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. The tongue from trifling causes contrives to breed great strife ’mongst men; wherefore are the wise most careful not to bring about a quarrel with their friends.
Menelaus
  1. Why,[*](Porson reads τίς δῆτ᾽ ἂν εἴτοι.) pray, should one call these old men wise, or those who once had a reputation in Hellas for being so? when thou, the great Peleus, son of a famous father, connected
    with me by marriage,[*](Nauck regards this as an interpolation, not improbably.) employest language disgraceful to thyself and abusive of me because of a barbarian woman,
  2. though thou shouldst have banished her far[*](Reading τῆλ᾽ (Reiske).) beyond the streams of Nile or Phasis, and ever encouraged me; seeing that she comes from Asia’s continent where fell so many of the sons of Hellas, victims to the spear; and likewise because she shared in the spilling of thy son’s blood;
  3. for[*](Lines 655-656 are rejected by Nauck.) Paris who slew thy son Achilles, was brother to Hector, whose wife she was. And dost thou enter the same abode with her, and deign to let her share thy board, and suffer her to rear her brood of vipers in thy house?
  4. But I, after all this foresight for thee, old man, and myself, am to have her torn from my clutches for wishing to slay her. Yet come now, for there is no disgrace in arguing the matter out; suppose my daughter has no child, while this woman’s sons grow up, wilt thou set them up to rule the land of Phthia,