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.
- Oh, oh! dire mishap to the Thracians.
- It is one of the allies who is groaning.
- Oh, oh! woe to me and to you, O king of Thrace, how cursed the sight of Troy to you!
- what an end to your life!
- Who are you? One of the allies? Night’s gloom has dulled these eyes and I cannot clearly recognize you.
- Where can I find some Trojan chief? Where does Hector
- take his rest under arms? To which of the captains of the army am I to tell my tale? What sufferings ours! what dark deeds someone has wrought on us and gone his way, when he had wound up a ball of sorrow manifest to every Thracian!
- From what I gather of this man’s words, some calamity, it seems, is befalling the Thracian army.
- Lost is all our army, our prince is dead, slain by a treacherous blow. Oh! Oh!
- The cruel anguish of this bloody wound that racks my frame within! Would I were dead! Was it to die this inglorious death that Rhesus and I came bringing aid to Troy?
- He does not declare the disaster in riddles;
- no, he clearly asserts our allies’ destruction.
- A sorry deed it was, and more than that a deed most shameful; yes, it is an evil doubly bad; to die with glory, if die one must, is bitterness enough I think to him who dies—how not?—
- though to the living it may add dignity and honor for their house. But we have died foolishly and without glory. No sooner had great Hector given us our quarters and told us the password than we lay down to sleep upon the ground, overcome by weariness. No guard our army set