As did that child of Œneus, steeped in guile,1050
Casting around my shoulders such a net,
Erinnys-woven, that has wrought my death;
For, cleaving to my side, it eats within,
Consuming all my flesh, and from my lungs,
Still winding in, it drains my arteries,
Drinks the warm blood, and I am done to death,
My whole frame bound with this unheard of chain;
And never yet did host on battle-plain,
Nor earth-born troop of Giants, nor the might
Of savage beasts, nor Hellas, nor the land
Of men that speak not,[1] nor the regions vast1060
I traversed clearing, work a deed like this:
But she, a woman, woman-like in mind,
Not of man's strength, alone, without a sword,
She has destroyed me; and do thou, my son,
Prove thyself truly mine, and honour not
Thy mother's name henceforward more than mine;
But thou thyself with thine own hands from home
To my hands bring her, that I thus may know
If thou dost mourn my sorrow more than hers,
When thou shalt see her body maimed and shamed
In righteous judgment. Come, my son, be bold,
And pity me, in all ways pitiable,1070
Who, like a girl must weep and shriek in pain;
And yet there lives not one who, ere it came,
Could say that he had seen this man thus act,
But ever I bore pain without a groan;
Yet now with this I grow a woman weak.
And now, come thou, and near thy father stand,
And see by what strange chance I suffer this;
- ↑ The "land of men that speak not" is simply that of the non-Hellenic races, whose speech seemed to the Greeks inarticulate as the chirping of choughs or swallows.
