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. Thou hast come uncalled by me to this burial,
  2. nor do I count thy presence as a friendly act. Never shall she be clad in any garniture of thine, nor[*](Nauck brackets this line as spurious.) in her burial will she need aught of thine. Thou shouldst have shewn thy sympathy at the time my doom was sealed. But thou didst stand aloof and let another die,
  3. though thou wert old, the victim young; shalt thou then mourn the dead? Methinks thou wert no real sire of mine nor was she my true mother who calls herself and is called so, but[*](Nauck refuses to credit Euripides with lines 638 and 639.) I was sprung of slave’s blood and privily substituted at thy wife’s breast.
  4. Brought to the test thou hast shewn thy nature; I cannot think I am thy child by birth. By heaven, thou art the very pattern of cowards, who at thy age, on the borderland of life, wouldst not, nay! couldst not find the heart to die
  5. for thy own son; but ye, my parents, left to this stranger, whom I henceforth shall
    justly hold e’en as mother and as father too, and none but her. And yet ’twas a noble exploit to achieve, to die to save thy son, and in any case the