Rhesus
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- Often the rustic mind is afflicted with dullness; so you have probably come to this ill-suited place to tell your master, in armor, about the sheep! Do you not know my palace or my father’s throne,
- where you should carry your tale when you have prospered with your flocks?
- Dull we herdsmen are; I do not dispute it. But none the less I bring joyful news to you.
- Cease your tale of how the sheep-fold fares; I have battles to fight and spears to wield.
- The very things of which I, too, came to tell you; for a chieftain of a countless army is on his way to join you as your friend and ally of this land.
- His country? and the home that he has left?
- Thrace; men call his father Strymon.
- Did you say that Rhesus was setting foot in Troy?
- You have it; and lighten me of half my speech.
- How is it that he comes to Ida’s meadows, wandering from the broad wagon track across the plain?
- I cannot say for certain, though I might guess.
- It is no idle task for an army to make an invasion by night, hearing that the plains are packed with foemen’s troops. But he frightened us rustic shepherds who dwell along the slopes of Ida, the earliest settlement in the land, as he came by night through the wood full of wild beasts.
- On surged the tide of Thracian warriors with loud shouts; at this in wild amazement we drove our flocks unto the heights, for fear that some Argives were coming to plunder and harry your steading, till we caught the sound of voices
- other than Greek and ceased from our alarm. Then I went and questioned in the Thracian tongue those who were reconnoitring the road for their lord, who it was that lead them, and whose son he was called, that came to the city to help the sons of Priam.