Heracleidae
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- next come ties of kin, and the debt I owe to treat them kindly for their father’s sake; and last, mine honour, which before all I must regard; for if I permit this altar to be violently despoiled by stranger hands, men will think
- the land I inhabit is free no more, and that through fear[*](Reading ὄκνῳ.) I have surrendered suppliants to Argives, and this comes nigh to make one hang oneself. Would that thou hadst come under a luckier star! yet, as it is, fear not that any man shall tear thee and these children from the altar by force.
- Get thee (to Copreus) to Argos and tell Eurystheus so; yea and more, if he have any charge against these strangers, he shall have justice; but never shalt thou drag them hence.
- Not even if I have right upon my side and prove my case?
- How can it be right to drag the suppliant away by force?
- Well,[*](Reading with Musgrave οὐκοῦν . . . ἀλλ’ οὐ. Jerram reads οὔκουν . . . ἀλλὰ σοὶ giving as the sense of this line and the next—Cop. No disgrace to me: the hurt will be thine. Dem. So it will, if I let thee take them.) mine is the disgrace; no harm will come to thee.
- Tis harm to me, if I let them be haled away by thee.
- Banish them thyself, and then will I take them from elsewhere.
- Nature made thee a fool, to think thou knowest better than the god.
- It seems then evildoers are to find a refuge here.
- A temple of the gods is an asylum open to the world.
- Maybe they will not take this view in Mycensa.
- What! am I not lord of this domain?
- So long as thou injure not the Argives, and if[*](Kirchhoff places a comma after ἐκείνους, and changes ἣν into ἄν, but this is not necessary.) wise, thou wilt not.
- Be injured for all I care, provided I sin not against the gods.
- I would not have thee come to blows with Argos.
- I am of like mind in this; but I will not dismiss these from my protection.
- For all that, I shall take and drag my own away.
- Why then perhaps thou wilt find a difficulty in returning to Argos.
- That shall I soon find out by making the attempt.