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. No brave man seeks so dastardly to harm
  2. His battle-foes; he meets them arm to arm.
  3. This Greek of thine, this sitter like a thief
  4. In ambush, I will make of him my chief
  5. Care. I will take him living, drive a straight
  6. Stake through him, and so star him at the Gate
  7. To feed your wide-winged vultures. ’Tis the death
  8. Most meet for a lewd thief, who pillageth
  9. God’s sanctuary, or so we hold in Thrace.
HECTOR.
  1. Seek first some sleep. There still remains a space
  2. Of darkness.—I will show the spot that best
  3. May suit you, somewhat sundered from the rest.
  4. Should need arise, the password of the night
  5. Is Phoebus: see your Thracians have it right.
  6. Advance beyond your stations, men, at some
  7. Distance, and stay on watch till Dolon come
  8. With word of the Argives’ counsel. If his vow
  9. Prosper, he should be nearing us by now.[*](P. 28, l. 528. Rhesus shows the simple courage of a barbarian in his contempt for the ruses of Odysseus, the brutality of a barbarian in the methods of punishment he proposes. Such proposals would disgust a Greek; it looks as if they displeased Hector. In any case his abruptness here, and his careful indication of the place where the Thracians are to sleep, far from the rest of the camp, have some dramatic value for the sequel.)
Exeunt HECTOR and RHESUS and Attendants. The Guards, who have been below, come forward sleepily from the camp fire, and sit watching by HECTOR’S tent.
CHORUS.
  1. Say, whose is the watch? Who exchanges
  2. With us? The first planets to rise