Euripides' ANDROMACHE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Thetis: (from above) O Peleus! because of my wedded days with thee
now long agone, I Thetis am come from the halls of Nereus. And first
I counsel thee not to grieve to excess in thy present distress, for
I too who need ne'er have borne children to my sorrow, have lost the
child of our love, Achilles swift of foot, foremost of the sons of
Hellas. Next will I declare why I am come, and do thou give ear. Carry
yonder corpse, Achilles' son, to the Pythian altar and there bury
it, a reproach to Delphi, that his tomb may proclaim the violent death
he met at the hand of Orestes. And for his captive wife Andromache,-she
must dwell in the Molossian land, united in honourable wedlock with
Helenus, and with her this babe, the sole survivor as he is of all
the line of Aeacus, for from him a succession of prosperous kings
of Molossia is to go on unbroken; for the race that springs from thee
and me, my aged lord, must not thus be brought to naught; no! nor
Troy's line either; for her fate too is cared for by the gods, albeit
her fall was due to the eager wish of Pallas. Thee too, that thou
mayst know the saving grace of wedding me, will I, a goddess born
and daughter of a god, release from all the ills that flesh is heir
to and make a deity to know not death nor decay. From henceforth in
the halls of Nereus shalt thou dwell with me, god and goddess together;
thence shalt thou rise dry-shod from out the main and see Achilles,
our dear son, settled in his island-home by the strand of Leuce, that
is girdled by the Euxine sea. But get thee to Delphi's god-built town,
carrying this corpse with thee, and, after thou hast buried him, return
and settle in the cave which time hath hollowed in the Sepian rock
and there abide, till from the sea I come with choir of fifty Nereids
to be thy escort thence; for fate's decree thou must fulfil; such
is the pleasure of Zeus. Cease then to mourn the dead; this is the
lot which heaven assigns to all, and all must pay their debt to death.

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