| Euripidis Index |
LEADER (chanting)
The King has fulfilled
Every rite;
The altars of all the Gods
Drip with the blood of slain beasts:
Nothing, nothing avails.
(From the women's quarters in the left wing of the
Palace comes a woman in tears. She is not a slave,
but one of the personal attendants on the Queen.)
But now from the house comes one of her women servants, all in
tears. What now shall I learn? (To the weeping Servant) It is well
to weep when our lords are in sorrow-but tell us, we would know, is
she alive, is she dead?
SERVANT
You may say she is both alive and dead.
LEADER
How can the same man be dead and yet behold the light?
SERVANT
She gasps, she is on the verge of death.
LEADER
Ah, unhappy man! For such a husband what loss is such a wife!
SERVANT
The King will not know his loss until he suffers it.
LEADER
Then there is no hope that her life may be saved?
SERVANT
The fated day constrains her.
LEADER
Are all things befitting prepared for her?
SERVANT
The robes in which her lord will bury her are ready.
LEADER
Then let her know that she dies gloriously, the best of women
beneath the sun by far!
SERVANT
How should she not be the best! Who shall deny it? What should the
best among women be? How better might a woman hold faith to her lord
than gladly to die for him? This the whole city knows, but you will
marvel when you hear what she has done within the house. When she knew
that the last of her days was come she bathed her white body in
river water, she took garments and gems from her rooms of cedar
wood, and clad herself nobly; then, standing before the hearth-shrine,
she uttered this prayer:
'O Goddess, since now I must descend beneath the earth, for the
last time I make supplication to you: and entreat you to protect my
motherless children. Wed my son to a fair bride, and my daughter to
a noble husband. Let not my children die untimely, as I their mother
am destroyed, but grant that they live out happy lives with good
fortune in their own land!'
To every altar in Admetus's house she went, hung them with
garlands. offered prayer, cut myrtle boughs-unweeping, unlamenting;
nor did the coming doom change the bright colour of her face.
Then to her marriage-room she went, flung herself down upon her
bed, and wept, and said:
'O my marriage-bed, wherein I loosed my virgin girdle to him for
whom I die! Farewell! I have no hatred for you. Only me you lose.
Because I held my faith to you and to my lord-I must die. Another
woman shall possess you, not more chaste indeed than I, more fortunate
perhaps.'
She fell upon her knees and kissed it, and all the bed was damp
with the, tide of tears which flooded to her eyes. And when she was
fulfilled of many tears, drooping she rose from her bed and made as if
to go, and many times she turned to go and many times turned back, and
flung herself once more upon the bed.
Her children clung to their mother's dress, and wept; and she
clasped them in her arms and kissed them turn by turn, as a dying
woman.
All the servants in the house wept with compassion for their
Queen, But she held out her hand to each, and there was none so base
to whom she did not speak, and who did not reply again.
Such is the misery in Admetus's house. If he had died, he would be
nothing now; and, having escaped, he suffers an agony he will never
forget.
LEADER
And does Admetus lament this woe-since he must be robbed of so
noble a woman?
SERVANT
He weeps, and clasps in his arms his dear bedfellow, and cries
to her not to abandon him, asking impossible things. For she pines,
and is wasted by sickness. She falls away, a frail burden on his
arm; and yet, though faintly, she still breathes, still strives to
look upon the sunlight, which she shall never see hereafter-since
now for the last time she looks upon the orb and splendour of the
sun I
I go, and shall announce that you are here; for all men are not so
well-minded to their lords as loyally to stand near them in
misfortunes, but you for long have been a friend to both my lords.
(She goes back into the women's quarters
of the Palace. The CHORUS now begins to sing.)
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