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. Their crouching shoulders till the gangways splash
  2. With blood, or teach them, fettered leg and arm,
  3. To dig the stiff clods of some Trojan farm.
LEADER.
  1. My Prince, thy words run fast. Nor thou nor I
  2. Have knowledge yet that the Greeks mean to fly.
HECTOR.
  1. What makes them light their beacons? Tell me, what?
LEADER.
  1. God knows! And, for my part, I like it not.
HECTOR.
  1. What, feared? Thou wouldst be feared of everything!
LEADER.
  1. They never lit such light before, O King.
HECTOR.
  1. They never fled, man, in such wild dismay.
LEADER
  1. ’Twas all thy work.—Judge thou, and we obey.
HECTOR.
  1. My word is simple. Arm and face the foe.
[A sound of marching without.
LEADER.
  1. Who comes? Aeneas, and in haste, as though
  2. Fraught with some sudden tiding of the night.
Enter AENEAS.
AENEAS.
  1. Hector, what means it? Watchers in affright
  2. Who gather shouting at thy doors, and then
  3. Hold midnight council, shaking all our men?
HECTOR.
  1. To arms, Aeneas! Arm from head to heel!
AENEAS.
  1. What is it? Tidings? Doth the Argive steal
  2. Some march, some ambush in the day’s eclipse?