Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/302

274. As a spectator merely, or to consult the oracle?

. 'Tis his wish to hear the self-same answer from Trophonius and Phœbus too.

. Is it to seek earth's produce or fruit of offspring that ye come?

. We are childless, though wedded these many years.

. Hast thou never been a mother? art thou wholly childless?

. Phœbus knows whether I am childless.

. Unhappy wife! how this doth mar thy fortune else so happy!

. But who art thou? how blest I count thy mother!

. Lady, I am called the servant of Apollo, and so I am.

. An offering of thy city, or sold to him by some master?

. Naught know I but this, that I am called the slave of Loxias.

. Then do I in my turn pity thee, sir stranger.

. Because I know not her that bare me, or him that begat me.

. Is thy home here in the temple, or hast thou a house to dwell in?

. The god's whole temple is my house, wherever sleep o'ertakes me.

. Was it as a child or young man that thou camest to the temple?

. Those who seem to know the truth, say I was but a babe.

. What Delphian maid, then, weaned thee?

. I never knew a mother's breast. But she who brought me up—

. Who was she, unhappy youth? I see thy sufferings in my own.