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. It shall be done; I will go to our seven towers and post captains at the gates, as you say,
  2. pitting them man for man against the enemy. To tell each one’s name is a great waste of time, when the enemy are camped beneath our very walls. But I will go, that my hands may no longer hang idle. And may I find my brother face to face,
  3. meet him in battle and kill him with my spear and kill him, for coming to waste my country! But if I suffer any misfortune, you must see to the marriage between Antigone, my sister and Haemon, your son; and now, as I take my leave,
  4. I ratify their previous betrothal. You are my mother’s brother, no need to speak at length. Take care of her as she deserves, both for your own sake and mine. As for my father, he has been guilty of folly against himself in putting out his eyes; I have small praise for him;
  5. by his curses it may be that he will slay us too.
  6. One thing we still have to do: ask Teiresias, the seer, if he has anything to say of heaven’s will. I will send your son Menoeceus, who bears your father’s name,
  7. to fetch Teiresias here, Creon; for he will readily converse with you, but I have before now so scorned his prophetic art to his face, that he has reasons to reproach me. This commandment, Creon, I lay upon the city and you:
  8. if my cause should prevail, never give Polyneices’ corpse a grave in Theban soil, and let the one who buries him die, even if it is a friend. This I say to you; and this to my servants Bring out my weapons and armor,
  9. so that I may start at once for the appointed combat, with justice to lead to victory. We will pray to Caution, the most useful goddess, to save our city. Exit Eteocles.
Chorus
  1. O Ares, god of much suffering! Why, why are you possessed by a love of blood and
  2. death, out of harmony with the festivals of Bromius? Not for young girls crowned in the lovely dance do you toss your curls, singing to the flute’s breath a song to charm the dancers’ feet; no, with warriors clad in armor you inspire the Argive army with a lust
  3. for Theban blood, leading your revels that are held without music. Nor do you rush with wild waving of the thyrsus, clad in fawnskin, but with chariots and horses you go to the waters of Ismenus, inspiring the Argives
  4. with hatred for the Spartans, arraying in bronze armor against these stone-built walls a band of warriors and their shields.
  5. Truly Strife is a goddess to fear, who devised these troubles for the princes of this land,
  6. for the much-suffering sons of Labdacus.
Chorus
  1. O snow-capped Cithaeron, dear to Artemis, holy vale of leaves, crowded with wild animals, would that you had never reared the one exposed to die, Oedipus, Jocasta’s child, when as a baby he was cast forth from his home,
  2. marked with a golden brooch; and would that the Sphinx, that winged maid, monster from the hills, had never come as a grief to our land with her inharmonious songs, she that once drew near our walls and snatched the sons of Cadmus away in her taloned feet to the untrodden light of heaven,