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.

  1. O what wilt thou do now in thy cruel dilemma?
Phaedra
  1. I only know one way,
  2. one cure for these my woes and that is instant death.
Hippolytus
  1. O mother earth! O sun’s unclouded orb! What words, unfit for any lips, have reached my ears!
Nurse
  1. Peace, my son, lest some one hear thy outcry.
Hippolytus
  1. I cannot hear such awful words and hold my peace.
Nurse
  1. I do implore thee by thy fair right hand.
Hippolytus
  1. Let go my hand, touch not my robe.
Nurse
  1. O by thy knees I pray, destroy me not utterly.
Hippolytus
  1. Why say this, if, as thou pretendest, thy lips are free from blame?
Nurse
  1. My son, this is no story to be noised abroad.
Hippolytus
  1. A virtuous tale grows fairer told to many.
Nurse
  1. Never dishonour thy oath, thy son.
Hippolytus
  1. My tongue an oath did take, but not my heart.
Nurse
  1. My son, what wilt thou do? destroy thy friends?
Hippolytus
  1. Friends indeed! the wicked are no friends of mine.
Nurse
  1. O pardon me; to err is only human, child.
Hippolytus
  1. Great Zeus, why didst thou, to man’s sorrow, put woman, evil counterfeit, to dwell where shines the sun? If
    thou wert minded that the human race should multiply, it was not from women they should have drawn their stock,
  2. but in thy temples they should have paid gold or iron or ponderous bronze and bought a family, each man proportioned to his offering, and so in independence dwelt, from women free.
  3. But now as soon as ever we would bring this plague into our home we bring its fortune to the ground.1[*](Nauck brackets these two lines as spurious.) ’Tis clear from this how great a curse a woman is; the very father, that begot and nurtured her, to rid him of the mischief gives her a dower and packs her off;