Hippolytus
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Chorus
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About her neck she tied the hangman’s knot.
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Theseus
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Had grief so chilled her blood? or what had befallen her?
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Chorus
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I know but this, for I am myself but now arrived at the house
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to mourn thy sorrows, O Theseus.
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Theseus
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Woe is me! why have I crowned my head with woven garlands, when misfortune greets my embassage? Unbolt the doors, servants,
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loose their fastenings, that I may see the piteous sight,
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my wife, whose death is death to me. [The palace opens, disclosing the corpse.
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Chorus
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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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Theseus
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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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Chorus
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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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Theseus
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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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Chorus
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GoneLines 848-851 attributed to Theseus in the Greek. 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.Reading with Jacobs, whom Nauck follows, ἀστεπωπὸν σέλας.
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Chorus
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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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Theseus
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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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Chorus
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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.This passage, as it stands, is unintelligible and corrupt. Paley attempts to extract meaning by changing μὲν into γ’ ἄν, but the result is not very satisfactory. My master’s house,
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alas! is ruined, brought to naught, I say. Nauck brackets the following three lines as spurious.Spare it, O Heaven, if it may be. Hearken to my prayer, for I see, as with prophetic eye, an omen boding mischief.
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Theseus
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O horror! woe on woe!
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and still they come, too deep for words, too heavy to bear. Ah me!
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Chorus
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What is it? speak, if I may share in it.
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Theseus
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This letter loudly tells a hideous tale! where can I escape my load of woe? For I am ruined and undone, so awful are the words I find here written clear
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as if she cried them to me; woe is me!
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Chorus
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Alas! thy words declare themselves the harbingers of woe.
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Theseus
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I can no longer keep the cursed tale within the portal of my lips, cruel though its utterance be. Ah me!
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Hippolytus hath dared by brutal force to violate my honour, recking naught of Zeus, whose awful eye is over all. O father Poseidon, once didst thou promise to fulfil three prayers of mine ; answer one of these and slay my son, let him not escape this single day,
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if the prayers thou gavest me were indeed with issue fraught.
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Chorus
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O king, I do conjure thee, call back that prayer; hereafter thou wilt know thy error. Hear, I pray.
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Theseus
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Impossible! Moreover I will banish him from this land, and by one of two fates shall he be struck down;
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either Poseidon, out of respect to my prayer, will cast his dead body into the house of Hades; or exiled from this land, a wanderer to some foreign shore, shall he eke out a life of misery.
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Chorus
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Lo! where himself doth come, thy son Hippolytus, in good time;
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dismiss thy hurtful rage, King Theseus, and bethink thee what is best for thy family.
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Hippolytus
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I heard thy voice, father, and hasted to come hither; yet know I not the cause of thy presentNauck from the Cento of the Christus Patiens restores τανῦν for τινι; certainly an improvement in the Greek. sorrow, but would fain learn of thee.
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Ha! what is this? thy wife a corpse I see; this is passing strange; ’twas but now I left her; a moment since she looked upon the light.
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How came she thus? the manner of her death?
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this would I learn of thee, father. Art dumb? silence availeth not in trouble; nay, for the heart that fain would know all must show its curiosity even in sorrow’s hour. Be sure it is not right, father,
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to hide misfortunes from those who love, ay, more than love thee.
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Theseus
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O ye sons of men, victims of a thousand idle errors, why teach your countless crafts, why scheme and seek to find a way for everything, while one thing ye know not nor ever yet have made your prize,
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a way to teach them wisdom whose souls are void of sense?
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Hippolytus
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A very master in his craft the man, who can force fools to be wise! But these ill-timed subtleties of thine, father, make me fear thy tongue is running riot through trouble.
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Theseus
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Fie upon thee! man needs should have some certain test set up to try his friends, some touchstone of their hearts, to know each friend whether he be true or false; all men should have two voices, one the voice of honesty, expediency’s the other,
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so would honesty confute its knavish opposite, and then we could not be deceived.
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Hippolytus
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Say, hath some friend been slandering me and hath he still thine ear? am I, though guiltless, banned? I am amazed indeed;
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thy random, frantic words fill me with wild alarm.
