Medea

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. By this time would a quick walker have made the turn in a course of six plethra[*](The reading is doubtful, still more the meaning. The conjecture ἀνελθών is adopted here, with Musgrave’s ἂν ἥπτετο for ἀνθήπτετο, ἀνελθὼν κῶλον ἑκπλέθρου δρόμου. This would mean, her swoon lasted as long as a man would take to go and return the distance of six plethra. The κῶλον then must be the limb, lap of the course up to the turning post.) and reached the goal, when she with one awful shriek awoke, poor sufferer, from her speechless trance and oped her closed eyes,
  2. for against her a twofold anguish was warring. The chaplet of gold about her head was sending forth a wondrous stream of ravening flame, while the fine raiment, thy children’s gift, was preying on the hapless maiden’s fair white flesh;
  3. and she starts from her seat in a blaze and seeks to fly, shaking her hair and head this way and that, to cast the crown therefrom; but the gold held firm to its fastenings, and the flame, as she shook her locks, blazed forth the more with double fury.