Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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81 pages - You are on Page 65

Leader of the Chorus: Ah, woe is thee! Oedipus, for thy sorrows! how
I pity thee! Heaven, it seems, has fulfilled those curses of thine.

Messenger: Now hear what further woes succeeded. Just as her two sons
had fallen and lay dying, comes their wretched mother on the scene,
her daughter with her, in hot haste; and when she saw their mortal
wounds, "Too late," she moaned, "my sons, the help I bring"; and throwing
herself on each in turn she wept and wailed, sorrowing o'er all her
toil in suckling them; and so too their sister, who was with her,
"Supporters of your mother's age I dear brothers, leaving me forlorn,
unwed!" Then prince Eteocles with one deep dying gasp, hearing his
mother's cry, laid on her his moist hand, and though he could not
say a word, his tear-filled eyes were eloquent to prove his love.
But Polyneices was still alive, and seeing his sister and his aged
mother he said, "Mother mine, our end is come; I pity thee and my
sister Antigone and my dead brother. For I loved him though he turned
my foe, I loved him, yes! in spite of all. Bury me, mother mine, and
thou, my sister dear, in my native soil; pacify the city's wrath that
may get at least that much of my own fatherland, although I lost my
home. With thy hand, mother, close mine eyes (therewith he himself
places her fingers on the lids) ; and fare ye well; for already the
darkness wraps me round."

So both at once breathed out their life of sorrow. But when their
mother saw this sad mischance, in her o'ermastering grief she snatched
from a corpse its sword and wrought an awful deed, driving the steel
right through her throat; and there she lies, dead with the dead she
loved so well, her arms thrown round them both.

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