The Suppliants, By Euripides

EVADNE To yonder pyre where lies dead Capaneus, I will leap down. IPHIS My daughter, speak not thus before the multitude! EVADNE The very thing I wish, that every Argive should learn it. IPHIS Nay, I will ne'er consent to let thee do this deed. EVADNE 'Tis all one; thou shalt never catch me in thy grasp. Lo! I cast me down, no joy to thee, but to myself and to my husband blazing on the pyre with me. (She leaps into the pyre.) CHORUS (chanting) O lady, thou hast done a fearful deed! IPHIS Ah me! I am undone, ye dames of Argos! CHORUS (chanting) Alack, alack! a cruel blow is this to thee, but thou must yet witness, poor wretch, the full horror of this deed. IPHIS A more unhappy wretch than me ye could not find. CHORUS (chanting) Woe for thee, unhappy man! Thou, old sir, hast been made partaker in the fortune of Oedipus, thou and my poor city too. IPHIS Ah, why are mortal men denied this boon, to live their youth twice o'er, and twice in turn to reach old age? If aught goes wrong within our homes, we set it right by judgment more maturely formed, but our life we may not so correct. Now if we had a second spell of youth and age, this double term of life would let us then correct each previous slip. For I, seeing others blest with children, longed to have them too, and found my ruin in that wish. Whereas if I had had present experience, and by a father's light had learnt how cruel a thing it is to be bereft of children, never should have fallen on

a thing it is to be bereft of children, never should have fallen on such evil days as these,-I who did beget a brave young son, proud parent that I was, and after all am now bereft of him. Enough of this. What remains for such a hapless wretch as me? Shall I to my home, there to see its utter desolation and the blank within my life? or shall to the halls of that dead Capaneus?-halls I smiled to see in days gone by, when yet my daughter was alive. But she is lost and gone, she that would ever draw down my cheek to her lips, and take my head between her hands; for naught is there more sweet unto an aged sire than a daughter's love; our sons are made of sterner stuff, but less winning are their caresses. Oh! take me to my house at once, in darkness hide me there, to waste and fret this aged frame with fasting! What shall it avail me to touch my daughter's bones? Old age, resistless foe, how do I loathe thy presence! Them too I hate, whoso desire to lengthen out the span of life, seeking to turn the tide of death aside by philtres, drugs, and magic spells,-folk that death should take away to leave the young their place, when they no more can benefit the world. (IPHIS departs. A procession enters from the direction of the pyre, led by the CHILDREN of the slain chieftains, who carry the ashes of their fathers in funeral urns. The following lines between the CHORUS and the CHILDREN are chanted responsively.)

lines between the CHORUS and the CHILDREN are chanted responsively.) CHORUS Woe, woe! Behold your dead sons' bones are brought hither; take them, servants of your weak old mistress, for in me is no strength left by reason of my mourning for my sons; time's comrade long have I been, and many a tear for many a sorrow have I shed. For what sharper pang wilt thou ever find for mortals than the sight of children dead? CHILDREN Poor mother mine, behold I bring my father's bones gathered from the fire, a burden grief has rendered heavy, though this tiny urn contains my all. CHORUS Ah me! ah me! Why bear thy tearful load to the fond mother of the dead, a handful of ashes in the stead of those who erst were men of mark in Mycenae? CHILDREN Woe worth the hour! woe worth the day! Reft of my hapless sire, a wretched orphan shall I inherit a desolate house, torn from my father's arms. CHORUS Woe is thee! Where is now the toil I spent upon my sons? what thank have I for nightly watch? Where the mother's nursing care? the sleepless vigils mine eyes have kept? the loving kiss upon my children's brow? CHILDREN Thy sons are dead and gone. Poor mother! dead and gone; the boundless air now wraps them round. CHORUS Turned to ashes by the flame, they have winged their flight to, Hades. CHILDREN Father, thou hearest thy children's lamentation; say, shall I e'er, as warrior dight, avenge thy slaughter?

