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.
- to slay the offspring of thy womb by such a murderous doom.
- Of all the wives of yore I know but one who laid her hand upon her children dear, even Ino,[*](This is Euripides’ version of the legend, not the usual one; which makes Athamas the father go mad and kill one son, while Ino leaps into the sea with the other.) whom the gods did madden in the day
- that the wife of Zeus drove her wandering from her home. But she, poor sufferer, flung herself into the sea because of the foul murder of her children, leaping o’er the wave-beat cliff, and in her death was she united to her children twain.
- Can there be any deed of horror left to follow this? Woe for the wooing of women fraught with disaster! What sorrows hast thou caused for men ere now!
- Ladies, stationed near this house, pray tell me is the author of these hideous deeds,
- Medea, still within, or hath she fled from hence? For she must hide beneath the earth or soar on wings towards heaven’s vault, if she would avoid the vengeance of the royal house. Is she so sure she will escape herself unpunished from this house,
- when she hath slain the rulers of the land? But enough of this! I am forgetting her children. As for her, those whom she hath wronged will do the like by her; but I am come to save the children’s life, lest the victim’s kin visit their wrath on me, in vengeance for the murder foul,
- wrought by my children’s mother.
- Unhappy man, thou knowest not the full extent of thy misery, else had thou never said those words.
- How now? Can she want to kill me too?
- Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother’s hand.
- O God! what sayest thou? Woman, thou hast sealed my doom.
- Thy children are no more; be sure of this.
- Where slew she them; within the palace or outside?
- Throw wide the doors and see thy children’s murdered corpses.
- Haste, ye slaves, loose the bolts,
- undo the fastenings, that I may see the sight of twofold woe, my murdered sons and her, whose blood in vengeance I will shed. [Medea in mid air, on a chariot drawn by dragons; the children’s corpses by her.
- Why shake those doors and attempt to loose their bolts, in quest of the dead and me their murderess? From such toil desist. If thou wouldst aught with me,
- say on, if so thou wilt; but never shalt thou lay hand on me, so swift the steeds the sun, my father’s sire, to me doth give to save me from the hand of my foes.
- Accursed woman! by gods, by me and all mankind abhorred as never woman was,
- who hadst the heart to stab thy babes, thou their mother, leaving me undone and childless; this hast thou done and still dost gaze upon the sun and earth after this deed most impious. Curses on thee! I now perceive what then I missed