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. Alas, alas! for your mournful fate and destiny, lady! You were fated, fated to have a life full of pain, when Zeus begot you on your mother,
  2. shining through the air on the wings of a snow-white swan. What evil is not yours? What life have you not endured? Your mother is dead;
  3. the twin beloved sons of Zeus do not enjoy happiness; and you do not see your fatherland, while through the cities a rumor goes, mistress, which hands you over
  4. to the bed of a barbarian; your husband has lost his life in the salty waves, and never again will you bring glee to your father’s halls and Athene of the Bronze House.
Helen
  1. Ah! Who was it, either from Phrygia
  2. or from Hellas, who cut the pine that brought tears to Ilion? From this wood the son of Priam built his deadly ship, and sailed by barbarian oars
  3. to my home, to that most ill-fated beauty, to win me as his wife; and with him sailed deceitful and murderous Kypris, bearing death for the Danaans.
  4. Oh, unhappy in my misfortune! But Hera, the holy beloved of Zeus on her golden throne, sent the swift-footed son of Maia. I was gathering fresh rose leaves in the folds of my robe,
  5. so that I might go to the goddess of the Bronze House; he carried me off through the air to this luckless land, and made me an object of miserable strife, of strife between Hellas and the sons of Priam. And my name
  6. beside the streams of Simois bears a false rumor.
Chorus Leader
  1. You have sorrows, I know; but it is best to bear as lightly as we can the necessary evils of life.
Helen
  1. Dear friends, to what a fate am I yoked? Did my mother bear me as a wonder to mankind? For no other woman, Hellene or barbarian, gives birth to a white vessel of chicks, in which they say Leda bore me to Zeus.
  2. My life and all I do is a wonder, partly because of Hera, and partly my beauty is to blame. If only I could be rubbed out like a painting, and have again in turn a plainer form instead of beauty, and the Hellenes would have forgotten the evil fate that I now have,
  3. and would remember what part of my life is not evil, as they now remember what is.
  4. When someone looks to one event only, and is ill-treated by the gods, it is hard, but all the same it can be borne. But I am involved in countless troubles.
  5. First, although I never acted wrongly, my good name is gone. And this trouble is stronger than the reality, if someone incurs blame for wrongs that are not his own. Next, the gods have removed me from my native country to barbarian habits, and bereft of friends
  6. I have become a slave although I am free by birth; for among barbarians all are slaves except one. And the only anchor of my fortunes is gone, the hope that my husband would come one day and free me of my woes—he is dead, he no longer exists.
  7. My mother is dead, and I am called her murderer—unjustly, but that injustice is mine to bear; while the one who was born the glory of the house, my daughter, is growing gray as a virgin, without a husband; and those two Dioskouroi, called the sons of Zeus, are no more.
  8. But with all my misfortunes, I am as good as dead in my circumstances, though not in fact. And this is the last evil of all: if ever I should come home, I would be shut out by barred doors, for people would think I was that Helen of Troy, coming back with Menelaos.
  9. If my husband were still alive, we could have recognized each other by recourse to tokens which are evident to us alone. But now this is not so, and he can never be saved.