The Suppliant Maidens
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- A more unhappy wretch than me ye could not find.
- Woe for thee, unhappy man! Thou, old sir, hast been made partaker in the fortune of Oedipus, thou and my poor city too.
- Ah, why are mortal men denied this boon, to live their youth twice o’er, and twice in turn to reach old age? If aught goes wrong within our homes, we set it right by judgment more maturely formed, but our life we may not so correct. Now if we had a second spell of youth
- and age, this double term of life would let us then correct each previous slip. I, for instance, seeing others blest with children, longed to have them too, and found my ruin in that wish. Whereas if I had had my present experience,
- and by a father’s light[*](Following Paley’s τεκών for the MSS. τέκνων.) had learnt how cruel a thing it is to be bereft of children, never should I have fallen on such evil days as these,—I who did beget a brave young son, proud parent that I was, and after all am now bereft of him. Enough of this. What remains for such a hapless wretch as me?
- Shall I to my home, there to see its utter desolation and the blank within my life? or shall I to the halls of that dead Capaneus?—halls I smiled to see in days gone by, when yet my daughter was alive. But she is lost and gone, she that would ever draw down my cheek
- to her lips, and take my head between her hands; for naught is there more sweet unto an aged sire than a daughter’s love; our sons are made of sterner stuff, but less winning are their caresses. Oh! take me to my house at once,
- in darkness hide me there, to waste and fret this aged frame with fasting! What shall it avail me to touch my daughter’s bones? Old age, resistless foe, how do I loathe thy presence! Them too I hate, whoso desire to lengthen out the span of life,
- seeking to turn the tide of death aside by philtres,[*](Reading βρωτοῖσι καὶ βοτοῖσι καῖ μαγεύμασι, as restored from Plutarch’s quotation of the passage.) drugs, and magic spells,—folk that death should take away to leave the young their place, when they no more can benefit the world.
- Woe, woe! Behold your dead sons’
- bones are brought hither; take them, servants of your weak old mistress, for in me is no strength left by reason of my mourning for my sons; time’s comrade long have I been, and many a tear for many a sorrow have I shed.
- For what sharper pang wilt thou ever find for mortals than the sight of children dead?
- Poor mother mine, behold I bring my father’s bones gathered from the fire,
- a burden grief has rendered heavy, though this tiny urn contains my all.
- Ah me! ah me! Why bear thy tearful load to the fond mother of the dead,
- a handful of ashes in the stead of those who erst were men of mark in Mycenae?
- Woe worth the hour! woe worth the day! Reft of my hapless sire, a wretched orphan shall I inherit a desolate house, torn from my father’s arms.
- Woe is thee! Where is now the toil I spent upon my sons? what thank have I for nightly watch? Where the mother’s nursing care? the sleepless vigils mine eyes have kept? the loving kiss upon my children’s brow?
- Thy sons are dead and gone. Poor mother!
- dead and gone; the boundless air now wraps them round.[*](The second half of this line is assigned to the Chorus in the Greek.)