Andromache

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.

  1. I am a thing of naught; death is come upon me. My voice is choked, my limbs droop beneath me.
Messenger
  1. Hearken; if thou art eager also[*](Reading εἰ καὶ, for which Hermann has εἴπερ. Dindorf εἴ τι.) to avenge thy friends,
  2. lift up thyself and hear what happened.
Peleus
  1. Ah, destiny! how tightly hast thou caught me in thy toils, a poor old man at life’s extremest verge! But tell me how he was taken from me, my one son’s only child; unwelcome as such news is, I fain would hear it.
Messenger
  1. As soon as we reached the famous soil of Phoebus, for three whole days were we feasting our eyes with the sight. And this, it seems, caused suspicion; for the folk, who dwell near the god’s shrine, began to collect in groups,
  2. while Agamemnon’s son, going to and fro through the town, would whisper in each man’s ear malignant hints: Do ye see yon fellow, going in and out of the god’s treasure-chambers, which are full of the gold stored there by all mankind? He is come hither a second time on the same mission as before,
  3. eager to sack the temple of Phoebus. Thereon there ran an angry murmur through the city, and the magistrates flocked to their council-chamber, while those, who have charge of the god’s treasures, had a guard privately placed amongst the colonnades.
  4. But we, knowing naught as yet of this, took sheep fed in the pastures of Parnassus, and went our way and stationed ourselves at the altars with vouchers and Pythian seers. And one said: What prayer, young warrior,
  5. wouldst thou have us offer to the god? Wherefore art thou come? And he answered: I wish to make atonement to Phoebus for my past transgression; for once I claimed from him satisfaction for my father’s blood. Thereupon the rumour, spread by Orestes, proved to have great weight,
  6. suggesting that my master was lying and had come on a shameful errand. But he crosses the threshold of the temple to pray to Phoebus before his oracle,[*](Also explained by the Schol. as = πρὸ τῶν θυσῶν, i.e. before sacrificing.) and was busy with his burnt-offering; when a body of men armed with swords set themselves[*](Hermann’s ἀνθυφειστήκει.) in ambush against him
  7. in the cover of the bay- trees, and Clytemnestra’s son, that had contrived the whole
    plot was one of them. There stood the young man praying to the god in sight of all, when lo! with their sharp swords they stabbed Achilles’ unprotected son from behind.
  8. But he stepped back, for it was not a mortal wound he had received, and drew his sword, and snatching armour from the pegs where it hung on a pillar, took his stand upon the altar-steps, the picture of a warrior grim; then cried he to the sons of Delphi, and asked them: