Explore "The Children of Prometheus" by James Baldwin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was sore distress in Lacedaemon. Famine and a deadly pestilence grieved the land, and in every household the notes of wailing and despair were heard. For Apollo, vexed because the men of Laconia were so slow to understand his wishes, was shooting his fateful arrows broadcast among them. Like a night-cloud he brooded over the land, and strong men and fair women and helpless babes all fell alike beneath the sharp blows of his deadly shafts. And the heart of Menelaus the king was burdened with grief because of the people's sore affliction. Then, when he found that sacrifice of lambs and goats availed him nothing, he sent in haste to ask the oracles the cause of Apollo's wrath, and to learn what could be done to stay the plague. The answer came as quickly: --
"When the bones of the children of Prometheus are brought from Ilios, and entombed in Lacedaemon, then the wrath of silver-bowed Apollo shall be turned aside, and the smiles of his favor shall bless the land."