Orestes
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.
- Put me once more upon the couch; whenever the madness leaves me, I am unnerved and weak.
- As she lays him down.There! His couch is welcome to the sick man,
- a painful possession, but a necessary one.
- Set me upright once again, turn my body round; it is their helplessness that makes the sick so hard to please.
- Will you set your feet upon the ground and take a step at last? Change is always pleasant.
- Oh, yes; for that has a semblance of health; and the semblance is preferable, though it is far from the truth.
- Hear me now, my brother, while the Furies permit you to use your senses.
- You have news to tell; if it is good, you do me a kindness;
- but if it tends to my hurt, I have suffered enough.
- Menelaus, your father’s brother, has come; his ships are moored in Nauplia.
- What did you say? Has he come to be a light in our troubles, a man of our own family, who owes gratitude to our father?
- He has come, and is bringing Helen from the walls of Troy—accept this as proof of what I say.
- If he had returned alone in safety, he would be more enviable; but if he is bringing his wife, he has come with great mischief.
- Tyndareus begot a race of daughters notorious for blame,
- infamous throughout Hellas.
- Then you be different from that evil brood, for you can be; and not only in words, but also in heart.
- Ah! brother, your eye is growing wild, and in a moment you are turning mad again, when you were just now sane.
- Mother, I implore you! Do not shake at me those maidens with their bloodshot eyes and snaky hair. Here they are, close by, to leap on me!
- Lie still, poor sufferer, on your couch; your eye sees nothing, you only imagine that you recognize them.
- O Phoebus! they will kill me, the hounds of hell, death’s priestesses with glaring eyes, the dreadful goddesses.