Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/432

362

Unseemly woe thou bearest. Driven astray

Flounders thy judgment, and like sorry leech

Falling distemper'd, spiritless thou art,

Nor remedies canst find thyself to cure.

Hearken the rest, and thou wilt marvel more

What arts and what resources I devised.

This chief of all; if any one fell sick,

No help there was, diet nor liniment,

Nor healing draught; but men, for lack of drugs

Wasted away, till I to them revealed

Commixtures of assuaging remedies

Which may disorders manifold repel.

Of prophecies the various modes I fixed,

And among dreams did first discriminate

The truthful vision. Voices ominous,

Hard to interpret, I to them made known:

And way-side auguries, the flight of birds

With crooked talons, clearly I defined;

Showed by their nature which auspicious arc,

And which ill-omened—taught the modes of life

Native to each, and what, among themselves

Their feuds, affections, and confederacies.

Touching the smoothness of the vital parts,

And what the hue most pleasing to the gods,

I taught them, and the mottled symmetry

Of gall and liver. Thighs encased in fat

With the long chine I burnt, and mortals guided