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. and thine had been the happier lot.
Peleus
  1. O marriage, marriage, woe to thee! thou bane of my home, thou destroyer[*](ὤλεσας ὤλεσας ἀμὰν (Hermann).) of my city! Ah my child, my boy! would[*](Paley has a long note on this passage, the sum of which seems to be that it is corrupt and unintelligible. Various emendation, all unsatisfactory, have been proposed. I have followed Hermann’s correction, the sense of which is thus given by Paley, would that your union with the captive Andromache had not involved you in the death intended for her;reading ὤφελ᾽ ἐμοὶ γέρας κ.τ.λ.) that the honour of wedding thee,
  2. fraught with
    evil as it was to my children and house, had not thrown oer thee, my son, Hermiones deadly net! O that the thunderbolt had slain her sooner! and that thou, rash mortal, hadst never charged
  3. the great god Phoebus with aiming that murderous shaft that spilt thy hero-fathers blood![*](Phoebus was said to have aimed the arrow of Paris, that slew Achilles.)
Chorus
  1. Woe! woe! alas! With due observance of funeral rites will I begin the mourning for my dead master.
Peleus
  1. Alack and well-a-day! I take up the tearful dirge, ah me! old and wretched as I am.
Chorus
  1. ’Tis Heaven’s decree; God willed this heavy stroke.
Peleus
  1. O darling child,
  2. thou hast left me all alone in my halls,[*](Nauck reads δόμον ἔλιπες ἔρημον.) old and childless by thy loss.
Chorus
  1. Thou shouldst have died, old sire, before thy children.
Peleus
  1. Shall I not tear my hair,
  2. and smite upon my head with grievous blows? O city! of both my children[*](Achilles his son, and Neoptolemus his grandson.) hath Phoebus robbed me.
Chorus
  1. What evils thou hast suffered, what sorrows thou hast seen, thou poor old man!
  2. what shall be thy life hereafter?
Peleus
  1. Childless, desolate, with no limit to my grief, I must drain the cup of woe, until I die.
Chorus
  1. ’Twas all in vain the gods wished thee joy on thy wedding day.[*](The gods had attended the marriage of Peleus and Thetis.)
Peleus
  1. All my hopes have flown away,
  2. fallen short of my high boasts.
Chorus
  1. A lonely dweller in a lonely home art thou.
Peleus
  1. I have no city any longer;[*](οὐκέτ᾽ ἐστί μοι πόλις (Hermann).) there! on the ground
    my sceptre do I cast; and thou, daughter of Nereus, neath thy dim grotto,