Chorus.
What hast thou said!
Doth not the armament of Barbary
March out of Europe over Helle's sound?
Darius.
Few out of many, if the oracles
Of Heaven, by warrant of these late events,
Gain credence: they are individable;
They do not fail in part, nor yet in part
Are they fulfilled. And even were they flawed
With false predictions, Xerxes, in false hopes
Confiding, hath abandoned to their fate
A vast array, the chosen of his host.
Where the Asopus watereth the plain
And maketh fat the deep Boeotian earth
They are cut off; and there is reserved for them
The culmination of their sufferings,
A just reward of pride and godless thoughts,
Because in Hellas they thought it no shame
To' strip the ancient statues of the Gods
And burn their temples: yea, cast down the altars,
And from their firm foundations overthrew,
So that they lie in heaps, the builded fanes
Of unseen powers. The evil that they did
Is in like measure meted unto them,
Yea, and more shall be meted; deeper still
Lies the hid vein of suffering; yet a little
And it shall gush forth. So great shall be the carnage;
A veritable offering of blood,
Congealed with slaughter, on Plataea's plain,
