Aeschylus, Fragments 189–207: Fragments of uncertain plays (3)

He dwelt on my happiness in my children, whose days were to be many and unacquainted with disease; and, comprising all, in triumph-strain that cheered my soul, he praised my lot, blest of the gods. And so I deemed that falsehood sat not upon Phoebus’ lips divine, fraught with the prophet’s art. But he, who raised this song himself, he who himself was present at my marriage-feast, he who himself spake thus, he it is who himself hath slain my son.

Courage! Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts not long.

Since men unjustly hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.

Thou needs must spit it out and make clean thy mouth.

’Tis meet that the dithyramb, his fellow-reveller, half song, half shout, attend on Dionysus.

For seizing a self-sharpened Euboean sword

[The flame,] come to its youthful strength, consumed the lofty labour of the carpenters.

. . . But when old show thyself a clear scribe (?)

Thou indeed didst give me life, thou dost think to destroy me.

[Changed from] a piteous old man with a stitch in his back and cramped by pain

A man dies not for all the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life’s end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom.

Truly then thou shalt pick the seeds from out the bitter-sweet pomegranate.

A frock that copies the Libyrnic cloak

And thou in a well-woven robe of drill

But easily from baths exceeding large

A mortal woman from out a seed moulded of clay

Froth from human food streamed over their jaws.

Truly at weaving wiles the Egyptians are clever.

A device, irresistible and inextricable