O Death, the savior, spurn me not, but come! For thou alone of ills incurable Art healer: no pain preyeth on the dead.
Alone of gods Death loves not gifts; with him Nor sacrifice nor incense aught avails; He hath no altar and no hymns of gladness; Prayer stands aloof from him, Persuasion fails.
Love throbs in holy heaven to wound the earth; And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals; The rain that falls in rivers from the sky, Impregnates earth, and she brings forth for men The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres; The bloom of forests by dews hymeneal Is perfected: in all which things I rule.
Zeus is the air, Zeus earth, and Zeus wide heaven: Yea, Zeus is all things, and the power above them.
This love-disease is a delightful trouble; Well might I shadow forth its power as thus: When the clear, eager frost has fallen, boys Seize with their fingers the firm frozen ice, And first they feel an unaccustomed pleasure, But in the end it melts, and they to leave it Or in their hands to hold it know not how; Even so the same desire drives wilful lovers To do and not to do by frequent changes.
Woman, that hast dared all, and more than all! There is not anything, nor will be ever, Than woman worse, let what will fall on men.
It is right to observe that Welcker and Ahrens have conjecturally pieced together this and many other scattered fragments, and connected them in such a way as to reconstitute a tragedy with Argos for its scene, not Thebes.
'Tis terrible that impious men, the sons Of sinners, even such should thrive and prosper, While men by virtue moulded, sprung from sires Complete in goodness, should be born to suffer. Nay, but the gods do ill in dealing thus With mortals! It were well that pious men Should take some signal guerdon at their hands; But evil-doers, on their heads should fall Conspicuous punishment for deeds ill-done. Then should no wicked man fare well and flourish.
The man who takes delight in always talking Is irksome to his friends and does not know it.
A reasonable soul, by just perception, Better than sophists may discover truth.
Money makes friends for men, and heaps up honors, And sets them on the tyrant's hated throne: Wealth finds no foes, or none but covert foes, Climbs pathless ways, and treads where tracks are beaten; While poor men, what luck gives them, may not use: A misshaped body, an ill-sounding name, Wealth turns by words to beauty, gifts with wisdom; For wealth alone hath privilege of freedom In joy and sickness, and can hide its sorrow.