Euripides' THE TROJAN WOMEN Complete

Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Gilbert Murray.

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89 pages - You are on Page 63

And Cypris, if he deemed her loveliest,
Beyond all heaven, made dreams about my face
And for her grace gave me. And, lo! her grace
Was judged the fairest, and she stood above
Those twain. -- Thus was I loved, and thus my love
Hath holpen Hellas. No fierce Eastern crown
Is o'er your lands, no spear hath cast them down.
O, it was well for Hellas! But for me
Most ill; caught up and sold across the sea
For this my beauty; yea, dishonoured
For that which else had been about my head
A crown of honour.... Ah, I see thy thought;
The first plain deed, 'tis that I answer not,
How in the dark out of thy house I fled....
There came the Seed of Fire, this woman's seed;
Came -- O, a Goddess great walked with him then --
This Alexander, Breaker-down-of-Men,
This Paris [40], Strength-is-with-him; whom thou, whom --
O false and light of heart -- thou in thy room
Didst leave, and spreadest sail for Cretan seas,
Far, far from me!... And yet, how strange it is!
I ask not thee; I ask my own sad thought,
What was there in my heart, that I forgot
My home and land and all I loved, to fly
With a strange man? Surely it was not I,
But Cypris, there! Lay thou thy rod on her,
And be more high than Zeus and bitterer,
Who o'er all other spirits hath his throne,
But knows her chain must bind him. My wrong done
Hath its own pardon....

[40] Alexander ... Paris.] -- Two plays on words in the Greek.

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