Trachiniae
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 5: The Trachiniae. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892.
- Will you indeed give me the honest truth?
- Yes, be great Zeus my witness—in anything that I know.
- Who is the woman, then, whom you escorted here?
- She is Euboean. But whose offspring, I cannot say.
- You there, look at me. To whom do you think you speak?
- And you, to what end have you asked me such a question?
- Dare to answer my question, if you are sensible.
- I speak to the royal Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus, wife of Heracles and, unless my eyes deceive me, my mistress.
- The very word that I wished to hear from you—you admit that she is your mistress?
- Yes, it is only right to do so.
- Well, then, what penalty would you think it right to pay, if you should be found to be behaving wrongly towards her?
- Wrongly? What fiction have you created?
- None. Rather it is you, to be sure, who do this.
- I am leaving—I was foolish to listen to you so long.
- No, not until you have answered a small question.
- Speak, if you require something. You are not the silent type.
- That captive, whom you escorted into the house, you know whom I mean?
- Yes. But why do you ask?
- Did you not avow that she, on whom you look as if in ignorance,
- was Iole, the seed of Eurytus, your captive?