Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/98

70 nature. But with reproaches heaped a thousandfold I cannot wound thee, so brazen is thy nature. Perish, vile sorceress, murderess of thy babes! Whilst I must mourn my luckless fate, for I shall ne'er enjoy my new-found bride, nor shall I have the children, whom I bred and reared, alive to say the last farewell to me; nay, I have lost them.

. To this thy speech I could have made a long retort, but Father Zeus knows well all I have done for thee, and the treatment thou hast given me. Yet thou wert not ordained to scorn my love and lead a life of joy in mockery of me, nor was thy royal bride nor Creon, who gave thee a second wife, to thrust me from this land and rue it not. Wherefore, if thou wilt, call me e'en a lioness, and Scylla, whose home is in the Tyrrhene land; for I in turn have wrung thy heart, as well I might.

. Thou, too, art grieved thyself, and sharest in my sorrow.

. Be well assured I am; but it relieves my pain to know thou canst not mock at me.

. O my children, how vile a mother ye have found!

. My sons, your father's feeble lust has been your ruin!

. 'Twas not my hand, at any rate, that slew them.

. No, but thy foul treatment of me, and thy new marriage.

. Didst think that marriage cause enough to murder them?

. Dost think a woman counts this a trifling injury?

. So she be self-restrained; but in thy eyes all is evil.

. Thy sons are dead and gone. That will stab thy heart.

. They live, methinks, to bring a curse upon thy head.