Euripides' PHOENISSAE Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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81 pages - You are on Page 19

Jocasta: But why did Adrastus liken you to wild beasts?

Polyneices: Because we came to blows about our bed.

Jocasta: Was it then that the son of Talaus understood the oracle?

Polyneices: Yes, and he gave to us his daughters twain.

Jocasta: Art thou blest or curst in thy marriage?

Polyneices: As yet I have no fault to find with it.

Jocasta: How didst thou persuade an army to follow thee hither?

Polyneices: To me and to Tydeus who is my kinsman by marriage, Adrastus
sware an oath, even to the husbands of his daughters twain, that he
would restore us both to our country, but me the first. So many a
chief from Argos and Mycenae has joined me, doing me a bitter though
needful service, for 'tis against my own city I am marching. Now I
call heaven to witness, that it is not willingly I have raised my
arm against parents whom I love full well. But to thee, mother, it
belongs to dissolve this unhappy feud, and, by reconciling brothers
in love, to end my troubles and thine and this whole city's. 'Tis
an old-world maxim, but I will cite it for all that: "Men set most
store by wealth, and of all things in this world it hath the greatest
power." This am I come to secure at the head of my countless host;
for good birth is naught if poverty go with it.

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