Prometheus
[1040]
No news to me, in truth, is the message this fellow has proclaimed so noisily.Yet for enemy to suffer ill from enemy is no disgrace. Therefore let the lightning's forked curl be cast upon my head and let the sky
[1045]
be convulsed with thunder and the wrack of savage winds; let the hurricane shake the earth from its rooted base, and let the waves of the sea mingle with their savage surge the courses
[1050]
of the stars in heaven; and let him lift me on high and hurl me down to black Tartarus with the swirling floods of stern Necessity: do what he will, me he shall never bring to death.
Hermes
Such indeed are the thoughts and the words
[1055]
one hears from men deranged. Where does his prayer fall short of raving? Where does he abate his frenzy?—But, at all events, may you who sympathize with his anguish,
[1060]
withdraw in haste from this spot so that the relentless roar of the thunder does not stun your senses.
Chorus
Use some other strain and urge me to some other course in which you are likely to convince me. This utterance
[1065]
in your flood of speech is, I think, past all endurance. How do you charge me to practise baseness? With him I am content to suffer any fate; for I have learned to detest traitors, and there is no pest
[1070]
I abhor more than this.
Hermes
Well then, bear my warning in memory and do not blame your fortune when you are caught in the toils of calamity; nor ever say that it was Zeus who cast you
[1075]
into suffering unforeseen. Not so, but blame yourselves. For well forewarned, and not suddenly or secretly shall you be entangled in the inextricable net of calamity by reason of your folly.Exit
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Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 1. Prometheus Bound. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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