Alcestis

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. Lift thyself, unhappy wife, forsake me not; entreat the mighty gods to pity us.
Alcestis
  1. I see the two-oared skiff, I see it; and Charon, death’s ferryman, his hand upon the boatman’s pole,
  2. is calling me e’en now, Why lingerest thou? Hasten. Thou art keeping me. Thus in his eager haste he hurries me.
Admetus
  1. Ah me! bitter to me is this voyage thou speakest of. Unhappy wife, what woes are ours!
Alcestis
  1. One draws me, draws me hence, seest thou not?
  2. to the courts of death, winged Hades glaring from beneath his dark brows. What wilt thou with me? Unhand me. On what a journey am I setting out, most wretched woman I!
Admetus
  1. Bitter journey to thy friends, yet most of all to me
  2. and to thy babes, the partners in this sorrow.
Alcestis
  1. Hands off! hands off at once! Lay me down, I cannot stand. Hades standeth near; and with its gloom steals night upon my eyes.
  2. O my children, my children, ye have no mother now. Fare ye well, my babes, live on beneath the light!
Admetus
  1. Woe is me! this is a message of sorrow to me, worse than aught that death can do.
  2. Steel not thy heart to leave me, I implore, by heaven, by thy babes whom thou wilt make orphans; nay, raise thyself, have courage. For if thou die I can no longer live; my life, my death are in thy hands; thy love is what I worship.
Alcestis
  1. Admetus, lo! thou seest how it is with me; to thee I fain would tell my wishes ere I die. Thee I set before myself, and instead of living have ensured thy life, and so I die, though I need not have died for thee,
  2. but might have taken for my husband whom I would of the Thessalians, and have had a home blest with royal power; reft of thee, with my children orphans, I cared not to live, nor, though crowned with youth’s fair gifts, wherein I used to joy, did I grudge them.
  3. Yet the father that begat thee, the mother that bare thee, gave thee up, though they had reached a time of life when to die were well, so saving thee their child, and winning noble death. For thou wert their only son, nor had they any hope, when thou wert dead, of other offspring.
  4. And I should have lived and thou the remnant of our days, nor wouldst thou have wept thy wife’s loss, nor have had an orphan family. But some god hath caused these things to be even as they are. Enough! Remember thou the gratitude due to me for this;
  5. yea, for I shall never ask thee for an adequate return, for naught is prized more highly than our life; but just is my request, as thou thyself must say, since thou no less than I dost love these children, if so be thou think’st aright. Be content to let them rule my house,
  6. and do not marry a new wife to be a stepmother to these children, for she from jealousy, if so she be a woman worse than me, will stretch out her hand against the children of our union. Then do not this, I do beseech thee.[*](Nauck suspects this line, and Hirzel thinks the two next are spurious.) For the stepmother that succeeds, hateth children
  7. of a former match, cruel as the viper’s are her tender mercies. A son, ’tis true, hath in his sire a tower of strength, to whom he speaks and has his answer back;[*](Paley encloses this line in brackets as suspicious. Nauck omits it in his text.) but thou, my daughter, how shall thy maidenhood be passed in honour? What shall thy experience
    be of thy father’s wife?
  8. She may fasten on thee some foul report in thy youthful bloom, and frustrate thy marriage. Never shall thy mother lead thee to the bridal bed, nor by her presence in thy travail hearten thee, my child, when a mother’s kindness triumphs over all.