Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/308

280 Come, let me share thy story: to the loyal

Thou wilt reveal it, to the true and tried

Whom, at thy bridal, with the dower royal

Tyndareus sent to wait upon thy bride.

Three daughters Leda, child of Thestius, bare,

Phœbê, and Klytemnestra mine own wife,

And Helen. Wooing this last, princes came

In fortune foremost in all Hellas-land.

With fearful threatenings breathed they murder, each

Against his rivals, if he won her not.

Then sore perplexed was Tyndareus her sire,

How, giving or refusing, he should 'scape

Shipwreck: and this thing came into his mind,

That each to each the suitors should make oath,

And clasp right hands, and with burnt sacrifice

Should pour drink-offerings, and swear to this:—

Whose wife soever Tyndareus' child should be,

Him to defend: if any from her home

Stole her and fled, and thrust her lord aside,

To march against him, and to raze his town,

Hellene or alien, with their mailed array.

So when they had pledged them thus, and cunningly

Old Tyndareus had by craft outwitted them,

He let his daughter midst the suitors choose

Him unto whom Love's sweet winds wafted her.

She chose—O had she never chosen him!—

Menelaus. Then from Phrygia he who judged

The Goddesses, as Argive legend tells,