Part 1

Ballantyne Press BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. LONDON AND EDINBURGH

HECUBA

_AND OTHER PLAYS_

BY EURIPIDES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY MICHAEL WODHULL

_WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY_ LL.D., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW AND NEW YORK 1888

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. LONDON AND EDINBURGH

MORLEY’S UNIVERSAL LIBRARY.

1. _Sheridan’s Plays._ 2. _Plays from Molière._ By English Dramatists. 3. _Marlowe’s Faustus_ and _Goethe’s Faust_. 4. _Chronicle of the Cid._ 5. _Rabelais’ Gargantua_ and the _Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel_. 6. _Machiavelli’s Prince._ 7. _Bacon’s Essays._ 8. _Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year._ 9. _Locke on Civil Government and Filmer’s “Patriarcha.”_ 10. _Butler’s Analogy of Religion._ 11. _Dryden’s Virgil._ 12. _Scott’s Demonology and Witchcraft._ 13. _Herrick’s Hesperides._ 14. _Coleridge’s Table-Talk._ 15. _Boccaccio’s Decameron._ 16. _Sterne’s Tristram Shandy._ 17. _Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad._ 18. _Mediæval Tales._ 19. _Voltaire’s Candide_, and _Johnson’s Rasselas_. 20. _Jonson’s Plays and Poems._ 21. _Hobbes’s Leviathan._ 22. _Samuel Butler’s Hudibras._ 23. _Ideal Commonwealths._ 24. _Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey._ 25 & 26. _Don Quixote._ 27. _Burlesque Plays and Poems._ 28. _Dante’s Divine Comedy._ LONGFELLOW’S Translation. 29. _Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, Plays, and Poems._ 30. _Fables and Proverbs from the Sanskrit._ (_Hitopadesa._) 31. _Lamb’s Essays of Elia._ 32. _The History of Thomas Ellwood._ 33. _Emerson’s Essays, &c._ 34. _Southey’s Life of Nelson._ 35. _De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium-Eater, &c._ 36. _Stories of Ireland._ By Miss EDGEWORTH. 37. _Frere’s Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, Birds._ 38. _Burke’s Speeches and Letters._ 39. _Thomas à Kempis._ 40. _Popular Songs of Ireland._ 41. _Potter’s Æschylus._ 42. _Goethe’s Faust: Part II._ ANSTER’S Translation. 43. _Famous Pamphlets._ 44. _Francklin’s Sophocles._ 45. _M. G. Lewis’s Tales of Terror and Wonder._ 46. _Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation._ 47. _Drayton’s Barons’ Wars, Nymphidia, &c._ 48. _Cobbett’s Advice to Young Men._ 49. _The Banquet of Dante._ 50. _Walker’s Original._ 51. _Schiller’s Poems and Ballads._ 52. _Peele’s Plays and Poems._ 53. _Harrington’s Oceana._ 54. _Euripides: Alcestis and other Plays._ 55. _Praed’s Essays._ 56. _Traditional Tales._ ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 57. _Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity. Books I.-IV._ 58. _Euripides: The Bacchanals and other Plays._ 59. _Izaak Walton’s Lives._ 60. _Aristotle’s Politics._ 61. _Euripides: Hecuba and other Plays._

“Marvels of clear type and general neatness.”—_Daily Telegraph._

INTRODUCTION.

We left the history of the House of Tantalus with a reference to Helen, as we find her in the translated play which is among those which here complete the collection of the extant works of Euripides.

Menelaus sent ambassadors to Troy to demand back Helen, his wife, whom Paris had carried off. The counsels of Antenor were set aside at Troy, by the persuasions of Paris that gave occasion to the Siege of Troy. Agamemnon, on the throne of the deposed Thyestes, had extended his dominion. Homer gave him command over a hundred ships in the expedition against Troy. Some were from Mycene, which although but six or seven miles from Argos had been capital of a separate kingdom until it was reunited to Argos after the defeat and death of Eurystheus; and when Agamemnon succeeded his father Atreus, he enlarged and beautified Mycene. Twenty-eight unsuccessful suitors of Helen were summoned by Menelaus to contribute aid, and under command of the strongest of the confederates, Agamemnon—who was the brother of Menelaus, and who then had by his wife Clytemnestra three daughters, Iphigenia, Chrysothemis, and Electra, also one son, Orestes, then an infant—the expedition sailed for Troy.

