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.
- to visit this city of the Pheraeans?
- I am performing a labour for Tirynthian Eurystheus.
- And whither art thou journeying? on what wandering art thou forced to go?
- To fetch the chariot-steeds of Thracian Diomedes.
- How canst thou? art a stranger to the ways of thy host?
- I am; for never yet have I gone to the land of the Bistones.
- Thou canst not master his horses without fighting.
- Still I cannot refuse these labours.
- Then shalt thou slay them and return, or thyself be slain and stay there.
- It will not be the first hard course that I have run.
- And what will be thy gain, suppose thou master their lord?
- The steeds will I drive away to the Tirynthian king.
- No easy task to bit their jaws.
- Easy enough, unless their nostrils vomit fire.
- With ravening jaws they rend the limbs of men.
- Thou speakest of the food of mountain beasts, not of horses.
- Their mangers blood-bedabbled thou shalt see.
- Whose son doth he who feeds them boast to be?
- Ares’ son, king of the golden targe of Thrace.
- This toil again is but a piece of my ill-luck;