Stasimon 3
[Episode]
What land is this? What people? By what name am I to call the one I see exposed to the tempest in bonds of rock? What offence have you committed that as punishment you are doomed to destruction?
Io
Tell me to what region of the earth I have wandered in my wretchedness?
565
Oh, oh! Aah! Aah! A gad-fly, phantom of earth-born Argus is stinging me again! Keep him away, O Earth! I am fearful when I behold that myriad-eyed herdsman. He travels onward with his crafty gaze upon me;
not even in death does the earth conceal him, but passing from the shades he hounds me, the forlorn one, and drives me famished along the sands of the seashore.
570
[Choral 1]
The waxen pipe drones forth in accompaniment a clear-sounding slumberous strain. Alas, alas! Where is my far-roaming wandering course taking me? In what, O son of Cronus, in what have you found offence so that you have bound me
575
Io
to this yoke of misery—aah! are you harassing a wretched maiden to frenzy by this terror of the pursuing gadfly? Consume me with fire, or hide me in the earth, or give me to the monsters of the deep to devour; but do not grudge, O Lord, the favor that I pray for.
580
My far-roaming wanderings have taught me enough, and I cannot discern how to escape my sufferings. Do you hear the voice of the horned virgin?
585
Prometheus
How can I fail to hear the maiden frenzied by the gadfly, the
daughter of Inachus? It is she who fires the heart of Zeus with passion, and now, through Hera’s hate, is disciplined by force with interminable wandering.
590
Io
Why do you call my father’s name? Tell me, the unfortunate maid, who you are,
unhappy wretch, that you thus correctly address the miserable maiden, and have named the heaven-sent plague that wastes and stings me with its maddening goad. Ah me! In frenzied bounds I come,
595
driven by torturing hunger, victim of Hera’s vengeful purpose. Who of the company of the unfortunate endures—aah! aah!—sufferings such as mine? Oh make it clear to me
600
what misery I am fated to suffer, what remedy is there, what cure, for my affliction. Reveal it, if you have the knowledge. Oh speak, declare it to the unfortunate, wandering virgin.
605