But first, when the confederate fleets met as agreed, in the haven of Aulis they were stayed by a dead calm. Guidance was sought from the Oracle, and the soothsayer Calchas reminded Agamemnon of a vow made in the year of Iphigenia’s birth that he would sacrifice to Diana the most beautiful production of the year. That was his daughter, Iphigenia, whom now Diana claimed. The fleet would remain bound in Aulis until the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The story of the sacrifice, of the anger of the maiden’s mother Clytemnestra, and her lover Achilles, is told by Euripides in his “Iphigenia in Aulis.” The Goddess in the act of sacrifice miraculously substituted a hind for the daughter, whom she wafted in a cloud to her temple among the Scythians at Tauris, where she became a Priestess, and where it was the custom of the barbarous people to sacrifice every Greek who landed on their shores.

In the siege of Troy, Paris was slain by the arrows of Philoctetes. Helen then married his brother Deiphobus, whom she betrayed to the Greeks. When she came again into the hands of Menelaus, he was soon reconciled to her. In returning from the ten years’ siege of Troy, many of the companions of Agamemnon were lost by wreck on the coast of Eubœa, where the father of Palamedes, to avenge the unjust killing of his son in the camp of the Greeks, had set up false lights. Agamemnon came safely to Argos with the captive prophetess Cassandra, whom he intended for himself. This was a new affront to Clytemnestra; who remembered the murder of her first husband Tantalus and her first infant, who remembered also the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and who had found a paramour in Ægisthus, son of Thyestes. Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon with an axe as he was coming out of the bath, and then married Ægisthus, who took Agamemnon’s throne.

The young Orestes was saved from his stepfather by a faithful servant, who carried him to Phocis, and there put him under the protection of Strophius. Electra remained at Argos and was married to a peasant, lest a husband powerful in the State should help to restore to their birthrights the children of Agamemnon.

When Orestes had passed out of childhood, he went for guidance to the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and was directed to avenge the murder of his father. He went then, with his inseparable friend Pylades, in disguise to Argos, and was received in a cottage on the boundary of Argos, by Electra and her peasant husband. He learnt that the peasant, strongly attached to the family of Agamemnon, had cancelled the wrong intended by Ægisthus, and had never claimed rights of a husband. Electra was still a maiden princess. Brother and sister then devised and carried out a plan for the killing of their mother Clytemnestra and Ægisthus.

But when the hands of Orestes were stained with his mother’s blood, the Furies rose from Hell, and drove him to distraction. Six days after the murder of Clytemnestra, the citizens of Argos met to pass sentence on Orestes and Electra. Menelaus after a voyage from Troy of seven years’ long delays, then landed at Nauplia near Argos, and would have helped his nephew Orestes; but he gave up Orestes and Electra to the people of Argos upon being told by Tyndarus that if he interfered he should never return to Sparta. The Council of Argos gave leave to Orestes and Electra to carry out upon themselves its sentence of death. After consulting with Pylades they resolved to kill Helen and seize their uncle’s one daughter, Hermione, as hostage. Helen had vanished; Menelaus breathed revenge; Apollo descended to save Orestes from his uncle, and from the people, by declaring that Orestes had done what the gods required. But Apollo bade him cleanse away pollution of his mother’s blood by a year’s banishment, after which he was to submit himself to the judgment of the Areopagus at Athens.

Before the Areopagus one of the Furies was his accuser, Apollo witnessed in his favour. The votes of the Court were equal, and Athené gave the casting vote for his acquittal. But still the Furies were implacable, and Orestes, again appealing to Apollo’s Oracle, was ordered to bring the statue of Diana from Tauris to Athens. Orestes sailed upon this mission with Pylades, whom he had affianced to his sister Electra. When the friends landed on the coast of Tauris, the barbarous people seized them and they were carried to Iphigenia to be sacrificed according to the custom of the land. When on the point of being sacrificed, discovery was made, and, with help of Minerva, not only the image of the goddess Diana, but also Iphigenia her priestess, was conveyed to Athens, in whose territories, at Brauronia, Iphigenia remained priestess until her death.

