Euripides' HELEN Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

90 pages - You are on Page 83

Messenger: Soon as the daughter of Zeus had left this royal mansion
and come unto the sea, daintily picking her way, most craftily she
set to mourn her husband, though he was not dead but at her side.
Now when we reached thy docks well walled, we began to launch the
fastest of Sidonian ships, with her full complement of fifty rowers,
and each task in due succession followed; some set up the mast, others
ranged the oars with their blades ready, and stored the white sails
within the hold, and the rudder was let down astern and fastened securely.
While we were thus employed, those Hellenes, who had been fellow-voyagers
with Menelaus, were watching us, it seems, and they drew nigh the
beach, clad in the rags of shipwrecked men,-well built enough, but
squalid to look upon. And the son of Atreus, directly he saw them
approach, bespoke them, craftily introducing the reason for his mourning:
"Ye hapless mariners, how have ye come hither? your Achaean ship where
wrecked? Are ye here to help bury dead Atreus' son, whose missing
body this lady, daughter of Tyndareas, is honouring with a cenotaph?"
Then they with feigned tears proceeded to the ship, bearing aboard
the offerings to be thrown into the deep for Menelaus. Thereat were
we suspicious, and communed amongst ourselves regarding the number
of extra voyagers; but still we kept silence out of respect for thy
orders, for by intrusting the command of the vessel to the stranger
thou didst thus spoil all. Now the other victims gave no trouble,
and we easily put them aboard; only the bull refused to go forward
along the gangway, but rolled his eyes around and kept bellowing,
and, arching his back and glaring askance towards his horns, he would
not let us touch him.

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