Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

81 pages - You are on Page 13

Jocasta: (chanting) Maidens, I hear you call in your Phoenician tongue,
and my old feet drag their tottering steps to meet my son. O my son,
my son, at last after many a long day I see thee face to face; throw
thy arms about thy mother's bosom; reach hither thy cheek to me and
thy dark locks of clustering hair, o'ershadowing my neck therewith.
Hail to thee! all hail! scarce now restored to thy mother's arms,
when hope and expectation both were dead. What can I say to thee?
how recall in every way, by word, by deed, the bliss of days long
past, expressing my joy in the mazy measures of the dance? Ah! my
son, thou didst leave thy father's halls desolate, when thy brother's
despite drove thee thence in exile. Truly thou wert missed alike by
thy friends and Thebes. This was why I cut off my silvered locks and
let them fall for grief with many a tear, not clad in robes of white,
my son, but instead thereof taking for my wear these sorry sable tatters;
while within the palace that aged one with sightless orbs, ever nursing
the sorrow of a double regret for the pair of brethren estranged from
their home, rushed to lay hands upon himself with the sword or by
the noose suspended o'er his chamber-roof, moaning his curses on his
sons; and now he buries himself in darkness, weeping ever and lamenting.
And thou, my child,-I hear thou hast taken an alien to wife and art
begetting children to thy joy in thy home; they tell me thou art courting
a foreign alliance, a ceaseless woe to me thy mother and to Laius
thy ancestor, to have this woeful marriage foisted on us. 'Twas no
hand of mine that lit for thee the marriage-torch, as custom ordains
and as a happy mother ought; no part had Ismenus at thy wedding in
supplying the luxurious bath; and there was silence through the streets
of Thebes, what time thy young bride entered her home. Curses on them!
whether it be the sword or strife or thy sire that is to blame, or
heaven's visitation that hath burst so riotously upon the house of
Oedipus; for on me is come all the anguish of these troubles.

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