Antistrophe II.
And those with sharp spears clanging
Who dwell, a hostile power,
Fortress'd on rocks o'erhanging, 430
Near Caucasos,—Arabia's martial flower.[1]
Epode.
One only of the gods before thus bent
Have I beheld, 'neath adamantine pains,
Atlas, the Titan, who with many a groan
Still on his back sustains,
Vast burthen, the revolving firmament.
Chiming in cadence ocean-waves resound; 440
Moans the abyss, and Hades' murky gloom
Bellows responsive in the depth profound;
While fountains of clear-flowing rivers moan
His piteous doom.
Prometheus.
Think not that I through pride or stubbornness
Keep silence; nay, my brooding heart is gnawed
Seeing myself thus marred with contumely;
And yet what other but myself marked out
To these new gods their full prerogatives?
- ↑ The word Arabia, with Xenophon, included Mesopotamia, as part of the land on which Arabs roam. My friend Professor Newman conjectures that Mardin, built on a limestone rock, which is said to be 2000 feet high, was the city ὑψίκρημνον, of which the poet had heard. The Arabs still roam up to the base of this little mountain. No Greek, in Æschylus's day, knew the geography of Courdistân; so it was natural to include the whole of the wonderful "Asiatic Switzerland" in Caucasos.
