RHESUS

A monologue from the play by Euripides

TRANSLATED BY GILBERT MURRAY

HECTOR: Thou child of Music and the Thracian flood,

Strymonian Rhesus, Truth is always good

In Hector's eyes. I wear no double heart.

 

Long, long ago thou shouldst have born thy part

In Ilion's labours, not have left us here,

For all thy help, to sink beneath the spear.

Why didst thou -- not for lack of need made plain! --

Not come, not send, not think of us again?

What grave ambassadors prayed not before

Thy throne, what herald knelt not at thy door?

What pride of gifts did Troy not sent to thee?

And thou, a lord of Barbary even as we,

Thou, brother of our blood, like one at sup

Who quaffs his fill and flings away the cup,

Hast flung to the Greeks my city! Yet, long since,

'Twas I that found thee but a little prince

And made thee mighty, I and this right hand;

When round Pangaion and the Paion's land,

Front against front, I burst upon the brood

Of Thrace and broke their targes, and subdued

Their power to thine. The grace whereof, not small,

Thou hast spurned, and when thy kinsmen, drowning, call,

Comest too late. Thou! Others there have been

These long years, not by nature of our kin . . .

Some under yon rough barrows thou canst see

Lie buried; they were true to Troy and me;

And others, yet here in the shielded line

Or mid the chariots, parching in the shine

Of noonday, starving in the winds that bite

Through Ilion's winter, still endure and fight

On at my side. 'Twas not their way, to lie

On a soft couch and, while the cups go by,

Pledge my good health, like thee, in Thracian wine.

 

I speak as a free man. With thee and thine

Hector is wroth, and tells thee to thy face.

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