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. No easy task to bit their jaws.
Heracles
  1. Easy enough, unless their nostrils vomit fire.
Chorus
  1. With ravening jaws they rend the limbs of men.
Heracles
  1. Thou speakest of the food of mountain beasts, not of horses.
Chorus
  1. Their mangers blood-bedabbled thou shalt see.
Heracles
  1. Whose son doth he who feeds them boast to be?
Chorus
  1. Ares’ son, king of the golden targe of Thrace.
Heracles
  1. This toil again is but a piece of my ill-luck;
  2. hard it ever is and still is growing steeper, if I with Ares’ own-begotten sons must fight, first with Lycaon, next with Cycnus, while now I am bound on this third contest to engage the horses and their master.
  3. Yet shall no man ever see Alcmena’s son trembling at his foemen’s prowess.
Chorus
  1. See where Admetus, lord of this land, comes in person from the palace forth.
Admetus
  1. Hail! son of Zeus, from Perseus sprung.
Heracles
  1. Joy to thee also, Admetus, king of Thessaly.
Admetus
  1. Would there were! yet thy kindly heart I know full well.
Heracles
  1. Why dost thou appear with head shorn thus in mourning?
Admetus
  1. To-day I am to bury one who is dead.
Heracles
  1. Heaven avert calamity from thy children!
Admetus
  1. The children I have begotten are alive within my house.
Heracles
  1. Thy father maybe is gone; well, he was ripe to go.
Admetus
  1. No, Heracles, he lives; my mother too.