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.
- And thou, a lord of Barbary even as we,
- Thou, brother of our blood, like one at sup
- Who quaffs his fill and flings away the cup,
- Hast flung to the Greeks my city! Yet, long since,
- ’Twas I that found thee but a little prince
- And made thee mighty, I and this right hand;
- When round Pangaion and the Paiôn’s land,
- Front against front, I burst upon the brood
- Of Thrace and broke their targes, and subdued
- Their power to thine. The grace whereof, not small,
- Thou hast spurned, and when thy kinsmen, drowning, call,
- Comest too late. Thou! Others there have been
- These long years, not by nature of our kin . .
- Some under yon rough barrows thou canst see
- Lie buried; they were true to Troy and me;
- And others, yet here in the shielded line
- Or mid the chariots, parching in the shine
- Of noonday, starving in the winds that bite
- Through Ilion’s winter, still endure and fight
- On at my side. ’Twas not their way, to lie