Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus (The Complete Greek Tragedies)
Euripides
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0226308804
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
(Seizing his hand.) MEDEA No, no, please don’t resort to that, I beg of you, Creon. CREON It’s clear you’re set upon an ugly squabble, woman. MEDEA I shall submit to banishment: that’s not the thing I’m pleading for. CREON Then why maintain this grip? Why not release my hand? MEDEA 340 Please just allow me to remain today, one day, and give me time to fix arrangements for my banishment, and make provisions for my boys, seeing that their father does not care enough to organize a
your father. Of few others is this true: you could find perhaps only one among many who’s not worse than his father. CHORUS LEADER This country now and always has been ready 330 to help others in difficulties, if the cause is just. And so it has undergone countless hardships for the sake of friends, and I see here yet another struggle approaching now. DEMOPHON You have spoken well, old sir, and I am sure that things won’t be different with these children here: the favor will be
see how I end! NURSE Your words are wounds. Where will your tale conclude? PHAEDRA Mine is an inherited curse. It is not new. NURSE I have not yet heard what I most want to know. PHAEDRA Ah! 345 If you could say for me what I must say myself. NURSE I am no prophet to know your hidden secrets. PHAEDRA What does it mean to say someone’s in love? NURSE Sweetest and bitterest, both in one, at once. PHAEDRA One of those two, I’ve known, and all too well. NURSE 350 Are you
would warrant. There are many who know good sense. 380 But look. We know the good, we see it clear. But we can’t bring it to achievement. Some are betrayed by their own laziness, and others value some other pleasure above virtue. There are so many pleasures in this life— long gossiping talks and leisure, that sweet curse. 385 Then there is shame that thwarts us. Shame is of two kinds. The one is harmless, but the other’s a plague. For clarity’s sake, we should not talk of “shame,”
by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, was published by the University of Chicago Press starting in 1953. But the origins of the series go back even further. David Grene had already published his translation of three of the tragedies with the same press in 1942, and some of the other translations that eventually formed part of the Chicago series had appeared even earlier. A second edition of the series, with new translations of several plays and other changes, was published in 1991. For well over