Eksodos
Prometheus
In one word, I hate all the gods that received good at my hands and with ill requite me wrongfully.
975
Hermes
Your words declare you stricken with no slight madness.
Prometheus
Mad I may be—if it is madness to loathe one’s enemies.
Hermes
You would be unbearable if you were prosperous.
Hermes
Alas? That is a word unknown to Zeus.
980
Prometheus
But ever-ageing Time teaches all things.
Hermes
Yes, but you at least have not yet learned to keep a sober mind.
Prometheus
Or else I would not have addressed you, an underling.
Hermes
It seems you will answer nothing that the Father demands.
Prometheus
Yes, truly, I am his debtor and I should repay favor to him.
985
Hermes
You taunt me as though, indeed, I were a child.
Prometheus
And are you not a child and even more witless than a child if you expect to learn anything from me? There is no torment or device by which
Zeus shall induce me to utter this until these injurious fetters are loosed. So then, let his blazing lightning be hurled, and with the white wings of the snow and thunders of earthquake let him confound the reeling world.
990
For nothing of this shall bend my will even to tell at whose hands he is fated to be hurled from his sovereignty.
995
Hermes
Look now whether this course seems to profit you.
Prometheus
Long ago has this my course been foreseen and resolved.
Hermes
Bend your will, perverse fool, oh bend your will at last
to wisdom in face of your present sufferings.
1000
Prometheus
In vain you trouble me, as though it were a wave you try to persuade. Never think that, through terror at the will of Zeus, I shall become womanish and, with hands upturned, aping woman’s ways,
shall importune my greatly hated enemy to release me from these bonds. I am far, far from that.
1005
Hermes
I think that by speaking much I will only speak in vain; for you are not soothed nor are you softened by my entreaties. You take the bit in your teeth like a new-harnessed
colt and struggle against the reins. Yet it is a paltry device that prompts your vehemence, for in the foolish-minded mere self-will of itself avails less than anything at all. But if you will not be won to belief by my words,
1010
think of what a tempest and a towering wave of woe shall break upon you past escape. First, the Father will shatter this jagged cliff with thunder and lightning-flame, and will entomb your frame, while the rock shall still hold you clasped in its embrace.
1015
But when you have completed a long stretch of time, you shall come back again to the light. Then indeed the winged hound of Zeus, the ravening eagle, coming an unbidden banqueter the whole day long, with savage appetite shall tear your body piecemeal into great rents and feast his fill
1020
upon your liver until it is black with gnawing.
Look for no term of this your agony until some god shall appear to take upon himself your woes and of his own free will descend into the sunless realm of Death and the dark deeps of Tartarus.
1025
Therefore be advised, since this is no counterfeited vaunting but utter truth; for the mouth of Zeus does not know how to utter falsehood, but will bring to pass every word. May you consider warily and reflect, and never deem
1030
stubbornness better than wise counsel.
1035
Chorus
To us, at least, Hermes seems not to speak untimely; for he bids you to lay aside your stubbornness and seek the good counsel of wisdom. Be advised! It is shameful for the wise to persist in error.
Prometheus
No news to me, in truth, is the message this fellow has proclaimed so noisily.Yet for enemy to suffer ill from enemy is no disgrace. Therefore let the lightning’s forked curl be cast upon my head and let the sky
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