“Eclogues” by Virgil

Eclogue I

So in old age, you happy man, your fields
will still be yours, and ample for your need!
Though, with bare stones o’erspread, the pastures all
be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young
by no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt
through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock.
Happy old man, who ‘mid familiar streams
and hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade!
Here, as of old, your neighbour’s bordering hedge,
that feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees,
shall oft with gentle murmur lull to sleep,
while the leaf-dresser beneath some tall rock
uplifts his song, nor cease their cooings hoarse
the wood-pigeons that are your heart’s delight,
nor doves their moaning in the elm-tree top.

Sooner shall light stags, therefore, feed in air,
the seas their fish leave naked on the strand,
germans and Parthians shift their natural bounds,
and these the Arar, those the Tigris drink,
than from my heart his face and memory fade.

Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
my native bounds—see many a harvest hence
with ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
some brutal soldier will possess these fields
an alien master. Ah! to what a pass
has civil discord brought our hapless folk!

Eclogue II

The grim-eyed lioness pursues the wolf,
the wolf the she-goat, the she-goat herself
in wanton sport the flowering cytisus,
and Corydon Alexis, each led on
by their own longing. See, the ox comes home
with plough up-tilted, and the shadows grow
to twice their length with the departing sun,
yet me love burns, for who can limit love?

Eclogue III [alternate verses]

Gifts for my love I’ve found; mine eyes have marked
where the wood-pigeons build their airy nests.

Ten golden apples have I sent my boy,
all that I could, to-morrow as many more.

What words to me, and uttered O how oft,
hath Galatea spoke! waft some of them,
ye winds, I pray you, for the gods to hear.

It profiteth me naught, Amyntas mine,
that in your very heart you spurn me not,
if, while you hunt the boar, I guard the nets.

Prithee, Iollas, for my birthday guest
send me your Phyllis; when for the young crops
I slay my heifer, you yourself shall come.

I am all hers; she wept to see me go,
and, lingering on the word, ‘farewell’ she said,
‘My beautiful Iollas, fare you well.’

Fell as the wolf is to the folded flock,
rain to ripe corn, Sirocco to the trees,
the wrath of Amaryllis is to me.

As moisture to the corn, to ewes with young
lithe willow, as arbute to the yeanling kids,
so sweet Amyntas, and none else, to me.

Eclogue IV

Now the last age by Cumae’s Sibyl sung
has come and gone, and the majestic roll
of circling centuries begins anew:
Justice [or Virgin] returns, returns old Saturn’s reign,
with a new breed of men sent down from heaven.
Only do thou, at the boy’s birth in whom
the iron shall cease, the golden race arise,
…
Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain
of our old wickedness, once done away,
shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear.
He shall receive the life of gods, and see
heroes with gods commingling, and himself
be seen of them, and with his father’s worth
reign o’er a world at peace. For thee, O boy,
first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth
her childish gifts, … Of themselves,
untended, will the she-goats then bring home
their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield
shall of the monstrous lion have no fear.
Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee
caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die,
die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far
and wide Assyrian spices spring.

But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes’ fame,
and of thy father’s deeds, and inly learn
what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees
with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow,
from the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape,
and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew

Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man,
no more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark
ply traffic on the sea, but every land
shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more
shall feel the harrow’s grip, nor vine the hook;
the sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer,
nor wool with varying colours learn to lie;
but in the meadows shall the ram himself,
now with soft flush of purple, now with tint
of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine.
While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs.

Assume thy greatness, for the time draws nigh,
dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove!
See how it totters—the world’s orbed might,
earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound,
all, see, enraptured of the coming time!
Ah! might such length of days to me be given,
and breath suffice me to rehearse thy deeds,

Eclogue V

As to trees the vine
is crown of glory, as to vines the grape,
bulls to the herd, to fruitful fields the corn,
so the one glory of thine own art thou.
When the Fates took thee hence, then Pales’ self,
and even Apollo, left the country lone.
Where the plump barley-grain so oft we sowed,
there but wild oats and barren darnel spring;
for tender violet and narcissus bright
thistle and prickly thorn uprear their heads.
Now, O ye shepherds, strew the ground with leaves,
and o’er the fountains draw a shady veil—
so Daphnis to his memory bids be done—

Eclogue VIII

Now let the wolf turn tail and fly the sheep,
tough oaks bear golden apples, alder-trees
bloom with narcissus-flower, the tamarisk
sweat with rich amber, and the screech-owl vie
in singing with the swan: let Tityrus
be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest-glade,
arion ‘mid his dolphins on the deep.
…
Yea, be the whole earth to mid-ocean turned!
Farewell, ye woodlands I from the tall peak
of yon aerial rock will headlong plunge
into the billows: this my latest gift,
from dying lips bequeathed thee, see thou keep.

