Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

81 pages - You are on Page 39

Chorus: (singing, strophe)

O Ares, god of toil and trouble! why, why art thou possessed by love
of blood and death, out of harmony with the festivals of Bromius?
'Tis for no crowns of dancers fair that thou dost toss thy youthful
curls to the breeze, singing the while to the lute's soft breath a
strain to charm the dancers' feet; but with warriors clad in mail
thou dost lead thy sombre revelry, breathing into Argive breasts lust
for Theban blood; with no wild waving of the thyrsus, clad in fawnskin
thou dancest, but with chariots and bitted steeds wheelest thy charger
strong of hoof. O'er the waters of Ismenus in wild career thou art
urging thy horses, inspiring Argive breasts with hate of the earth-born
race, arraying in brazen harness against these stone-built walls a
host of warriors armed with shields. Truly Strife is a goddess to
fear, who devised these troubles for the princes of this land, for
the much-enduring sons of Labdacus.

(antistrophe)

O Cithaeron, apple of the eye of Artemis, holy vale of leaves, amid
whose snows full many a beast lies couched, would thou hadst never
reared the child exposed to die, Oedipus the fruit of Jocasta's womb,
when as a babe he was cast forth from his home, marked with golden
brooch; and would the Sphinx, that winged maid, fell monster from
the hills, had never come to curse our land with inharmonious strains;
she that erst drew nigh our walls and snatched the sons of Cadmus
away in her taloned feet to the pathless fields of light, a fiend
sent by Hades from hell to plague the men of Thebes; once more unhappy
strife is bursting out between the sons of Oedipus in city and home.
For never can wrong be right, nor children of unnatural parentage
come as a glory to the mother that bears them, but as a stain on the
marriage of him who is father and brother at once.

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