Helen

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.

  1. wanting to see the prophetess Theonoe, you be my patron, so I might obtain an oracle: how I should steer a favorable course to the island of Cyprus, where Apollo has declared I am to live, giving it the island name of
  2. Salamis in honor of that fatherland over there.
Helen
  1. The voyage itself will explain that, stranger; leave this land and escape, before the son of Proteus, the ruler of this land, catches sight of you; now he is away with his trusty hounds tracking his savage quarry to the death;
  2. for he kills every visitor from Hellas that he catches. Do not seek to learn his reason, and I will not say; for how could I help you?
Teucer
  1. Lady, you have spoken well. May the gods grant you a return for your kindness!
  2. Although you have a body like Helen’s, your heart is not like hers, but very different. May she die miserably, and never reach the streams of Eurotas! But may you always have good fortune, lady.
Exit Teucer.
Helen
  1. Oh, as I begin the great lament of my great distress,
  2. what mourning shall I strive to utter? or what Muse shall I approach with tears or songs of death or woe? Alas!
Helen
  1. Winged maidens, virgin daughters of Earth, the Sirens, may you come to my mourning
  2. with Libyan flute or pipe or lyre, tears to match my plaintive woes; grief for grief and mournful chant for chant, may Persephone send choirs of death
  3. in harmony with my lamentation, so that she may receive as thanks from me, in addition to my tears, a paean for the departed dead beneath her gloomy roof.
Chorus
  1. Beside the deep-blue water
  2. and on the tangled grass, I happened to be drying purple robes in the sun’s golden blaze near the young reed shoots; from my mistress, from where she cried aloud her misery,
  3. I heard a sound, a mournful song not fit for the lyre, because she was then shrieking, lamenting with her wails; just as a Naiad nymph, who sends a song of woe ringing over the hills, cries out, under the rocky hollows, with screams
  4. at the rape of Pan.
Helen
  1. Oh! Oh! Maidens of Hellas, the prey of barbarian sailors! An Achaean sailor
  2. came, he came bringing tears upon tears to me. Ilion has been destroyed and is left to the enemy’s fire through me, the death-giver, through my name, full of suffering.
  3. Leda sought death by hanging, in anguish over my disgrace. My husband, after much wandering in the sea, has died and is gone;
  4. and Castor and his brother, twin glory of their native land, have vanished, vanished, leaving the plains that shook to their galloping horses,
  5. and the schools of reed-fringed Eurotas, scene of youthful labors.