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.
- In that hour around the house I was singing as I danced to that maiden of the hills, the child of Zeus;
- when there rang along the town a cry of death which filled the homes of Troy, and babies in terror clung about their mothers’ skirts,
- as forth from their ambush came the warrior-band, the handiwork of maiden Pallas. Soon the altars ran with Phrygian blood, and desolation reigned over every bed where young men lay beheaded,
- a glorious crown for Hellas won, for her, the nurse of youth, but for our Phrygian fatherland a bitter grief.
- Hecuba, do you see Andromache advancing here on a foreign chariot?
- and with her, clasped to her throbbing breast, is her dear Astyanax, Hector’s child. Where are you being carried, unhappy wife, mounted on that chariot, side by side with Hector’s brazen arms and Phrygian spoils of war,
- with which Achilles’ son will deck the shrines of Phthia on his return from Troy?
- My Achaean masters are leading me away.
- Ah me!
- Why do you in note of woe utter the dirge that is mine?
- Alas—
- For these sorrows—
- O Zeus—
- And for this calamity.
- O my children!
- Our day is past.
- Joy is gone, Troy is gone.
- Unhappy!
- For my gallant sons
- Alas!