Euripides' THE TROJAN WOMEN Complete

Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Gilbert Murray.

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89 pages - You are on Page 33

To Odysseus' gate
My mother goeth, say'st thou? Is God's word
As naught, to me in silence ministered,
That in this place she dies? [26]... (To herself) No more; no more!
Why should I speak the shame of them, before
They come?... Little he knows, that hard-beset
Spirit, what deeps of woe await him yet;
Till all these tears of ours and harrowings
Of Troy, by his, shall be as golden things.
Ten years behind ten years athwart his way
Waiting: and home, lost and unfriended....

Nay:
Why should Odysseus' labours vex my breath?
On; hasten; guide me to the house of Death,
To lie beside my bridegroom!...

Thou Greek King,
Who deem'st thy fortune now so high a thing,
Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,
In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee:
And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain
A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,
Dead ... and out-cast ... and naked.... It is I
Beside my bridegroom: and the wild beasts cry,
And ravin on God's chosen!

[She clasps her hands to her brow and feels the wreaths.

[26] That in this place she dies.] -- The death of Hecuba is connected with a certain heap of stones on the shore of the Hellespont, called Kunossema, or "Dog's Tomb." According to one tradition (Eur. Hec. 1259 ff.) she threw herself off the ship into the sea; according to another she was stoned by the Greeks for her curses upon the fleet; but in both she is changed after death into a sort of Hell-hound. M. Victor Berard suggests that the dog first comes into the story owing to the accidental resemblance of the (hypothetical) Semitic word S'qoulah, "Stone" or "Stoning," and the Greek Skulax, dog. The Homeric Scylla (Skulla) was also both a Stone and a Dog (Pheneciens et Odyssee, i. 213). Of course in the present passage there is no direct reference to these wild sailor-stories.

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