Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/271

Rh. What sweet relief to sufferers 'tis to weep, to mourn, lament, and chant the dirge that tells of grief!

. Dost thou see this, mother of that Hector, who once laid low in battle many a son of Argos?

. I see that it is heaven's way to exalt what men accounted naught, and ruin what they most esteemed.

. Hence with my child as booty am I borne; the noble are to slavery brought—a bitter, bitter change.

. This is necessity's grim law; it was but now Cassandra was torn with brutal violence from my arms.

. Alas, alas! it seems a second Aias hath appeared to wrong thy daughter; but there be other ills for thee.

. Ay, beyond all count or measure are my sorrows; evil vies with evil in the struggle to be first.

. Thy daughter Polyxena is dead, slain at Achilles' tomb, an offering to his lifeless corpse.

. O woe is me! This is that riddle Talthybius long since told me, a truth obscurely uttered.

. I saw her with mine eyes; so I alighted from the chariot, and covered her corpse with a mantle, and smote upon my breast.

. Alas! my child, for thy unhallowed sacrifice! and yet again, ah me! for this thy shameful death!

. Her death was even as it was, and yet that death of hers was after all a happier fate than this my life.

. Death and life are not the same, my child; the one is annihilation, the other keeps a place for hope.

. Hear, O mother of children! give ear to what I urge so well, that I may cheer my drooping spirit. 'Tis all one, I say, ne'er to have been born and to be dead, and better far is death than life with misery. For the dead feel no sorrow any more and know no grief; but he who has known prosperity and has fallen on evil days feels his spirit