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.
- If indeed you should find happiness in the future, it would be a match for the past.
- Menelaos, give me as well a share of that joy which I understand, but not clearly.
- Come and take part in our talk, old man, you too.
- This woman is not the arbitrator of all the trouble in Troy?
- She is not; I was tricked by the gods
- and had in my arms the baneful image of a cloud.
- What are you saying? We suffered in vain for the sake of a cloud?
- It was the work of Hera, and the rivalry of the three goddesses.
- And the one who is truly your wife is this woman here?
- This is she; trust my word for that.
- O daughter, how intricate and hard to trace out is the nature of the god! In some way that is good, he twists everything about, now up, now down; one man suffers, and one who has not suffered comes afterwards to a bad end,
- having no security in his current fortune. You and your husband have had your share of trouble, you in repute, he in the heat of battle. In his eagerness, while he was eager, he got nothing; but now that he has achieved the greatest good fortune, he has it without cause.
- You did not, after all, bring shame upon your old father or on the twin sons of Zeus, nor did you do such things as were spoken of. Now again I renew your wedding rites and remember the blazing torch I bore, running beside the four yoked horses; and you,
- in the chariot as a bride, were leaving your happy home with this man here. Whoever pays no reverence to his master’s affairs, rejoicing with him and grieving with his troubles, is worthless. Although I was born a servant, let me still be numbered among honest
- slaves; my mind is free, if not my name. For this is better than to suffer double misery as one man: to have a worthless heart and, being a slave, to owe obedience to any other.