Parodos
[Choral 1]
At thy knees I fall, aged dame, and my old lips beseech thee;
Chorus
arise, rescue from the slain my children’s bodies, whose limbs, by death relaxed, are left a prey to savage mountain beasts,
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beholding the bitter tears which spring to my eyes
and my old wrinkled skin torn by my hands; for what can I do else? who never laid out my children dead within my halls, nor now behold their tombs heaped up with earth.
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[Choral 2]
Thou too, honoured lady, once a son didst bear,
Chorus
crowning thy lord’s marriage with fond joy; then share, O share with me thy mother’s feelings, in such measure as my sad heart grieves for my own dead sons;
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and persuade thy son, whose aid we implore, to go unto the river Ismenus, there to place within my hapless arms the bodies of my children, slain in their prime and left without a tomb.Translating from Elmsley’s emendation of this corrupt passage, θαλερῶν σῶμα ταλαίνας ἄταφον.
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ThoughBecause they had arrived during a festival, and their supplication at such a time was a bad omen. not as piety enjoins, yet from sheer necessity I have come to the fire-crowned altars of the gods, falling on my knees with instant supplication,
for my cause is just, and ’tis in thy power, blest as thou art in thy children, to remove from me my woe; so in my sore distress I do beseech thee of my misery place in my hands my son’s
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dead body, that I may throw my arms about his hapless limbs.
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[Choral 3]
Behold a rivalry in sorrow! woe takes up the tale of woe; hark! thy servants beat their breasts. Come ye who join the mourners’ wail, come, O sympathetic band, to join the dance,
Chorus
which Hades honours; let theHartung proposes to read διὰ παρῆδος ὄνθχα τίθετε φόνιον, αἱματοῦτε χρόα τε λευκόν, but I have followed Paley’s text, which gives a possible meaning. pearly nail be stained red, as it rends your cheeks, let your skin be streaked with gore; for honours rendered to the dead are a creditReading κόσμος, which Hartung alters to κῆδος. to the living.
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Sorrow’s charm doth drive me wild, insatiate, painful,
endless, even as the trickling stream that gushes from some steep rock’s face; for ’tis woman’s way to fall a-weeping o’er
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the cruel calamity of children dead. Ah me! would I could die and forget my anguish!
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