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.
- O’er both of us thou dost lament.
- Would God the Theban ranks had laid me dead in the dust!
- Oh that I had ne’er been wedded to a husband!
- Behold this sea of troubles
- Ah! hapless mothers.
- Our nails have ploughed our cheeks in furrows, and o’er our heads have we strewn ashes.
- Ah me! ah me! Oh that earth’s floor would swallow me,
- or the whirlwind snatch me away, or Zeus’s flaming bolt descend upon my head!
- Bitter the marriages thou didst witness, bitter the oracle of Phoebus!
- The curse of Oedipus, fraught with sorrow, after desolating[*](For the unintelligible ἔλημας of the MS. Hermann conjectured ἔρημα σ’ which is here followed.) his house, is come on thee.
- [*](There is some corruption in the three following lines. Nauck’s εἴασα for the words ἐς τὰ σά γε makes it possible to extract meaning, but further emendation is needed. Nauck would omit the word στρατῷ in l. 838 and the whole of l. 839, except the word γόους.) I meant to question thee when thou wert venting thy lamentations to the host, but I will let it pass; yet, though I dropped the matter then
- and left it alone, I now do ask Adrastus, Of what lineage sprang those youths, to shine so bright in chivalry? Tell it to our younger citizens of thy fuller wisdom, for thou art skilled to know. Myself beheld their daring deeds, too high for words to tell,
- whereby they thought to capture Thebes. One question will I spare thee, lest I provoke thy laughter; the foe that each of them encountered in the fray, the spear from which each received his death-wound. These be idle tales alike for those who hear
- or him who speaks, that any man amid the fray, when clouds of darts are hurtling before his eyes, should declare for certain who each champion is. I could not ask such questions, nor yet believe those who dare assert the like;
- for when a man is face to face with the foe, he scarce can see even that which ’tis his bounden duty to observe.
- Hearken then. For in giving this task to me thou findest a willing eulogist of friends, whose praise I would declare in all truth and sincerity.
- Dost see yon corpse by Zeus’s bolt transfixed? That is Capaneus; though he had ample wealth, yet was he the last to boast of his prosperity; nor would he ever vaunt himself above a poorer neighbour, but shunned the man whose sumptuous board had puffed him up too high
- and made him scorn mere competence, for he held that virtue lies not in greedy gluttony, but that moderate means suffice. True friend was he, alike to present or to absent friends the same; of such the number is not great. His was a guileless character,
- a courteous address, that left no promise unperformed either towards his own household or his fellow-citizens. The next I name is Eteocles; a master he of other kinds of excellence; young, nor richly dowered with store, yet high in honour in the Argive land.
- And though his friends oft offered gifts of gold, he would not have it in his house, to make his character its slave by taking wealth’s yoke upon him. Not his city, but those that sinned against her did he hate, for a city is no wise to be blamed