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. I have wept bitterly, and my eyes are wet with tears; the wife of Zeus ruined me.
Menelaos
  1. Hera? Why did she want to bring trouble to the two of us?
Helen
  1. Alas for my terrible fate, the baths and springs, where the goddesses brightened the beauty from which the judgment came.
Menelaos
  1. Regarding the judgment, Hera made it a cause of these troubles for you?
Helen
  1. To take me away from Paris—
Menelaos
  1. How? Tell me.
Helen
  1. To whom Kypris had promised me.
Menelaos
  1. O unhappy one!
Helen
  1. Unhappy, unhappy; and so she brought me to Egypt.
Menelaos
  1. Then she gave him a phantom instead, as I hear from you.
Helen
  1. Sorrow, sorrow to your house,
  2. mother, alas.
Menelaos
  1. What do you mean?
Helen
  1. My mother is no more; through shame of my disgraceful marriage she tied a noose around her neck.
Menelaos
  1. Alas! Is our daughter Hermione alive?
Helen
  1. Ah, my husband! Unmarried, and without children, she mourns my
  2. fatal marriage.
Menelaos
  1. O Paris, who utterly destroyed my whole house, these things ruined you also, and countless bronze-clad Danaans.
Helen
  1. The god cast me out, ill-fated and accursed, from my country,
  2. from my city, and from you, when I left my home and bed—yet I did not leave them—for a shameful marriage.