Œdip. What solemn name should I invoke them with?
Ath. Str. Eumenides, the Gentle Ones, all seeing,—
They call them here. It may be, other names
Befit them elsewhere.[1]
Œdip. May they then receive me,
Their suppliant, gently: thus I need not go,
Nor ever quit my station on their ground!
Ath. Str. What means this?
Œdip. 'Tis the omen of my fate.
Ath. Str. And I, too, dare not move thee from thy seat,
Without the state's command, before I tell
My tale, and learn what it is meet to do.
Œdip. By all the Gods, I charge thee scorn me not,
Poor wanderer though I be! But what I ask 50
I pray thee tell.
Ath. Str. Speak, then, thou shalt not meet,
As far as my will goes, with scorn or shame.
Œdip. And what, then, is this place to which we've come?
Ath. Str. All that I know thou too shalt hear and learn:
The ground all round is sacred, and the dread
Poseidon claims it, and the God of fire,
Titan Prometheus;[2] and the place thou tread'st on
Is called the brass-paved threshold of our land,
- ↑ Historically the name Eumenides is said to have belonged to Sicyon, (Pausan. ii. 11, 4.) In Attica they were the Σεμναί, or Dread Ones. Appeased by the worship of the Athenians after the acquittal of Orestes, the avenging Erinnyes became the kindly, propitious Eumenides.
- ↑ Prometheus, as the guardian deity of the potters, and perhaps also of the iron-founders, of Athens and Colonos. Torch-races in his honour were run from his altar in the Academeia through the Kerameikos to the city.
such as we find as to their birth in the Theogony of Hesiod, (l. 185,) and to rise into loftier and purer thoughts.
