The Suppliant Maidens
E.D.A. Morshead (1883)
Aeschylus's The Suppliant Maidens (c. 463 BC) is among the earliest surviving Greek tragedies, the one complete play of a lost trilogy on the daughters of Danaus. The fifty Danaids flee Egypt to escape forced marriage to their cousins and take refuge as suppliants at Argos, forcing its king to choose between their sacred claim and the threat of war. Notable for the chorus itself being the protagonist, it dramatizes the tension between supplication, consent, and civic responsibility. The translation is E.D.A. Morshead's.
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