Complete Works of Euripides

by Euripides

  POLYX. Farewell, O mother, farewell Cassandra too.

  HEC. Others farewell, but this is not for thy mother.

  POLYX. Farewell, my brother Polydore, among the warlike Thracians.

  HEC. If he lives at least: but I doubt, so unfortunate am I in every thing.

  POLTX. He lives, and shall close thy dying eye.

  HEC. I am dead, before my death, beneath my ills.

  POLYX. Lead me, Ulysses, having covered my face with a veil, since, before I am sacrificed indeed, I am melted in heart at my mother’s plaints, her also I melt by my lamentations. O light, for yet it is allowed me to express thy name, but I have no share in thee, except during the time that I am going between the sword and the pyre of Achilles.

  HEC. Ah me! I faint; and my limbs fail me. — O daughter, touch thy mother, stretch forth thy hand — give it me — leave me not childless — I am lost, my friends. Would that I might see the Spartan Helen, the sister of the twin sons of Jove, thus, for through her bright eyes that most vile woman destroyed the happy Troy.

  CHOR. Gale, gale of the sea, which waftest the swift barks bounding through the waves through the surge of the ocean, whither wilt thou bear me hapless? To whose mansion shall I come, a purchased slave? Or to the port of the Doric or Phthian shore, where they report that Apidanus, the most beautiful father of floods, enriches the plains? or wilt thou bear me hapless urged by the maritime oar, passing a life of misery in my prison-house, to that island where both the first-born palm tree and the laurel shot forth their hallowed branches to their beloved Latona, emblem of the divine parturition? And with the Delian nymphs shall I celebrate in song the golden chaplet and bow of Diana? Or, in the Athenian city, shall I upon the saffron robe harness the steeds to the car of Minerva splendid in her chariot, representing them in embroidery upon the splendid looms of brilliant threads, or the race of Titans, which Jove the son of Saturn sends to eternal rest with his flaming lightning? Alas, my children! Alas, my ancestors, and my paternal land, which is overthrown, buried in smoke, captured by the Argive sword! but I indeed am a slave in a foreign country, having left Asia the slave of Europe, having changed my bridal chamber for the grave.

  TALTHYBIUS, HECUBA, CHORUS.

  TAL. Tell me, ye Trojan dames, where can I find Hecuba, late the queen of Troy?

  CHOR. Not far from thee, O Talthybius, she is lying stretched on the ground, muffled in her robes.

  TAL. O Jupiter, what shall I say? Shall I say that thou beholdest mortals? or that they have to no end or purpose entertained false notions, who suppose the existence of a race of Deities, and that fortune has the sovereign control over men? Was not this the queen of the opulent Phrygians? was not this the wife of the all-blest Priam? And now all her city is overthrown by the spear, but she a captive, aged, childless, lies on the ground defiling her ill-fated head with the dust. Alas! alas! I too am old, but rather may death be my portion before I am involved in any such debasing fortune; stand up, oh unhappy, raise thy side, and lift up thy hoary head.

  HEC. Let me alone: who art thou that sufferest not my body to rest? why dost thou, whoever thou art, disturb me from my sadness?

  TAL. I am here, Talthybius, the herald of the Greeks, Agamemnon having sent me for thee, O lady.

  HEC. Hast thou come then, thou dearest of men, it having been decreed by the Greeks to slay me too upon the tomb? Thou wouldest bring dear news indeed. Then haste we, let us speed with all our might: lead on, old man.

  TAL. I am here and come to thee, O lady, that thou mayest entomb thy dead daughter. Both the two sons of Atreus and the Grecian host send me.

  HEC. Alas! what wilt thou say? Art thou not come for me as doomed to death, but to bring this cruel message? Thou art dead, my child, torn from thy mother; and I am childless as far as regards thee; oh! wretch that I am. But how did ye slay her? was it with becoming reverence? Or did ye proceed in your butchery as with an enemy, O old man? Tell me, though you will relate no pleasing tale.

