Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

81 pages - You are on Page 59

Jocasta: Haste, my daughter, haste! For, if I can forestall the onset
of my sons, may yet live; but if they be dead, I will lay me down
and die with them. (Jocasta and Antigone hurriedly depart.)

Chorus: (singing, strophe)

Ah me! my bosom thrills with terror; and through my flesh there passes
a throb of pity for the hapless mother. Which of her two sons will
send the other to a bloody grave? ah, woe is me! O Zeus, O earth,
alas! brother severing brother's throat and robbing him of life, cleaving
through his shield to spill his blood? Ah me! ah me! which of them
will claim my dirge of death?

(antistrophe)

Woe unto thee, thou land of Thebes! two savage beasts, two murderous
souls, with brandished spears will soon be draining each his fallen
foeman's gore. Woe is them, that they ever thought of single combat!
in foreign accent will I chant a dirge of tears and wailing in mourning
for the dead. Close to murder stands their fortune; the coming day
will decide it. Fatal, ah! fatal will this slaughter be, because of
the avenging fiends.

But I see Creon on his way hither to the palace with brow o'ercast;
I will check my present lamentations. (Creon enters. He is followed
by attendants carrying the body of Menoeceus.)

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