Hecuba
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.
- Oh! mother, mother, why do you call so loud? what news is it you have proclaimed, scaring me, like a cowering bird, from my chamber by this alarm?
- Alas, my daughter!
- Why this ominous address? it means sorrow for me.
- Woe for your life!
- Tell it, hide it no longer. Ah mother! how I dread, I dread
- the import of your loud laments.
- Ah my daughter! a luckless mother’s child!
- Why do you tell me this?
- The Argives with one consent are eager for your sacrifice to the son of Peleus
- at his tomb.
- Ah! my mother! how can you speak of such a dire mischance? Tell me all, mother, yes all!
- It is an ill-boding rumor I tell, my child;
- they bring me word that sentence is passed upon your life by the Argives’ vote.
- Alas, for your cruel sufferings, my persecuted mother! woe for your life of grief! What grievous outrage
- has some fiend sent on you, hateful, horrible? No more shall I your daughter share your bondage, hapless youth on hapless age attending.
- For you, alas! will see me, your hapless child, torn from your arms like a calf of the hills, and sent beneath the darkness of the earth with severed throat for Hades, where with the dead
- shall I be laid, ah me! For your unhappiness I weep with plaintive wail, mother; but for my own life, its ruin and its outrage, never a tear I shed; no, death has become to me
- a happier lot than life.
- See where Odysseus comes in haste, to announce some fresh command to you, Hecuba.
- Lady, I think you know already the intention of the army, and the vote that has been passed; still I will declare it.