Euripides Rhesus 422

RHESUS.

Thy way is mine, friend. Straight I run my race

In word and deed, and bear no double tongue.

I tell thee, more than thine my heart was wrung,

Yea, angered past all durance, thus to stay

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Back from thy battles. ’Twas a folk that lay

Hard on my borders, Scythians of the north;

Just when my host for Troy had started forth,

They fell upon our homes. I had reached the coast

Of the Friendless Sea and purposed to have crossed

My Thracians there. We turned; and all that plain

Is trampled in a mire of Scythian slain

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Ploughed by our spears, and blood of Thrace withal

Not stinted. This it was that drowned thy call

For help and held me back from Ilion ’s need.

I broke their power; the princes of their breed

I took to hostage, made their elders swear

To bring my house due tribute, year by year,

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Then, never lagging, crossed the Pontus mouth,

Marched by long stages through Bithynia south

And here am come . . . not drunken with the feast,

As thou wouldst have me be, not lulled to rest

In golden chambers. In this harness hard

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I have borne my nights of winter storm that starred

The Euxine into ice and scared the strong

Paionians. Long I have been, but not too long

To save thee yet. Friend, this is the tenth year

Thou labourest on unceasing, with no clear

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Vantage; day creeps by day, and Ares throws

The same red dice for thee and for thy foes.

Now, hear my vow. Before one day’s eclipse

I swear to break their wall, to burn their ships

And slay their princes. On the second day

I leave this soil and take my homeward way,

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Thy pains relieved. No Trojan of the land

Need move, nor turn the buckler in his hand.

Alone my late-comers will turn the tide

And smite your Greeks, for all their bitter pride.