The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trojan Women of Euripides
Title: The Trojan Women of Euripides
Author: Euripides
Translator: Gilbert Murray
Release date: February 4, 2011 [eBook #35171]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Barbara Watson, James Wright and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
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THE TROJAN WOMEN
THE ATHENIAN DRAMA
FOR ENGLISH READERS
A Series of Verse Translations of the Greek
Dramatic Poets, with Commentaries and
Explanatory Notes.
Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 7s. 6d. each net.
Each Volume Illustrated from ancient
Sculptures and Vase-Painting.
AESCHYLUS: The Orestean Trilogy. By Prof. G. C. Warr. With an Introduction on The Rise of Greek Tragedy, and 13 Illustrations.
SOPHOCLES: Œdipus Tyrannus and Coloneus, and Antigone. By Prof. J. S. Phillimore. With an Introduction on Sophocles and his Treatment of Tragedy, and 16 Illustrations.
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus; Bacchae; Aristophanes' 'Frogs.' By Prof. Gilbert Murray. With an Appendix on The Lost Tragedies of Euripides, and an Introduction on The Significance of the Bacchae in Athenian History, and 12 Illustrations. [Second Edition.
ALSO UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE
THE HOMERIC HYMNS. A New Prose Rendering by Andrew Lang, with Essays Critical and Explanatory, and 14 Illustrations.
THE PLAYS OF EURIPIDES
Translated into English Rhyming Verse, with Explanatory Notes, by Prof. Gilbert Murray. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. each net.
The Trojan Women.
Electra.[In the Press.
|
Hippolytus. Third Edition. Bacchae. |
} | Paper Covers, Impl. 16mo, 1s. each net. |
THE
TROJAN WOMEN
OF
EURIPIDES
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE
WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY
GILBERT MURRAY, M.A., LL.D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF GLASGOW; SOMETIME FELLOW OF
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1905
[All rights reserved]
Printed by Ballantyne Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Judged by common standards, the Troädes is far from a perfect play; it is scarcely even a good play. It is an intense study of one great situation, with little plot, little construction, little or no relief or variety. The only movement of the drama is a gradual extinguishing of all the familiar lights of human life, with, perhaps, at the end, a suggestion that in the utterness of night, when all fears of a possible worse thing are passed, there is in some sense peace and even glory. But the situation itself has at least this dramatic value, that it is different from what it seems.
The consummation of a great conquest, a thing celebrated in paeans and thanksgivings, the very height of the day-dreams of unregenerate man—it seems to be a great joy, and it is in truth a great misery. It is conquest seen when the thrill of battle is over, and nothing remains but to wait and think. We feel in the background the presence of the conquerors, sinister and disappointed phantoms; of the conquered men, after long torment, now resting in death. But the living drama for Euripides lay in the conquered women. It is from them that he has named his play and built up his scheme of parts: four figures clearly lit and heroic, the others in varying grades of characterisation, nameless and barely articulate, mere half-heard voices of an eternal sorrow.
Indeed, the most usual condemnation of the play is not that it is dull, but that it is too harrowing; that scene after scene passes beyond the due limits of tragic art. There are points to be pleaded against this criticism. The very beauty of the most fearful scenes, in spite of their fearfulness, is one; the quick comfort of the lyrics is another, falling like a spell of peace when the strain is too hard to bear (cf. p. 89). But the main defence is that, like many of the greatest works of art, the Troädes is something more than art. It is also a prophecy, a bearing of witness. And the prophet, bound to deliver his message, walks outside the regular ways of the artist.
For some time before the Troädes was produced, Athens, now entirely in the hands of the War Party, had been engaged in an enterprise which, though on military grounds defensible, was bitterly resented by the more humane minority, and has been selected by Thucydides as the great crucial crime of the war. She had succeeded in compelling the neutral Dorian island of Mêlos to take up arms against her, and after a long siege had conquered the quiet and immemorially ancient town, massacred the men and sold the women and children into slavery. Mêlos fell in the autumn of 416 B.C. The Troädes was produced in the following spring. And while the gods of the prologue were prophesying destruction at sea for the sackers of Troy, the fleet of the sackers of Mêlos, flushed with conquest and marked by a slight but unforgettable taint of sacrilege, was actually preparing to set sail for its fatal enterprise against Sicily.
Not, of course, that we have in the Troädes a case of political allusion. Far from it. Euripides does not mean Mêlos when he says Troy, nor mean Alcibiades' fleet when he speaks of Agamemnon's. But he writes under the influence of a year which to him, as to Thucydides, had been filled full of indignant pity and of dire foreboding. This tragedy is perhaps, in European literature, the first great expression of the spirit of pity for mankind exalted into a moving principle; a principle which has made the most precious, and possibly the most destructive, elements of innumerable rebellions, revolutions, and martyrdoms, and of at least two great religions.
