Euripides' MEDEA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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57 pages - You are on Page 49

Leader of the Chorus: This day the deity, it seems, will mass on Jason,
as he well deserves, heavy load of evils. Woe is thee, daughter of
Creon We pity thy sad fate, gone as thou art to Hades' halls as the
price of thy marriage with Jason.

Medea: My friends, I am resolved upon the deed; at once will I slay
my children and then leave this land, without delaying long enough
to hand them over to some more savage hand to butcher. Needs must
they die in any case; and since they must, I will slay them-I, the
mother that bare them. O heart of mine, steel thyself! Why do I hesitate
to do the awful deed that must be done? Come, take the sword, thou
wretched hand of mine! Take it, and advance to the post whence starts
thy life of sorrow! Away with cowardice! Give not one thought to thy
babes, how dear they are or how thou art their mother. This one brief
day forget thy children dear, and after that lament; for though thou
wilt slay them yet they were thy darlings still, and I am a lady of
sorrows. (Medea enters the house.)

Chorus: (chanting) O earth, O sun whose beam illumines all, look,
look upon this lost woman, ere she stretch forth her murderous hand
upon her sons for blood; for lo! these are scions of thy own golden
seed, and the blood of gods is in danger of being shed by man. O light,
from Zeus proceeding, stay her, hold her hand, forth from the house
chase this fell bloody fiend by demons led. Vainly wasted were the
throes thy children cost thee; vainly hast thou borne, it seems, sweet
babes, O thou who hast left behind thee that passage through the blue
Symplegades, that strangers justly hate. Ah! hapless one, why doth
fierce anger thy soul assail? Why in its place is fell murder growing
up? For grievous unto mortal men are pollutions that come of kindred
blood poured on the earth, woes to suit each crime hurled from heaven
on the murderer's house.

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