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. if this rumor of my husband’s death is true—and what was obscure in those words?—I will stretch a deadly noose about my neck, or drive inward a murderous thrust of slaughter that gushes from the throat,
  2. a contest of the blade through my flesh, as a sacrifice to the three goddesses and to the son of Priam, who once sat on the hollows of Ida, near the ox-stalls.
Chorus
  1. May sorrow be turned aside elsewhere, and may your lot be fortunate!
Helen
  1. Oh, unhappy Troy! Through deeds not done by yourself, you are ruined, and have suffered pitiably; for the gift that Kypris gave me has caused much blood
  2. and many tears; it has added grief to grief and tear to tear, sorrows. . . . Mothers have lost their children and virgin sisters of the slain have cut off their hair by the swollen tide of Phrygian Skamandros.