Themselves like mountains huge: such arms employ;
Hurl down such fires. Avenge the banished day; 1085
With thy consuming Sames supply the light
Which has been snatched from out the darkened heaven.
Select us both as objects of thy wrath;
Or if not both, then me; aim thou at me.
With that three-forked bolt of thine transfix 1090
My guilty breast. If I would give my sons
To burning and to fitting burial,
I must myself be burned. But if my prayers
Do not with heaven prevail, and if no god
Aims at the impious his fatal shaft;
Then may eternal night brood o'er the earth,
And hide these boundless crimes in endless shade.
If thou, O sun, dost to thy purpose hold, 1095
And cease to shine, I supplicate no more.
Atreus: ⁠Now do I praise my handiwork indeed;
Now have I gained the palm of victory.
My deed had failed entirely of its aim,
Didst thou not suffer thus. Now may I trust
That those I call my sons are truly so,
And faith that once my marriage bed was pure
Has come again.
Thyestes: ⁠What was my children's sin? 1100
Atreus: ⁠Because they were thy chidlren.
Thyestes: ⁠But to think
That children to the father—
Atreus: ⁠That indeed,
I do confess it, gives me greatest joy:
That thou art well assured they were thy sons.
Thyestes: I call upon the gods of innocence—
Atreus: ⁠Why not upon the gods of marriage call?
Thyestes: Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime?
Atreus: ⁠Well do I know the cause of thy complaint:
Because I have forestalled thee in the deed.
Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed 1105
This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first