The Phoenician Women

Euripides

Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.

  1. He will come to this house, under truce, to fill your heart with joy.
Antigone
  1. Who is that, old man, on his chariot, driving white horses?
Old servant
  1. That, lady, is the prophet Amphiaraus; with him are the victims, earth’s bloodthirsty streams.
Antigone
  1. Daughter of the sun with dazzling zone, O moon, you circle of golden light, how quietly, with what restraint he drives, goading first one horse, then the other! But where is the one who utters those dreadful insults against this city?
Old servant
  1. Capaneus? There he is, calculating how he may scale the towers, taking the measure of our walls up and down.
Antigone
  1. O Nemesis, and roaring thunder-peals of Zeus and blazing lightning-bolts, oh! put to sleep his presumptuous boasting!
  2. This is the man who says he will give the Theban girls as captives of his spear to the women of Mycenae, to Lerna’s trident, and the waters of Amymone, dear to Poseidon, when he has them enslaved.
  3. Never, never, Lady Artemis, golden-haired child of Zeus, may I endure that slavery.
Old servant
  1. My child, go inside, and stay beneath the shelter of your maiden chamber, now that you have had
  2. your wish and seen all that you wanted; for a crowd of women is coming toward the royal palace, as confusion enters the city. Now women by nature love scandal; and if they get some slight handle for their gossip
  3. they exaggerate it, for women seem to have pleasure in saying nothing wholesome about each other. Exeunt Antigone and the old servant.
Chorus
  1. From the Tyrian swell of the sea I came, a choice offering for Loxias from the island of Phoenicia,
  2. to be a slave to Phoebus in his halls, where he dwells under the snow-swept peaks of Parnassus; through the Ionian sea I sailed in the waves,
  3. over the unharvested plains, in the gusts of Zephyrus that ride from Sicily, sweetest music in the sky.
Chorus
  1. Chosen from my city
  2. as beauty’s gift for Loxias, to the land of Cadmus I came, sent here to the towers of Laius, the home of my kin, the famous sons of Agenor.
  3. And I became the handmaid of Phoebus, dedicated like his statues of wrought gold. But the water of Castalia is still waiting for me to drench the maiden glory of my hair
  4. for the service of Phoebus.
Chorus
  1. Hail, rock that lights up a double-crested flash of fire above the frenzied heights of Dionysus; and the vine, that every day
  2. lets fall the lush cluster of grapes; and the holy cavern of the serpent and the gods’ watchtower on the hills, and the sacred snow-swept mountain!