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.
- Hence with my child as booty am I borne; the noble
- are brought to slavery—a bitter change.
- This is necessity’s grim law; it was just now that Cassandra was torn with brutal violence from my arms.
- Alas, alas! it seems a second Aias has appeared to wrong your daughter; but there are other ills for you.
- Yes, beyond all count or measure are my sorrows; evil vies with evil in the struggle to be first.
- Your daughter Polyxena is dead, slain at Achilles’ tomb, an offering to his lifeless corpse.
- O woe is me! This is that riddle Talthybius
- long ago told me, a truth obscurely uttered.
- I saw her myself; so I alighted from the chariot, and covered her corpse with a mantle, and struck upon my breast.
- Alas! my child, for your unhallowed sacrifice! and yet again, alas! for your shameful death!
- Her death was even as it was, and yet that death of hers was after all a happier fate than my life.
- Death and life are not the same, my child; the one is annihilation, the other keeps a place for hope.
- Hear, O mother of children! give ear to what I urge so well,
- that I may cheer my drooping spirit. It is all one, I say, never to have been born and to be dead, and better far is death than life with misery. For the dead feel no sorrow any more and know no grief; but he who has known prosperity and has fallen on evil days
- feels his spirit straying from the scene of former joys. Now that child of yours is dead as though she never had seen the light, and little she knows of her calamity; whereas I, who aimed at a fair repute, though I won a higher lot than most, yet missed my luck in life.
- For all that stamps the wife a woman chaste, I strove to do in Hector’s home. In the first place, whether there is a slur upon a woman, or whether there is not, the very fact of her not staying at home brings in its train an evil name;
- therefore I gave up any longing to do so, and stayed within my house; nor would I admit indoors the clever gossip women love, but conscious of a heart that told an honest tale I was content. And ever would I keep a silent tongue and modest eye before my husband;
- and well I knew where I might rule him, and where it was best to yield.