Medea (Euripedes)

-8-

Chorus

Unhappy woman,

Feu, feu [Ah, ah] unhappy for your miseries.

Where will you turn? To what host for shelter?

Or what home or land will you find

to rescue you from shipwreck?

A god has brought you into an

impassable surge of woes, Medea.

Medea

Things have gone wrong at every turn. Who can deny it?

But this is not how it will be. Don't even think it.

There are still trials for the newly-weds

and for their kin no small troubles.

Do you think that I would ever have fawned on him

if not to get something or with some plan in mind?

I would not even have spoken to him or touched his hands.

He has reached such a state of recklessness,

that though he could have destroyed all my plans

by forcing me out of the country, he has allowed me to remain

this one day, in which I will turn three of my enemies into

corpses, the father, the daughter, and my husband.

I have many ways to kill them;
I do not know which to try first, my friends.

Whether I should set the bridal chamber on fire

or thrust a sharp sword through her liver,

in silence going into the house where the bed is laid.

But there is one thing in the way: if I am caught

entering the house in secret and carrying out my scheme,

I will die and become a laughing stock to my enemies.

Best the straight route in which I am

most skilled - to take them off with poisons.

So far so good.

And then they are dead. What city will take me in?

What friend abroad will offer me asylum

and a secure home and save my life?

There is none. Let me wait a short time

in case some tower of strength will occur to me

and then with deceit and in silence proceed to the murder.

But if I am driven by resourceless misfortune

I will myself take the sword - even if I must die -

and kill them - I will go to such an extreme of daring.

No! By the mistress I worship

most of all and have chosen as my helpmate,

Hecate, dwelling in the inmost recesses of my hearth,

no one will bruise and batter my heart and get away with it.

I will make their marriage bitter and painful,

bitter the royal connection and my exile from this land.

But come. Spare nothing of what you know, Medea, planning and

scheming.

Go now to the edge. This is a contest for heroes.

You see what you suffer. You must not be a laughing stock
to these sons of Sisyphus and this marriage of Jason,

you who are born of a noble father, son of the Sun god.

But you know all that. And besides we are

women, most helpless for the good,

but skilled craftsmen of all that is evil.