Andromache (832-900)

Oh! why didst thou hunt me to snatch away my sword? Give, oh! give it back, dear nurse, that I may thrust it through my heart. Why dost thou prevent me hanging myself?

What! was I to let thy madness lead thee on to death?

Ah me, my destiny! Where can I find some friendly fire? To what rocky height can I climb above the sea or ’mid some wooded mountain glen,

there to die and trouble but the dead?

Why vex thyself thus? on all of us sooner or later heaven’s visitation comes.

Thou hast left me, O my father,

left me like a stranded bark, all alone, without an oar. My lord will surely slay me; no home is mine henceforth beneath my husband’s roof. What god is there to whose statue I can as a suppliant haste?

or shall I throw myself in slavish wise at slavish knees? Would I could speed[*] away from Phthia’s land on bird’s dark pinion, or like that pine-built ship,[*]

the first that ever sailed betwixt the rocks Cyanean!

My child, I can as little praise thy previous sinful excesses, committed against the Trojan captive, as thy present exaggerated terror. Thy husband will never listen to

a barbarian’s weak pleading and reject his marriage with thee for this. For thou wast no captive from Troy whom he wedded, but the daughter of a gallant sire, with a rich dower, from a city too of no mean prosperity. Nor will thy father forsake thee, as thou dreadest,

and allow thee to be cast out from this house. Nay, enter now, nor show thyself before the palace, lest the sight[*] of thee there bring reproach upon thee, my daughter. Exit Nurse.

Lo! a stranger of foreign appearance from some other land

comes hurrying towards us.

Ladies of this foreign land! is this the home, the palace of Achilles’ son?

Thou hast it; but who art thou to ask such a question?

The son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra,

by name Orestes, on my way to the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. But now that I am come to Phthia, I am resolved to inquire about my kinswoman, Hermione of Sparta; is she alive and well? for though

she dwells in a land far from my own, I love her none the less.

Son of Agamemnon, thy appearing is as a haven from the storm to sailors; by thy knees I pray, have pity on me in my distress, on me of whose fortunes thou art inquiring. About thy knees

I twine my arms with all the force of sacred fillets.

Ha! what is this? Am I mistaken or do I really see before me the queen of this palace, the daughter of Menelaus?

The same, that only child whom Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, bore my father in his halls; never doubt that.

O saviour Phoebus, grant us respite from our woe! But what is the matter? art thou afflicted by gods or men?