Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/106

94

What hast thou said!

Doth not the armament of Barbary

March out of Europe over Helle's sound?

Few out of many, if the oracles

Of Heaven, by warrant of these late events,

Gain credence: they are individable;

They do not fail in part, nor yet in part

Are they fulfilled. And even were they flawed

With false predictions, Xerxes, in false hopes

Confiding, hath abandoned to their fate

A vast array, the chosen of his host.

Where the Asopus watereth the plain

And maketh fat the deep Boeotian earth

They are cut off; and there is reserved for them

The culmination of their sufferings,

A just reward of pride and godless thoughts,

Because in Hellas they thought it no shame

To' strip the ancient statues of the Gods

And burn their temples: yea, cast down the altars,

And from their firm foundations overthrew,

So that they lie in heaps, the builded fanes

Of unseen powers. The evil that they did

Is in like measure meted unto them,

Yea, and more shall be meted; deeper still

Lies the hid vein of suffering; yet a little

And it shall gush forth. So great shall be the carnage;

A veritable offering of blood,

Congealed with slaughter, on Plataea's plain,