Euripides' ANDROMACHE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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51 pages - You are on Page 15

Come now, Menelaus, let us carry through this argument. Suppose I
am slain by thy daughter, and she work her will on me, yet can she
never escape the pollution of murder, and public opinion will make
thee too an accomplice in this deed of blood, for thy share in the
business must needs implicate thee. But even supposing I escape death
myself, will ye kill my child? Even then, how will his father brook
the murder of his child? Troy has no such coward's tale to tell of
him; nay, he will follow duty's call; his actions will prove him a
worthy scion of Peleus and Achilles. Thy daughter will be thrust forth
from his house; and what wilt thou say when seeking to betroth her
to another? wilt say her virtue made her leave a worthless lord? Nay,
that will be false. Who then will wed her? wilt thou keep her without
a husband in thy halls, grown grey in widowhood? Unhappy wretch! dost
not see the flood-gates of trouble opening wide for thee? How many
a wrong against a wife wouldst thou prefer thy daughter to have found
to suffering what I now describe? We ought not on trifling grounds
to promote great ills; nor should men, if we women are so deadly a
curse, bring their nature down to our level. No! if, as thy daughter
asserts, I am practising sorcery against her and making her barren,
right willingly will I, without any crouching at altars, submit in
my own person to the penalty that lies in her husband's hands, seeing
that I am no less chargeable with injuring him if I make him childless.
This is my case; but for thee, there is one thing I fear in thy disposition;
it was a quarrel for a woman that really induced thee to destroy poor
Ilium's town.

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