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.
- As a spectator merely, or to consult the oracle?
- ’Tis his wish to hear the self-same answer from Trophonius and Phoebus too.
- Is it to seek earth’s produce or fruit of offspring that ye come?
- We are childless, though wedded these many years.
- Hast thou never been a mother? art thou wholly childless?
- Phoebus knows whether I am childless.
- Unhappy wife! how this doth mar thy fortune else so happy!
- But who art thou? how blest I count thy mother!
- Lady, I am called the servant of Apollo, and so I am.
- An offering of thy city, or sold to him by some master?
- Naught know I but this, that I am called the slave of Loxias.
- Then do i in my turn pity thee, sir stranger.
- Because I know not her that bare me, or him that begat me.
- Is thy home here in the temple, or hast thou a house to dwell in?
- The god’s whole temple is my house, wherever sleep o’ertakes me.
- Was it as a child or young man that thou earnest to the temple?
- Those who seem to know the truth, say I was but a babe.
- What Delphian maid, then, weaned thee?
- I never knew a mother’s breast. But she who brought me up—
- Who was she, unhappy youth? I see thy sufferings in my own.