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.
- Some god with evil intent is destroying the race of Oedipus.
- So it began, my childbearing was unholy, and in an evil hour I married your father and you were born. But why repeat these horrors? What the gods send we have to bear. I am afraid to ask you what I would, for fear of stinging your heart; yet I long to.
- No, question me, leave out nothing; for your will, mother, is my pleasure too.
- Well then, first I ask you what I long to have answered. What is it, to be deprived of one’s country? Is it a great evil?
- The greatest; harder to bear than tell.
- What is it like? What annoys the exile?
- One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.
- This is a slave’s lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.
- The follies of the rulers must be borne.
- That too is painful, to join in the folly of fools.
- Yet to gain our ends we must serve against our nature.
- Hope, they say, is the exile’s food.
- Yes, hope that looks so fair; but always in the future.
- But doesn’t time expose its emptiness?
- It has a certain winsome charm in misfortune.
- Where did you get your living, before your marriage found it for you?
- Sometimes I would have enough for the day, and sometimes not.
- Didn’t your father’s friends and guests assist you?
- Seek to be prosperous; friends are nothing in misfortune.
- Didn’t your noble breeding lead you to the heights?