Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/298

228 'Gainst famous Athens hath my son devised;

Nor did the deaths suffice of Asia's host

Whom Marathon destroyed; for them my son

Thought to exact requital, but instead,

Upon himself hath drawn this host of ills.

But speak, the ships that have destruction 'scaped,—

Where didst thou leave them? This canst clearly tell?

Of the surviving ships the captains straight

Before the wind took flight in disarray.

But of the host the remnant met their death

In the Bœotian's land. Some pressed with thirst

Round sparkling fount, some breathless, spent by toil.

Thence crossed we over to the Phocian land,

To soil of Doris and the Melian gulf,

Whose plain Spercheios' stream with kindly draught

Waters; thereafter the Achaian soil,

And cities of Thessalians us received,

Straitened for food; there died the greater part

Of thirst and hunger, for both ills [sic]befel.

Magnesia and the Macedonian land

Traversed we then, far as to Axios' ford,

To Bolbe's marshy reed, and to the height

Of Mount Pangaios and the Edonian land;

But on that night, winter, out of due time,

Some god aroused, who Strymon's holy stream

Through its whole course congealed; then who before