Persians

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.

  1. There it was that many perished of thirst and hunger, for we were oppressed by both. And we came to the Magnesian land and to the country of the Macedonians, to the ford of the Axius and Bolbe’s reedy marsh, and to Mount Pangaeus,
  2. in the Edonian land. But on that night the god roused winter before its time and froze the stream of sacred Strymon from shore to shore. Many a man who before that had held the gods in no esteem, implored them then in supplication, doing obeisance to earth and heaven.
  3. But when our host had made an end of its fervent invocation of the gods, it ventured to pass across the ice-bound stream. And each of us who started on his way before the sun god dispersed his beams, found himself in safety, for the bright orb of the sun with its burning rays
  4. heated the middle section and pierced it with its flames. One after another our men sank in, and fortunate indeed was he who perished soonest. The survivors, after making their way through Thrace with great hardship,
  5. —and few they were indeed—escaped to the safety of the land of their homes; now the city of the Persians may make lament in regret for the beloved youth of the land. What I say is true, yet much remains untold of the ills launched by Heaven upon the Persians. Exit
Chorus
  1. O unearthly power, source of our cruel distress, with what crushing weight have you fallen upon the whole Persian race!
Atossa
  1. How the utter destruction of our host distresses me! O vivid vision of my dreams at night, how clearly did you signify misfortune to me!
  2. And all too lightly did you in turn interpret it. However, since your explanation determined thus, first of all I wish to offer prayers to the gods, and then I will return after I have brought from the palace a sacrificial cake as a gift to Earth and the dead.
  3. I know indeed that it is for what cannot be undone, yet I do this in the hope that something more auspicious may come to pass in the future. But you should confer faithfully with the faithful counsellors in view of what has befallen. And as for my son, if he should come here before I return,
  4. comfort him and escort him to the palace, so that he will not inflict on himself some further ill to crown those already ours. Exit
Chorus
  1. O sovereign Zeus, by destroying the army of the haughty and multitudinous Persians,
  2. you have shrouded in the gloom of grief the city of Susa and of Agbatana! Many a woman, who has a share in this sorrow, tears her veil with tender hands
  3. and moistens with drenching tears the robe covering her bosom. And the Persian wives, indulging in soft wailing through longing to behold their lords and abandoning the daintily wrought coverlets of their couches, the delight of their youth,
  4. mourn with complainings that know no end. So I too sustain the truly woeful fate of those who are gone.
Chorus
  1. For now in truth the whole land of Asia, decimated, moans:
  2. Xerxes led forth (woe!), Xerxes laid low (woe!), Xerxes disposed all things imprudently with his sea-going vessels. Why then was Darius
  3. in his time so unscathed by disaster, he who was ruler of archers, to the men of Susa a beloved leader?
Chorus
  1. For infantry and seamen both, the ships, dark-eyed[*](The great eye that was often painted on each bow made a Greek ship seem a thing of life. Cp. Aesch. Supp. 716.)and linen-winged,