  TAL. Twice, O lady, thou desirest me to indulge in tears through pity for thy daughter; for both now while relating the mournful circumstance shall I bedew this eye, as did I then at the tomb when she perished. The whole host of the Grecian army was present before the tomb, at the sacrifice of thy daughter. But the son of Achilles taking Polyxena by the hand, placed her on the summit of the mound; but I stood near him: and there followed a chosen band of illustrious youths in readiness to restrain with their hands thy daughter’s struggles; then the son of Achilles took a full-crowned goblet of entire gold, and poured forth libations to his deceased father; and makes signal to me to proclaim silence through all the Grecian host. And I standing forth in the midst, thus spoke: “Be silent, O ye Greeks, let all the people remain silent; silence, be still:” and I made the people perfectly still. But he said, “O son of Peleus, O my father, accept these libations which have the power of soothing, and which speed the dead on their way; and come, that thou mayest drink the pure purple blood of this virgin, which both the army and myself offer unto thee; but be propitious to us, and grant us to weigh anchor, and to loose the cables of our ships, and to return each to his country, having met with a prosperous return from Troy.” Thus much he said, and all the army joined in the prayer. Then taking by the hilt his sword decked with gold, he drew it from its scabbard, and made signs to the chosen youths of the Greeks to hold the virgin. But she, when she perceived it, uttered this speech: “O Argives, ye that destroyed my city, I die willingly; let none touch my body; for I will offer my neck to the sword with a good heart. But, by the Gods, let me go free while ye kill me, that I may die free, for to be classed as a slave among the dead, when a queen, is what I am ashamed of.” But the people murmured assent, and king Agamemnon ordered the young men to quit the virgin; [but they, soon as they heard the last words of him who had the seat of chief authority among them, let go their hold,] and she, on hearing this speech of her lords, took her robe, and rent it, beginning from the top of her shoulder down to her waist: and showed her breasts and bosom beauteous, as a statue’s, and bending her knee on the ground, spoke words the most piteous ever heard, “Lo! strike, if this bosom thou desirest, O youth; or wouldest thou rather under the neck, here is this throat prepared.” But he at once resolved and unresolved through pity of the virgin, cuts with the sword the passage of her breath; and fountains of blood burst forth. But she, e’en in death, showed much care to fall decently, and to veil from the eyes of men what ought to be concealed. But after that she breathed forth her spirit under the fatal blow, not one of the Greeks exercised the same offices; but some scattered leaves from their hands on the dead; some heap the funeral pile, bringing whole trunks of pines: but he that would not bring, heard rebukes of this sort from him that was thus employed: “Standest thou idle, thou man of most mean spirit? Hast in thy hand no robe, no ornament for the maiden? Hast thou naught to give to her so exceeding brave in heart and most noble in soul?” These things I tell thee of the death of thy daughter, but I behold thee at once the most happy, at once the most unhappy of all women in thine offspring.

  CHOR. Dreadful calamities have risen fierce against the house of Priam; such the hard fate of the Gods.

  HEC. O daughter! which of my ills I shall first attend to, amidst such a multitude, I know not: for if I touch on any, another does not suffer me; and thence again some fresh grief draws me aside, succeeding miseries upon miseries. And now I can not obliterate from my mind thy sufferings, so as not to bewail them: but excess of grief hast thou taken away, having been reported to me as noble. Is it then no paradox, if land indeed naturally bad, when blest with a favorable season from heaven, bears well the ear; but good land, robbed of the advantages it ought to have, brings forth bad fruit: but ever among men, the bad by nature is nothing else but bad; the good always good, nor under misfortune does he degenerate from his nature, but is the same good man? Is it, that the parents cause this difference, or the education? The being brought up nobly hath indeed in it the knowledge and principles of go
odness; but if one is acquainted well with this, he knows what is vicious, having already learned it by the rule of virtue. And this indeed has my mind been ejaculating in vain. But do thou go, and signify these things to the Greeks, that no one be suffered to touch my daughter, but bid them keep off the multitude. In so vast an army the rabble are riotous, and the sailors’ uncontrolled insolence is fiercer than fire; and he is evil, who does not evil. But do thou, my old attendant, taking an urn, fill it with sea water, and bring it hither, that I may wash my girl in her last bath, the bride no bride now, and the virgin no longer a virgin, wash her, and lay her out; according to her merits — whence can I? This I can not; but as I can, I will, for what can I do! And collecting ornaments from among the captured women, who dwell beside me in these tents, if any one, unobserved by our new lords, has by her any stolen memorial of her home. O state of my house, O mansions once happy! O Priam, of vast wealth possessed, and supremely blest in thine offspring, and I too, this aged woman, the mother of such children! How have we come to nothing, bereft of our former grandeur! And yet still forsooth we are elated, one of us in his gorgeous palaces; another, when honored among his citizens. These are nothing. In vain the counsels of the mind, and the tongue’s boast. He is most blest, to whom from day to day no evil happens.

  CHORUS.

  Against me was it fated that calamity, against me was it fated that woe should spring, when Paris first hewed the pine in Ida’s forest, preparing to cut his way over the ocean surge to the bed of Helen, the fairest that the sun’s golden beams shine upon. For toils, and fate more stern than toils, close us round: and from the folly of one came a public calamity fatal to the land of Simois, and woes springing from other woes: and when the dispute was decided, which the shepherd decided between the three daughters of the blessed Gods on Ida’s top, for war, and slaughter, and the desolation of my palaces. And many a Spartan virgin at her home on the banks of the fair-flowing Eurotas sighs while bathed in tears: and many an aged matron strikes her hand against her hoary head, for her children who have perished, and tears her cheek making her nails all blood-stained with her wounds.

