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Translated by E. Coleridge.
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Euripides in Print
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81 pages - You are on Page 32
Chorus: (singing, strophe)
To this land came Cadmus of Tyre, at whose feet an unyoked heifer
threw itself down, giving effect to an oracle on the spot where the
god's response bade him take up his abode in Aonia's rich cornlands,
where gushing Dirce's fair rivers of water pour o'er verdant fruitful
fields; here was born the Bromian god by her whom Zeus made a mother,
round whom the ivy twined its wreaths while he was yet a babe, swathing
him amid the covert of its green foliage as child of happy destiny,
to be a theme for Bacchic revelry among the maids and wives inspired
in Thebes.
(antistrophe)
There lay Ares' murderous dragon, a savage warder, watching with
roving eye the watered glens and quickening streams; him did Cadmus
slay with a jagged stone, when he came thither to draw him lustral
water, smiting that fell head with a blow of his death-dealing arm;
but by the counsel of Pallas, motherless goddess, he cast the teeth
upon the earth into deep furrows, whence sprang to sight mail-clad
host above the surface of the soil; but grim slaughter once again
united them to the earth they loved, bedewing with blood the ground
that had disclosed them to the sunlit breath of heaven.
(epode)
Thee too, Epaphus, child of Zeus, sprung from Io our ancestress,
call on in my foreign tongue; all hail to thee! hear my prayer uttered
in accents strange, and visit this land; 'twas in thy honour thy descendants
settled here, and those goddesses of twofold name, Persephone and
kindly Demeter or Earth the queen of all, that feedeth every mouth,
won it for themselves; send to the help of this land those torch-bearing
queens; for to gods all things are easy.
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