In the beautiful little ode which follows—an ode which Mr Plumptre has translated admirably—the Chorus express a pious fear of the power of Zeus, and dread of the effects of such boldness in speech as Prometheus has displayed. Too great, too hopeless was his endeavour on behalf of men, and grievous is its consequence; an end so different from that happy day on which, as the Ocean-nymphs sadly remember, he led as a bride to his halls their own sister Hesione. Their gentle sympathy has reached its tenderest point, and the soft music, which has held those thirty thousand Athenians enthralled, dies quietly away.
And now a new person comes upon the scene; one who, like Prometheus, is a sufferer under the wrath of heaven, the maiden Io. She wears the form of a heifer, though her face is still a woman's, and in this shape she is driven up and down the world, by the jealousy of Juno, because her beauty, by no fault of hers, had attracted the love of the sovereign of Olympus. Behind her follows a spectral form, the ghost of Argus the many-eyed, who still, though dead, drives her before him through the earth, while a gadfly, with its constant stings, adds to her restlessness. She comes upon the scene lamenting her lot, and calling upon Zeus for an answer to her prayers. Prometheus recognises her at once. "Surely," he says,—
"Surely I hear the maid by gadfly driven,
Daughter of Inachos, who warmed the heart
Of Zeus with love, and now through Here's hate
Is tried, perforce, with wanderings over-long."
