Euripides' HIPPOLYTUS Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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61 pages - You are on Page 42

Theseus: O the mind of mortal man! to what lengths will it proceed?
What limit will its bold assurance have? for if it goes on growing
as man's life advances, and each successor outdo the man before him
in villainy, the gods will have to add another sphere unto the world,
which shall take in the knaves and villians. Behold this man; he,
my own son, hath outraged mine honour, his guilt most clearly proved
by my dead wife. Now, since thou hast dared this loathly crime, come,
look thy father in the face. Art thou the man who dost with gods consort,
as one above the vulgar herd? art thou the chaste and sinless saint?
Thy boasts will never persuade me to be guilty of attributing ignorance
to gods. Go then, vaunt thyself, and drive thy petty trade in viands
formed of lifeless food; take Orpheus for thy chief and go a-revelling,
with all honour for the vapourings of many a written scroll, seeing
thou now art caught. Let all beware, I say, of such hypocrites! who
hunt their prey with fine words, and all the while are scheming villainy.
She is dead; dost think that this will save thee? Why this convicts
thee more than all, abandoned wretch! What oaths, what pleas can outweigh
this letter, so that thou shouldst 'scape thy doom? Thou wilt assert
she hated thee, that 'twixt the bastard and the true-born child nature
has herself put war; it seems then by thy showing she made a sorry
bargain with her life, if to gratify her hate of thee she lost what
most she prized. 'Tis said, no doubt, that frailty finds no place
in man but is innate in woman; my experience is, young men are no
more secure than women, whenso the Queen of Love excites a youthful
breast; although their sex comes in to help them. Yet why do I thus
bandy words with thee, when before me lies the corpse, to be the clearest
witness? Begone at once, an exile from this land, and ne'er set foot
again in god-built Athens nor in the confines of my dominion. For
if I am tamely to submit to this treatment from such as thee, no more
will Sinis, robber of the Isthmus, bear me witness how I slew him,
but say my boasts are idle, nor will those rocks Scironian, that fringe
the sea, call me the miscreants' scourge.

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