No More Learning

CHORUS

Zeus, pity our distress, or e'er we die.

DANAUS

If so he will, your toils to joy will turn.

CHORUS

Lo, on this shrine, the semblance of a bird. [2]

DANAUS

Zeus' bird of dawn it is; invoke the sign.

CHORUS

Thus I invoke the saving rays of morn.

[Footnote: 2: The whole of this dialogue in alternate verses is
disarranged in the MSS. The re-arrangement which has approved itself
to Paley has been here followed. It involves, however, a hiatus,
instead of the line to which this note is appended. The substance of
the lost line being easily deducible from the context, it has been
supplied in the translation. ]

DANAUS

Next, bright Apollo, exiled once from heaven.

CHORUS

The exiled god will pity our exile.

DANAUS

Yea, may he pity, giving grace and aid.

CHORUS

Whom next invoke I, of these other gods?

DANAUS

Lo, here a trident, symbol of a god.

CHORUS

Who [3] gave sea-safety; may he bless on land!
[Footnote: 3: Poseidon] DANAUS

This next is Hermes, carved in Grecian wise.

CHORUS

Then let him herald help to freedom won.

DANAUS

Lastly, adore this altar consecrate
To many lesser gods in one; then crouch
On holy ground, a flock of doves that flee,
Scared by no alien hawks, a kin not kind,
Hateful, and fain of love more hateful still.
Foul is the bird that rends another bird,
And foul the men who hale unwilling maids,
From sire unwilling, to the bridal bed.
Never on earth, nor in the lower world,
Shall lewdness such as theirs escape the ban:
There too, if men say right, a God there is
Who upon dead men turns their sin to doom,
To final doom. Take heed, draw hitherward,
That from this hap your safety ye may win.
[_Enter the_ KING OF ARGOS.

THE KING OF ARGOS

Speak--of what land are ye? No Grecian band
Is this to whom I speak, with Eastern robes
And wrappings richly dight: no Argive maid,
No woman in all Greece such garb doth wear.
This too gives marvel, how unto this land,
Unheralded, unfriended, without guide,
And without fear, ye came? yet wands I see,
True sign of suppliance, by you laid down
On shrines of these our gods of festival.
No land but Greece can read such signs aright.
Much else there is, conjecture well might guess,
But let words teach the man who stands to hear.

CHORUS

True is the word thou spakest of my garb;
But speak I unto thee as citizen,
Or Hermes' wandbearer, or chieftain king?

THE KING OF ARGOS

For that, take heart and answer without fear.
I am Pelasgus, ruler of this land,
Child of Palaichthon, whom the earth brought forth;
And, rightly named from me, the race who reap
This country's harvests are Pelasgian called.