Chorus
[515]
O unearthly power, source of our cruel distress, with what crushing weight have you fallen upon the whole Persian race!
Atossa
How the utter destruction of our host distresses me! O vivid vision of my dreams at night, how clearly did you signify misfortune to me!
[520]
And all too lightly did you in turn interpret it. However, since your explanation determined thus, first of all I wish to offer prayers to the gods, and then I will return after I have brought from the palace a sacrificial cake as a gift to Earth and the dead.
[525]
I know indeed that it is for what cannot be undone, yet I do this in the hope that something more auspicious may come to pass in the future. But you should confer faithfully with the faithful counsellors in view of what has befallen. And as for my son, if he should come here before I return,
[530]
comfort him and escort him to the palace, so that he will not inflict on himself some further ill to crown those already ours.Exit
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Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 1. Persians. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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