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Theseus
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O the mind of mortal man! to what lengths will it proceed? What limit will its bold assurance have? for if it goes on growing as man’s life advances, and each successor outdo the man before him
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in villainy, the gods will have to add another sphere unto the world, which shall take in the knaves and villains.
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Behold this man; he, my own son, hath outraged mine honour, his guilt most clearly proved
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by my dead wife. Now, since thou hast dared this loathly crime, come, look thy father in the face. Art thou the man who dost with gods consort, as one above the vulgar herd? art thou the chaste and sinless saint?
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Thy boasts will never persuade me to be guilty of attributing ignorance to gods. Go then, vaunt thyself, and drive1Hippolytus is here taunted with being an exponent of the Orphic mysteries. Apparently Orpheus, like Pythagoras, taught the necessity of total abstinence from animal food. thy petty trade in viands formed of lifeless food; take Orpheus for thy chief and go a-revelling, with all honour for the vapourings of many a written scroll,
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seeing thou now art caught. Let all beware, I say, of such hypocrites! who hunt their prey with fine words, and all the while are scheming villainy. She is dead; dost think that this will save thee? Why this convicts thee more than all, abandoned wretch!
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What oaths, what pleas can outweigh this letter, so that thou shouldst ’scape thy doom? Thou wilt assert she hated thee, that ’twixt the bastard and the true-born child nature has herself put war; it seems then by thy showing she made a sorry bargain with her life,
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if to gratify her hate of thee she lost what most she prized. ’Tis said, no doubt, that frailty finds no place in man but is innate in woman; my experience is, young men are no more secure than women, whenso the Queen of Love excites a youthful breast;
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although their sex comes in to help them.This apparently means that men, being addicted to the sin mentioned, are more disposed to deal lightly with offenders of their own sex. But the line has little point, and has been condemned by Hirzel, whose judgment Nauck approves, without however actually noting the fact in his own text. Yet why do I thus bandy words with thee, when before me lies the corpse, to be the clearest witness? Begone at once, an exile from this land, and ne’er set foot again in god-built Athens
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nor in the confines of my dominion. For if I am tamely to submit to this treatment from such as thee, no more will Sinis,Sinis and Sciron were two notorious evil-doers, whom Theseus had slain. robber of the Isthmus, bear me witness how I slew him, but say my boasts are idle, nor will those rocks Scironian, that fringe the sea,
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call me the miscreants’ scourge.
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Chorus
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I know not how to call happy any child of man; for that which was first has turned and now is last.
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Hippolytus
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Father, thy wrath and the tension of thy mind are terrible; yet this charge, specious though its arguments appear,
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becomes a calumny, if one lay it bare. Small skill have I in speaking to a crowd, but have a readier wit for comrades of mine own age and small companies. Yea, and this is as it should be; for they, whom the wise despise, are better qualified to speak before a mob.
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Yet am I constrained under the present circumstances to break silence. And at the outset will I take the point which formed the basis of thy stealthy attack on me, designed to put me out of court unheard; dost see yon sun, this earth? These do not contain,
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for all thou dost deny it, chastity surpassing mine. To reverence God I count the highest knowledge, and to adopt as friends not those who attempt injustice, but such as would blush to propose to their companions aught disgraceful or pleasure them by shameful services;
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to mock at friends is not my way, father, but I am still the same behind their backs as to their face. The very crime thou thinkest to catch me in, is just the one I am untainted with, for to this day have I kept me pure from women. Nor know I aught thereof, save what I hear
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or see in pictures, for I have no wish to look even on these, so pure my virgin soul. I grant my claim to chastity may not convince thee; well, ’tis then for thee to show the way I was corrupted. Did this woman exceed in beauty
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all her sex? Did I aspire to fill the husband’s place after thee and succeed to thy house?The next few lines teem with so many difficulties, and present such evident traces of corruption that Weil rejects them bodily; Nauck, approving his verdict, endeavours however by new punctuation to exhort a meaning; while Mahaffy, following a system scarcely likely to win favour universally, entirely rearranges the passage. It is not improbable that here and elsewhere in this play, the two editions of it may have led to some confusion, due to the introduction by ignorant copyists of inappropriate lines from one edition to the other. That surely would have made me out a fool, a creature void of sense. Thou wilt say, Your chaste man loves to lord it. No, no! say I, sovereignty pleases only those
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whose hearts are quite corrupt. Now, I would be the first and best at all the games in Hellas, but second in the state, for ever happy thus with the noblest for my friends. For there one may be happy, and the absence of danger
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gives a charm beyond all princely joys.