Meanwhile Menelaus had married his only daughter, Hermione, to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. Neoptolemus, who had offended Apollo by making the god answerable for the death of Achilles, went to Delphi to appease his wrath. Orestes, who sought Hermione for wife, went also to Delphi and persuaded the people there that Neoptolemus sought plunder of the temple. Neoptolemus was, therefore, murdered by the people of Delphi, as he was going unarmed to the temple to propitiate the god. Then Orestes carried off Hermione, and married her, at the same time when his sister Electra was married to Pylades. The plays of Euripides here leave Orestes; ruler on the throne of Agamemnon, reconciled to Menelaus, and married to Hermione, through whom, by right of her mother Helen and her father Menelaus, he may hope to bring also under his rule the dominions of Sparta.

Here ends an abstract of an abstract of the History of the House of Tantalus, as given by Michael Wodhull, Esq., to show the relations to each other of the stories upon which Euripides based many of his plays.

This volume completes our set of English versions of all extant plays of Euripides.

H. M.

_April 1888_

TO THE READERS OF THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY.

The next volume of this Library, published in May 1888, will complete our household edition of Rabelais with the Sequel to Pantagruel. This will be followed in June by “A Miscellany” of short works of special interest taken from different periods of English life. The sixty-three volumes of the Universal Library, re-arranged in historical order, will then form a completed series, and the supply of standard literature in shilling monthly volumes will be left to other editors whose good work in this direction has been called into existence by the success of the Universal Library, which on its first appearance broke new ground.

The work done in these volumes will be continued, without change of aim, in a new series that has been planned to permit issue of large books without the crowding of type which, in this series, has been now and then found necessary. In the New Series, there will be a complete change of form. Substantial and handsome volumes of the best literature will be published in alternate months at a price that will add not more than three shillings to the present annual cost of “The Universal Library.” The name of the new Library will change from the Universal to the Particular. Its books may be named from their _habitat_, and they will usually be edited where the eye raised from the paper and ink rests upon Carisbrooke Castle.

THE FIRST VOLUME OF Morley’s Carisbrooke Library _Will be published on the First of October, 1888_.

H. M.

EURIPIDES.

HECUBA.

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA.

POLYDORE’S GHOST. HECUBA. CHORUS OF CAPTIVE TROJAN DAMES. POLYXENA. ULYSSES. FEMALE ATTENDANT OF HECUBA. AGAMEMNON. POLYMESTOR. TALTHYBIUS.

SCENE.—THE THRACIAN CHERSONESUS.

THE GHOST OF POLYDORE.

Leaving the cavern of the dead, and gates Of darkness, where from all the gods apart Dwells Pluto, come I Polydore, the son Of Hecuba from royal Cisseus sprung, And Priam, who, when danger threatened Troy, Fearing his city by the Grecian arms Would be laid low in dust, from Phrygia’s realm In privacy conveyed me to the house Of Polymestor, of his Thracian friend, Who tills the Chersonesus’ fruitful soil, Ruling a nation famed for generous steeds; But secretly, with me, abundant gold My father sent, that his surviving children Might lack no sustenance, if Ilion’s walls Should by the foe be levelled with the ground. I was the youngest of all Priam’s sons, By stealth he therefore sent me from the realm; Nor could my feeble arm sustain the shield, Or launch the javelin; but while yet entire Each ancient landmark on our frontiers stood, The turrets of the Phrygian state remained Unshaken, and my brother Hector’s spear Prospered in battle; nurtured by the man Of Thrace, my father’s friend, I, wretched youth, Grew like a vigorous scion. But when Troy, When Hector failed, when my paternal dome Was from its basis rent, and Priam’s self, My aged father, at the altar bled Which to the gods his pious hands had reared, Butchered by curst Achilles’ ruthless son; Me, his unhappy guest, my father’s friend Slew for the sake of gold, and having slain, Plunged me into the sea, that he might keep Those treasures in his house. My breathless corse, In various eddies by the rising waves Of ocean tost, lies on the craggy shore, Unwept, unburied. But by filial love For Hecuba now prompted, I ascend A disembodied ghost, and thrice have seen The morning dawn, to Chersonesus land, Since my unhappy mother came from Troy. But all the Grecian army, in their ships, Here anchoring on this coast of Thrace remain Inactive; for appearing on his tomb Achilles, Peleus’ son, restrained the troops, Who homeward else had steered their barks, and claims Polyxena my sister, as a victim Most precious at his sepulchre to bleed; And her will he obtain, nor will his friends Withhold the gift; for fate this day decrees That she shall die: my mother must behold Two of her slaughtered children’s corses, mine, And this unhappy maid’s—that in a tomb I may be lodged, where the firm beach resists The waves, I to her servant will appear, Since from the powers of hell I have obtained The privilege of honourable interment, And that a mother’s hand these rites perform: I shall accomplish what my soul desired. But on the aged Hecuba’s approach, Far hence must I retreat; for from the tent Of Agamemnon she comes forth, alarmed By my pale spectre. O my wretched mother, How art thou torn from princely roofs to view This hour of servitude! what sad reverse Of fortune! some malignant god hath balanced Thy present misery ’gainst thy former bliss.

