Racine: Phaedra

GEDIPUS REX 49
And the sad anthem song
Hear, golden child of Zeus,
And send us bright-eyed help.
Strophe III.
And Ares the destroyer drive away !
Who now, though hushed the din
Of brazen shield and spear,
With fiercest battle-cry
Wars on me mightily.
Bid him go back in flight.
Retreat from this our land.
Or to the ocean bed.
Where Amphitrite sleeps,
Or to that haven of the homeless sea
Which sweeps the Thracian shore.*
If waning night spares aught.
That doth the day assail
Do thou, then, Sire almighty.
Wielding the lightning's strength.
Blast him with thy dread fiery thunderbolts.
Antistrophe III.
And thou, Lyceian king, the wolf's dread foe.
Fain would I see thy darts
From out thy golden bow
Go forth invincible.
Helping and bringing aid
And with them, winged with fire,
The rays of Artemis,
With which on Lyceian hills.
She moveth on her course.
And last, O golden-crowned, I call on thee,
Named after this our land,"
• The Pestilence, previously person!- Neptune, or to the northern coasts of
fied. is now identified with Ares, the the Euxine, where Ares was worshipped
Goa of slaughter, and, as such, the foe as the special God of the Thracians.
of the more benign deities. *" Bacchos, as bom in Thebes, was
• The Chorus prays that the pestilence known as the Cadmeian king, the Boeotnay
be driven either to the far western tian God, while Thebes took from him
ocean, beyond the i^illars of Heracles, the epithet Bacchia.
the couch of Amphitrite, the bride of