Euripides' THE TROJAN WOMEN Complete

Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Gilbert Murray.

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89 pages - You are on Page 11

O ships, O crowding faces
Of ships [9], O hurrying beat
Of oars as of crawling feet,
How found ye our holy places?
Threading the narrows through,
Out from the gulfs of the Greek,
Out to the clear dark blue,
With hate ye came and with joy,
And the noise of your music flew,
Clarion and pipe did shriek,
As the coiled cords ye threw,
Held in the heart of Troy!

What sought ye then that ye came?
A woman, a thing abhorred:
A King's wife that her lord
Hateth: and Castor's [10] shame
Is hot for her sake, and the reeds
Of old Eurotas stir
With the noise of the name of her.
She slew mine ancient King,
The Sower of fifty Seeds [11],
And cast forth mine and me,
As shipwrecked men, that cling
To a reef in an empty sea.

[9] Faces of ships.] -- Homeric ships had prows shaped and painted to look like birds' or beasts' heads. A ship was always a wonderfully live and vivid thing to the Greek poets. (Cf. p. 64.)

[10] Castor.] -- Helen's brother: the Eurotas, the river of her home, Sparta.

[11] Fifty seeds.] -- Priam had fifty children, nineteen of them children of Hecuba (Il. vi. 451, &c.).

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