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.

  1. Yes, if he lives, which I doubt; so luckless am I in every way.
Polyxena
  1. He lives; and, when you die, he will close your eyes.
Hecuba
  1. I am dead; sorrow has forestalled death here.
Polyxena
  1. Come veil my head, Odysseus, and take me away; for now, before the fatal blow, my heart is melted by my mother’s wailing, and hers by mine.
  2. O light of day! for still I may call you by your name, though now my share in you is only the time I take to go between Achilles’ tomb and the sword. Odysseus and his attendants lead Polyxena away.
Hecuba
  1. Alas! I faint; my limbs sink under me. O my daughter, embrace your mother, stretch out your hand,
  2. give it to me; do not leave me childless! Ah, friends! it is my death-blow. Oh! to see that Spartan woman, Helen, sister of the sons of Zeus, in such a plight; for her bright eyes have caused the shameful fall of Troy’s once prosperous town. Hecuba sinks fainting to the ground.
Chorus
  1. O breeze, breeze of the sea,
  2. that wafts swift galleys, ocean’s coursers, across the surging main! Where will you bear me, the sorrowful one? To whose house shall I be brought, to be his slave and chattel?
  3. to some haven in the Dorian land, or in Phthia, where men say Apidanus, father of fairest streams, makes fat and rich the soil?
Chorus
  1. Or to an island home, sent on a voyage of misery by oars that sweep the brine, leading a wretched existence in halls where the first-created palm and the bay-tree put forth their sacred
  2. shoots for dear Latona, a memorial of her divine birth-pains? and there with the maids of Delos shall I hymn
  3. the golden head-band and bow of Artemis, their goddess?
Chorus
  1. Or in the city of Pallas, the home of Athena of the lovely chariot, shall I then upon her saffron robe yoke horses,
  2. embroidering them on my web in brilliant varied shades, or the race of Titans, put to sleep by Zeus the son of Cronos with bolt of flashing flame?
Chorus
  1. Alas for my children! alas for my ancestors, and my country which is falling in smouldering ruin among the smoke, sacked by the Argive spear, while I upon a foreign
  2. shore am called a slave, indeed! leaving Asia, Europe’s handmaid, and receiving in its place a deadly marriage-bower.
The herald, Talthybius, enters.
Talthybius
  1. Where can I find Hecuba, who once was
  2. queen of Ilium, you Trojan maidens?
Chorus Leader
  1. There she lies near you, Talthybius, stretched full length upon the ground, wrapped in her robe.