IO

I know not 
How fitly to refuse; and at your wish 
All ye desire to know I will in plain, 
Round terms set forth. And yet the telling of it 
Harrows my soul; this winter’s tale of wrong, 
Of angry Gods and brute deformity, 
And how and why on me these horrors swooped. 
Always there were dreams visiting by night 
The woman’s chambers where I slept; and they 
With flattering words admonished and cajoled me, 
Saying, “O lucky one, so long a maid? 
And what a match for thee if thou would’st wed 
Why, pretty, here is Zeus as hot as hot- 
Love-sick-to have thee! Such a bolt as thou 
Hast shot clean through his heart And he won’t rest 
Till Cypris help him win thee! Lift not then, 
My daughter, a proud foot to spurn the bed 
Of Zeus: but get thee gone to meadow deep 
By Lerna’s marsh, where are thy father’s flocks 
And cattle-folds, that on the eye of Zeus 
May fall the balm that shall assuage desire.” 
Such dreams oppressed me, troubling all my nights, 
Woe’s me! till I plucked courage up to tell 
My father of these fears that walked in darkness. 
And many times to Pytho and Dodona 
He sent his sacred missioners, to inquire 
How, or by deed or word, he might conform 
To the high will and pleasure of the Gods. 
And they returned with slippery oracles, 
Nought plain, but all to baffle and perplex- 
And then at last to Inachus there raught 
A saying that flashed clear; the drift, that 
Must be put out from home and country, forced 
To be a wanderer at the ends of the earth, 
A thing devote and dedicate; and if 
I would not, there should fall a thunderbolt 
From Zeus, with blinding flash, and utterly 
Destroy my race. So spake the oracle 
Of Loxias. In sorrow he obeyed, 
And from beneath his roof drove forth his child 
Grieving as he grieved, and from house and home 
Bolted and barred me out. But the high hand 
Of Zeus bear hardly on the rein of fate. 
And, instantly-even in a moment-mind 
And body suffered strange distortion. Horned 
Even as ye see me now, and with sharp bite 
Of gadfly pricked, with high-flung skip, stark-mad, 
I bounded, galloping headlong on, until 
I came to the sweet and of the stream 
Kerchneian, hard by Lerna’s spring. And thither 
Argus, the giant herdsman, fierce and fell 
As a strong wine unmixed, with hateful cast 
Of all his cunning eyes upon the trail, 
Gave chase and tracked me down. And there he perished 
By violent and sudden doom surprised. 
But I with darting sting-the scorpion whip 
Of angry Gods-am lashed from land to land. 
Thou hast my story, and, if thou can’st tell 
What I have still to suffer, speak; but do not, 
Moved by compassion, with a lying tale 
Warm my cold heart; no sickness of the soul 
Is half so shameful as composed falsehoods.

CHORUS

Off! lost one! off! Horror, I cry! 
Horror and misery 
Was this the traveller’s tale I craved to hear? 
Oh, that mine eyes should see 
A sight so ill to look upon! Ah me! 
Sorrow, defilement, haunting fear, 
Fan my blood cold, 
Stabbed with a two-edged sting! 
O Fate, Fate, Fate, tremblingly I behold 
The plight of Io, thine apportioning!

PROMETHEUS

Thou dost lament too soon, and art as one 
All fear. Refrain thyself till thou hast heard 
What’s yet to be.

CHORUS

Speak and be our instructor: 
There is a kind of balm to the sick soul 
In certain knowledge of the grief to come.

PROMETHEUS

Your former wish I lightly granted ye: 
And ye have heard, even as ye desired, 
From this maid’s lips the story of her sorrow. 
Now hear the sequel, the ensuing woes 
The damsel must endure from Hera’s hate. 
And thou, O seed of Inachaean loins, 
Weigh well my words, that thou may’st understand 
Thy journey’s end. First towards the rising sun 
Turn hence, and traverse fields that ne’er felt plough 
Until thou reach the country of the Scyths, 
A race of wanderers handling the long-bow 
That shoots afar, and having their habitations 
Under the open sky in wattled cotes 
That move on wheels. Go not thou nigh to them, 
But ever within sound of the breaking waver, 
Pass through their land. And on the left of the 
The Chalybes, workers in iron, dwell. 
Beware of them, for they are savages, 
Who suffer not a stranger to come near. 
And thou shalt reach the river Hybristes, 
Well named. Cross not, for it is ill to cross, 
Until thou come even unto Caucasus, 
Highest of mountains, where the foaming river 
Blows all its volume from the summit ridge 
That o’ertops all. And that star-neighboured ridge 
Thy feet must climb; and, following the road 
That runneth south, thou presently shall reach 
The Amazonian hosts that loathe the male, 
And shall one day remove from thence and found 
Themiscyra hard by Thermodon’s stream, 
Where on the craggy Salmadessian coast 
Waves gnash their teeth, the maw of mariners 
And step-mother of ships. And they shall lead the 
Upon thy way, and with a right good will. 
Then shalt thou come to the Cimmerian Isthmus, 
Even at the pass and portals of the sea, 
And leaving it behind thee, stout of heart, 
Cross o’er the channel of Maeotis’ lake. 
For ever famous among men shall be 
The story of thy crossing, and the strait 
Be called by a new name, the Bosporus, 
In memory of thee. Then having left 
Europa’s soil behind thee thou shalt come 
To the main land of Asia. What think ye? 
Is not the only ruler of the Gods 
A complete tyrant, violent to all, 
Respecting none? First, being himself a God, 
He burneth to enjoy a mortal maid, 
And then torments her with these wanderings. 
A sorry suitor for thy love, poor girl, 
A bitter wooing. Yet having heard so much 
Thou art not even in the overture 
And prelude of the song.

