Euripides' HECUBA Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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54 pages - You are on Page 3

Hecuba: (chanting) Guide these aged steps, my servants, forth before
the house; support your fellow-slave, your queen of yore, ye maids
of Troy. Take hold upon my aged hand, support me, guide me, lift me
up; and I will lean upon your bended arm as on a staff and quicken
my halting footsteps onwards. O dazzling light of Zeus! O gloom of
night! why am I thus scared by fearful visions of the night? O earth,
dread queen, mother of dreams that flit on sable wings! I am seeking
to avert the vision of the night, the sight of horror which I saw
so clearly in my dreams touching my son, who is safe in Thrace, and
Polyxena my daughter dear. Ye gods of this land! preserve my son,
the last and only anchor of my house, now settled in Thrace, the land
of snow, safe in the keeping of his father's friend. Some fresh disaster
is in store, a new strain of sorrow will be added to our woe. Such
ceaseless thrills of terror never wrung my heart before. Oh! where,
ye Trojan maidens, can I find inspired Helenus or Cassandra, that
they may read me my dream? For I saw a dappled hind mangled by a wolf's
bloody fangs, torn from my knees by force in piteous wise. And this
too filled me with affright; o'er the summit of his tomb appeared
Achilles' phantom, and for his guerdon he would have one of the luckless
maids of Troy. Wherefore, I implore you, powers divine, avert this
horror from my daughter, from my child.
(The Chorus of Captive Trojan Women enters.)

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