previous next


Chorus
[140] “Although, O Lovely One, you are so gracious to the tender whelps of fierce lions, and take delight in the suckling young of every wild creature that roams the field, promise that the issue be brought to pass in accordance with these signs, portents [145] auspicious yet filled with ill. And I implore Paean1, the healer, that she may not raise adverse gales with long delay to stay the Danaan fleet from putting forth, [150] by urging another sacrifice, one that knows no law, unsuited for feast, worker of family strife, dissolving wife's reverence for husband. For there abides wrath— [155] terrible, not to be suppressed, a treacherous guardian of the home, a wrath that never forgets and that exacts vengeance for a child.”

Such utterances of doom, derived from auguries on the march, together with many blessings, did Calchas proclaim to the royal house; and in harmony with this,

Sing the song of woe, the song of woe, but may the good prevail!

1 Apollo; who is implored to divert his sister Artemis from accomplishing the evil part of the omen

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus English (Robert Browning, 1889)
load focus Greek (Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph.D., 1926)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (5 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (2):
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Ajax, 183
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Philoctetes, 507-518
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
    • Raphael Kühner, Friedrich Blass, Ausführliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache, B. Konsonanten.
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: