Hippolytus (856-909)

Ha! what means this letter? clasped in her dear hand it hath some strange tale to tell. Hath she, poor lady, as a last request, written her bidding as to my marriage and her children?

Take heart, poor ghost; no wife henceforth shall wed thy Theseus or invade his house. Ah! how yon seal of my dead wife stamped with her golden ring affects my sight! Come, I will unfold the sealed packet

and read her letter’s message to me.

Woe unto us! Here is yet another evil in the train by heaven sent. Looking to what has happened, I should count my lot in life no longer worth one’s while to gain.[*] My master’s house,

alas! is ruined, brought to naught, I say. [*]Spare it, O Heaven, if it may be. Hearken to my prayer, for I see, as with prophetic eye, an omen boding mischief.

O horror! woe on woe!

and still they come, too deep for words, too heavy to bear. Ah me!

What is it? speak, if I may share in it.

This letter loudly tells a hideous tale! where can I escape my load of woe? For I am ruined and undone, so awful are the words I find here written clear

as if she cried them to me; woe is me!

Alas! thy words declare themselves the harbingers of woe.

I can no longer keep the cursed tale within the portal of my lips, cruel though its utterance be. Ah me!

Hippolytus hath dared by brutal force to violate my honour, recking naught of Zeus, whose awful eye is over all. O father Poseidon, once didst thou promise to fulfil three prayers of mine ; answer one of these and slay my son, let him not escape this single day,

if the prayers thou gavest me were indeed with issue fraught.

O king, I do conjure thee, call back that prayer; hereafter thou wilt know thy error. Hear, I pray.

Impossible! Moreover I will banish him from this land, and by one of two fates shall he be struck down;

either Poseidon, out of respect to my prayer, will cast his dead body into the house of Hades; or exiled from this land, a wanderer to some foreign shore, shall he eke out a life of misery.

Lo! where himself doth come, thy son Hippolytus, in good time;

dismiss thy hurtful rage, King Theseus, and bethink thee what is best for thy family.

I heard thy voice, father, and hasted to come hither; yet know I not the cause of thy present[*] sorrow, but would fain learn of thee.

Ha! what is this? thy wife a corpse I see; this is passing strange; ’twas but now I left her; a moment since she looked upon the light.

How came she thus? the manner of her death?