Libation Bearers (340-439)

—Welcomed there below by your comrades

who nobly fell, a ruler of august majesty, distinguished even beneath the earth, and minister of the mightiest, the deities who rule in the nether world.[*]

For in your life you were a king of those who have the power to assign the portion of death,[*] and who wield the staff all mortals obey.

No, not even beneath the walls of Troy, father,

would I wish you to have fallen and to be entombed beside Scamander’s waters among the rest of the host slain by the spear. I wish rather that his murderers had been killed by their own loved ones, just as they killed you,

so that someone in a distant land who knew nothing of these present troubles should learn of their fatal doom.

And when will mighty Zeus bring down his hand on them

and split their heads open? Let it be a pledge to the land! After injustice I demand justice as my right. Hear, O Earth, and you honored powers below!

But again my heart throbs as I hear this pitiful lament. At once I am devoid of hope and my viscera are darkened at the words I hear.

But when hope once again lifts and strengthens me, it puts away my distress and dawns brightly on me.

To what could we more fittingly appeal than to those very miseries we have endured from the woman herself who bore us?

She may fawn upon us, but they are past all soothing. For like a fierce-hearted wolf the temper we have acquired from our mother is implacable.

Yes, and I would have you know he was brutally mangled.[*]