Pity is a rebel passion. Its hand is against the strong, against the organised force of society, against conventional sanctions and accepted Gods. It is the Kingdom of Heaven within us fighting against the brute powers of the world; and it is apt to have those qualities of unreason, of contempt for the counting of costs and the balancing of sacrifices, of recklessness, and even, in the last resort, of ruthlessness, which so often mark the paths of heavenly things and the doings of the children of light. It brings not peace, but a sword.
So it was with Euripides. The Troädes itself has indeed almost no fierceness and singularly little thought of revenge. It is only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into music, as it were, and made beautiful by "the most tragic of the poets." But its author lived ever after in a deepening atmosphere of strife and even of hatred, down to the day when, "because almost all in Athens rejoiced at his suffering," he took his way to the remote valleys of Macedon to write the Bacchae and to die.
G. M.
THE TROJAN WOMEN
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
The God Poseidon.
The Goddess Pallas Athena.
Hecuba, Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother of Hector and Paris.
Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba, a prophetess.
Andromache, wife of Hector, Prince of Troy.
Helen, wife of Menelaüs, King of Sparta; carried off by Paris, Prince of Troy.
Talthybius, Herald of the Greeks.
Menelaus, King of Sparta, and, together with his brother Agamemnon, General of the Greeks.
Soldiers attendant on Talthybius and Menelaus.
Chorus of Captive Trojan Women, young and old, maiden and married.
The Troädes was first acted in the year 415 B.C. "The first prize was won by Xenocles, whoever he may have been, with the four plays Oedipus, Lycaön, Bacchae and Athamas, a Satyr-play. The second by Euripides with the Alexander, Palamêdês, Troädes and Sisyphus, a Satyr-play."—Aelian, Varia Historia, ii. 8.
THE TROJAN WOMEN
The scene represents a battlefield, a few days after the battle. At the back are the walls of Troy, partially ruined. In front of them, to right and left, are some huts, containing those of the Captive Women who have been specially set apart for the chief Greek leaders. At one side some dead bodies of armed men are visible. In front a tall woman with white hair is lying on the ground asleep.
It is the dusk of early dawn, before sunrise. The figure of the god Poseidon is dimly seen before the walls.
Poseidon.
Of blue salt sea, where feet most beautiful
Of Nereïd maidens weave beneath the foam
Their long sea-dances, I, their lord, am come,
Poseidon of the Sea. 'Twas I whose power,
With great Apollo, builded tower by tower
These walls of Troy; and still my care doth stand
True to the ancient People of my hand;
Which now as smoke is perished, in the shock
Of Argive spears. Down from Parnassus' rock
The Greek Epeios came, of Phocian seed,
And wrought by Pallas' mysteries a Steed
Marvellous, big with arms; and through my wall
It passed, a death-fraught image magical. The groves are empty and the sanctuaries
Run red with blood. Unburied Priam lies
By his own hearth, on God's high altar-stair,
And Phrygian gold goes forth and raiment rare
To the Argive ships; and weary soldiers roam
Waiting the wind that blows at last for home,
For wives and children, left long years away,
Beyond the seed's tenth fullness and decay,
To work this land's undoing.
And for me,
Since Argive Hera conquereth, and she
Who wrought with Hera to the Phrygians' woe,
Pallas, behold, I bow mine head and go
Forth from great Ilion and mine altars old.
When a still city lieth in the hold
Of Desolation, all God's spirit there
Is sick and turns from worship.—Hearken where
The ancient River waileth with a voice
Of many women, portioned by the choice
Of war amid new lords, as the lots leap
For Thessaly, or Argos, or the steep
Of Theseus' Rock. And others yet there are,
High women, chosen from the waste of war
For the great kings, behind these portals hid;
And with them that Laconian Tyndarid,
Helen, like them a prisoner and a prize.
And this unhappy one—would any eyes
Gaze now on Hecuba? Here at the Gates
She lies 'mid many tears for many fates
Of wrong. One child beside Achilles' grave
In secret slain, Polyxena the brave,
Lies bleeding. Priam and his sons are gone;
And, lo, Cassandra, she the Chosen One,Whom Lord Apollo spared to walk her way
A swift and virgin spirit, on this day
Lust hath her, and she goeth garlanded
A bride of wrath to Agamemnon's bed.
[He turns to go; and another divine Presence becomes visible in the dusk. It is the goddess Pallas Athena.
Ye shining towers and mine own citadel;
Broken by Pallas, Child of God, or still
Thy roots had held thee true.
Pallas.
Of God's high Brother, to whose hand is given
Great power of old, and worship of all Heaven,
To suffer speech from one whose enmities
This day are cast aside?
Poseidon.
