Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.
- Who then is to release you against the will of Zeus?
- It is to be one of your own grandchildren.
- What did you say? A child of mine will release you from your misery?
- The third in descent after ten generations.
- Your prophecy is not easy to understand.
- Yes, so do not seek to learn the full extent of your own sufferings.
- Do not offer me a favor and then withdraw it.
- I will present you with one or other of two tales.
- Which two? Set them forth and offer me the choice.
- I am making the offer: choose whether I shall reveal the sufferings still in store for you or the one who will be my deliverer.
- Consent to bestow on her one of these favors, and on me the other; do not deny me the tale. Tell her about her further wanderings;
- tell me who will deliver you—for I would like to know this.
- Well, since you are bent on this, I will not refuse to proclaim all that you still crave to know. First, to you, Io, will I declare your much-vexed wandering, and may you engrave it on the recording tablets of your mind.