Iphigenia in Tauris

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.

  1. No one knows; we didn’t hear it.
Iphigenia
  1. How did you see them? How did you come upon them and catch them?
Herdsman
  1. At the edge of the breakers of the Black Sea—
Iphigenia
  1. And what do herdsmen have to do with the sea?
Herdsman
  1. We came to wash our cattle in the salt water.
Iphigenia
  1. Go back to the earlier question, how did you take them, and in what way, for I want to know this. They have come after a long time; the altar of the goddess has not yet been reddened by streams of Hellene blood.
Herdsman
  1. When we were driving the cattle, that feed in the forest, into the sea that flows through the Symplegades, there was a broken cleft, hollowed by the constant surge of waves, shelter for those who hunt the purple-fish. Here one of the herdsmen saw two youths,
  2. and made a retreat on tip-toe. He said: Don’t you see them? These are deities that sit there. One of us, who revered the gods, lifted up his hands and prayed, as he saw them:
  3. O son of the sea-goddess Leukothea, guardian of ships, lord Palaemon, be propitious to us! Or do you sit on our shores, twin sons of Zeus? Or the darlings of Nereus, father of the chorus of fifty Nereids?
  4. Another, who was foolish and bold in his lawlessness, laughed at the prayers and asserted that ship-wrecked sailors were sitting on the cliff, in fear of our custom, having heard that we sacrifice strangers here.
  5. Most of us thought that he spoke well,
  6. and that we ought to hunt down the customary offerings to the goddess. At this moment, one of the strangers left the rock, and stood, shaking his head up and down and groaning, with hands trembling, wandering in madness; and like a hunter, he cried aloud:
  7. Pylades, do you see her? Don’t you see hell’s dragon, how she wants to kill me, fringed with her dreadful vipers against me? and the one who breathes fire and slaughter from her robe and wings her way, my mother
  8. in her arms—the rocky mass, how she hurls it at me! Ah, she will kill me! Where can I escape?
  9. We could not see these shapes; but he alternated the sounds of sheep and howling of dogs . . . to send forth the Furies’ imitations.
  10. Astonished, we cowered together and sat in silence; but he drew his sword and rushed like a lion into the midst of our cattle, striking their flanks with his iron sword and thrusting it into their sides, thinking in this way to ward off the Furies,
  11. so that the waves of the sea blossomed red with blood. And all of us, as we saw our herds falling and ravaged, took arms, blew our conch shells, and collected the neighbors; for we thought cowherds would make a poor fight of it
  12. against well-grown and young foreigners. After a long time, our numbers were complete. But the stranger fell down, his pulsing beat of madness gone, his chin dripping with foam; when we saw him, so conveniently fallen, each of us went to work,
  13. hurling and striking at him. The other stranger wiped off the foam and tended his body, covering him with a finely-woven robe, looking out for the attacking blows, treating his friend kindly with his care.
  14. The stranger, now in his senses, started up from his fall and realized the surge of enemies close at hand and the present danger to them both, with a groan; we did not let up our attack with stones, pressing hard from all sides.