[_Exit._

HECUBA, _attended by_ TROJAN DAMSELS.

HEC. Forth from these doors, ye gentle virgins, lead me, A weak old woman: O ye nymphs of Troy, Support your fellow-servant, once your queen Bear me along, uphold my tottering frame, And take me by this aged hand; your arm Shall be my staff to lean on, while I strive My tardy pace to quicken. O ye lightnings Of Jove, O Night in tenfold darkness wrapt, By such terrific phantoms from my couch Why am I scared? Thou venerable earth, Parent of dreams that flit on raven wing; The vision I abhor, which I in sleep This night have seen, relating to my son, Who here is fostered in the Thracian realm, And to Polyxena my dearest daughter; For I too clearly saw and understood The meaning of that dreadful apparition; Ye tutelary gods of this domain, Preserve the only anchor of our house, My son, who dwells in Thracian fields, o’erspread With snow, protected by his father’s friend. Some fresh event awaits us, and ere long By accents most unwelcome shall the ear Of wretchedness be wounded: till this hour, By such incessant horrors, such alarms, My soul was never seized. Where shall I view The soul of Helenus, on whom the god Bestowed prophetic gifts, ye Phrygian maids? Where my Cassandra to unfold the dream? With bloody fangs I saw a wolf, who slew A dappled hind, which forcibly he tore From these reluctant arms, and what increased My fears, was this—Achilles’ spectre stalked Upon the summit of his tomb, and claimed A gift, some miserable Trojan captive. You therefore I implore, ye gods, avert Such doom from my loved daughter.

CHORUS, HECUBA.

CHOR. I to thee, To thee, O Hecuba, with breathless speed, Fly from the tents of our imperious lords, Where I by lot have been assigned, and doomed To be a slave, driven by the pointed spear From Troy; by their victorious arms the Greeks Have made me captive: nothing can I bring, Thy sorrows to alleviate; but to thee Laden with heaviest tidings am I come The herald of affliction. For ’tis said, Greece in full council hath resolved thy daughter A victim to Achilles shall be given. The warrior mounting on his tomb, thou know’st, Appeared in golden armour, and restrained The fleet just ready to unfurl its sails, Exclaiming, “Whither would ye steer your course, Ye Greeks, and leave no offering on my grave?” A storm of violent contention rose, And two opinions in the martial synod Of Greece went forth; the victim, some maintained, Ought on the sepulchre to bleed, and some Such offering disapproved. But Agamemnon, Who shares the bed of the Prophetic Dame, Espoused thy interest; while the sons of Theseus, Branches from the Athenian root, discussed The question largely in each point of view, But in the same opinion both concurred, And said that never should Cassandra’s love To great Achilles’ valour be preferred: Equally balanced the debate still hung, When he, that crafty orator, endued With sweetest voice, the favourite of the crowd, Laertes’ son, persuaded all the host, Not to reject the first of Grecian chiefs, And yield the preference to a victim slave: Lest some vindictive ghost, before the throne Of Proserpine arising, might relate How Greece, unmindful of her generous sons, Who nobly perished for their native land, From Ilion’s fields departed. In a moment Ulysses will come hither, from thy breast, And aged arms to drag the tender maid. But to the temples, to the altars, go, In suppliant posture clasp Atrides’ knees, Invoke the gods of heaven and hell beneath, For either thou wilt by thy prayers avert Thy daughter’s fate, else must thou at the tomb Behold the virgin fall distained with gore, And gushing from her neck a crimson stream.

