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.
- Bid Rhesus welcome, as war-friend to Troy.
- Now Adrasteia[*](P. 20, l. 342, Adrasteia.]—She-from-whom-there-is-no-Running, is a goddess identified with Nemesis, a requiter of sin, especially the sin of pride or over-confidence. In spite of the opening apology this whole chorus, with its boundless exultation, is an offence against her.—It is interesting to notice that a town and a whole district in the north of the Troad was called by her name; the poet is using local colour in making his Trojans here, and Rhesus in l. 468, speak of her. There seems also to be something characteristically Thracian in the story of the Muse and the River, in the title Zeus of the Dawn given to Rhesus, in the revelry to be held when Ilion is free, and in the conception of the king in his dazzling chariot, Sun-god-like.) be near and guard
- Our lips from sin, lest the end be hard!
- But he cometh, he cometh, the Child of the River!
- The pride of my heart it shall roll unbarred.
- We craved thy coming; yea, need was strong
- In the Hall of thy lovers, O child of Song;
- Thy mother the Muse and her fair-bridged River
- They held thee from us so long, so long!
- By Strymon’s torrent alone she sang,
- And Strymon shivered and coiled and sprang;
- And her arms went wide to the wild sweet water,
- And the love of the River around her rang.
- We hail thee, Fruit of the River’s seed,
- Young Zeus of the Dawn, on thy starry steed!
- O ancient City, O Ida’s daughter,
- Is God the Deliverer found indeed?
- And men shall tell of thee, Ilion mine,
- Once more a-harping at day’s decline,
- ’Mid laughing of lovers and lays and dances