Kindred and long companionship withal,
Most high Athena, are things magical.
Pallas.
A road of comfort here, for thee and me.
Poseidon.
Spoken of Zeus? Or is it tidings heard
From some far Spirit?
Pallas.
Whereon we tread, I seek thee, and would make
My hand as thine.
Poseidon.
Failed, where she lieth in her ashen sleep?
Thou pitiest her?
Pallas.
In heart with me and hand till all be done?
Poseidon.
Thou comest, not for Hellas?
Pallas.
Mine ancient enemies laugh for joy, and bring
On these Greek ships a bitter homecoming.
Poseidon.
And hot thy love and hate, where'er they fall.
Pallas.
Mine holy place: thou knowest?
Poseidon.
Of Ajax, when he cast Cassandra down . . .
Pallas.
Nor word from all the Greeks!
Poseidon.
That gave them Troy!
Pallas.
To smite them.
Poseidon.
Is ready in mine heart. What seekest thou?
Pallas.
And cometh to no home.
Poseidon.
Wouldst hold them or amid mine own salt foam?
Pallas.
Zeus shall send rain, long rain and flaw of driven
Hail, and a whirling darkness blown from heaven;To me his levin-light he promiseth
O'er ships and men, for scourging and hot death:
Do thou make wild the roads of the sea, and steep
With war of waves and yawning of the deep,
Till dead men choke Euboea's curling bay.
So Greece shall dread even in an after day
My house, nor scorn the Watchers of strange lands!
Poseidon.
Shall stir the waste Aegean; reefs that cross
The Delian pathways, jag-torn Myconos,
Scyros and Lemnos, yea, and storm-driven
Caphêreus with the bones of drownèd men
Shall glut him.—Go thy ways, and bid the Sire
Yield to thine hand the arrows of his fire.
Then wait thine hour, when the last ship shall wind
Her cable coil for home! [Exit Pallas.
How are ye blind,
Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast
Temples to desolation, and lay waste
Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die!
[Exit Poseidon.
The day slowly dawns: Hecuba wakes.
Hecuba.
This is not Troy, about, above—
Not Troy, nor we the lords thereof.
Thou breaking neck, be strengthenèd!
Endure and chafe not. The winds rave
And falter. Down the world's wide road,
Float, float where streams the breath of God;
Nor turn thy prow to breast the wave.
Ah woe! . . . For what woe lacketh here?
My children lost, my land, my lord.
O thou great wealth of glory, stored
Of old in Ilion, year by year
We watched . . . and wert thou nothingness?
What is there that I fear to say?
And yet, what help? . . . Ah, well-a-day,
This ache of lying, comfortless
And haunted! Ah, my side, my brow
And temples! All with changeful pain
My body rocketh, and would fain
Move to the tune of tears that flow:
For tears are music too, and keep
A song unheard in hearts that weep.
[She rises and gazes towards the Greek ships far off on the shore.
Of ships, O hurrying beat
Of oars as of crawling feet,
How found ye our holy places?
Threading the narrows through,
Out from the gulfs of the Greek,
Out to the clear dark blue,
With hate ye came and with joy,
And the noise of your music flew,
Clarion and pipe did shriek, As the coilèd cords ye threw,
Held in the heart of Troy!
What sought ye then that ye came?
A woman, a thing abhorred:
A King's wife that her lord
Hateth: and Castor's shame
Is hot for her sake, and the reeds
Of old Eurôtas stir
With the noise of the name of her.
She slew mine ancient King,
The Sower of fifty Seeds,
And cast forth mine and me,
As shipwrecked men, that cling
To a reef in an empty sea.
Who am I that I sit
Here at a Greek king's door,
Yea, in the dust of it?
A slave that men drive before,
A woman that hath no home,
Weeping alone for her dead;
A low and bruisèd head,
And the glory struck therefrom.
[She starts up from her solitary brooding, and calls to the other Trojan Women in the huts.
And maidens, maidens, brides of shame,
Troy is a smoke, a dying flame;
Together we will weep for her:
I call ye as a wide-wing'd bird
Calleth the children of her fold, To cry, ah, not the cry men heard
In Ilion, not the songs of old,
That echoed when my hand was true
On Priam's sceptre, and my feet
Touched on the stone one signal beat,
And out the Dardan music rolled;
And Troy's great Gods gave ear thereto.
[The door of one of the huts on the right opens, and the Women steal out severally, startled and afraid.
First Woman.
[Strophe 1.
Thy bitter cry? Behind our door
We heard thy heavy heart outpour
Its sorrow: and there shivered by
Fear and a quick sob shaken
From prisoned hearts that shall be free no more!
Hecuba. Child, 'tis the ships that stir upon the shore...
Second Woman. The ships, the ships awaken!
Third Woman. Dear God, what would they? Overseas
Bear me afar to strange cities?