I e'er, as warrior dight, avenge thy slaughter? CHORUS God grant it, O my child CHILDREN Some day, if god so will, shall the avenging of my father be my task; not yet this sorrow sleeps. CHORUS Alas! Fortune's sorrows are enough for me, I have enough of troubles now. CHILDREN Shall Asopus' laughing tide ever reflect my brazen arms as I lead on my Argive troops? CHORUS To avenge thy fallen sire. CHILDREN Methinks I see thee still before my eye, my father- CHORUS Printing a loving kiss upon thy cheek. CHILDREN But thy words of exhortation are borne on the winds away. CHORUS Two mourners hath he left behind, thy mother and thee, bequeathing to thee an endless legacy of grief for thy father. CHILDREN The weight of grief I have to bear hath crushed me utterly. CHORUS Come, let me clasp the ashes of my son to my bosom. CHILDREN I weep to hear that piteous word; 'it stabs me to the heart, CHORUS My child, thou art undone; no more shall I behold thee, thy own fond mother's treasure. THESEUS Adrastus, and ye dames from Argos sprung, ye see these children bearing in their hands the bodies of their valiant sires whom I redeemed; to thee I give these gifts, I and Athens. And ye must bear in mind the memory of this favour, marking well the treatment ye have had of me. And to these children I repeat the self-same words, that they may honour this city, to children's children ever handing on the kindness

may honour this city, to children's children ever handing on the kindness ye received from us. Be Zeus the witness, with the gods in heaven, of the treatment we vouchsafed you ere you left us. ADRASTUS Theseus, well we know all the kindness thou hast conferred upon the land of Argos in her need, and ours shall be a gratitude that never waxeth old, for your generous treatment makes us debtors for a like return. THESEUS What yet remains, wherein I can serve you? ADRASTUS Fare thee well, for such is thy desert and such thy city's too. THESEUS Even so. Mayst thou too have the self-same fortune! (ATHENA appears from above.) ATHENA Hearken, Theseus, to the words that I Athena utter, telling thee thy duty, which, if thou perform it, will serve thy city. Give not these bones to the children to carry to the land of Argos, letting them go so lightly; nay, take first an oath of them that they will requite thee and thy city for your efforts. This oath must Adrastus swear, for as their king it is his right to take the oath for the whole realm of Argos. And this shall be the form thereof: "We Argives swear we never will against this land lead on our mail-clad troops to war, and, if others come, we will repel them." But if they violate their oath and come against the city, pray that the land of Argos may be miserably destroyed. Now hearken while I tell thee where thou must slay the victims. Thou hast within thy halls a tripod with brazen

must slay the victims. Thou hast within thy halls a tripod with brazen feet, which Heracles, in days gone by, after he had o'erthrown the foundations of Ilium and was starting on another enterprise, enjoined the to set up at the Pythian shrine. O'er it cut the throats of three sheep; then grave within the tripod's hollow belly the oath; this done, deliver it to the god who watches over Delphi to keep, a witness and memorial unto Hellas of the oath. And bury the sharp-edged knife, wherewith thou shalt have laid the victims open and shed their blood, deep in the bowels of the earth, hard by the pyres where the seven chieftains burn; for its appearance shall strike them with dismay, if e'er against thy town they come, and shall cause them to return with sorrow. When thou hast done all this, dismiss the dead from thy land. And to the god resign as sacred land the spot where their bodies were purified by fire, there by the meeting of the triple roads that lead unto the Isthmus. Thus much to thee, Theseus, address; next to the sons of Argos I speak; when ye are grown to men's estate, the town beside Ismenus shall ye sack, avenging the slaughter of your dead sires; thou too, Aegialeus, shalt take thy father's place and in thy youth command the host, and with thee Tydeus' son marching from Aetolia,-him whom his father named Diomedes. Soon as the beards your cheeks o'ershadow must ye lead an armed Danaid host against the

battlements of Thebes with sevenfold gates. For to their sorrow shall ye come like lion's whelps in full-grown might to sack their city. No otherwise is it to be; and ye shall be a theme for minstrels' songs in days to come, known through Hellas as "the After-born"; so famous shall your expedition be, thanks to Heaven. THESEUS Queen Athena, I will hearken to thy bidding; for thou it is dost set me up, so that I go not astray. And I will bind this monarch by an oath; do thou but guide my steps aright. For if thou art friendly to our state, we shall henceforth live secure. (ATHENA vanishes.) CHORUS (chanting) Let us go, Adrastus, and take the oath to this monarch and his state; for the service they have already done us claims our reverence. THE END