Hermes
Yet it was by such proud wilfulness before, too,
[965]
that you brought yourself to this harbor of distress.
Prometheus
For your servitude, rest assured, I'd not barter my hard lot, not I.
Hermes
Better, no doubt, to serve this rock than be the trusted messenger of Father Zeus!
Prometheus
[970]
Such is the proper style for the insolent to offer insult.
Hermes
I think you revel in your present plight.
Prometheus
I revel? Oh, I wish that I might see my enemies revelling in this way! And you, too, I count among them.
Hermes
What! You blame me in some way for your calamities?
Prometheus
[975]
In one word, I hate all the gods that received good at my hands and with ill requite me wrongfully.
Hermes
Your words declare you stricken with no slight madness.
Prometheus
Mad I may be—if it is madness to loathe one's enemies.
Hermes
You would be unbearable if you were prosperous.
Prometheus
[980]
Alas!
Hermes
“Alas”? That is a word unknown to Zeus.
Prometheus
But ever-ageing Time teaches all things.
Hermes
Yes, but you at least have not yet learned to keep a sober mind.
Prometheus
Or else I would not have addressed you, an underling.
Hermes
It seems you will answer nothing that the Father demands.
Prometheus
[985]
Yes, truly, I am his debtor and I should repay favor to him.
Hermes
You taunt me as though, indeed, I were a child.
Prometheus
And are you not a child and even more witless than a child if you expect to learn anything from me? There is no torment or device by which
[990]
Zeus shall induce me to utter this until these injurious fetters are loosed. So then, let his blazing lightning be hurled, and with the white wings of the snow and thunders of earthquake let him confound the reeling world.
[995]
For nothing of this shall bend my will even to tell at whose hands he is fated to be hurled from his sovereignty.
Hermes
Look now whether this course seems to profit you.
Prometheus
Long ago has this my course been foreseen and resolved.
Hermes
Bend your will, perverse fool, oh bend your will at last
[1000]
to wisdom in face of your present sufferings.
Prometheus
In vain you trouble me, as though it were a wave you try to persuade. Never think that, through terror at the will of Zeus, I shall become womanish and, with hands upturned, aping woman's ways,
[1005]
shall importune my greatly hated enemy to release me from these bonds. I am far, far from that.
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Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. 1. Prometheus Bound. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.
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