Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/174

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 * Mountainous country, and in the middle of a deep gorge a Rock, towards which and  carry the gigantic form of .  follows dejectedly with hammer, nails, chains, etc.

Now have we journeyed to a spot of earth

Remote,—the Scythian wild, a waste untrod.

And now, Hephaestus, thou must execute

The task our father laid on thee, and fetter

This malefactor to the jagged rocks

In adamantine bonds infrangible;

For thine own blossom of all forging fire

He stole and gave to mortals; trespass grave

For which the Gods have called him to account,

That he may learn to bear Zeus' tyranny

And cease to play the lover of mankind.

Kratos and Bia, for ye twain the hest

Of Zeus is done with; nothing lets you further.

But forcibly to bind a brother God,

In chains, in this deep chasm raked by all storms

I have not courage; yet needs must I pluck

Courage from manifest necessity,

For woe worth him that slights the Father's word.

O high-souled son of Themis sage in counsel,