and pray that their pursuers may be overwhelmed in the sea, and never reach the shores of Argos. And now they have reached the orchestra, and dividing into ranks and companies, they range themselves about the altar, there to sing, no longer to the music of a march, but in more varied strains, their prayers and lamentations. Just as Prometheus compares his sufferings with those of Atlas and Typhon, so these maidens compare themselves to Tereus' bride, the piteous nightingale:—
"As she, driven back from wonted haunts and streams,
Mourns with a strange new plaint,
And takes her son's death as the theme of song,
How he at her hand died,
Meeting with evil wrath unmotherly;
E'en so do I, to wailing all o'ergiven,
In plaintive music of Ionian mood,
Vex the soft cheek on Neilos' banks that bloomed,
And heart that bursts in tears,
And pluck the flower of lamentations loud."
In their appeals to Zeus, here and throughout the play, the suppliants assert the sublimest truths about the one supreme God. The mystery that shrouds His ways and the certainty of His justice are their favourite themes:—
"For dark and shadowed o'er
The pathways of the counsels of His heart,
And difficult to see.
And from high towering hopes He hurleth down
