Ah! woe is me! here is a sad sight for me to see and take unto my halls! Ah me! ah me! I am undone, thou city of Thessaly! My line now ends; I have no children left me in my home. Oh! the sorrows I seem born to endure! What friend can I look to for relief? Ah, dear lips, and cheeks, and hands! Would thy destiny had slain thee ’neath Ilium’s walls beside the banks of Simois!ChorusHad he so died, my aged lord, he had won him honour thereby, and thine had been the happier lot.
PeleusO marriage, marriage, woe to thee! thou bane of my home, thou destroyerὤλεσας ὤλεσας ἀμὰν (Hermann). of my city! Ah my child, my boy! wouldPaley has a long note on this passage, the sum of which seems to be that it is corrupt and unintelligible. Various emendation, all unsatisfactory, have been proposed. I have followed Hermann’s correction, the sense of which is thus given by Paley, would that your union with the captive Andromache had not involved you in the death intended for her;
reading ὤφελ᾽ ἐμοὶ γέρας κ.τ.λ. that the honour of wedding thee, fraught with evil as it was to my children and house, had not thrown oer thee, my son, Hermiones deadly net! O that the thunderbolt had slain her sooner! and that thou, rash mortal, hadst never charged the great god Phoebus with aiming that murderous shaft that spilt thy hero-fathers blood!Phoebus was said to have aimed the arrow of Paris, that slew Achilles. ChorusWoe! woe! alas! With due observance of funeral rites will I begin the mourning for my dead master.PeleusAlack and well-a-day! I take up the tearful dirge, ah me! old and wretched as I am.Chorus’Tis Heaven’s decree; God willed this heavy stroke.PeleusO darling child,