and women for passion and its consequences that is
accountable for such horrors as have haunted the
house of Atreus (Choeph. 576):—
“Many the forms of woe and fear
And shuddering pain the earth doth bear;
And in the ocean's wide embrace
Swarm myriad shapes of monstrous race.
With warnings close to dazzled eyes
Dread meteors shoot athwart the skies:
Foreboding birds and beasts can speak
What wrath the hurricanes will wreak.
But who can tell what heights of crime
Man's hardened soul will dare to climb,
Or passion in a woman's breast
By no controlling awe suppressed,
Passion that, harbouring still with pain,
Brings all things deadly in her train?”
The man that in the pride of his heart spurns the
dictates of justice and righteousness, vainly calls on
the gods, whom he neglected in his day of prosperous
wickedness. They will laugh when his trouble
cometh (Eum. 528):—
“Caught in the racing current, which no skill
Or force avails to stem,
Loud are his cries to those who will not hear,
Or hearing answer them.
Hot-headed fool! the headland's deadly point
He thought with ease to clear!
God laughs to see him in the grip of fate,
In woe he did not fear.
Upon the reef of Justice strikes his keel,
His long-stored wealth is gone;
Sudden he passes to the eternal night
Unseen, unwept, alone.”
