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

Oh you Greeks you have found torture worse than any barbarian’s!
Why do you kill this child who has never done you any wrong?
Oh Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, you are not the child of Zeus.
You are the child of many fathers: an avenging Fury first,
then Envy, and Slaughter, and Death: as many miseries as the earth has borne.
I say you were never Zeus’s daughter, but rather evil incarnate,
a curse on both barbarians and Greeks. Your beautiful eyes
brought ugly destruction to the noble fields of Phrygia.
[To Talthybius]
Here, take him away, carry him off, throw him down,
since that’s your decision, and feast on his flesh.
I am destroyed by the gods, and cannot save my child from death.
Hide my miserable body, throw me in the ship.
I go to a fine marriage after losing my child.
Chorus
Poor Troy, you have lost thousands for the
sake of one hateful woman and her marriage.
Come child, let your poor mother go,
Leave her embrace,
Go to the top of your ancestral towers,
The crown of the city,
Where they voted
You will breathe your last.
[To the guards]
Take him.
[Aside]
A man to deliver messages like these
Should be pitiless and shameless,
Not think and feel the way that I do.
Talthybius
[Exeunt guards and boy; Talthybius with Andromache.]
Child, son of my poor son,
Hecuba
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