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. Ladies of another land, tell me from what country do you come to the halls of Hellas?
Chorus Leader
  1. Phoenicia is my native land where I was born and bred; and the grandsons of Agenor sent me here as first-fruits of the spoil of war for Phoebus. But when the noble son of Oedipus was about to send me to the hallowed oracle and the altars of Loxias,
  2. the Argive army came against his city. Now tell me in return who you are, who have come to this fortress of the Theban land with its seven gates.
Polyneices
  1. My father was Oedipus, the son of Laius; my mother Jocasta, daughter of Menoeceus;
  2. and I am called Polyneices by the people of Thebes.
Chorus
  1. O kinsman of Agenor’s race, my royal masters who sent me here!
  2. I fall to my knees before you, lord, honoring the custom of my home.
  3. At last you have come to your native land. Hail to you! all hail! Lady, come from the house, open wide the gates! Do you hear, you who gave birth to this man? Why do you delay to leave the sheltered hall
  4. and hold your son in your embrace?
Jocasta
  1. Maidens, I hear your Phoenician voice, and my old feet drag their tottering steps. O my son,
  2. at last after countless days I see your face; throw your arms about your mother’s breast, stretch out to me your cheeks and the dark, curly locks of your hair, overshadowing my neck.
  3. Hail to you! all hail! scarcely here in your mother’s arms, beyond hope and expectation. What can I say to you? How in every way, by hands, by words, in the mazy delight
  4. of the dance, shall I find the pleasure of my former joy? Ah! my son, you left your father’s house desolate, when your brother’s outrage drove you away in exile.
  5. Truly you were missed alike by your friends and Thebes. And so I cut my white hair and let it fall for grief, in tears, not clad in robes of white, my son,
  6. but taking instead these dark rags.
  7. While in the house the old blind man, always possessed by his tearful longing for the pair of brothers estranged from the home,
  8. rushed to kill himself with the sword or by the noose suspended over his chamber-roof, moaning his curses on his sons;