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.
- I am ruined! I found you, my husband, but I will not have you.
- The greatness of my troubles over there convinces me; you do not.
- Ah me! Who was ever more miserable than I am?
- Those whom I love best are leaving me, and I shall never reach the Hellenes or my own country.
- (entering hurriedly.)Menelaos, I find you, after taking great trouble to look for you, wandering over the whole of this foreign land; I am sent by the comrades whom you left behind.
- What is it? Surely you are not being plundered by the foreigners?
- It is a miracle; what I say is of less account than what happened.
- Tell me; for, judging by this eagerness, you are certainly bringing something new.
- I say that you have suffered countless labors in vain.
- You are mourning over old sorrows; what is your message?
- Your wife has disappeared, taken up into the folds of the unseen air; she is hidden in heaven, and as she left the hallowed cave where we were keeping her, she said this: Miserable Phrygians, and all the Achaeans! On my account you were dying by the banks of Skamandros,
- through Hera’s contrivance, for you thought that Paris had Helen when he didn’t. But I, since I have stayed my appointed time, and kept the laws of fate, will now depart into the sky, my father; but the unhappy daughter of Tyndareus,
- guilty in no way, has borne an evil name without reason.
- Welcome, daughter of Leda, were you here after all? I was just announcing your departure up to the hidden starry realms, not knowing that you had a winged body. I will not let you mock us like this again,
- for you gave your fill of trouble to your husband and his allies in Ilion.