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Chorus
So then you have delivered into
Achaea
’s hand, O Zeus, your shrine in
Ilium
and your fragrant altar, the offerings of burnt sacrifice with smoke of myrrh to heaven uprising,
1060
and holy
Pergamos
, and glens of Ida tangled with the ivy’s growth, where rills of melting snow pour down their flood, a holy sun-lit land that bounds the world
1065
and takes the god’s first rays!
1070
So then you have delivered into
Achaea
’s hand, O Zeus, your shrine in
Ilium
and your fragrant altar, the offerings of burnt sacrifice with smoke of myrrh to heaven uprising,
1060
and holy
Pergamos
, and glens of Ida tangled with the ivy’s growth, where rills of melting snow pour down their flood, a holy sun-lit land that bounds the world
1065
and takes the god’s first rays!
1070
Chorus
Gone are your sacrifices! gone the dancer’s cheerful shout! gone the vigils of the gods as night closed in! your images of carven gold are now no more;
and
Phrygia
’s holy festivals, twelve times a year, at each full moon, are ended now. It is this, it is this that fills me with anxious thought whether you, lord, seated on the sky, your heavenly throne, care at all that my city is destroyed,
1075
a prey to the furious fiery blast.
1080
Gone are your sacrifices! gone the dancer’s cheerful shout! gone the vigils of the gods as night closed in! your images of carven gold are now no more;
and
Phrygia
’s holy festivals, twelve times a year, at each full moon, are ended now. It is this, it is this that fills me with anxious thought whether you, lord, seated on the sky, your heavenly throne, care at all that my city is destroyed,
1075
a prey to the furious fiery blast.
1080
Chorus
Ah! my loved husband, you are a wandering spectre;
unwashed, unburied lies your corpse, while over the sea the ship sped by wings will carry me to
Argos
, land of steeds, where stand Cyclopian walls of stone reaching to heaven. There in the gate the children gather,
1085
and weep their piteous lamentation; they cry, they cry: Mother, alas! torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship
1090
to row me over the deep to sacred
Salamis
or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.
1095
Ah! my loved husband, you are a wandering spectre;
unwashed, unburied lies your corpse, while over the sea the ship sped by wings will carry me to
Argos
, land of steeds, where stand Cyclopian walls of stone reaching to heaven. There in the gate the children gather,
1085
and weep their piteous lamentation; they cry, they cry: Mother, alas! torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship
1090
to row me over the deep to sacred
Salamis
or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.
1095
Chorus
Oh may the sacred blazing thunderbolt of the
Aegean
, hurled in might, smite the ship of Menelaus full in the middle, on its way in mid-sea,
1100
since he is carrying me away in bitter sorrow from the shores of
Ilium
to be a slave in
Hellas
, while the daughter of Zeus still keeps her golden mirrors, delight of maidens’ hearts.
1105
Never may he reach his home in
Laconia
or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of
Pitane
1
or the temple of the goddess
2
with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on
Hellas
through its length and breadth and woful anguish
1110
on the streams of Simois!
1115
Oh may the sacred blazing thunderbolt of the
Aegean
, hurled in might, smite the ship of Menelaus full in the middle, on its way in mid-sea,
1100
since he is carrying me away in bitter sorrow from the shores of
Ilium
to be a slave in
Hellas
, while the daughter of Zeus still keeps her golden mirrors, delight of maidens’ hearts.
1105
Never may he reach his home in
Laconia
or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of
Pitane
1
or the temple of the goddess
2
with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on
Hellas
through its length and breadth and woful anguish
1110
on the streams of Simois!
1115
The Trojan Women. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1906.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.