  FEMALE ATTENDANT, CHORUS, HECUBA.

  ATT. O attendants, where, I pray, is the all-wretched Hecuba, who surpasses the whole race of man and woman kind in calamities? no one shall wrest from her the crown.

  CHOR. But what dost thou want, O wretch, in thy words of ill omen? for thy messages of woe never rest.

  ATT. I bring this grief to Hecuba; but in calamity ’tis no easy thing for men to speak words of good import.

  CHOR. And see, she is coming out of the house, and appears in the right time for thy words.

  ATT. O all-wretched mistress, and yet still more wretched than I can express in words, thou art undone, and no longer beholdest the light, childless, husbandless, cityless, entirely destroyed.

  HEC. Thou has said nothing new, but hast reproached me who already know it: but why dost thou bring this corse of my Polyxena, whose sepulture was reported to me as in a state of active progress through the labors of all the Grecians?

  ATT. She nothing knows, but, woe’s me! laments Polyxena, nor does she apprehend her new misfortunes.

  HEC. O wretched me! dost bring hither the body of the frantic and inspired Cassandra?

  ATT. She whom thou mentionedst, lives; but thou dost not weep for him who is dead; but behold this corse cast naked [on the shore,] and look if it will appear to thee a wonder, and what thou little expectest.

  HEC. Alas me! I do indeed see my son Polydore a corse, whom (I fondly hoped) the man of Thrace was preserving in his palace. Now am I lost indeed, I no longer exist. Oh my child, my child! Alas! I begin the Bacchic strain, having lately learned my woes from my evil genius.

  ATT. Thou knowest then the calamity of thy son, O most unfortunate.

  HEC. I see incredible evils, still fresh, still fresh: and my immeasurable woes follow one upon the other. No longer will a day without a tear, without a groan, have part with me.

  CHOR. Dreadful, oh! dreadful are the miseries that we endure!

  HEC. O child, child of a wretched mother, by what fate art thou dead, by what hap liest thou here? by the hand of what man?

  ATT. I know not: on the wave-washed shore I found him.

  HEC. Cast up from the sea, or fallen by the blood-stained spear? (Note [C].)

  ATT. The ocean’s billow cast him up from the deep on the smooth sand.

  HEC. Woe is me! Now understand I the dream, the vision of mine eyes; the black-winged phantom has not flitted by me in vain, which I saw concerning thee, my child, as being no longer in the light of day.

  CHOR. But who slew him? canst thou, O skilled in dreams, declare him?

  HEC. My friend, my friend, who curbs the steed in Thrace, where his aged father placed him for concealment.

  CHOR. Ah me! what wilt thou say? Was it to possess his gold that he slew him!

  HEC. Unutterable deeds, unworthy of a name, surpassing miracles, unhallowed, insufferable! Where are the laws of hospitality? O most accurst of men, how didst thou mar that skin, how sever with the cruel sword the poor limbs of this boy, nor didst feel pity?

  CHOR. O hapless woman, how has the deity made thee by far the most wretched of mortals, whoever he be that presses heavy on thee! But, my friends, let us henceforward be silent, for I see our lord Agamemnon advancing.

  AGAMEMNON, CHORUS, HECUBA.

  AGA. Why, Hecuba, delayest thou to come, and bury thy girl in her tomb, agreeably to what Talthybius told me, that no one of the Argives should be suffered to touch thy daughter. For our part we leave her alone, and touch her not; but thou art slow, whereat I am astonished. I am come therefore to fetch thee, for every thing there has been well and duly performed, if aught of well there be in this. Ah! what corse is this I see before the tent? some Trojan’s too? for that it is no Grecian’s, the robes that vest his limbs inform me.

  HEC. (aside) Thou ill-starr’d wretch! myself I mean, when I say “thou.” O Hecuba, what shall I do? Shall I fall at the knees of Agamemnon here, or bear my ills in silence?

  AGA. Why dost lament turning thy back upon me, and sayest not what has happened? Who is this?

  HEC. (aside) But should he, thinking me a slave, an enemy, spurn me from his knees, I should be adding to my present sufferings.

  AGA. No prophet I, so as to trace, unless by hearing, the path of thy counsels.

  HEC. (aside) Am I not rather then putting an evil construction on this man’s thoughts, whereas he has no evil intention toward me?

  AGA. If thou art willing that I should nothing of this affair, thou art of a mind with me, for neither do I wish to hear.

