Euripides' IPHIGENIA AT AULIS Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Chorus: Happy they who find the goddess come in moderate might, sharing
with self-restraint in Aphrodite's gift of marriage and enjoying calm
and rest from frenzied passions, wilerein the Love-god, golden-haired,
stretches his charmed bow with arrows twain, and one is aimed at happiness,
the other at life's confusion. O lady Cypris, queen of beauty! far
from my bridal bower I ban the last. Be mine delight in moderation
and pure desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess
therein

Men's natures vary, and their habits differ, but true virtue is always
manifest. Likewise the training that comes of education conduces greatly
to virtue; for not only is modesty wisdom, but it has also the rare
grace of seeing by its better judgment what is right; whereby glory,
ever young, is shed o'er life by reputation. A great thing it is to
follow virtue's footsteps-for women in their secret loves; while in
men again an inborn sense of order, shown in countless ways, adds
to a city's greatness.

Thou camest, O Paris, to the place where thou wert reared to herd
the kine amid the white heifers of Ida, piping in foreign strain and
breathing on thy reeds an echo of the Phrygian airs Olympus played.
Full-uddered cows were browsing at the spot where that verdict 'twixt
goddesses was awaiting thee the cause of thy going to Hellas to stand
before the ivory palace, kindling love in Helen's tranced eyes and
feeling its flutter in thine own breast; whence the fiend of strife
brought Hellas with her chivalry and ships to the towers of Troy.

Oh! great is the bliss the great enjoy. Behold Iphigenia, the king's
royal child, and Clytaemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareus; how proud
their lineage! how high their pinnacle of fortune! These mighty ones,
whom wealth attends, are very gods in the eyes of less favoured folk.

Halt we here, maidens of Chalcis, and lift the queen from her chariot
to the ground without stumbling, supporting her gently in our arms,
with kind intent, that the renowned daughter of Agamemnon but just
arrived may feel no fear; strangers ourselves, avoid we aught that
may disturb or frighten the strangers from Argos. (Enter Clytaemnestra
and Iphigenia.)

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