With stroke redoubled, whelm'd our land forlorn?
All her lost triremes we deplore,
No triremes now, alas, no, never more.
[The Ghost of Darius rises.]
Darius.
O faithful of the faithful, ye whilome
My youth's compeers, elders of Persia, say
With what sore travail travaileth the state?
The land, breast-smitten and with furrowed cheek,[1]
Moaneth, and I, beholding near my tomb 680
My consort, troubled am, but graciously
Her offrings I received; ye also stand
Lifting the dirge beside my sepulchre,
And, shouting loud with shade-evoking strains,
Piteously call me: but the upward path
Lies not too open; for the gods below
More ready are to seize than to let loose.
Yet, rank among them holding, I am come;
But haste, that time rebuke not my delay.
What this new ill that weighs the Persians down?
- ↑ στένει, κέκοπται, καὶ χαράσσεται πέδον.
Considerable diversity of opinion prevails as to the correct interpretation of this passage. When it is remembered, however, that κόπτομαι, med., means to beat the breast in grief, like Lat. plangere, it seems evident that χαράσσεται, taken in connection with στένει and κέκοπται, can refer only to the παρῄδων ἀμυγμός. I therefore conclude that by a bold image the poet ascribes to the very soil the horrors of frenzied mourning, with the modes of which the Greeks wore familiar.
