Euripides' ANDROMACHE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

51 pages - You are on Page 26

Peleus: With this good staff I'll stain thy head with blood!

Menelaus: Just touch me and see! Approach one step!

Peleus: What! shalt thou rank with men? chief of cowards, son of cowards!
What right hast thou to any place 'mongst men? Thou who didst let
Phrygian rob thee of thy wife, leaving thy home without bolt or guard,
as if forsooth the cursed woman thou hadst there was a model of virtue.
No! a Spartan maid could not be chaste, e'en if she would, who leaves
her home and bares her limbs and lets her robe float free, to share
with youths their races and their sports,-customs I cannot away with.
Is it any wonder then that ye fail to educate your women in virtue?
Helen might have asked thee this, seeing that she said goodbye to
thy affection and tripped off with her young gallant to a foreign
land. And yet for her sake thou didst marshal all the hosts of Hellas
and lead them to Ilium, whereas thou shouldst have shown thy loathing
for her by refusing to stir a spear, once thou hadst found her false;
yea, thou shouldst have let her stay there, and even paid a price
to save ever having her back again. But that was not at all the way
thy thoughts were turned; wherefore many a brave life hast thou ended,
and many an aged mother hast thou left childless in her home, and
grey-haired sires of gallant sons hast reft. Of that sad band am I
member, seeing in thee Achilles' murderer like a malignant fiend;
for thou and thou alone hast returned from Troy without a scratch,
bringing back thy splendid weapons in their splendid cases just as
they went. As for me, I ever told that amorous boy to form no alliance
with thee nor take unto his home an evil mother's child; for daughters
bear the marks of their mothers' ill-repute into their new homes.

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