1 EURIPIDES' TROJAN WOMEN PREFACE, TRANSLATION, and ...

Andromache
She’s dead and gone; she’s better off than I who live.
Dying cannot be compared with living;
Death is nothing, in life there is hope.
Hecuba
Andromache
Mother, oh mother, listen as I try to word this well;
perhaps I can say something that will lift your spirits.
I think not to be born is the same as death, and to live
with suffering is worse than dying. If one does not feel pain,
then there is no pain; the sorrow of a long fall
from happiness into unhappiness drives a soul mad.
Polyxena, is dead and it’s as if she never had seen the light;
she is free from suffering.
I aimed high, at good repute, and I got it, but not good luck.
I brought to Hector’s house all the virtues of a good wife.
First, if a wife does not stay indoors, whether she is to blame or not,
she gets a bad reputation, so I tamed my desire and stayed at home. 650
I would not allow women’s wheedling gossip inside my house.
My own good sense taught me, and I put goodness into practice.
My tongue was quiet, and my eye modest;
I knew when my judgement should prevail,
and when I should give in to my husband.
My reputation reached the Greeks and this was my ruin.
When I was taken prisoner, the son of Achilles wanted me
for his bedmate; I shall be a slave
in the house of my husband’s murderer.
If I drive my dear Hector out of my heart,
and open it to my present lover, I will betray the dead;
but if I show myself unwilling, I shall be hated by my new master.
They say that a night in bed with a man wins a woman over.
That’s disgusting, and I despise the woman who rejects
her former husband for love in a new bed. Not even a horse,
if you take her mate from the harness, will bear a new yoke easily.
Yet animals lack speech and are inferior in nature to man.
You, my beloved Hector, were the mate for me;
you were great in intelligence, birth, wealth, and bravery.
You took me pure from my father’s house, and tamed me,
a virgin, in your bed. And now you are dead. I shall sail
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