Euripides' HECUBA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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54 pages - You are on Page 21

Leave me free, I do beseech; so slay me, that death may find me free;
for to be called a slave amongst the dead fills my royal heart with
shame." Thereat the people shouted their applause, and king Agamemnon
bade the young men loose the maid. So they set her free, as soon as
they heard this last command from him whose might was over all. And
she, hearing her captors' words took her robe and tore it open from
the shoulder to the waist, displaying a breast and bosom fair as a
statue's; then sinking on her knee, one word she spake more piteous
than all the rest, "Young prince, if 'tis my breast thou'dst strike,
lo! here it is, strike home! or if at my neck thy sword thou'lt aim,
behold! that neck is bared."

Then he, half glad, half sorry in his pity for the maid, cleft with
the steel the channels of her breath, and streams of blood gushed
forth; but she, e'en in death's agony, took good heed to fall with
maiden grace, hiding from gaze of man what modest maiden must. Soon
as she had breathed her last through the fatal gash, each Argive set
his hand to different tasks, some strewing leaves o'er the corpse
in handfuls, others bringing pine-logs and heaping up a pyre; and
he, who brought nothing, would hear from him who did such taunts as
these, "Stand'st thou still, ignoble wretch, with never a robe or
ornament to bring for the maiden? Wilt thou give naught to her that
showed such peerless bravery and spirit?"

Such is the tale I tell about thy daughter's death, and I regard thee
as blest beyond all mothers in thy noble child, yet crossed in fortune
more than all.

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