How many wives of Persia vainly wed, 290
By her are widows made, bereft of all.
Atossa.
Long have I silence kept, struck down by ills,
Wretched:—for so transcendent this mischance,
Our grief may be nor told nor questioned of.
Yet mortals needs must bear calamities
Sent by the gods; wherefore, our sum of loss
Unfolding, though thou groanest at our ills,
Yet in well-ordered narrative rehearse
Who hath from death escaped; whom must we wail
Of princely leaders that the truncheon held
Who now, by death has left his post unmanned. 300
Messenger.
Xerxes himself still lives and sees the light.
Atossa.
Great light, in sooth, thou speakest to my house,
And day clear shining, after murky night.
Messenger.
But Artembares, lord of myriad horse,
'Gainst the Sileni's rugged shores is dashed;
And Dadaces, the chiliarch, spear-struck,
Forth from his galley leapt with nimble bound.
And Tenagon, of Bactria's true stock
Bravest, the sea-lash'd isle of Ajax haunts.
Lilaios, Arsames, Argestes, these 310
Round the dove-nurturing island overpowered,