  HEC. (aside) I can not without him take vengeance for my children. Why do I thus hesitate? I must be bold, whether I succeed, or fail. Agamemnon, by these knees, and by thy beard I implore thee, and by thy blessed hand —

  AGA. What thy request? Is it to pass thy life in freedom? for this is easy for thee to obtain.

  HEC. Not this indeed; but so that I avenge myself on the bad, I am willing to pass my whole life in slavery.

  AGA. And for what assistance dost thou call on me?

  HEC. In none of those things which thou imaginest, O king. Seest thou this corse, o’er which I drop the tear?

  AGA. I see it; thy meaning however I can not learn from this.

  HEC. Him did I once bring forth, him bore I in my bosom.

  AGA. Is this indeed one of thy children, O unhappy woman?

  HEC. It is, but not of the sons of Priam who fell under the walls of Troy.

  AGA. Didst thou then bear any other besides those, O lady?

  HEC. In vain, as it appears, this whom you see.

  AGA. But where did he chance to be, when the city fell?

  HEC. His father sent him out of the country, dreading his death.

  AGA. Whither, having removed him alone of his children then alive?

  HEC. To this country, where he was found a corse.

  AGA. To him who is king over th
is state, to Polymestor?

  HEC. Hither was he sent, the guardian of gold, which proved most destructive to him.

  AGA. By whose hand then he is dead, and having met with what fate?

  HEC. By whom else should he? The Thracian host slew him.

  AGA. O wretch! was he so inflamed with the desire of obtaining the gold?

  HEC. Even so, after he had heard of Troy’s disasters.

  AGA. And where didst thou find him, or who brought the body?

  HEC. She, meeting with it on the sea-shore.

  AGA. In quest of it, or occupied in some other employment?

  HEC. She was going to bring from the sea wherewith to bathe Polyxena.

  AGA. This friend then, as it seems, murdered him, and after that cast him out.

  HEC. To toss upon the waves thus gashing his body.

  AGA. O thou unhappy from thy unmeasured ills!

  HEC. I perish, no woe is left, O Agamemnon.

  AGA. Alas! alas! What woman was ever so unfortunate?

  HEC. There is none, except you reckon Misfortune herself. But for what cause I fall at thy knees, now hear: if I appear to you to suffer these ills justly, I would be reconciled to them; but if otherwise, be thou my avenger on this man, this most impious of false friends; who revering neither the Gods beneath the earth, nor the Gods above, hath done this most unholy deed, having often partaken of the same table with me, [and in the list of hospitality the first of my friends; and having met with whatever was due, and having received a full consideration for his services,] slew him, and deigned not to give him a tomb, which he might have given, although he purposed to slay him, but cast him forth at the mercy of the waves. We indeed are slaves, and perhaps weak; but the Gods are strong, and strong the law, which governs them; for by the law we judge that there are Gods, and we live having justice and injustice strictly defined; which if when referred to thee it be disregarded, and they shall suffer no punishment who slay their guests, or dare to pollute the hallowed statutes of the Gods, there is nothing equitable in the dealings of men. Beholding these things then in a base and proper light, reverence me; pity me, and, as the artist stands aside to view a picture, do thou view my living portrait, and see what woes I am enduring. Once was I a queen, but now I am thy slave; once was I blest in my children, but now aged, and at the same time childless, cityless, destitute, the most miserable of mortals. Alas me wretched! whither withdrawest from me thy foot? It seems I shall make no impression, wretch that I am. Why then do we mortals toil after all other sciences, as a matter of duty, and dive into them, but least of all strive to learn thoroughly Persuasion, the sole mistress o’er the minds of men, giving a price for her knowledge, that at some time we may have it in our power at once to persuade and obtain what we wish? — How then can any one hereafter hope that he shall be fortunate? So many children that I had, and now not one is left to me. But I am perishing a captive in base servitude, and yet see the smoke there leaping aloft from the city. And however this part of my argument may perchance be vain, the bringing forward love; still nevertheless it shall be urged. My daughter is wont to sleep by thy side, that prophetess, whom the Trojans call Cassandra. Where wilt thou show that thy nights were nights of love, O king, or will my daughter receive any recompense for her most fond embraces, and I through her? [For from the secret shade, and from night’s joys, the greatest delight is wont to spring to mortals.] Now then attend. Thou seest this corse? Him assisting, thou wilt assist one joined to thee in affinity. One thing my speech wants yet. I would fain I had a voice in my arms, and hands, and in my hair, and in my footsteps, or by the skill of Dædalus, or some God, that each at once might hold thy knees, weeping, and imploring in all the strains of eloquence. O my lord. O greatest light of the Greeks, be persuaded; lend thy hand to avenge this aged woman, although she is of no consequence, yet avenge her. For it belongs to a good man to minister justice, and always and in every case to punish the bad.