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.
- I fain would on their lips imprint.
- Embraces now, and fond farewells for them; but then a cold repulse!
- By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
- No, no! in vain this word has sped its flight.
- O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young? Yet so far as I may and can, I raise for them a dirge,
- and do adjure[*](κἀπιθεάζω, Blomfield’s emendation for MSS. κἀπιθοάζω.) the gods to witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee slay them after all!
- Many a fate doth Zeus dispense, high on his Olympian throne; oft do the gods bring things to pass beyond man’s expectation; that, which we thought would be, is not fulfilled, while for the unlooked-for god finds out a way; and such hath been the issue of this matter.