HEC. Wretch that I am! ah me! what clamorous sounds, What words, what plaints, what dirges shall I find, Expressive of the anguish which I feel? Opprest by miserable old age, bowed down Under a load of servitude too heavy To be endured: what sanctuary remains, What valiant race, what city will protect me? The hoary Priam is no more, my sons Are now no more. Or to this path, or that, Shall I direct my steps? or whither go? Where shall I find some tutelary god? Ye Phrygian captives, messengers of ill, O ye who with unwelcome tidings fraught, Come hither, ye have ruined me. The orb Of day shall never rise to fill this breast With any comfort more. Ye luckless feet, Bear an infirm old woman to the tent Of our captivity. Come forth, my daughter, Come forth and listen to thy mother’voice, That thou may’st know the rumour I have heard, In which thy life is interested.

POLYXENA, HECUBA, CHORUS.

POLYX. O mother, What mean you by those shrieks? what fresh event Proclaiming, from my chamber, like a bird, Have you constrained me, urged by fear, to speed My flight?

HEC. Ah, daughter!

POLYX. With foreboding voice, Why do you call me? these are evil omens.

HEC. Alas! thy life, Polyxena.

POLYX. Speak out, Nor aggravate the horrors yet untold By long suspense. I fear, O mother, much I fear. What mean those oft repeated groans?

HEC. Thou child of a most miserable mother!

POLYX. Why speak you thus?

HEC. The Greeks, with one consent, Resolve that on the tomb of Peleus’ son Thou shalt be sacrificed.

POLYX. What boundless woes Are these which to your daughter you announce! Yet, O my mother, with the tale proceed.

HEC. Of a most horrible report I speak, Which says, that, by the suffrage of the Greeks, It is resolved to take away thy life.

POLYX. O, my unhappy mother, doomed to suffer Wrongs the most dreadful, doomed to lead a life Of utter wretchedness: what grievous curse, Such as no language can express, on you Hath some malignant demon hurled! no more Can I, your daughter, share the galling yoke Of servitude with your forlorn old age; For like some lion’s whelp, or heifer bred Upon the mountains, hurried from your arms Shall you behold me, and with severed head Consigned to Pluto’s subterraneous realms Of darkness, there among the silent dead, Wretch that I am, shall I be laid. These tears Of bitter lamentation I for you, For you, O mother, shed; but my own life I heed not, nor the shame, nor fatal stroke, For I in death a happier lot obtain.

CHOR. To thee, O Hecuba, with hasty step Behold Ulysses some new message brings.

ULYSSES, HECUBA, POLYXENA, CHORUS.

ULY. Though I presume the counsels of our troops And their decision are already known To thee, O woman, yet must I repeat Th’ unwelcome tidings; at Achilles’ tomb, Polyxena, thy daughter, have the Greeks Resolved to slay; me to attend the virgin Have they commanded: but Achilles’ son Is at the altar destined to preside, And be the priest. Know’st thou thy duty then? Constrain us not to drag her from those arms With violence, nor strive with me; but learn The force of thy inevitable woes: For there is wisdom, e’en when we are wretched, In following reason’s dictates.

HEC. Now, alas! It seems a dreadful struggle is at hand, With groans abounding and unnumbered tears. I died not at the time I ought to die, Neither did Jove destroy me; he still spares My life, that I may view fresh woes, yet greater, Wretch that I am, than all my former woes. But if a slave, who not with bitter taunt, Or keen reproach, her questions doth propose, Might speak to freemen, now ’tis time for you To cease, and give me audience while I ask——

ULY. Allowed, proceed; for I without reluctance Will grant thee time.

HEC. Remember you when erst You came to Troy a spy, in tattered garb Disguised, and from your eyes upon your beard Fell tears extorted by the dread of death?

ULY. I well remember: for by that event My inmost heart was touched.

HEC. But Helen knew you, And told me only.

ULY. I can ne’er forget Into what danger I was fallen.

HEC. My knees You in a lowly posture did embrace.