Hippolytus

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.

  1. Away, I do conjure thee; loose my hand.
Nurse
  1. I will not, for the boon thou shouldst have granted me is denied.
Phaedra
  1. I will grant it out of reverence for thy holy sup- pliant touch.
Nurse
  1. Henceforth I hold my peace; ’tis thine to speak from now.
Phaedra
  1. Ah! hapless mother,[*](Pasiphae, wife of Minos, deceived by Aphrodite into a fatal passion for a bull. Cf. Verg. Aen. vi. ad init., also Ovid Metam., viii, 131 sqq.) what a love was thine!
Nurse
  1. Her love for the bull? daughter, or what meanest thou?
Phaedra
  1. And woe to thee! my sister,[*](Ariadne, deserted by Theseus in the isle of Naxos, where Dionysus found her.) bride of Dionysus.
Nurse
  1. What ails thee, child? speaking ill of kith and kin.
Phaedra
  1. Myself the third to suffer! how am I undone!
Nurse
  1. Thou strik’st me dumb! Where will this history end?
Phaedra
  1. That love has been our curse from time long past.
Nurse
  1. I know no more of what I fain would learn.
Phaedra
  1. Ah! would thou couldst say for me what I have to tell.
Nurse
  1. I am no prophetess to unriddle secrets.
Phaedra
  1. What is it they mean when they talk of people being in love?
Nurse
  1. At once the sweetest and the bitterest thing, my child.
Phaedra
  1. I shall only find the latter half.
Nurse
  1. Ha! my child, art thou in love?
Phaedra
  1. The Amazon’s son, whoever he may be,—
Nurse
  1. Mean’st thou Hippolytus?