Aeschylus, Fragments 208–233: Fragments of uncertain plays (4)

Take ye your stand in a ring about yon altar and its gleaming fire, and with your band grouped in a circle offer up your prayers.

For where might and justice are yoke-fellows—what pair is stronger than this?

Father Theoinos, thou subduer of the Maenads!

Hera, the Perfecter, wedded wife of Zeus

O Hermes, lord of games, son of Maia and Zeus!

Truly lamentation is a prop of suffering.

With bright flashes, the torches’ might

He was transported with longing for this mystic rite.

Lady Hecate, before the portal of the royal halls

Fortune is for all, judgment is theirs who have won it for themselves.

Who knows things useful, not many things, is wise.

Truly even he errs that is wiser than the wise.

Verily a prosperous fool is a heavy load.

Bronze is a mirror of the face, wine of the mind.

Oaths are not surety for a man, but the man for the oaths.

God loves to help him who strives to help himself.

’Tis seemly that even the aged learn wisdom.

Ere thou utterest words such as these, thou must bite thy lips.

For successful rascals are insufferable.

For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.

For age is more just than youth.

Death is rather to be chosen than a toilsome life; and not to be born is better than to be born to misery.

Whence it shall bear the name Rhegium

Hallowed Bura and thunder-smitten Rhypae, and Dyme, Helice and Aegeira and precipitous, sacred Olenus

Aegina yonder lies towards the southern blasts.

But as yet all the cymbals that raised a din