Eclogue IX

look where Dionean Caesar’s star comes forth
in heaven, to gladden all the fields with corn,
and to the grape upon the sunny slopes
her colour bring!

References:

• “Eclogues” at Theoi
• “Eclogues” at Perseus

“Prometheus Bound” by Aeschylus

Prometheus

In the beginning, though [humans] had eyes to see, they saw to no avail; they had ears, but they did not understand; but, just as shapes in dreams, throughout their length of days, without purpose they wrought all things in confusion. They had neither knowledge of houses built of bricks and turned to face the sun nor yet of work in wood; but dwelt beneath the ground like swarming ants, in sunless caves. They had no sign either of winter or of flowery spring or of fruitful summer, on which they could depend but managed everything without judgment, until I taught them to discern the risings of the stars and their settings, which are difficult to distinguish.

Yes, and numbers, too, chiefest of sciences, I invented for them, and the combining of letters, creative mother of the Muses’ arts, with which to hold all things in memory. I, too, first brought brute beasts beneath the yoke to be subject to the collar and the pack-saddle, so that they might bear in men’s stead their heaviest burdens; and to the chariot I harnessed horses and made them obedient to the rein, to be an image of wealth and luxury. It was I and no one else who invented the mariner’s flaxen-winged car that roams the sea.

Wretched that I am—such are the arts I devised for mankind, yet have myself no cunning means to rid me of my present suffering.

I showed [men] how to mix soothing remedies with which they now ward off all their disorders. And I marked out many ways by which they might read the future, and among dreams I first discerned which are destined to come true; and voices baffling interpretation I explained to them, and signs from chance meetings. The flight of crook-taloned birds I distinguished clearly— which by nature are auspicious, which sinister—their various modes of life, their mutual feuds and loves, and their consortings; and the smoothness of their entrails, and what color the gall must have to please the gods, also the speckled symmetry of the liver-lobe; and the thigh-bones, wrapped in fat, and the long chine I burned and initiated mankind into an occult art. Also I cleared their vision to discern signs from flames,which were obscure before this. Enough about these arts. Now as to the benefits to men that lay concealed beneath the earth—bronze, iron, silver, and gold—who would claim to have discovered them before me? …Every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus.

Craft is far weaker than Necessity [i.e., the Fates and Furies]. Certainly [Zeus] cannot escape destiny.

Therefore let the lightning’s forked curl be cast upon my head and let the sky be convulsed with thunder and the wrack of savage winds; let the hurricane shake the earth from its rooted base, and let the waves of the sea mingle [engulf] with their savage surge the courses of the stars in heaven; and let him lift me on high and hurl me down to black Tartarus with the swirling floods of stern Necessity: do what he will, me he shall never bring to death.

Look for no term of this your agony until some god shall appear to take upon himself your woes and of his own free will descend into the sunless realm of Death and the dark deeps of Tartarus.

References:

• “Prometheus Bound” at Perseus

“Suppliants” by Aeschylus

Aeschylus’ Zeus

The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt out: the paths of his mind stretch tangled and shadowy, impossible to perceive or see clearly. It falls safe, not on its back, when an action is ordained by the nod of Zeus. It blazes everywhere, even in darkness, with black [obscure] fortune for mortal folk. He casts human down from lofty, towering hopes to utter destruction without deploying any armed force. Everything gods do is done without toil: he sits still, and nevertheless somehow carries out his will directly from his abode.

Will not Zeus be liable to merited censure for dishonouring the child of the cow, whom he himself once begot and caused to be, by now turning his face away when we pray to him?

Kindred to both [peoples] in blood, Zeus surveys both sides [in both directions] alike in this dispute with an impartial scale, apportioning, as is due, to the wicked their wrongdoing and to the godly their works of righteousness. When these things are thus equally balanced, why do you fear to act justly?

References:

• “Suppliants” at Perseus

“Seven Against Thebes” by Aeschylus

Two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, killed each other in battle, because they were not willing to share their father’s kingdom. They perished in a manner appropriate to their names –with “true glory”(Eteocles) and “much strife”(Polynices). Aeschylus attributed the mutual destruction of the two brothers to the sins of their grandfather, the curse of their father and the wrath of the gods, whereas Euripides attributed it to their own characters and actions, in his play based on the same event, “The Phoenician Women“.

Quotes:

“What else but that suffering is a resident in the house?
Friends, with the wind of lamentation in your sails
ply in accompaniment the regular beating of hands on head,
[like the rhythmic beat of a ship's oars]
which is for ever crossing the Acheron,
propelling on a sacred mission from which there is no return
the black-sailed ship,
on which Apollo Paeon never treads and the sun never shines,
to the invisible shores that welcome all.”

References:

• “Seven Against Thebes” at Perseus
• “Seven Against Thebes” at ebooks@Adelaide