Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/331

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HELEN.
275

Oh that, what time thou mad'st the Gods a feast,
Thou hadst left in presence of the Gods thy life,
Ere thou begattest Atreus, sire to me, 390
Who raised up seed of Aeropê—Agamemnon,
And me, Menelaus, chariot-yoke renowned.[1]
For mightiest host on earth—no vaunt is this—
Did I speed overseas to Troy, their chief;
Nor by compulsion captained them to war, 395
But led with Hellas' heroes' glad consent.
Some must we count mid them that are no more;
Gladly have other some escaped the sea,
And bring back home the names of men deemed dead.
But I far o'er the grey sea's shoreless surge 400
Wander in pain, long as the leaguer-years
Of Troy;[2] and though I yearn to reach my land,
Of this I am not held worthy by the Gods,
But to all Libya's beaches lone and wild[3]
Have sailed: yea, whenso I am nigh my land, 405
Back the blast drives me; never following breeze
Hath swelled my sail to waft me to mine home.
And now, a shipwrecked wretch, my comrades lost,
On this land am I cast: against the rocks
My ship is shattered all in countless shards. 410

  1. ↑ The two chiefs are, by a common figure, compared to two horses yoked to a war-chariot. The same comparison is used of the children of Medea (Medea, 1145), and of the Goddesses approaching Paris on Mount Ida (Andromache 276); also, by Aeschylus (Agamemnon, 44), of these same chiefs.
  2. ↑ Troy was besieged for ten years; Menelaus had now wandered for seven: but the time may well have seemed as long.
  3. ↑ In the coasting navigation of the heroic age, the crews always, when practicable, put ashore for the night, there being no cabins, nor even the rudest sleeping accommodation, on their galleys. See Odyssey, esp. Bks. ix, x, xii.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.