Hecuba
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- are eager to set sail from Troy for home; and, when you have accomplished all that you must do, you shall return with your children to the place where you have lodged my son. Hecuba leads Polymestor and his children into the tent.
- Not yet have you paid the penalty, but perhaps you will.
- Like one who slips and falls into the surge with no haven near, so shall you lose your own life for the life you have taken. For where liability to justice coincides with heaven’s law;
- there is ruin full of death and doom. Your hopes of this journey shall cheat you, for it has led you, unhappy wretch! to the halls of death; and to no warrior’s hand shall you resign your life.
- O horror! I am blinded of the light of my eyes, ah me!
- Did you hear, friends, that Thracian’s cry of woe?
- O horror! horror! my children! 0 the cruel blow.
- Friends, there is strange mischief afoot in yo.
- No, you shall never escape for all your hurried flight;
- for with a blow I will burst open the inmost recesses of this building.
- Hark! how he launches a bolt with weighty hand! Shall we force an entry? The crisis calls on us to aid Hecuba and the Trojan women.
- Strike on, spare not, burst the doors!
- you shall never replace bright vision in your eyes or see your children, whom I have slain, alive again.
- What! have you foiled the Thracian stranger and is he in your power, mistress? Is all your threat now brought to pass?
- A moment, and you shall see him before the tent,
- blind, advancing with blind random step; and the bodies of his two children whom I with my brave women of Troy killed; he has paid me the penalty; here he comes from the tent, as you see. I will withdraw out of his path and stand aside
- from the hot fury of the Thracian, my deadly foe.
Polymestor rushes out. Blood is streaming from his eyes.Polymestor
- Woe is me! where can I go, where halt, or turn? shall I crawl like a wild four-footed beast on their track, as my reward? Which path shall I take first,
- this or that, eager as I am to clutch those Trojan murderesses that have destroyed me? You wretched, cursed daughters
- of Phrygia! to what corner have you fled cowering before me? O sun-god, would you could heal, could heal my bleeding eyes, ridding me of my blindness!