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.

  1. On a soft couch and, while the cups go by,
  2. Pledge my good health, like thee, in Thracian wine.
  3. I speak as a free man. With thee and thine
  4. Hector is wroth, and tells thee to thy face.
RHESUS.
  1. Thy way is mine, friend. Straight I run my race
  2. In word and deed, and bear no double tongue.
  3. I tell thee, more than thine my heart was wrung,
  4. Yea, angered past all durance, thus to stay
  5. Back from thy battles. ’Twas a folk that lay
  6. Hard on my borders, Scythians of the north;
  7. Just when my host for Troy had started forth,
  8. They fell upon our homes. I had reached the coast
  9. Of the Friendless Sea and purposed to have crossed
  10. My Thracians there. We turned; and all that plain
  11. Is trampled in a mire of Scythian slain
  12. Ploughed by our spears, and blood of Thrace withal
  13. Not stinted. This it was that drowned thy call
  14. For help and held me back from Ilion’s need.
  15. I broke their power; the princes of their breed
  16. I took to hostage, made their elders swear