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Chorus
In this, my child, your wish is better than gold. It surpasses great good fortune, even that of the supremely blesssed;1 for it is easy to wish. But now the lash of this double scourge2 comes home: [375] our cause already has its champions beneath the earth, while the hands of our loathsome opponents, though they have the mastery, are unholy. The children have won the day.
1 The Hyperboreans, a fabulous people dwelling “beyond the North wind,” were imagined to live longer and in greater felicity than other mortals.
2 The “lash of this double scourge” refers to the appeal to the dead, lashing him to vengenace, to the beating of the head and breast, and to the stamping open the ground, which, like the invocation of the dead, were intended to arouse the nether powers. The scourge is “double” （cp. Agam.647） because the participants in the scene are the two children （l. 334） and the Chorus.
Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 2. Libation Bearers. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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