Greek drama (Tragedy) -- Translations into English
_Prometheus._ Hearken the rest,
And marvel further, what more arts and means
I did invent, this greatest: if a man
Fell sick there was no cure, nor esculent,
Nor chrism, nor liquid, but for lack of drugs
Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all
Those mixtures of emollient remedies,
Whereby they might be rescued from disease,
I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
Discerned the vision from the common dream,
Instructed them in vocal auguries,
Hard to interpret, and defined as plain
The wayside omens--flights of crook-clawed birds--
Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
And which not so, and what the food of each,
And what the hates, affections, social needs,
Of all to one another,--taught what sign
Of visceral lightness, colored to a shade,
May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots
Commend the lung and liver. Burning so
The limbs encased in fat, and the long chine,
I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,
And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire,
Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this:
For the other helps of man hid underground,
The iron and the brass, silver and gold,
Can any dare affirm he found them out
Before me? None, I know, unless he choose
To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole:
That all arts come to mortals from Prometheus.
Aeschylus: _Prometheus_. [Mrs. Browning's
translation.]
2
(_For comparison with the preceding_)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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