Euripides' ANDROMACHE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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51 pages - You are on Page 17

Andromache: Ah me! 'tis a bitter lot thou art offering about my life;
whether I take it or not I am equally unfortunate. Attend to me, thou
who for a trifling cause art committing an awful crime. Why art thou
bent on slaying me? What reason hast thou? What city have I betrayed?
Which of thy children was ever slain by me? What house have I fired?
I was forced to be my master's concubine; and spite of that wilt thou
slay me, not him who is to blame, passing by the cause and hurrying
to the inevitable result? Ah me! my sorrows! Woe for my hapless country!
How cruel my fate! Why had I to be a mother too and take upon me a
double load of suffering? Yet why do I mourn the past, and o'er the
present never shed a tear or compute its griefs? I that saw Hector
butchered and dragged behind the chariot, and Ilium, piteous sight!
one sheet of flame, while I was baled away by the hair of my head
to the Argive ships in slavery, and on my arrival in Phthia was given
to Hector's murderer as his mistress. What pleasure then has life
for me? Whither am I to turn my gaze? to the present or the past?
My babe alone was left me, the light of my life, and him these ministers
of death would slay. No! they shall not, if my poor life can save
him; for if he be saved, hope in him lives on, while to me 'twere
shame to refuse to die for my son. Lo! here I leave the altar and
give myself into your hands, to cut or stab, to bind or hang. Ah!
my child, to Hades now thy mother passes to save thy dear life. Yet
if thou escape thy doom, remember me, my sufferings and my death,
and tell thy father how I fared, with fond caress and streaming eye
and arms thrown round his neck. Ah! yes, his children are to every
man as his own soul; and whoso sneers at this through inexperience,
though he suffers less anguish, yet tastes the bitter in his cup of
bliss.

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