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. (to Orestes.) I raise a lament for you; the drops from the holy water,
  2. mingled with blood, will soon take you into their care.
Orestes
  1. This is not a case for pity, but farewell, strangers.
Chorus
  1. (to Pylades.)We honor you, young man, for your happy fate, because you will tread on your native land some day.
Pylades
  1. An unenviable fate indeed for a friend, when his friend is to die.
Chorus
  1. O cruel mission!
  2. Ah, ah! You are destroyed! Alas, alas! Which is better?
  3. For still my mind disputes a double argument, shall I mourn for you or rather for you.
Orestes
  1. By the gods, Pylades, do you feel the same thing I do?
Pylades
  1. I do not know; I have no reply to your question.
Orestes
  1. Who is the girl? How like a Hellene she questioned me about the labors in Ilium and the return of the Achaeans, and Calchas, wise in omens, and Achilles’ name; and how she pitied the wretched Agamemnon, and asked me about
  2. his wife and children! This stranger is an Argive by race, and from that land; or she would not be sending the tablet and examining these things, as if she had some share in Argos’ prosperity.
Pylades
  1. You are not much ahead of me: I was about to say the same things you said,
  2. except this: all who move about in the world know what happens to kings. But I have arrived at another consideration.
Orestes
  1. What is it? Share it with me so that you may know better.
Pylades
  1. It is shameful for me to live when you are dead;
  2. I sailed together with you, and I ought to die together with you. For I will seem a coward and base in Argos and Phocis of the many mountain folds. Most will think—for most people are base—that I betrayed you and saved myself to come home alone,
  3. or I plotted your death, in the afflictions of your house, for the sake of your kingdom, since I married your sister and heiress. I fear these things and I am ashamed; and I must breathe my last with you,
  4. be slaughtered with you and consumed on the pyre; because I am your friend and I fear reproach.
Orestes
  1. Hush! I must bear my own ills, and when the grief is single, I will not bear it double. What you call vile and infamous,