the Nile. There her descendants will found a colony. At this point Prometheus bitterly says: "If any of this is not clear, ask, and I will repeat it; I have far more leisure than I like." To confirm his prophecy he tells her what her past wanderings have been; how she visited Dodona, and how she gave a name to the Ionian Sea. Then, passing on to the prophecy of his own release, he tells her that in Canopus, at the mouth of the Nile, a child Epaphus shall be born to her; from him in the fifth generation shall spring those fifty maidens who, in flight from wedlock with their fifty cousins, are to seek the land of Argos, and there each bride slay her husband, except one, who shall "prefer to be known as weak rather than murderous," and shall save her husband alive. From them will spring Hercules, whose arrows will slay the eagle which devours Prometheus, and set him free. So much and no more he will tell.
Immediately his prophecies about lo begin to accomplish themselves. The frenzy which the gadfly's bite inspires seizes on her afresh, and in a wild agony she rushes forth to renew her wanderings through the earth. The music of the Chorus is now heard again, and dancing slowly and sadly round the altar, they chant their reflections on the fate of Io; deprecating for themselves any ill-matched love, such as Io received from Zeus; praising the propitious and temperate union, of equals, and condemning—this is quite Æschylean—any desire on the part of the working man for wedlock with the rich or the high-born. Such are the thoughts which Io's suffering suggests to these maidens; above all, they dread any collision with the will of Zeus.
