Libation Bearers
Aeschylus
Aeschylus, Volume 2. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1926.
- O you gods, judge rightly the plea of right!
- A shudder steals over me as I hear these prayers. Doom has long been waiting,
- but it will come in answer to those who pray.
- Ah, inbred trouble and bloody stroke of ruin striking a discord! Ah, lamentable and grievous sorrows!
- Ah, the unstaunched pain!
- Our house has a cure to heal these woes, a cure not from outside, from the hands of others, but from itself, by fierce, bloody strife.
- This hymn is for the gods beneath the earth.
- O you blessed powers below, hear this supplication of ours, and with a favorable will send forth to these children your aid for victory!
- O father, who perished by a death unbefitting a king,
- grant in answer to my prayer the lordship over your halls!
- And I too, father, have a like request of you: to escape when I have wrought great destruction on Aegisthus.
- Yes, for then the customary funeral feasts of men would be established in your honor. But otherwise, at the rich and savory banquet
- of burnt offerings made to the earth, you will be without a portion of honor.
- And I will likewise at my wedding offer libations to you out of the fullness of my inheritance from my father’s house, and before all else I will hold this tomb of yours in the highest honor.
- O Earth, send up my father to watch my battle!
- O Persephone, grant us indeed a glorious victory!
- Father, remember the bath where you were robbed of life.
- And remember how they devised a strange net to cast about you.
- You were caught, my father, in fetters forged by no smith’s hand.
- And in a fabric shamefully devised.