Ion
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.
- while life is hers, endure within the sunshine of her eyes the sight of alien rulers in her halls.
- I blush for that god of song,
- if this stranger is to witness the torch-dance, that heralds in the twentieth dawn, around Callichorus’ fair springs, a sleepless votary in midnight revels, what time the star-lit firmament of Zeus,
- the moon, and Nereus’ fifty daughters, that trip it lightly o’er the sea and the eternal rivers’ tides, join the dance in honour
- of the maiden with the crown of gold and her majestic mother; where this vagabond, by Phoebus favoured, thinks to reign, entering into other men’s hard toil.
- Look to it, all ye bards, who, in malicious strains, expose our amours and unholy bonds of lawless love; see how far our
- virtue surpasses man’s disloyalty. Change the burden of your song and keep your spiteful verse to brand man’s faithlessness. For this scion of the stock of Zeus
- shows himself a heedless wight, denying to the mistress of his halls the lot of mutual offspring, and, paying all his court to some strange love,
- hath gotten him a bastard son.
- Ladies of another land, where may I find your mistress, daughter of Erechtheus? For I have searched each nook and corner of this town, and cannot find her.
- What news, my fellow-thrall? why that hurried gait? what tidings bringest thou?
- I am pursued; the rulers of this land are seeking her to stone her to death.
- Alas, what is thy tale? say not we are detected in our secret plot for murdering the boy?
- Thou hast guessed aright; nor wilt thou be the last to share the trouble.
- How was the hidden scheme laid bare?
- The god found means to master wrong with right, unwilling to see his shrine polluted.
- How so? I do conjure thee, tell us all.
- For if to die or yet to live be ours, ’twere sweeter so, when we know all.
- Soon as Xuthus, husband of Creusa, had left the god’s prophetic shrine, taking with him his new-found son, to hold the feast and sacrifice that he designed to offer to the gods,
- himself departed to the place where leaps the Bacchic flame, with blood of sacrifice to dew the double peaks of Dionysus for the son now offered to his gaze, and thus he spake, My son, abide thou here, and raise a spacious tent by craftsmen’s toiling skill;