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.
- whom I bred and reared, alive to say the last farewell to me; nay, I have lost them.
- To this thy speech I could have made a long retort, but Father Zeus knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast given me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love
- and lead a life of joy in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave thee a second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore, if thou wilt, call me e’en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in the Tyrrhene land;
- for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might.
- Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.
- Be well assured I am; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst not mock at me.
- O my children, how vile a mother ye have found!
- My sons, your father’s feeble lust has been your ruin!
- ’Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.
- No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage.
- Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?
- Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury?
- So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.
- Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.
- They live, methinks,[*](Reading οἵμαι with Tyrrwhitt.) to bring a curse upon thy head.
- The gods know, whoso of them began this troublous coil.
- Indeed, they know that hateful heart of thine.
- Thou art as hateful. I am aweary of thy bitter tongue.
- And I likewise of thine. But parting is easy.
- Say how; what am I to do? for I am fain as thou to go.