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Chorus
O Earth, you once bore—as I heard, I heard the story told by foreigners once in my own home—you bore [820] a race which sprang of the teeth of a snake with blood-red crest, that fed on beasts, to be the glory and reproach of Thebes. In days gone by the sons of heaven came to the wedding of Harmonia, and the walls and towers of Thebes rose to the sound of Amphion's lyre, [825] in the midst between the double streams where Dirce waters the grass-green field before Ismenus; and Io, our horned ancestress, was mother of the kings of Thebes; [830] thus our city, through an endless succession of various blessings, has set herself upon the heights, crowned with the glory of war.
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 2. The Phoenissae, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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