“She, when she saw the dress, could not...

“She, when she saw the dress, could not restrain herself.

She agreed with all her husband said, and before

He and the children had gone far from the palace,

She took the gorgeous robe and dressed herself in it,

And put the golden crown around her curly locks,

And arranged the set of the hair in a shining mirror,

And smiled at the lifeless image of herself in it.

Then she rose from her chair and walked about the room,

With her gleaming feet stepping most soft and delicate,

All overjoyed with the present. Often and often

She would stretch her foot out straight and look along it.

But after that it was a fearful thing to see.

The color of her face changed, and she staggered back,

She ran, and her legs trembled, and she only just

Managed to reach a chair without falling flat down.

An aged woman servant who, I take it, through

This was some seizure of Pan or another god,

Cried out “God bless us,” but that was before she saw

The white foam breaking through her lips and her rolling

The pupils of her eyes and her face all bloodless.

Then she raised a different cry from the “God bless us,”

A huge shriek, and the women ran, one to the kind,

One to the newly wedded husband to tell him

What had happened to his bride; and with frequent sound

The whole of the palace rang as they went running.

One walking quickly round the course of a race-track

Would now have turned the bend and be close to the goal,

When she, poor girl, opened her shut and speechless eye,

And with a terrible groan she came to herself.

For a twofold pain was moving up against her.

The wreath of gold that was resting around her head

Let forth a fearful stream of all-devouring fire,

And the finely woven dress your children gave to her,

Was fastening on the unhappy girl’s fine flesh.

She left up from the chair, and all on fire she ran,

Shaking her hair now this way and now that, trying

To hurl the diadem away; but fixedly

The gold preserved its grip, and, when she shook her hair,

Then more and twice as fiercely the fire blazed out.

Till, beaten by her fate, she fell down to the ground,

Hard to be recognized except by a parent.

Neither the setting of her eyes was plain to see,

Nor the shapeliness of her face. From the top of

Her head there oozed out blood and fire mixed together.

Like the drops on pine-bark, so the flesh from her bones

Dropped away, torn by the hidden fang of the poison.

It was a fearful sight; and terror held us all

From touching the corpse. We had learned from what had happened.

But her wretched father, knowing nothing of the event,

Came suddenly to the house, and fell upon the corpse,

And at once cried out and folded his arms about her,

And kissed her and spoke to her, saying “O my poor child,

What heavenly power has so shamefully destroyed you?

And who has set me here like and ancient sepulcher,

Deprived of you? O let me die with you, my child!”

And when he had made an end of his wailing and crying,

Then the old man wished to raise himself to his feet;

But, as the ivy clings to the twigs of the laurel,

So he stuck to the fine dress, and he struggled fearfully.

For he was trying to lift himself to his knee,

And she was pulling him down, and when he tugged hard

He would be ripping his aged flesh from his bones.

At last his life was quenched, and the unhappy man

Gave up the ghost, no longer could hold up his head.

There they lie close, the daughter and the old father,

Dead bodies, and event he prayed for in his tears.

As for your interests, I will say nothing of them,

For you will find your own escape from punishment.

Our human life I think and have thought a shadow,

And I do not fear to say that those who are held

Wise among men and who search the reasons of things

Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves.

For of mortals there is no one who is happy.

If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps

Luckier than one’s neighbor, but still not happy.”

Full text can be found: Trans. Rex Warner, The Medea, originally published Bodley Head Limited, 1944. Ed. David Grene and Richard Lattimore, Euripides I. University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 98-100.