Hippolytus
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.
- Away, I do conjure thee; loose my hand.
- I will not, for the boon thou shouldst have granted me is denied.
- I will grant it out of reverence for thy holy sup- pliant touch.
- Henceforth I hold my peace; ’tis thine to speak from now.
- Ah! hapless mother,[*](Pasiphae, wife of Minos, deceived by Aphrodite into a fatal passion for a bull. Cf. Verg. Aen. vi. ad init., also Ovid Metam., viii, 131 sqq.) what a love was thine!
- Her love for the bull? daughter, or what meanest thou?
- And woe to thee! my sister,[*](Ariadne, deserted by Theseus in the isle of Naxos, where Dionysus found her.) bride of Dionysus.
- What ails thee, child? speaking ill of kith and kin.
- Myself the third to suffer! how am I undone!
- Thou strik’st me dumb! Where will this history end?
- That love has been our curse from time long past.
- I know no more of what I fain would learn.
- Ah! would thou couldst say for me what I have to tell.
- I am no prophetess to unriddle secrets.
- What is it they mean when they talk of people being in love?
- At once the sweetest and the bitterest thing, my child.
- I shall only find the latter half.
- Ha! my child, art thou in love?
- The Amazon’s son, whoever he may be,—
- Mean’st thou Hippolytus?