The Suppliant Maidens Aeschylus - translated by G. M. Cookson - D R A M A T I S P E R S O N A E DANAUS PELASGUS , King of Argos AN EGYPTIAN HERALD CHORUS OF THE DANAIDES ATTENDANTS Argos. A Hill rises in the foreground, and on the summit of it stand altars and statues of many gods. Enter the fifty DANAIDES , with their slave girls, and DANAUS . Chorus Zeus, the Suppliant's God, be gracious to us, pitifully behold us, for fugitives are we; where the blown sand-dunes silt the mouths of Nilus, there we took the highway of the blue, salt sea; there looked our last at the land of Zeus, her borders lapsed and lost in the Syrian marches wild, fleeing, not as outlaws banned for blood-guilt lest a people perish, but self-exiled. No way but this to escape abhorred embraces, marriage rites unholy that true love shuns; better far lands and unfamiliar faces than wedded and bedded with King Ægyptus' sons. As when hard pressed on the board a cautious player this piece or that from
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