Hippolytus

1Chorus A rock there is, where, as they say, the ocean dew distils, and from its beetling brow it pours a copious stream for pitchers to be dipped therein;’twas here I had a friend washing robes of purple in the trickling stream, and she was spreading them out on the face of a warm sunny rock; from her I had the tidings, first of all, that my mistress

1Chorus she was wasting on the bed of sickness, pent within her house, a thin veil o’ershadowing her head of golden hair. And this is the third day I hear that she hath closed her lovely lips and denied her chaste body all sustenance, eager to hide her suffering and reach death’s cheerless bourn.

2Chorus Maiden, thou must be possessed, by Pan made frantic or by Hecate, or by the Corybantes dread, and Cybele the mountain mother. Or maybe thou hast sinned against Dictynna, huntress-queen, and art wasting for thy guilt in sacrifice unoffered. For she doth range o’er lakes’ expanse and past the bounds of earth upon the ocean’s tossing billows.

2Chorus Or doth some rival in thy house beguile thy lord, the captain of Erechtheus’ sons, that hero nobly bom, to secret amours hid from thee? Or hath some mariner sailing hither from Crete reached this port that sailors love, with evil tidings for our queen, and she with sorrow for her grievous fate is to her bed confined?

1Chorus O, too clearly didst thou hear our queen uplift her voice to tell her startling tale of piteous suffering. Come death ere I reach thy state of feeling,†loved mistress. O horrible! woe, for these miseries! woe, for the sorrows on which mortals feed! Thou art undone! thou hast disclosed thy sin to heaven’s light. What hath each passing day and every hour in store for thee? Some strange event will come to pass in this house. For it is no longer uncertain where the star of thy love is setting, thou hapless daughter†of Crete.

1Chorus O Love, Love, that from the eyes diffusest soft desire, bringing on the souls of those, whom thou dost camp against, sweet grace, O never in evil mood appear to me, nor out of time and tune approach! Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite’s shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus.

1Chorus Idly, idly by the streams of Alpheus and in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, Hellas heaps the slaughtered steers; while Love we worship not, Love, the king of men, who holds the key to Aphrodite’s sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe.

2Chorus There was that maiden†in Oechalia, a girl unwed, that knew no wooer yet nor married joys; her did the queen of Love†snatch from her home across the sea and gave unto Alcmena’s son, mid blood and smoke and murderous marriage-hymns, to be to him a frantic fiend of hell; woe! woe for his wooing!

2Chorus Ah! holy walls of Thebes, ah! fount of Dirce, ye could testify what course the love-queen follows. For with the blazing levin-bolt did she cut short the fatal marriage of Semele, mother of Zeus-bom Bacchus. All things she doth inspire, dread goddess, winging her flight hither and thither like a bee.

1Phaedra O the cruel, unhappy fate of women!†What arts, what arguments have we, once we have made a slip, to loose by craft†the tight-drawn knot? I have met my deserts. O earth, O light of day! How can I escape the stroke of fate? How my pangs conceal, kind friends? What god will appear to help me, what mortal to take my part or help me in unrighteousness? The present calamity of my life admits of no escape. Most hapless I of all my sex! Chorus Alas, alas! the deed is done, thy servant’s schemes have gone awry, my queen, and all is lost. Phaedra Accursed woman! traitress to thy friends! How hast thou ruined me! May Zeus, my ancestor, smite thee with his fiery bolt and uproot thee from thy place. Did I not foresee thy purpose, did I not bid thee keep silence on the very matter which is now my shame? But thou wouldst not be still; wherefore my fair name will not go with me to the tomb. But now I must another scheme devise. Yon youth, in the keenness of his fury, will tell his father of my sin, and the aged Pittheus of my state, and fill the world with stories to my shame. Perdition seize thee and every meddling fool who by dishonest means would serve unwilling friends! Nurse Mistress, thou may’st condemn the mischief I have done, for sorrow’s sting o’ermasters thy judgment; yet can I answer thee in face of this, if thou wilt hear.’Twas I who nurtured thee; I love thee still; but in my search for medicine to cure thy sickness I found what least I sought. Had I but succeeded, I had been counted wise, for the credit we get for wisdom is measured by our success. Phaedra Is it just, is it any satisfaction to me, that thou shouldst wound me first, then bandy†words with me? Nurse We dwell on this too long; I was not wise, I own; but there are yet ways of escape from the trouble, my child. Phaedra Be dumb henceforth; evil was thy first advice to me, evil too thy attempted scheme. Begone and leave me, look to thyself; I will my own fortunes for the best arrange. (Exit Nurse). Ye noble daughters of Troezen, grant me the only boon I crave; in silence bury what ye here have heard. Chorus By majestic Artemis, child of Zeus, I swear I will never divulge aught of thy sorrows. Phaedra’Tis well. But I, with all my thought,†can but one way discover out of this calamity, that so I may secure my children’s honour, and find myself some help as matters stand. For never, never will I bring shame upon my Cretan home, nor will I, to save one poor life, face Theseus after my disgrace. Chorus Art thou bent then on some cureless woe? Phaedra On death; the means thereto must I devise myself. Chorus Hush! Phaedra Do thou at least advise me well. For this very day shall I gladden Cypris, my destroyer, by yielding up my life, and shall own myself vanquished by cruel love. Yet shall my dying be another’s curse, that he may learn not to exult at my misfortunes; but when he comes to share the self-same plague with me, he will take a lesson in wisdom.

