Rhesus
Euripides
Euripides. The Rhesus of Euripides. Translated into English rhyming verse with explanatory notes by Gilbert Murray. Murray, Gilbert, translator. London: George Allen and Company, Ltd., 1913.
- Good gold is ready, if that tempteth thee.
- We live at ease and have no care for gold.
- Well, Troy hath other treasures manifold.
- Pay me not now, but when the Greeks are ta’en.
- The Greeks! . . . Choose any save the Atridae twain.
- Kill both, an it please thee. I make prayer for none.
- Thou wilt not ask for Ajax, Ileus’ son[*](P. 12, 1. 175, Ajax, Ileus’ son.]—Ajax is mentioned here and at 11. 463, 497, 601, as apparently next in importance to the two Atreidae or to Achilles. That is natural, but it is a shock to have him here described as son of Ileus. In the Iliad we should have had Ajax son of Telamon. The son of Ileus is Ajax the less, a hero of the second rank. Scholars have conjectured on other grounds that in some older form of the Iliad-saga Ajax son of Ileus was of much greater importance. The father Telamon and the connection with Aegina are neither of them original in the myth.)?
- A princely hand is skilless at the plough.
- ’Tis ransom, then? . . . What prisoner cravest thou?
- I said before, of gold we have our fill.
- For spoils and armour . . . thou shalt choose at will.
- Nail them for trophies on some temple wall.
- What seeks the man? What prize more rich than all?
- Achilles’ horses, and where Xanthos is given a human voice to warn his master of the coming of death (end of XIX.). The heroic age of Greece delighted in horses. Cf. those of Aeneas, Diomedes, Eumêlus, and Rhesus himself.) Murmurs of surprise.
- Yes, I need a great
- Prize. I am dicing for my life with Fate.
- ’Fore God, I am thy rival, if thy love
- Lies there. Undying was the breed thereof,
- And these shall never die, who bear to war
- Great Peleus’ son, swift gleaming like a star.