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.
- And I hold you, whom we thought to have gone to Ida’s city and the unhappy towers of Ilion.
- By the gods, how were you taken from my home?
- Ah! ah! You are setting out on a bitter beginning. Ah! ah! You are asking about a bitter tale.
- Speak; all gifts from the gods should be heard.
- I detest the story I am now to introduce.
- Tell it anyway. It is sweet to hear of troubles.
- Not to the bed of the young barbarian, on the wings of oars, on the wings of desire for lawless marriage—
- What god or fate tore you from your country?
- Ah, my husband! The son of Zeus, of Zeus, brought me to the Nile.
- Amazing! Who sent you there? O dreadful story!
- I have wept bitterly, and my eyes are wet with tears; the wife of Zeus ruined me.
- Hera? Why did she want to bring trouble to the two of us?
- Alas for my terrible fate, the baths and springs, where the goddesses brightened the beauty from which the judgment came.
- Regarding the judgment, Hera made it a cause of these troubles for you?
- To take me away from Paris—