Racine: Phaedra

104
EURIPIDES
Your folly knows, nor can that tongue e'er cease
To utter menaces against your lords;
Hence from these regions justly are you doomed
To be cast forth. But with unwearied love
Attentive to your interest am I come,
Lest with your children you by cruel want
Should be encompassed ; exile with it brings
Full many evils. Me, though you abhor.
To you 1 harbor no unfriendly thought.
Medea.—Thou worst of villains ( for this bitter charge
Against thy abject cowardice my tongue
May justly urge), com'st thou to me, O wretch.
Who to the gods art odious, and to me
And all the human race ? It is no proof
Of courage, or of steadfastness, to face
Thy injured friends, but impudence, the worst
Of all diseases. Yet hast thou done well
In coming : I by uttering the reproaches
Which thou deservest shall ease my burdened soul,
And thou wilt grieve to hear them. With th' events
Which happened first will I begin my charge.
Each Grecian chief who in the Argo sailed
Knows how from death I saved thee, when to yoke
The raging bulls whose nostrils poured forth flames.
And sow the baleful harvest, thou wert sent
Then having slain the dragon, who preserved
With many a scaly fold the golden fleece,
Nor ever closed in sleep his watchful eyes,
I caused the morn with its auspicious beams
To shine on thy deliverance ;
but, my sire
And native land betraying, came with thee
To Pelion, and lolchos' gates : for love
Prevailed o'er reason. Pelias next I slew
Most wretched death—by his own daughter's hands,
And thus delivered thee from all thy fears.
Yet though to me, O most ungrateful man.
Thus much indebted, hast thou proved a traitor.
And to the arms of this new consort fled,
Although a rising progeny is thine.
Hadst thou been childless, 'twere a venial fault