The Phoenician Maidens (379-414)

Some god with evil intent is destroying the race of Oedipus.

So it began, my childbearing was unholy, and in an evil hour I married your father and you were born. But why repeat these horrors? What the gods send we have to bear. I am afraid to ask you what I would, for fear of stinging your heart; yet I long to.

No, question me, leave out nothing; for your will, mother, is my pleasure too.

Well then, first I ask you what I long to have answered. What is it, to be deprived of one’s country? Is it a great evil?

The greatest; harder to bear than tell.

What is it like? What annoys the exile?

One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.

This is a slave’s lot you speak of, not to say what one thinks.

The follies of the rulers must be borne.

That too is painful, to join in the folly of fools.

Yet to gain our ends we must serve against our nature.

Hope, they say, is the exile’s food.

Yes, hope that looks so fair; but always in the future.

But doesn’t time expose its emptiness?

It has a certain winsome charm in misfortune.

Where did you get your living, before your marriage found it for you?

Sometimes I would have enough for the day, and sometimes not.

Didn’t your father’s friends and guests assist you?

Seek to be prosperous; friends are nothing in misfortune.

Didn’t your noble breeding lead you to the heights?

Poverty is a curse; breeding did not find me food.

Man’s dearest treasure, it seems, is his country.

You could not name how dear it is!

How did you come to Argos? What was your scheme?

Loxias gave Adrastus an oracle.

What was it? What are you saying? I cannot guess.

That he should marry his daughters to a boar and a lion.

What did you, my son, have to do with the name of beasts?

I don’t know; the deity summoned me there to my destiny.

Yes, for the god is wise; but how did you win your wife?