Trachiniae

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 5: The Trachiniae. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892.

  1. no, if you do some such thing, let it not be while I am still alive! So great is my fear, as I look upon these girls.
  1. Unfortunate girl, who are you? Are you without a man, or are you a mother? To judge by your appearance, you are untried in those roles, but someone of noble birth.
  2. Lichas, whose daughter is this stranger? Who is her mother, who the father who begot her? Speak; I pity her more than all the rest, when I look at her, inasmuch as she alone knows self-control.
Lichas
  1. Why would I know? Why would you ask me? Perhaps
  2. she is the offspring of not the lowest family in that land.
Deianeira
  1. Can she be of the ruling family? Was she a child of Eurytus?
Lichas
  1. I do not know; I did not in fact make a long investigation.
Deianeira
  1. And you do not know her name from one of her fellow captives?
Lichas
  1. No, indeed. In silence I completed my task.
Deianeira
  1. Unhappy girl, tell it to me, anyway, from your own mouth. It is indeed distressing to me not to know who you are.
Lichas
  1. It will not, I assure you, be at all on a par with time past if she moves her lips. She has not said a word, large or small,
  2. but has been constantly laboring with the heavy pains of her misfortune and weeping, poor girl, since she left her windswept fatherland. Her condition is indeed bad—for her, anyway—but claims our forbearance.
Deianeira
  1. Then let her be left in peace, and go beneath our roof
  2. as it pleases her. Let her not in addition to her existing troubles take fresh grief from me; she has enough already. Now let us all go in, so that you may go speedily on your journey, while I make all things ready in the house.Exit Lichas, followed by the Captives, into the house.
Messenger
  1. Do go in, but first remain here a short while, so that you may learn, apart from these others, who they are whom you take into your home, and gain necessary knowledge of the facts which you have not heard. For of these I am in full possession.
Deianeira
  1. What do you mean? Why do you stay my departure?
Messenger
  1. Stop and listen. My former report was not a waste of your time, and neither, I believe, will this one be.
Deianeira
  1. Shall I call those others back again? Or do you wish to speak before me and these women?
Messenger
  1. To you and the women I can speak freely. Never mind the others.
Deianeira
  1. Well, they are gone. Now let your speech signal your meaning.