On Some Grand Lines in a Greek Tragedy

Question

_{I recently asked this question on Christianity SE, but it received no answers. It was suggested that I ask it here with the greek-language tag:}

In his essay "The Syllabus" (which refers to the Syllabus of Errors attributable to Pope Bl. Pius IX.), St. John Henry Newman writes:

How many strong things, for instance, have been reported with a sort of triumph on one side and with irritation and despondency on the other, of what the Vatican Council has done; whereas the very next year after it, Bishop Fessler, the Secretary General of the Council, brings out his work on "True and False Infallibility," reducing what was said to be so monstrous to its true dimensions. When I see all this going on, those grand lines in the Greek Tragedy always rise on my lips—

οὔπωε τὰν Διὸς ἁρμονίαν θνατῶν παρεξίασι βουλαί,

and still more the consolation given us by a Divine Speaker that, though the swelling sea is so threatening to look at, yet there is One who rules it and says, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!"

_{Newman, John Henry. "The Syllabus." Section 7 of A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation. Accessed at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section7.html 8 January 2023.}

The above is taken from pg. 105 of Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk

Here's the OCR of the Greek text (in Unicode UTF-8): οὔπωε τὰν Διὸς ἁρμονίαν θνατῶν παρεξίασι βουλαί.

However, DeepL gives "As the Son was the harmony of the harmony of the dead."—which seems to be neither intelligible nor what the ancient Greek author likely had in mind.

What does the line in Greek translate into, and which Greek tragedy St. John Newman is alluding to?

Thank you.

Answer 1

The quotation is from Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound lines 550–551. Here is a transliteration into Roman characters:

oúpōe tàn Diòs harmonían thnatō̃n parexíasi boulaí

In Herbert Weir Smyth's translation:

Never shall the counsels of mortal men transgress the ordering of Zeus.

_{Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, 2 vols. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1926. Accessed at perseus.tufts.edu 8 January 2023.}

Or in Lewis Campbell's rather more florid rendering:

           Shall the power
Of creatures creeping for an hour
By wisdom overpass the bound
The mind of Zeus hath fixed their little lives around?

Never !

_{Campbell, Lewis, trans. Aeschylus: The Seven Plays in English Verse. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1906, rept. 1935. p. 250. Accessed at archive.org 8 January 2023.}