IO
Alas! Oh! Oh!
PROMETHEUS

Thou dost cryout, fetching again deep groans: 
What wilt thou do when thou hast heard in full 
The evils yet to come?

CHORUS

And wilt thou tell 
The maiden something further: some fresh sorrow?

PROMETHEUS
A stormy sea of wrong and ruining.
IO

What does it profit me to live! Oh, why 
Do I not throw myself from this rough crag 
And in one leap rid me of all my pain? 
Better to die at once than live, and all 
My days be evil.

PROMETHEUS

Thou would’st find it hard 
To bear what I must bear: for unto me 
It is not given to die,-a dear release 
From pain; but now of suffering there is 
No end in sight till Zeus shall fall.

IO

And shall 
Zeus fall? His power be taken from him? 
No matter when if true-

PROMETHEUS

‘Twould make thee happy 
Methinks, if thou could’st see calamity 
Whelm him.

IO

How should it not when all my woes 
Are of his sending? learn how 
These things shall be. 
The tyrant’s rod? 
And fond imaginings.

IO

But how? Oh, speak, 
If the declaring draw no evil down I

PROMETHEUS
A marriage he shall make shall vex him sore.
IO

A marriage? Whether of gods or mortals? 
Speak! 
If this be utterable!

PROMETHEUS

Why dost thou ask 
What I may not declare?

IO

And shall he quit 
The throne of all the worlds, by a new spouse 
Supplanted?

PROMETHEUS

She will bear to him a child, 
And he shall be in might more excellent 
Than his progenitor.

IO

And he will find 
No way to parry this strong stroke of fate?

PROMETHEUS
None save my own self-when these bonds are loosed.
IO

And who shall loose them if Zeus wills not? 
Of thine own seed. 
How say’st thou? Shall a child 
Of mine release thee?

PROMETHEUS

Son of thine, but son 
The thirteenth generation shall beget.

IO
A prophecy oracularly dark.
PROMETHEUS
Then seek not thou to know thine own fate.
IO

Nay, 
Tender me not a boon to snatch it from me.

PROMETHEUS
Of two gifts thou hast asked one shall be thine.
IO
What gifts? Pronounce and leave to me the choice.
PROMETHEUS

Nay, thou are free to choose. Say, therefore, whether 
I shall declare to thee thy future woes 
Or him who shall be my deliverer.

CHORUS

Nay, but let both be granted! Unto her 
That which she chooseth, unto me my choice, 
That I, too, may have honour from thy lips. 
First unto her declare her wanderings, 
And unto me him who shall set thee free; 
‘Tis that I long to know.

PROMETHEUS

I will resist 
No further, but to your importunacy 
All things which ye-desire to learn reveal. 
And, Io, first to thee I will declare 
Thy far-driven wanderings; write thou my words 
In the retentive tablets of thy heart. 
When thou hast crossed the flood that flows between 
And is the boundary of two continents, 
Turn to the sun’s uprising, where he treads 
Printing with fiery steps the eastern sky, 
And from the roaring of the Pontic surge 
Do thou pass on, until before thee lies 
The Gorgonean plain, Kisthene called, 
Where dwell the gray-haired three, the Phorcides, 
Old, mumbling maids, swan-shaped, having one eye 
Betwixt the three, and but a single tooth. 
On them the sun with his brightbeams ne’er glanceth 
Nor moon that lamps the night. Not far from them 
The sisters three, the Gorgons, have their haunt; 
Winged forms, with snaky locks, hateful to man, 
Whom nothing mortal looking on can live. 
Thus much that thou may’st have a care of these. 
Now of another portent thou shalt hear. 
Beware the dogs of Zeus that ne’er give tongue, 
The sharp-beaked gryphons, and the one-eyed horde 
Of Arimaspians, riding upon horses, 
Who dwell around the river rolling gold, 
The ferry and the frith of Pluto’s port. 
Go not thou nigh them. After thou shalt come 
To a far land, a dark-skinned race, that dwell 
Beside the fountains of the sun, whence flows 
The river Ethiops: follow its banks 
Until thou comest to the steep-down slope 
Where from the Bibline mountains Nilus old 
Pours the sweet waters of his holy stream. 
And thou, the river guiding thee, shalt come 
To the three-sided, wedge-shaped land of Nile, 
Where for thyself, Io, and for thy children 
Long sojourn is appointed. If in aught 
My story seems to stammer and to er 
From indirectness, ask and ask again 
Till all be manifest. I do not lack 
For leisure, having more than well contents me

Prometheus Bound By Aeschylus