Hecuba. Nay, child, I know not. Dreams are these,
Fears of the hope-forsaken.
First Woman.
And learn your lots! Even now the Argives break
Their camp for sailing!
Hecuba.
Whom God hath maddened, lest the foe
Mock at her dreaming. Leave me clear
From that one edge of woe.
O Troy, my Troy, thou diest here
Most lonely; and most lonely we
The living wander forth from thee,
And the dead leave thee wailing!
[One of the huts on the left is now open, and the rest of the Chorus come out severally. Their number eventually amounts to fifteen.
Fourth Woman.
[Antistrophe 1.
I steal, my Queen, with trembling breath:
What means thy call? Not death; not death!
They would not slay so low a thing!
Fifth Woman. O, 'tis the ship-folk crying
To deck the galleys: and we part, we part!
Hecuba. Nay, daughter: take the morning to thine heart.
Fifth Woman. My heart with dread is dying!
Sixth Woman. An herald from the Greek hath come!
Fifth Woman. How have they cast me, and to whom
A bondmaid?
Hecuba. Peace, child: wait thy doom.
Our lots are near the trying.
Fourth Woman.
Or some lone island of the tossing sea,
Far, far from Troy?
Hecuba.
A winter-frozen bee, a slave
Death-shapen, as the stones that lie
Hewn on a dead man's grave:
The children of mine enemy
To foster, or keep watch before
The threshold of a master's door,
I that was Queen in Troy!
A Woman to Another.
[Strophe 2.
The Other. The shuttle still shall flit and change
Beneath my fingers, but the loom,
Sister, be strange.
Another (wildly).
Look, my dead child! My child, my love,
The last look. . . .
Another. Oh, there cometh worse.
A Greek's bed in the dark. . . .
Another. God curse
That night and all the powers thereof!Another. Or pitchers to and fro to bear
To some Pirênê on the hill,
Where the proud water craveth still
Its broken-hearted minister.
Another. God guide me yet to Theseus' land,
The gentle land, the famed afar . . .
Another. But not the hungry foam—Ah, never!—
Of fierce Eurotas, Helen's river,
To bow to Menelaus' hand,
That wasted Troy with war!
A Woman.
[Antistrophe 2.
Where glimmers round Olympus' roots
A lordly river, red with corn
And burdened fruits.
Another. Aye, that were next in my desire
To Athens, where good spirits dwell . . .
Another. Or Aetna's breast, the deeps of fire
That front the Tyrian's Citadel:
First mother, she, of Sicily
And mighty mountains: fame hath told
Their crowns of goodness manifold. . . .
Another. And, close beyond the narrowing sea,
A sister land, where float enchanted
Ionian summits, wave on wave, And Crathis of the burning tresses
Makes red the happy vale, and blesses
With gold of fountains spirit-haunted
Homes of true men and brave!
Leader.
Grave with the weight of dooms unknown:
A Herald from the Grecian ships.
Swift comes he, hot-foot to be done
And finished. Ah, what bringeth he
Of news or judgment? Slaves are we,
Spoils that the Greek hath won!
[Talthybius, followed by some Soldiers, enters from the left.
Talthybius.
Thy plain with tidings from the Hellene host.
'Tis I, Talthybius. . . . Nay, of ancient use
Thou know'st me. And I come to bear thee news.
Hecuba.
Women of Troy, our long embosomed fear!
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Phthia or Thebes, or sea-worn Thessaly?
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Falls, or can fall on any child of Troy?
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Still first. Say how Cassandra's portion lies.
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
A tirewoman? For Helen's sister's pride?
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Prize that God promisèd
Out of the golden clouds, her virgin crown? . . .
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Cast all away,
The haunted Keys, the lonely stole's array
That kept thy body like a sacred place!
Talthybius.
On such a maid?
Hecuba.
Ye reft from me but now?
Talthybius (speaking with some constraint).
Hecuba.
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Speak, Friend? What fashion of the laws of Greece?
Talthybius.
To fear . . .
Hecuba.
Talthybius.
From all toil else.
Hecuba.
Wife of mine iron-hearted Hector, where
Journeyeth she?
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
The shaken head, the arm that creepeth by,
Staff-crutchèd, like to fall?
Talthybius.
Hecuba.
Rend the cheek till the tears run red!
A lying man and a pitiless
Shall be lord of me, a heart full-flown
With scorn of righteousness:
O heart of a beast where law is none,
Where all things change so that lust be fed,
The oath and the deed, the right and the wrong,
Even the hate of the forkèd tongue:
Even the hate turns and is cold,
False as the love that was false of old!
O Women of Troy, weep for me!
Yea, I am gone: I am gone my ways.
Mine is the crown of misery,
The bitterest day of all our days.
Leader.