The Trojan Women

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.

  1. and weep their piteous lamentation; they cry, they cry: Mother, alas! torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship
  2. to row me over the deep to sacred Salamis or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.
Chorus
  1. Oh may the sacred blazing thunderbolt of the Aegean, hurled in might, smite the ship of Menelaus full in the middle, on its way in mid-sea,
  2. since he is carrying me away in bitter sorrow from the shores of Ilium to be a slave in Hellas, while the daughter of Zeus still keeps her golden mirrors, delight of maidens’ hearts.
  3. Never may he reach his home in Laconia or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of Pitane [*](Part of Sparta was so called.) or the temple of the goddess [*](Athena of the Brazen House, a temple on the acropolis.) with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on Hellas through its length and breadth and woful anguish
  4. on the streams of Simois!
Enter Talthybius and attendants, bearing the corpse of Astyanax on Hector’s shield.
Chorus Leader
  1. All me! ah me! new troubles fall on my country, to take the place of those that still are fresh! Behold,
  2. you hapless wives of Troy, the corpse of Astyanax, whom the Danaids have cruelly slain by hurling him from the battlements.
Talthybius
  1. Hecuba, one ship alone delays its plashing oars,
  2. and it is soon to sail to the shores of Phthia freighted with the remnant of the spoils of Achilles’ son; for Neoptolemus is already out at sea, having heard that new calamities have befallen Peleus, for Acastus, son of Pelias, has banished him from the realm. Therefore he is gone, too quick to indulge in any delay,
  3. and with him goes Andromache, who drew many tears from me when she set out from the land, wailing her country and crying her farewell to Hector’s tomb. And she begged her master leave to bury this poor dead child of Hector
  4. who breathed his last when hurled from the turrets; entreating too that he would not carry this shield, the terror of the Achaeans—this shield with plates of brass with which his father would gird himself—to the home of Peleus or to the same bridal bower where she, Andromache,
  5. the mother of this corpse, would be wed, a bitter sight to her, but let her bury the child in it instead of in a coffin of cedar or a tomb of stone, and to your hands commit the corpse that you may deck it with robes and garlands as best you can with your present means;
  6. for she is far away and her master’s haste prevented her from burying the child herself. So we, when you have decked the corpse, will heap the earth above and set upon it a spear; but do you with your best speed perform your allotted task;
  7. one toil however I have already spared you, for I crossed Scamander’s stream and bathed the corpse and cleansed its wounds. But now I will go to dig a grave for hiin, that our united efforts
  8. shortening our task may speed our ship towards home. Exit Talthybius.
Hecuba
  1. Place the shield upon the ground, Hector’s shield so deftly rounded, a piteous sight, a bitter grief for me to see. O you Achaeans, more reason have you to boast of your prowess than your wisdom. Why have you in terror of this child
  2. been guilty of a murder never matched before? Did you fear that some day he would rear again the fallen walls of Troy? It seems then you were nothing after all, when, though Hector’s fortunes in the war were prosperous and he had ten thousand other arms to back him, we still were daily overmatched; and yet, now that our city is taken and every Phrygian slain,