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.
- A stranger surely! quite a stranger she!
- Is there some trouble that he withheld from me?
- Farewell, go thy way! my master’s troubles are my care.
- This word of thine heralds not a grief for strangers felt.
- Had it been, the sight of thy merriment had not grieved me so.
- Can[*](There is some doubt whether the next four lines are genuine. Nauck brackets them.) it be mine host hath strangely wronged me?
- Thou earnest at no proper time for our house to welcome thee, for sorrow is come upon us; lo! thou seest our shorn heads and robes of sable hue.
- Who is it that is dead?
- Is it a child or his aged sire that hat hath passed away?
- Nay, sir guest, ’tis Admetus’ wife that is no more.
- What sayest thou? and did ye then in spite of that admit me to your cheer?
- Yes, for his regard would not let him send thee from his door.
- Unhappy husband, what a wife hast thou lost!
- We are all undone, not she alone.
- I knew it when I saw his streaming eye, shorn head and downcast look, yet did he persuade me, saying it was a stranger he was bearing to burial. So I did constrain myself and passed his gates
- and sat drinking in his hospitable halls, when he was suffering thus. And have I wreathed my head and do I revel still? But—thou to hold thy peace when such a crushing sorrow lay upon the house! Where is he burying her? Whither shall I go to find her?
- Beside the road that leadeth straight to Larissa, shalt thou see her carved tomb outside the suburb.
- O heart, O soul, both sufferers oft, now show the mettle of that son Tirynthian Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, bare to Zeus.
- For I must save this woman, dead but now, setting Alcestis once again within this house, and to Admetus this kind service render. So I will go and watch for death the black-robed monarch of the dead, and him methinks I shall find
- as he drinks of the blood-offering near the tomb. And if, from ambush rushing, once I catch and fold him in my arms’ embrace, none shall ever wrest him thence with smarting ribs, ere he give up the woman unto me.