Stasimon 1
[Choral 1]
Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite’s shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus.
530
Chorus
Idly, idly by the streams of Alpheus and in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, Hellas heaps the slaughtered steers; while Love we worship not, Love, the king of men, who holds the key to Aphrodite’s
535
sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe.
540
[Choral 2]
There was that maidenIole, daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia. Her father refused, after promising, to give her to Heracles, who thereupon took her by force. in Oechalia, a girl unwed, that knew no wooer yet nor married joys; her did the queen of LoveThere is some corruption here. It is probable the doubtful εἰρεσίᾳ conceals an allusion to Euryptus, as Monk indeed suggest; but the passage is not yet satisfactorily emended. snatch from her home across the sea
545
Chorus
and gave unto Alcmena’s son, mid blood and smoke and murderous marriage-hymns, to be to him a frantic fiend of hell; woe! woe for his wooing!
550
Ah! holy walls of Thebes, ah! fount of Dirce, ye could testify what course the love-queen follows. For with the blazing levin-bolt
555
did she cut short the fatal marriage of Semele, mother of Zeus-bom Bacchus. All things she doth inspire, dread goddess, winging her flight hither and thither like a bee.
560
