Iphigenia in Aulis
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.
- There is no necessity to order me; I am willing to be questioned.
- Do you mean to slay your child and mine?
- Ha! these are heartless words, unwarranted suspicions!
- Peace! answer me that question first.
- Put a fair question and you shall have a fair answer.
- I have no other questions to put; give me no other answers.
- O fate revered, O destiny, and my fortune!
- Yes, and mine and hers too; the three share one bad fortune.
- Whom have I injured?
- Do you ask this question? A thought like that itself amounts to tboughtlessness.
- Ruined! my secret betrayed!
- I know all; I have heard what you are bent on doing to me.[*](Paley regards this line as spurious; the use of σύ, where no emphasis seems intended, is his main reason for rejecting it.) Your very silence and those frequent groans are a confession; do not tire yourself by telling it.
- See, I am silent; for why should I tell you a falsehood,
- and add effrontery to misfortune?
- Well, now listen; for I will unfold my meaning and no longer employ dark riddles. In the first place—to reproach you first with this—it was not of my own free will but by force that you took and wed me,
- after slaying Tantalus, my former husband, and dashing[*](Reading προσούδισας πέδῳ (Scaliger) and ζῶν (Musgrave) for the MSS. σῷ προσούρισας πάλῳ, which Hermann explains as meaning having added him to yoar share in the division of the spoils. Hartung gives προσώρισας.) my baby on the ground when you had torn him from my breast with brutal violence. Then those two sons of Zeus, who were my brothers, came flashing on horseback to war with you;
- but Tyndareus, my old father, rescued you because of your suppliant prayers, and you in turn had me to wife. Once I was reconciled to you upon this footing, you will bear me witness I have been a blameless wife to you and your family, chaste in love,
- an honor to your house, that so your coming in might be with joy and your going out with gladness. And it is seldom a man secures a wife like this, though the getting of a worthless woman Is no rarity.
- Besides three daughters, of one of whom you are heartlessly depriving me,
- I am the mother of this son of yours. If anyone asks you your reason for slaying her, tell me, what will you say? or must I say it for you? It is that Menelaus may recover Helen. An honorable exchange, indeed, to pay a wicked woman’s price in children’s lives!