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.
- Behold a rivalry in sorrow! woe takes up the tale of woe; hark! thy servants beat their breasts. Come ye who join the mourners’ wail, come, O sympathetic band, to join the dance,
- which Hades honours; let the[*](Hartung proposes to read διὰ παρῆδος ὄνθχα τίθετε φόνιον, αἱματοῦτε χρόα τε λευκόν, but I have followed Paley’s text, which gives a possible meaning.) pearly nail be stained red, as it rends your cheeks, let your skin be streaked with gore; for honours rendered to the dead are a credit[*](Reading κόσμος, which Hartung alters to κῆδος.) to the living.
- Sorrow’s charm doth drive me wild, insatiate, painful,
- endless, even as the trickling stream that gushes from some steep rock’s face; for ’tis woman’s way to fall a-weeping o’er
- the cruel calamity of children dead. Ah me! would I could die and forget my anguish!
- What is this lamentation that I hear, this beating of the breast, these dirges for the dead, with cries that echo from this shrine? How fluttering fear disquiets me,
- lest haply my mother have gotten some mischance, in quest of whom I come, for she hath been long absent from home. Ha! what now? A strange sight challenges my speech; I see my aged mother sitting at the altar and stranger dames are with her, who in various note
- proclaim their woe; from aged eyes the piteous tear is starting to the ground, their hair is shorn, their robes are not the robes of joy.
- What means it, mother? ’Tis thine to make it plain to me, mine to listen; yea, for I expect some tidings strange.
- My son, these are the mothers of those chieftains seven, who fell around the gates of Cadmus’ town. With suppliant boughs they keep me prisoner, as thou seest, in their midst.
- And who is yonder man, that moaneth piteously in the gateway?
- Adrastus, they inform me, king of Argos.
- Are those his children, those boys who stand round him?
- Not his, but the sons of the fallen slain.
- Why are they come to us, with suppliant hand outstretched?
- I know; but ’tis for them to tell their story, my son.
- To thee, in thy mantle muffled, I address my inquiries; unveil thy head, let lamentation be, and speak; for naught can be achieved save through the utterance of thy tongue.[*](Markland’s emendation περᾷς … ’ιών, is certainly tempting. Hartung adopts it; but Paley and Nauck, whom I have followed, retain the old reading πάρας … ’ιόν.)
- Victorious prince of the Athenian realm, Theseus, to thee and to thy city I, a suppliant, come.
- What seekest thou? What need is thine?
- Dost know how I did lead an expedition to its ruin?