This may not be; the destined curse of things Fate must accomplish.... Though art be strong, necessity is stronger. CHORUS. And who is lord of strong necessity? PROMETHEUS. The triform Fates and the sure-memoried Furies. CHORUS. And mighty Jove himself must yield to them? PROMETHEUS. No more than others Jove can 'scape his doom. CHORUS. * * * * * There's some dread mystery in thy speech Close-veiled. PROMETHEUS. * * * * The truth thou'lt know In fitting season; now it lies concealed In deepest darkness; for relenting Jove Himself must woo this secret from my breast. (This secret--so it is told in the old myths--is that Jove is to meet his own downfall through an unfortunate marriage, and Prometheus is in possession of the details which would enable Jove to avoid the doom.) After a choral hymn, recommending submission to Jove, we have suddenly the grotesque apparition of Io upon the stage. Io had been beloved by Jove; but the jealousy of Hera, or Juno, had transformed her into a cow, and had doomed her to wander over the world stung by an inexpugnable gadfly, and watched by the hundred-eyed Argus. Thus, suddenly, upon the spectacle of a man suffering from the hatred of Jove, Æschylus brings the spectacle of a woman suffering from the love of Jove. Io enters with this fine outburst: What land is this? What race of mortals Owns this desert? Who art thou, Rock-bound with these wintry fetters, And for what crime tortured thus? Worn and weary with far travel, Tell me where my feet have borne me! O pain! pain! pain! it stings and goads me again, The fateful gadfly!--save me, O Earth!--avaunt, Thou horrible shadow of the earth-born Argus! Could not the grave close up thy hundred eyes, But thou must come, Haunting my path with thy suspicious look, Unhoused from Hades? Avaunt! avaunt! why wilt thou hound my track, The famished wanderer on the waste sea-shore? After much talk, Io now relates her mournful story, and, supported by the Chorus, persuades Prometheus to prophesy the very eventful future which awaits her when her wanderings are over. In this prophetic account of her travels, Æschylus gives a soul-expanding review of land after land according to the geographic and ethnic notions of his time; and here Mr. Blackie, whose translation of the Prometheus I have been partly quoting from, sometimes reproduces his author in very large and musical measures. For example, Prometheus chants: