Hippolytus

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 516 sections

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sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe.
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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
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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!
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Ah! holy walls of Thebes, ah! fount of Dirce, ye could testify what course the love-queen follows. For with the blazing levin-bolt
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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.
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What a cry was there! what loud alarm! say what sudden terror, lady, doth thy soul dismay.
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I am undone. Stand here at the door and hear the noise arising in the house.
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Thou art already by the bolted door; ’tis for thee to note the sounds that issue from within. And tell me, O tell me what mischief can be on foot.
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’Tis the son of the horse-loving Amazon who calls, Hippolytus, uttering foul curses on my servant.
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I hear a noise, but cannot clearly tell which way it comes. Ah! ’tis through the door the sound reached thee.
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Yes, yes, he is calling her plainly enough a go-between in vice,
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traitress to her master’s honour.
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Woe, woe is me! thou art betrayed, dear mistress! What counsel shall I give thee? thy secret is out; thou art utterly undone.
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Ah me! ah me!
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Betrayed by friends!
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She hath ruined me by speaking of my misfortune; ’twas kindly meant, but an ill way to cure my malady.
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O what wilt thou do now in thy cruel dilemma?
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I only know one way,
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one cure for these my woes and that is instant death.
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O mother earth! O sun’s unclouded orb! What words, unfit for any lips, have reached my ears!
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Peace, my son, lest some one hear thy outcry.
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I cannot hear such awful words and hold my peace.
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I do implore thee by thy fair right hand.
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Let go my hand, touch not my robe.
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O by thy knees I pray, destroy me not utterly.
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Why say this, if, as thou pretendest, thy lips are free from blame?
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My son, this is no story to be noised abroad.
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A virtuous tale grows fairer told to many.
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Never dishonour thy oath, thy son.
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My tongue an oath did take, but not my heart.
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My son, what wilt thou do? destroy thy friends?
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Friends indeed! the wicked are no friends of mine.
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O pardon me; to err is only human, child.
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Great Zeus, why didst thou, to man’s sorrow, put woman, evil counterfeit, to dwell where shines the sun? If thou wert minded that the human race should multiply, it was not from women they should have drawn their stock,
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but in thy temples they should have paid gold or iron or ponderous bronze and bought a family, each man proportioned to his offering, and so in independence dwelt, from women free.
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But now as soon as ever we would bring this plague into our home we bring its fortune to the ground.1 ’Tis clear from this how great a curse a woman is; the very father, that begot and nurtured her, to rid him of the mischief gives her a dower and packs her off;
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while the husband, who takes the noxious weed into his home, fondly decks his sorry idol in fine raiment and tricks her out in robes, squandering by degrees, unhappy wight! his house’s wealth. For he is in this dilemma;
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say his marriage has brought him good connections, he is glad then to keep the wife he loathes; or, if he gets a good wife but useless relations, he tries to stifle the bad luck with the good. But it is easiest for him who has settled in his house as wife a mere nobody, incapable from simplicity.
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I hate a clever woman; never may she set foot in my house who aims at knowing more than women need; for in these clever women Cypris implants a larger store of villainy, while the artless woman is by her shallow wit from levity debarred.
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No servant should ever have had access to a wife, but men should put to live with them beasts, which bite, not talk, in which case they could not speak to any one nor be answered back by them. But, as it is, the wicked in their chambers plot wickedness,
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and their servants carry it abroad.
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Even thus, vile wretch, thou cam’st to make me partner in an outrage on my father’s honour; wherefore I must wash that stain away in running streams, dashing the water into my ears. How could I commit so foul a crime
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when by the very mention of it I feel myself polluted? Be well assured, woman, ’tis only my religious scruple saves thee. For had not I unawares been caught by an oath, ’fore heaven! I would not have refrained from telling all unto my father. But now I will from the house away, so long as
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Theseus is abroad, and will maintain strict silence. But, when my father comes, I will return and see how thou and thy mistress face him, and so shall I learn by experience the extent of thy audacity.
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Perdition seize you both! (To the audience). I can never satisfy my hate for
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women, no! not even though some say this is ever my theme, for of a truth they always are evil. So either let some one prove them chaste, or let me still trample on them for ever.
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O the cruel, unhappy fate of women!
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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?
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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!
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Alas, alas! the deed is done, thy servant’s schemes have gone awry, my queen, and all is lost.
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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.
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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,
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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!
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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.
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Had I but succeeded, I had been counted wise, for the credit we get for wisdom is measured by our success.
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Is it just, is it any satisfaction to me, that thou shouldst wound me first, then bandy words with me?
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We dwell on this too long; I was not wise, I own;
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but there are yet ways of escape from the trouble, my child.
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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).
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Ye noble daughters of Troezen, grant me the only boon I crave; in silence bury what ye here have heard.
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By majestic Artemis, child of Zeus, I swear I will never divulge aught of thy sorrows.
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’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,
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nor will I, to save one poor life, face Theseus after my disgrace.
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Art thou bent then on some cureless woe?
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On death; the means thereto must I devise myself.
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Hush!
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Do thou at least advise me well.
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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;
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but when he comes to share the self-same plague with me, he will take a lesson in wisdom.
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O to be nestling ’neath some pathless cavern, there by god’s creating hand to grow into a bird amid the winged tribes!
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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
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distil into the glooming flood the amber brilliance of their tears.
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And to the apple-bearing strand of those minstrels in the west I then would come, where ocean’s lord
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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,
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and holy earth, the bounteous mother, causes joy to spring in heavenly breasts.
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O white-winged bark, that o’er the booming ocean-wave didst bring
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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,
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and the crew made fast its twisted cable-ends upon the beach of Munychus, and on the land stept out.
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Whence comes it that her heart
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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,
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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.
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Woe! woe is thee for thy piteous lot! thou hast done thyself a hurt deep enough to overthrow this family. Ah! ah! the daring of it! done to death by violence and unnatural means, the desperate effort
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of thy own poor hand! Who cast the shadow o’er thy life, poor lady?
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My prince, ’tis not to thee alone such sorrows come;
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thou hast lost a noble wife, but so have many others.
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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.
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Who can tell me what caused the fatal stroke that reached thy heart, dear wife? Will no one tell me what befell?
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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!
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Gone and left us hast thou, fondest wife and noblest of all women
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’neath the sun’s bright eye or night’s star-lit radiance.
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Poor house, what sorrows are thy portion now! My eyes are wet with streams of tears to see thy fate;
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but the sequel to this tragedy has long with terror filled me.
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Ha! what means this letter? clasped in her dear hand it hath some strange tale to tell. Hath she, poor lady, as a last request, written her bidding as to my marriage and her children?
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Take heart, poor ghost; no wife henceforth shall wed thy Theseus or invade his house. Ah! how yon seal of my dead wife stamped with her golden ring affects my sight! Come, I will unfold the sealed packet
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and read her letter’s message to me.
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Woe unto us! Here is yet another evil in the train by heaven sent. Looking to what has happened, I should count my lot in life no longer worth one’s while to gain. My master’s house,

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg005.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.