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. ’Tis flight, man! They are marching to the ships.
AENEAS.
  1. How know’st thou?—Have we proof that it is flight?
HECTOR.
  1. They are burning beacon-fires the livelong night.
  2. They never mean to wait till dawn. Behind
  3. That screen of light they are climbing in the blind
  4. Dark to their ships—unmooring from our coast.
AENEAS.
  1. God guide them!—Why then do you arm the host?
HECTOR.
  1. I mean to lame them in their climbing, I
  2. And my good spear, and break them as they fly.
  3. Black shame it were, and folly worse than shame,
  4. To let these spoilers go the road they came
  5. Unpunished, when God gives them to us here.
AENEAS.
  1. Brother, I would thy wit were like thy spear![*](P. 8, 1. 105, Brother! I would thy wit were like thy spear!]—In Homer Hector is impulsive and over-daring, but still good in counsel. On the stage every quality that is characteristic is apt to be over-emphasized, all that is not characteristic neglected. Hence on the Attic stage Odysseus is more crafty, Ajax and Diomedes more blunt, Menelaus more unwarlike and more uxorious than in Homer. This speech of Aeneas, though not inapposite, is rather didactic—a fault which always remained a danger to Euripides.)
  2. But Nature wills not one man should be wise
  3. In all things; each must seek his separate prize.
  4. And thine is battle pure. There comes this word
  5. Of beacons, on the touch thy soul is stirred:
  6. They fly! Out horse and chariots!—Out withal
  7. Past stake and trench, while night hangs like a pall!
  8. Say, when we cross that coiling depth of dyke,