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O snow-capped Cithaeron, dear to Artemis, holy vale of leaves, crowded with wild animals, would that you had never reared the one exposed to die, Oedipus, Jocasta’s child, when as a baby he was cast forth from his home,
marked with a golden brooch; and would that the Sphinx, that winged maid, monster from the hills, had never come as a grief to our land with her inharmonious songs, she that once drew near our walls and snatched the sons of Cadmus away in her taloned feet to the untrodden light of heaven,
805
sent by Hades from hell to plague the men of
Thebes
; once more unhappy strife is coming into bloom between the sons of Oedipus in home and city. For never can wrong be right,
810
nor can there be good in unlawful children, their mother’s birth pangs, their father’s pollution; she came to the bed of her son. . . .
815
O snow-capped Cithaeron, dear to Artemis, holy vale of leaves, crowded with wild animals, would that you had never reared the one exposed to die, Oedipus, Jocasta’s child, when as a baby he was cast forth from his home,
marked with a golden brooch; and would that the Sphinx, that winged maid, monster from the hills, had never come as a grief to our land with her inharmonious songs, she that once drew near our walls and snatched the sons of Cadmus away in her taloned feet to the untrodden light of heaven,
805
sent by Hades from hell to plague the men of
Thebes
; once more unhappy strife is coming into bloom between the sons of Oedipus in home and city. For never can wrong be right,
810
nor can there be good in unlawful children, their mother’s birth pangs, their father’s pollution; she came to the bed of her son. . . .
815
The Phoenician Women. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1891.
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