C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Songs from the ‘Hippolytus’
By Euripides (c. 480–406 B.C.)
Overflow; who sweet delight
Bringest to the soul thou stormest,
Come not, prithee, sorrow-laden,
Nor too mighty, unto me!
Neither flaming fire is stronger,
Nor the splendor of the stars,
Than the shaft of Aphrodite,
Darting from the hands of Eros,
Who is child of Zeus supreme.
Or in Phoibos’s Pythian fane,
Hellas heaps the slaughtered oxen!
Eros, of mankind the tyrant,
Holder of the key that locks
Aphrodite’s dearest chambers,
Is not honored in our prayers,
Though he comes as the destroyer,
Bringing uttermost disaster
Unto mortals, when he comes.
May some god into a bird
Flitting ’mid the wingèd throng transform me!
Where the Adriatic’s wave
Breaks upon the shore I fain would hasten;
Or to the Eridanos,
Where into the purple tide,
Mourning over Phaeton,
Evermore the wretched maidens
Drop their amber-gleaming tears.
Of Hesperian minstrelsy,
Where the sea lord over purple waters
Bars the way of mariners;
Setting there, to be upheld by Atlas,
Heaven’s holy boundary.
There ambrosial fountains flow
From the place where Zeus abides,
And the sacred land of plenty
Gives delight unto the gods.
That across the ever-smiting
Briny billow of the ocean
Hither hast conveyed my queen,
From her home of royal splendor,
Wretched in her wedded bliss!
For to both of evil omen
Surely, or at least for Crete,
Thou to glorious Athens flitted,
Where in the Munychian harbor
They unbound their twisted cables
And set foot upon the shore.
Cursed with an unholy passion
By the might of Aphrodite;
Wholly overwhelmed by woe;
In the chamber of her nuptials,
Fitted to her snowy neck,
She will hang the cord suspended,
Showing thus her reverence
For the god by men detested,
Eager most for reputation,
And releasing so her spirit
From the love that brought her pain.
When it recurs to my mind, greatly assuages my grief:
Yet am I quickly bereft of the hope and conviction I cherished,
Pondering over the deeds, over the fortunes of men.
Change is but followed by change, in our erring mortal existence.
Fortune to happiness joined, courage undaunted by pain!
May my repute be neither exceedingly great nor ignoble!
Still with the changing day easily changing my ways,
May I forever enjoy a life of prosperous fortune.
See the illustrious star of Athena
Driven before the paternal wrath to a far habitation!
O ye sands on the shore of the city!
O ye glades in which, attendant on holy Dictynna,
Once with his hounds fleet-footed he hunted!
Over the track that encircles Limna.
Sleepless once was the Muse by the lyre in the halls of thy fathers;
Now is she silent; and stript of their garlands
Lie in the long deep grass the retreats of the daughter of Leto:
Maidens contend not for thee in thy exile.
Ah, thy mother, how wretched! in vain were the pangs of her travail!
Frenzied am I of the gods! Ye close-linked Graces, ah, wherefore
Forth from this his home and out of the land of his fathers,
Send ye a youth ill-fated, who nowise of crime has been guilty?
Thou, O Kypris, captive leadest,
While upon his shimmering pinions
Round them swift-winged Eros flits.
Over earth he hovers ever,
And the salt resounding sea.
Eros charms the heart to madness,
Smitten by his golden arrow;
Charms the hounds upon the mountain,
Creatures of the land and wave,
Wheresoever Helios gazes;
Even man,—and royal honors
Thou alone, O Kypris, hast from all!