1Chorus O to be nestling’neath some pathless cavern, there by god’s creating hand to grow into a bird amid the winged tribes! Away would I soar to Adrians wave-beat shore and to the waters of Eridanus; where a father’s hapless daughters†in their grief for Phaethon distil into the glooming flood the amber brilliance of their tears.

1Chorus And to the apple-bearing strand of those minstrels in the west I then would come, where ocean’s lord no more to sailors grants a passage o’er the deep dark main, finding there the heaven’s holy bound, upheld by Atlas, where water from ambrosial founts wells up beside the couch of Zeus inside his halls, and holy earth, the bounteous mother, causes joy to spring in heavenly breasts.

2Chorus O white-winged bark, that o’er the booming ocean-wave didst bring my royal mistress from her happy home, to crown her queen’mongst sorrow’s brides! Surely evil omens from either port, at least from Crete, were with that ship, what time to glorious Athens it sped its way, and the crew made fast its twisted cable-ends upon the beach of
 Munychus, and on the land stept out.

2Chorus Whence comes it that her heart is crushed, cruelly afflicted by Aphrodite with unholy love; so she by bitter grief o’erwhelmed will tie a noose within her bridal bower to fit it to her fair white neck, too modest for this hateful lot in life, prizing o’er all her name and fame, and striving thus to rid her soul of passion’s sting.

1Theseus Ah me, my cruel lot! sorrow hath done her worst on me. O fortune, how heavily hast thou set thy foot on me and on my house, by fiendish hands inflicting an unexpected stain? Nay,’tis complete effacement of my life, making it impossible; for I see, alas! so wide an ocean of grief that I can never swim to shore again, nor breast the tide of this calamity. How shall I speak of thee, my poor wife, what tale of direst suffering tell? Thou art vanished like a bird from the covert of my hand, taking one headlong leap from me to Hades’ halls. Alas, and woe! this is a bitter, bitter sight! This must be a judgment sent by God for the sins of an ancestor, which from some far source I am bringing on myself. Chorus My prince,’tis not to thee alone such sorrows come; thou hast lost a noble wife, but so have many others.

1Theseus Fain would I go hide me’neath earth’s blackest depth, to dwell in darkness with the dead in misery, now that I am reft of thy dear presence! for thou hast slain me than thyself e’en more. Who can tell me what caused the fatal stroke that reached thy heart, dear wife? Will no one tell me what befell? doth my palace all in vain give shelter to a herd of menials? Woe, woe for thee, my wife! sorrows past speech, past bearing, I behold within my house; myself a ruined man, my home a solitude, my children orphans! Chorus Gone†and left us hast thou, fondest wife and noblest of all women’neath the sun’s bright eye or night’s star-lit radiance.†

1Chorus In very deed the thoughts I have about the gods, whenso they come into my mind, do much to soothe its grief, but though I cherish secret hopes of some great guiding will, yet am I at fault when I survey the fate and doings of the sons of men; change succeeds to change, and man’s life veers and shifts in endless restlessness.

1Chorus Fortune grant me this, I pray, at heaven’s hand,—a happy lot in life and a soul from sorrow free; opinions let me hold not too precise nor yet too hollow; but, lightly changing my habits to each morrow as it comes, may I thus attain a life of bliss!

2Chorus For now no more is my mind free from doubts, unlooked-for sights greet my vision; for lo! I see the morning star of Athens, eye of Hellas, driven by his father’s fury to another land. Mourn, ye sands of my native shores, ye oak-groves on the hills, where with his fleet hounds he would hunt the quarry to the death, attending on Dictynna, awful queen.

2Chorus No more will he mount his car drawn by Venetian steeds, filling the course round Limna with the prancing†of his trained horses. Nevermore in his fathers house shall he wake the Muse that never slept beneath his lute-strings; no hand will crown the spots where rests the maiden Latona’mid the boskage deep; nor evermore shall our virgins vie to win thy love, now thou art banished;