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.
- Ah, hapless wife! you call on my son who lies in the tomb.
- Your wife’s defender!
- Oh, you, who before made the Achaeans grieve, eldest of the sons I bore to Priam, take me to your rest in Hades’ halls!
- These great griefs—
- Unhappy one, bitter these woes to bear.
- Our city ruined—
- And sorrow to sorrow added.
- Through the will of angry heaven, since the day that son [*](i.e., Paris, who had been exposed to die on account of an oracle foretelling the misery he would cause if he grew to man’s estate; but shepherds had found him on the hills and reared him.) of yours escaped death, he that for a hated bride brought destruction on the Trojan citadel. There lie the gory corpses of the slain by the shrine of Pallas for vultures to carry off;
- and Troy has come to slavery’s yoke.
- O my country, O unhappy land—
- I weep for you now left behind.
- Now do you behold your piteous end.
- And you, my house, where I gave birth.
- O my children! bereft of her city as your mother is, she now is losing you. Oh, what mourning and what sorrow! . . .
- oh, what endless streams of tears in our houses! The dead alone forget their griefs and never shed a tear.
- What sweet relief to sufferers it is to weep, to mourn, lament, and chant the dirge that tells of grief!
- Do you see this, mother of that man, Hector, who once laid low in battle many a son of Argos?
- I see that it is heaven’s way to exalt what men accounted nothing, and ruin what they most esteemed.