O brother Perses, do you hear Justice (Dike) speaking?
Do not compound your insolence.
Any lawless assault turns out badly for a poor mortal.
Not even a rich noble
will be able to endure its consequences.
Even he will be weighed down by [215]
all the retribution coming his way.
Better to take the other road. It’s less traveled,
but superior, visiting just actions.
Only Justice can restrain an insolent assault;
only Justice should march off with the prize.
A dumb child learns this lesson by suffering.
Without delay, Oath (Horcus) catches up
with anybody’s crooked judgments.
With a whoosh, she swooshes in,
if Justice is knocked down, dragged around by men [220]
fed by bribes. They pretend to adjudicate sacred laws,
but their judgments are crooked.
She, weeping, attends the city
and the customs of its people.
Clothed in nothing but air,
invisibly she will run up alongside those humans
who thought they expelled her.
They did not dispense a fair deal, so she has evil for them.
They who render,
unto strangers and natives, judgments [225]
that are fair,
who do not depart,
on a holiday of wickedness, from what is righteous,
for them
their city shall flourish,
and their people prosper within it.
Peace (Eirene) shall reign in their corner of the Earth,
nourishing their children.
Never painful war shall Zeus put on them.
He, a long-range thinker, pays tribute to such.
Never is Famine (Limos) the follow-up
for men whose judgments are fair. [230]
Never do they taste Ruin (Ate).
In good cheer instead, they distribute the meat and drink
from their own fields. The Earth brings them
a more than sufficient livelihood: the oaks
on the mountains send forth acorns
on all their branches, and bees swarm in their trunks,
and the wooly sheep
are thick with fleece.
Always shall the women give birth
to children befitting for their fathers. [235]
Forever and ever shall the good be teeming.
No need to go abroad
on ships, because in their own fertile land
is abundance of seed.
But for those keen on insolent assault
and merciless deeds,
that long-range thinker, Zeus,
the son Cronus, has decreed Justice.
Most of the time, an evil man’s entire city
suffers the punishment [240]
paid to the transgressor,
for the reckless deeds he devised.
The son of Cronus applies great pain to them.
From the sky comes
Famine (Limos) linked with Plague (Loimos).
And the people slowly perish.
Never after shall the women give birth.
Their homes are emptied
in accordance with the designs of Olympian Zeus.
But sometimes he does this [245]
by wiping out their whole army,
or by letting their city wall be breached.
Sometimes the son of Cronus
simply plucks their ships off the Sea.
O kings, even you
yourselves can understand
this (invisible taloned) Justice:
it is said that the immortals are near
to us humans,
when by crooked judgments [250]
we grind each other down,
taking no heed of the gods’ divine vengeance.
The ground can nourish many,
and thirty thousand Angels of the golden age roam over it.
For mortal humans,
Zeus made them the immortal watchers.
They keep close watch
over legal disputes and merciless deeds.
Clothed in nothing but air,
they stalk the land everywhere. [255]
Justice, she is a virgin,
sprung from her father, Zeus.
Among the gods who hold Olympus,
she is noble and venerable.
If anyone harms her,
taking her lightly with crooked behavior,
without delay she ascends the throne
next to her father, Zeus, the son of Cronus.
She sings to him of the unjust human mind.
She sings of the atonement [260]
the country people pay for their reckless kings.
She sings of their ruinous plans
by which they turned from her,
by which they rendered their judgments crookedly.
O kings, watch out for these things.
Make your judgments straight and fair,
you who have fed on bribes.
Give up entirely your crooked judgments.
He who causes evils for another man,
causes evils for himself. [265]
The evil plan is
most evil for he who planned it.
The eye of Zeus sees all.
The mind of Zeus knows all.
If he wishes, he can examine us right now.
Not hidden from him
is that brand of justice a city hammers out
behind closed doors in back rooms.
As for me, why would I myself want
to stand out among human beings as just? [270]
Or why would my son?
It is obviously bad to be a just man, since
the more unjust you are, the more will you get,
at least when the judge’s verdict arrives.
Zeus is full of stratagems, but I have no hope:
not even he can talk them into a just deal.
O my brother, Perses,
take these things to heart.
Listen to Justice
and forget all use of force. [275]
The son of Cronus
has ordained for humans this law:
Fish and beasts
and winged birds
may eat each another,
because Justice is not theirs,
since he gave Justice to humans.
Justice is by far the best thing
that belongs to us. If anyone wishes
to proclaim the things that are just and true, [280]
then Zeus, that long-range thinker,
shall bestow on him wealth.
But he who before giving his testimony
willingly swears the oath,
and then lies,
does damage
to Justice,
bringing on incurable harm.
You can see how
the offspring he leaves behind
will be treated like nobodies:
when it comes to justice,
blindness in one generation
makes that family dead to all.
Stronger, better,
is the family of the man
true to his word,
he who keeps his oath. [285]