The Suppliants (137-180)

What induced thee to select this alliance?

Dark riddles of Phoebus stole away my judgment.

What said Apollo to determine the maidens’ marriage?

That I should give my daughters twain to a wild boar and a lion.

How dost thou explain the message of the god?

One night came to my door two exiles.

The name of each declare; thou art speaking of both together.

They fought together, Tydeus with Polynices.

Didst thou give thy daughters to them as to wild beasts?

Yea, for, as they fought, I likened them to those monsters twain.

Why had they left the borders of their native land and come to thee?

Tydeus was exiled for the murder of a kinsman.

Wherefore had the son of Oedipus left Thebes?

By reason of his father’s curse, not to spill his brother’s blood.

Wise no doubt that voluntary exile.

But those who stayed at home were for injuring the absent.

What! did brother rob brother of his inheritance?

To avenge this I set out; hence my ruin.

Didst consult seers, and gaze into the flame of burnt-offerings?

Ah me! thou pressest on the very point, wherein I most did fail.

It seems thy going was not favoured by heaven.

Worse; I went in spite even of Amphiaraus.

And so heaven lightly turned[*] its face from thee.

I was carried away by the clamour of younger men.

Thou didst favour courage instead of discretion.

[*]True; and many a general owes defeat to that. O king of Athens, bravest of the sons of Hellas, I blush

to throw myself upon the ground and clasp thy knees, I a grey-haired king, blest in days gone by; yet needs must I yield to my misfortunes. I pray thee save the dead; have pity on my sorrows and on these, the mothers of the slain,

whom hoary eld finds reft of their sons; yet they endured to journey hither and tread a foreign soil with aged tottering steps, bearing no embassy to Demeter’s mysteries; only seeking burial for their dead, which lot should have been theirs,

e’en burial by the hands of sons still in their prime.[*] And ’tis wise in the rich to see the poor man’s poverty, and in the poor man to turn ambitious eyes toward the rich, that so he may himself indulge a longing for property; and they, whom fortune frowns not on, should gaze on misery’s presentment;

likewise, who maketh songs should take a pleasure in their making; for if it be not so with him, he will in no wise avail to gladden others, if himself have sorrow in his home; nay, ’tis not even right to expect it. Mayhap thou’lt say, Why pass the land of Pelops o’er,