GHOST OF DARIUS
by groundless expectations. And
1
they are remaining where Asopus with his streams waters the plain, a kind enrichment of the Boeotian fields: where the supreme of horrors await them to suffer, in retribution for their presumption and godless devices; who, when they arrived in the land of Hellas, shrunk not from despoiling the statues of the gods, nor from firing their shrines: but the altars are demolished, and the temples of the divinities utterly overthrown from their basements in confused ruin; wherefore, having done evil, they experience not less, and will still further; and not yet is it come to the dregs
2
of their calamities, but still they keep on gushing forth: for so great a clotted gore-dripping mass shall there be amid the land of the Plataeans, beneath the Dorian spear; and heaps of corpses, even to the third generation, shall voicelessly announce to the eyes of mortals, how that it becomes not one that is mortal to entertain thoughts too high for him. For presumption, when it has bloomed, is wont to produce for fruit a crop of Atè, whence it reaps an all-mournful harvest. Seeing such are the recompenses of these things, be ye mindful of Athens and of Hellas, and let not any one contemning his present fortune, enamoured of other things, cast away great felicity. Jove is in sooth over us a chastiser of extremely overbearing thoughts, a stern censor. Wherefore do ye instruct him, destitute as he is of prudence
3
, with reasonable admonitions, that he should cease to insult the gods with his overweening confidence. And do thou, dear aged mother of Xerxes, go into the palace, and fetch vesture such as is seemly, and meet thy child; for in his sorrow for these misfortunes, tatters of his embroidered robes are rent all about his person. But do thou mildly soothe him with words; for to thee alone, I am assured, will he endure to listen. But I will depart from earth into the gloom that is beneath. And you, my aged friends, give yourselves to joy, though ye be in afflictions, giving your spirits to pleasure day by day; since to the dead wealth is of no avail.
The GHOST OF DARIUS descends.
4
CHORUS
Persians. Aeschylus. Theodore Alois Buckley (Translator). London. 1849.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by Volunteer.