This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Chorus
Now, O Queen, your joy is plainly revealed; part is with you, and of the rest you have foreknowledge. Deianeira
Yes, how would I not rejoice with dutiful spirit, when I hear of my husband's successful venture? [295] My rejoicing is bound to keep pace with his success. And yet a prudent mind can see room for fear, lest he who prospers should one day stumble. For a strange pity came over me, friends, at the sight of these ill-fated exiles, [300] homeless and fatherless in a foreign land. Though they were once the daughters perhaps of freeborn men, they now live the life of slaves. O Zeus, god who turns the tide of battle, may I never see you stalking against a child of my line on any occasion; [305] no, if you do some such thing, let it not be while I am still alive! So great is my fear, as I look upon these girls. To Iole.
Unfortunate girl, who are you? Are you without a man, or are you a mother? To judge by your appearance, you are untried in those roles, but someone of noble birth. [310] Lichas, whose daughter is this stranger? Who is her mother, who the father who begot her? Speak; I pity her more than all the rest, when I look at her, inasmuch as she alone knows self-control.
Sophocles. The Trachiniae of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1892.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.