Free Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) by Aeschylus Page B

sons-in-law would kill him; he therefore
orders the Danaids to murder their husbands on their wedding night. His
daughters agree. The Danaids would
open the day after the wedding.
    In short
order, it is revealed that forty-nine of the Danaids killed their husbands as
ordered; Hypermnestra, however, loved her husband Lynceus, and thus spared his
life and helped him to escape. Angered by his daughter’s disobedience, Danaus
orders her imprisonment and, possibly, her execution. In the trilogy’s climax
and dénouement, Lynceus reveals himself to Danaus, and kills him (thus
fulfilling the oracle). He and Hypermnestra will establish a ruling dynasty in Argos. The other
forty-nine Danaids are absolved of their murderous crime, and married off to
unspecified Argive men. The satyr play following this trilogy was titled Amymone , after one of the Danaids.

The Danaides (1903) by John William Waterhouse

DRAMATIS
PERSONA E
    DANAÜS
PELASGUS, King of Argos
HERALD of the Sons of Aegyptus
CHORUS of the Daughters of Danaüs
Attendant Maidens
    SCENE. — A sacred precinct on the
shore not far from Argos.
Many images of the gods are visible whose collective worship is denoted by a
common altar.
TIME. — Prehistoric.

ARGUMEN T
    Io, daughter of Inachus, King of
Argos, was priestess of Hera, whose jealousy of her lord’s love for the maiden
brought upon her victim marring of mind and body; and she was driven distraught
and in the semblance of a heifer made to wander over land and sea until she
came to the land of the Nile. There she
regained her human form by the mysterious touch of her lover Zeus, and bore a
child Epaphus, from whom sprang Libya,
and from her Belus and Agenor. Between Belus’s two sons, Aegyptus and Danaüs,
strife arose, and the fifty sons of Aegyptus wished to possess by forced
marriage the fifty daughters of Danaüs. But the maidens, loathing the violence
of their kinsmen, fled amain with their father to Argos, the home of their primal mother, and
besought sanctuary from the king of that land, Pelasgus.
The hesitation of the king to vindicate to the suppliants the right of asylum,
the triumph of that right by vote of the people of Argos, the arrival of the
suitors in pursuit, preceded by their herald demanding the surrender of the
maidens, and his repulse through threatening war, constitute the action of the
play.
The sequel was contained in the Egyptians and the Danaïdes. Danaüs, forced to
acquiesce to the demands of his nephews, enjoins upon his daughter the duty of
killing their bridegrooms on the marriage night. All, save Hypermnestra, obey;
she with splendid perfidy spares Lynceus out of love; and when brought to trial
is defended by the goddess Aphrodite pleading that love of man and woman is
sanctified by the love of Heaven for Earth.

THE SUPPLIANT S
    [ Enter a company
of maidens, who have fled from Egypt
and just landed on the shores of Argos;
with them is their father. ]
    CHORUS
[1] May Zeus who
guards suppliants look graciously upon our company, which boarded a ship and
put to sea from the outlets of the fine sand of the Nile.
For we have fled Zeus’ land whose pastures border Syria, and are fugitives, not
because of some public decree pronounced against blood crime, but because of
our own act to escape the suit of man, since we abhor as impious all marriage
with the sons of Aegyptus. It was Danaus, our father, adviser and leader, who,
considering well our course, decided, as the best of all possible evils, that
we flee with all speed over the waves of the sea and find a haven on Argos’
shore. For from there descends our race, sprung from the caress and breath of
Zeus on the gnat-tormented heifer.
    [19] To what kinder
land than this could we come with these wool-wreathed branches in our hands,
sole weapons of the suppliant? O realm, O land, and clear water; gods on high
and earth-bound powers, grievous in your vengeance, which inhabit the tomb; and
you, Zeus the Savior, invoked third, the guardian of