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. shalt see me grovelling in the dust,[*](γᾷ πίτνοντα μ᾽ ὄψει (Hermann).) a ruined king.
Chorus
  1. Look, look! A dim form of divine appearance in seen hovering in mid air. What is that moving? what influence divine am I conscious of? Look, maidens, mark it well; see, yonder is some deity, wafted through the lustrous air and alighting on the plains
  2. of Phthia, home of steeds.
Thetis
  1. O Peleus! because of my wedded days with thee now long agone, I Thetis am come from the halls of Nereus. And first I counsel thee not to grieve to excess in thy present distress,
  2. for I too who need ne’er have born children to my sorrow, have lost the child of our love, Achilles swift of foot, foremost of the sons of Hellas. Next will I declare why I am come, and do thou give ear. Carry yonder corpse, Achilles’ son,
  3. to the Pythian altar and there bury it, a reproach to Delphi, that his tomb may proclaim the violent death he met at the hand of Orestes. And for his captive wife Andromache,–she must dwell in the Molossian land,
  4. united in honourable wedlock with Helenus, and with her this babe, the sole survivor as he is of all the line of Aeacus, for from him a succession of prosperous kings of Molossia is to go on unbroken; for
  5. the race that springs from thee and me, my aged lord, must not thus be brought to naught; no! nor Troy’s line either; for her fate[*](τὰκείνης (Lenting).) too is cared for by the gods, albeit her fall was due to the eager wish of Pallas. Thee too, that thou mayst know the saving grace of wedding me, will I, a goddess born and daughter of a god,[*]( This line is probably interpolated.)
  6. release from all the ills that flesh is heir to and make a deity to know not death nor decay. From henceforth in the halls of Nereus shalt thou dwell with me,
    god and goddess together; thence shalt thou rise dry-shod from out the main
  7. and see Achilles, our dear son, settled in his island-home by the strand of Leuce, that is girdled by the Euxine sea. But get thee to Delphi’s god-built town, carrying this corpse with thee, and, after thou hast buried him,
  8. return and settle in the cave which time hath hollowed in the Sepian rock and there abide, till from the sea I come with choir of fifty Nereids to be thy escort thence; for fate’s decree thou must fulfil; such is the pleasure of Zeus.
  9. Cease then to mourn the dead; this is the lot which heaven assigns to all, and all must pay their debt to death.