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.
- 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.