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122 . I know it well. . What, then, is thy thought?

. How we are to go home, I cannot tell. . And do not seek to go.

. Trouble besets us. . And erstwhile bore hardly on you.

. Desperate then, and now more cruel than despair.

. Great, verily, is the sea of your troubles.

. Alas, alas! O Zeus, whither shall we turn? To what last hope doth fate now urge us?

. Weep no more, maidens; for where the kindness of the Dark Powers is an abiding grace to the quick and to the dead, there is no room for mourning; divine anger would follow.

. Son of Aegeus, we supplicate thee!

. For the obtaining of what desire, my children?

. We fain would look with our own eyes upon our father's tomb.

. Nay, it is not lawful.

. How sayest thou, king, lord of Athens?

. My children, he gave me charge that no one should draw nigh unto that place, or greet with voice the sacred tomb wherein he sleeps. And he said that, while I duly kept that word, I should always hold the land unharmed. These pledges, therefore, were heard from my lips by the god, and by the all-seeing Watcher of oaths, the servant of Zeus.