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.
- ne’er would I to gratify thy passions have urged thee to this course; but now ’tis a struggle fierce to save thy life, and therefore less to blame.
- Accursed proposal! peace, woman! never utter those shameful words again!
- Shameful, maybe, yet for thee better than honour’s code. Better this deed, if it shall save thy life, than that name thy pride will kill thee to retain.
- I conjure thee, go no further! for thy words are plausible but infamous; for though as yet
- love has not[*](I follow Nauck in reading οὐ for εὖ. ὑπειργασμαι = have been subdued—according to Paley and Liddell and Scott (passive). Mahaffy extracts a middle sense prepared my soul for love’s entry, and adopts the conjectural οὐ which would certainly seem to add clearness.) undermined my soul, yet, if in specious words thou dress thy foul suggestion, I shall be beguiled into the snare from which I am now escaping.
- If thou art of this mind, ’twere well thou ne’er hadst sinned; but as it is, hear me; for that is the next best course; I in my house have charms
- to soothe thy love,—’twas but now I thought of them;—these shall cure thee of thy sickness on no disgraceful terms, thy mind unhurt, if thou wilt be but brave.
- But from him thou lovest we must get some token, a word or fragment of his robe,
- and thereby unite in one love’s twofold stream.[*](These lines are perhaps spurious. Nauck and Weil both bracket them.)
- Is thy drug a salve or potion?
- I cannot tell; be content, my child, to profit by it and ask no questions.
- I fear me thou wilt prove too wise for me.
- If thou fear this, confess thyself afraid of all; but why thy terror?
- Lest thou shouldst breathe a word of this to Theseus’ son.
- Peace, my child! I will do all things well; only be thou, queen Cypris, ocean’s child, my partner in the work! And for the rest of my purpose, it will be enough for me to tell it to Our friends within the house. [Exit Nurse.
- O Love, Love, that from the eyes diffusest soft desire, bringing on the souls of those, whom thou dost camp against, sweet grace, O never in evil mood appear to me, nor out of time and tune approach!
- Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite’s shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus.
- Idly, idly by the streams of Alpheus and in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, Hellas heaps the slaughtered steers; while Love we worship not, Love, the king of men, who holds the key to Aphrodite’s
- sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe.
- There was that maiden[*](Iole, daughter of Eurytus, king of Oechalia. Her father refused, after promising, to give her to Heracles, who thereupon took her by force.) in Oechalia, a girl unwed, that knew no wooer yet nor married joys; her did the queen of Love[*](There is some corruption here. It is probable the doubtful εἰρεσίᾳ conceals an allusion to Euryptus, as Monk indeed suggest; but the passage is not yet satisfactorily emended.) snatch from her home across the sea