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. because I guessed the baffling riddle of the girl, half-maiden.
Antigone
  1. You are bringing up again the reproach of the Sphinx. Talk no more of past success. This misery was in store for you all the while,
  2. to become an exile from your country and die anywhere.
  3. Leaving to my girlhood friends sad tears, I go forth from my native land, to roam as no maiden should.
  4. Ah! This dutiful resolve towards my father’s suffering will make me famous. Alas for the insults heaped on you and on my brother, whose dead body goes from the house unburied,
  5. poor boy! I will bury him secretly, though I have to die for it, father.
Oedipus
  1. Show yourself to your companions.
Antigone
  1. My own laments suffice.
Oedipus
  1. Go pray at the altars.
Antigone
  1. They have enough of my piteous tale.
Oedipus
  1. At least go seek the Bromian god in his untrodden sanctuary among the Maenads’ hills.
Antigone
  1. Bromius, for whom I once dressed in the Theban fawn-skin and
  2. danced upon the hills in the holy choir of Semele—shall I now offer the gods homage that is not homage?
Oedipus
  1. O citizens of a famous country, look at me; I am Oedipus, who solved the famous riddle, and was the greatest of men,
  2. I, who alone controlled the murderous Sphinx’s power, am now myself driven from the land in dishonor and misery. But why do I make this moan and useless lamentation? As a mortal, I must bear the constraint that the gods decree.
Chorus
  1. Greatly revered Victory,
  2. may you occupy my life and never cease to crown me!