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One thing I have not said, the rest thou hast. Had I a witness to attest my purity, and were I pitted ’gainst her still alive, facts would show thee on enquiry who the culprit was.
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Now by Zeus, the god of oaths, and by the earth, whereon we stand, I swear to thee I never did lay hand upon thy wife nor would have wished to, or have harboured such a thought Slay me, ye gods! rob me of name and honour, from home and city cast me forth, a wandering exile o’er the earth!
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nor sea nor land receive my bones when I am dead, if I am such a miscreant! I cannot say if she through fear destroyed herself, for more than this am I forbid. With her discretion took the place of chastity,
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while I, though chaste, was not discreet in using this virtue.There seems to be a play on the double meaning of the word σώφρων, unattainable by any one word in English. To obtain this, however, the Greek must be rather violently handled. Nauck cuts the Gordian knot by at once rejecting the passage; his plan certainly relieves Euripides of a host of difficulties, but where is it to stop? Of many conjectures, Weil’s is so ingenious that it is at least worth quoting: . . . οὐκ ἔκουσ’ ἄλλως φροωεῖν … οὐ κακῶς . . . i.e. she was virtuous, because she had no chance of being otherwise, whereas I, who had such a chance, did not put it to a bad use.
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Chorus
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Thy oath by heaven, strong security, sufficiently refutes the charge.
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Theseus
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A wizard or magician must the fellow be, to think he can first flout me, his father,
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then by coolness master my resolve.
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Hippolytus
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Father, thy part in this doth fill me with amaze; wert thou my son and I thy sire, by heaven! I would have slain, not let thee off with banishment, hadst thou presumed to violate my honour.
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Theseus
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A just remark! yet shalt thou not die by the sentence thine own lips pronounce upon thyself; for death, that cometh in a moment, is an easy end for wretchedness. Nay, thou shalt be exiled from thy fatherland, and wandering to a foreign shore drag out a life of misery;
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for such are the wages of sin.Bergk rejects the first, Nauck the second of these lines.
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Hippolytus
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Oh! what wilt thou do? Wilt thou banish me, without so much as waiting for Time’s evidence on my case?
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Theseus
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Ay, beyond the sea, beyond the bounds of Atlas, if I could, so deeply do I hate thee.
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Hippolytus
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What! banish me untried, without even testing my oath, the pledge I offer, or the voice of seers?
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Theseus
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This letter here, though it bears no seers’ signs, arraigns thy pledges; as for birds that fly o’er our heads, a long farewell to them.
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Hippolytus
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(aside). Great gods! why do I not unlock my lips, seeing that I am ruined by you, the objects of my reverence? No, I will not; I should nowise persuade those whom I ought to, and in vain should break the oath I swore.
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Theseus
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Fie upon thee! that solemn air of thine is more than I can bear.
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Begone from thy native land forthwith!
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Hippolytus
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Whither shall I turn? Ah me! whose friendly house will take me in, an exile on so grave a charge?
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Theseus
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Seek one who loves to entertain as guests and partners in his crimes corrupters of men’s wives.
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Hippolytus
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Ah me! this wounds my heart and brings me nigh to tears to think that I should appear so vile, and thou believe me so.
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Theseus
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Thy tears and forethought had been more in season when thou didst presume to outrage thy father’s wife.
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Hippolytus
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O house, I would thou couldst speak for me and witness if I am so vile!
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Theseus
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Dost fly to speechless witnesses? This deed, though it speaketh not, proves thy guilt clearly.
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Hippolytus
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Alas! Would I could stand and face myself, so should I weep to see the sorrows I endure.
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Theseus
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Ay, ’tis thy character to honour thyself far more than reverence thy parents, as thou shouldst.
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Hippolytus
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Unhappy mother! son of sorrow! Heaven keep all friends of mine from bastard birth!