Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Thy son then, seeing these gates secure, went on to the next, and
I with him. There I saw Tydeus and his serried ranks of targeteers
hurling their Aetolian spears into the opening at the top of the turrets,
with such good aim that our men fled and left the beetling battlements:
but thy son rallied them once more, as a huntsman cheers his hounds,
and made them man the towers again. And then away we hastened to other
gates, after stopping the panic there. As for the madness of Capaneus,
how am I to describe it? There was he, carrying with him a long scaling-ladder
and loudly boasting that even the awful lightning of Zeus would not
stay him from giving the city to utter destruction; and even as he
spoke, he crept up beneath the hail of stones, gathered under the
shelter of his shield, mounting from rung to rung on the smooth ladder;
but, just as he was scaling the parapet of the wall, Zeus smote him
with a thunderbolt; loud the earth re-echoed, and fear seized every
heart; for his limbs were hurled from the ladder far apart as from
a sling, his head toward the sky, his blood toward earth, while his
legs and arms went spinning round like Ixion's wheel, till his charred
corpse fell to the ground. But when Adrastus saw that Zeus was leagued
against his army, he drew the Argive troops outside the trench and
halted them. Meantime our horse, marking the lucky omen of Zeus, began
driving forth their chariots, and our men-at-arms charged into the
thick of the Argives, and everything combined to their discomfiture;
men were falling and hurled headlong from chariots, wheels flew off,
axles crashed together, while ever higher grew the heaps of slain;
so for to-day at least have we prevented the destruction of our country's
bulwarks; but whether fortune will hereafter smile upon this land,
that rests with Heaven; for, even as it is, it owes its safety to
some deity.

Victory is fair; and if the gods are growing kinder, it would be well
with me.

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