Scaife ATLAS

CTS Library / The Suppliants

The Suppliants (345-430)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg008.perseus-eng2:345-430
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bidst me undertake this enterprise? Yea, I will go about this business and rescue the dead by words persuasive; or, failing that, the spear forthwith shall decide this issue, nor will heaven grudge me this. But I require the whole city’s sanction also,
which my mere wish will ensure; still by communicating the proposal to them I shall find the people better disposed. For them I made supreme, when I set this city free, by giving all an equal vote. So I will take Adrastus as a text for what I have to say
and go to their assembly, and when I have won them to these views, I will return hither, after collecting a picked band of young Athenians; and then remaining under arms I will send a
message to Creon, begging the bodies of the dead. But do ye, aged ladies, remove from my mother your holy wreaths,
that I may take her by the hand and conduct her to the house of Aegeus; for a wretched son is he who rewards not his parents by service; for, when he hath conferred on them the best he hath, he in his turn from his own sons receives all such service as he gave to them.
365
Chorus
O Argos, home of steeds, my native land! ye have heard with your ears these words, the king’s pious will toward the gods in the sight of great Pelasgia and throughout Argos.
369
Chorus
May he reach the goal! yea, and triumph o’er my sorrows,
rescuing the gory corpse, the mother’s idol, and making the land of Inachus his friend by helping her.
373
Chorus
For pious toil is a fair ornament to cities, and carries with it a grace that never wastes away.
What will the city decide, I wonder? Will it conclude a friendly truce with me, and shall we obtain burial for our sons?
377
Chorus
Help, O help, city of Pallas, the mother’s cause, that so they may not pollute the laws of all mankind. Thou, I know, dost reverence right, and to injustice dealest out
defeat, a protection at all times to the afflicted.
381
Theseus
(to a herald.) Forasmuch as with this thy art thou hast ever served the stat and me by carrying my proclamations far and wide, so now cross Asopus and the waters of Ismenus, and declare this message to the haughty king of the Cadmeans:
Theseus, thy neighbour, one who well may win the boon he craves, begs as a favour thy permission to bury the dead, winning to thyself thereby the love of all the Erechthidae. And if they will acquiesce, come back again, but if they hearken not, thy second message runneth thus,
they may expect my warrior host; for at the sacred fount of Callichorus my army camps in readiness and is being reviewed. Moreover, the city gladly of its own accord undertook this enterprise, when it perceived my wish.
Ha! who comes hither to interrupt my speech? A Theban herald,
so it seems, though I am not sure thereof. Stay; haply he may save thee thy trouble. For by his coming he meets my purpose half-way.
399
Herald
Who is the despot of this land? To whom must I announce
the message of Creon, who rules o’er the land of Cadmus, since Eteocles was slain by the hand of his brother Polynices, at the sevenfold gates of Thebes?
Theseus
Sir stranger, thou hast made a false beginning to thy speech, in seeking here a despot. For this city is not ruled
by one man, but is free. The people rule in succession year by year, allowing no preference to wealth, but the poor man shares equally with the rich.
Herald
Thou givest me here an advantage, as it might be in a game of draughts[*];
for the city, whence I come, is ruled by one man only, not by the mob; none there puffs up the citizens with specious words, and for his own advantage twists them this way or that,—one moment dear to them and lavish of his favours,
the next a bane to all; and yet by fresh calumnies of others he hides his former failures and escapes punishment. Besides, how shall the people, if it cannot form true judgments, be able rightly to direct the state? Nay, ’tis time, not haste, that affords a better
understanding. A poor hind, granted he be not all unschooled, would still be unable from his toil to give his mind to politics. Verily[*] the better sort count it no healthy sign when the worthless man obtains a reputation
by beguiling with words the populace, though aforetime he was naught.
426
Theseus
This herald is a clever fellow, a dabbler in the art of talk. But since thou hast thus entered the lists with me, listen awhile, for ’twas thou didst challenge a discussion. Naught is more hostile to a city than a despot;
where he is, there are in the first place no laws common to all, but one
man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end. But when the laws are written down, rich and poor alike have equal justice,

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