Aeschylus, Suppliants 524–599: First stasimon: the prayer to Zeus

Lord of lords, most blessed among the blessed, power most perfect among the perfect, O blessed Zeus, hear! And from your offspring ward off in utter abhorrence the lust of men, and into the purple sea cast their black-benched madness!

Look benignly upon the women’s cause, look upon our race ancient in story, and recall the happy tale of our ancestress, the woman of your love. Show that you remember all, you who laid your hand upon Io. It is from Zeus that we claim descent, and it is from this, our homeland, that we went forth.

I have come here to the prints of ancient feet, my mother’s, even to the region where she was watched while she browsed among the flowers— into that pasture, from which Io, tormented by the gad-fly’s sting, fled in frenzy, traversing many tribes of men, and according to fate, cut in two the surging strait, marking off the land upon the farther shore.

And through the land of Asia she gallops, straight through sheep-pasturing Phrygia, and she passes the city of Teuthras among the Mysians, and the hollow vales of Lydia, across the mountains of the Cilicians and the Pamphylians, speeding over ever-flowing rivers and earth deep and rich, and the land of Aphrodite that teems with wheat.

Harassed by the sting of the winged herdsman she gains at last the fertile groves sacred to Zeus, that snow-fed pasture assailed by Typho’s fury, and the water of the Nile that no disease may touch—maddened by her ignominious toils and frenzied with the pain of Hera’s torturing goad.

And mortals, who in those days dwelled in the land, shook with pallid terror at the terrible sight as they beheld a being fearsome, half-human, part cow and part of woman; and they were astonished at the monstrous thing. And then, at last, who was it who calmed the far-wandering, the wretched, the sting-tormented Io?

Zeus, it was, through endless time, the lord, . . . and by the unharming might of his hand, and by his divine breath, she gained rest, and let fall the sorrowing shame of tears. And, taking Zeus as her support, according to a true story, she bore a blameless son—

Throughout long ages blessed. All the earth cries aloud, This is in very truth the offspring of life-giving Zeus; for who else could have endured the suffering plotted by Hera? Call this the work of Zeus and this his race sprung from Epaphus and you will hit the truth.

Which of the gods has accomplished deeds which, with good reason, warrant more justly my appeal to him? Father himself and lord, he planted us with his own hand; he is the mighty fashioner of our race, ancient in wisdom, who devises everything, whose breath makes all things prosper, Zeus himself.

He does not sit upon his throne by mandate of another and hold his dominion beneath a mightier. No one sits above him whose power he holds in awe. He speaks, and it is done—he hastens to execute whatever his counselling mind conceives.