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Plot:
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    Contents:
  • Episode 1
  • Choral 1
  • Episode 2
  • Choral 2
  • Episode 3
  • Choral 3
  • Episode 4
  • Choral 4
  • Episode 5
  • Euripides, Hecuba (ed. E. P. Coleridge)

    Editions and translations: Greek (ed. Gilbert Murray) | English (ed. E. P. Coleridge)
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    Scene: Before Agamemnon's tent in the Greek camp upon the shore of the Thracian Chersonese. The Ghost of Polydorus appears.
    Ghost

    I have come from out of the charnel-house and gates of gloom, where Hades dwells apart from gods, I Polydorus, a son of Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, and of Priam. Now my father, when Phrygia's capital [5]  was threatened with destruction by the spear of Hellas, took alarm and conveyed me secretly from the land of Troy to Polymestor's house, his guest-friend in Thrace, who sows these fruitful plains of Chersonese, curbing by his might a nation delighting in horses. [10]  And with me my father sent much gold by stealth, so that, if ever Ilium's walls should fall, his children that survived might not want for means to live. I was the youngest of Priam's sons; and this it was that caused my secret removal from the land; for my childish arm was not able [15]  to carry weapons or to wield the spear. So long then as the bulwarks of our land stood firm, and Troy's battlements abode unshaken, and my brother Hector prospered in his warring, I, poor child, grew up and flourished, like some vigorous shoot, [20]  at the court of the Thracian, my father's guest-friend. But when Troy fell and Hector lost his life and my father's hearth was rooted up, and he himself fell butchered at the god-built altar by the hands of Achilles' murderous son; [25]  then my father's friend killed me, his helpless guest, for the sake of the gold, and then cast me into the swell of the sea, to keep the gold for himself in his house. And there I lie, at one time upon the strand, at another in the salt sea's surge, drifting ever up and down upon the billows, [30]  unwept, unburied; but now I am hovering over the head of my dear mother Hecuba, a disembodied spirit, keeping my airy station these three days, ever since my poor mother came from Troy to linger here in the Chersonese.



    There are a total of 6 comments on and cross references to this page.

    Cross references from Sir Richard Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus:
    * [1249-1555: Fourth episode]: kindunos esche dori pesein Hellênikôi

    Cross references from Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache (ed. Ildar Ibraguimov):
    382 [a) Praesens.]

    Cross references from Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache (ed. Ildar Ibraguimov):
    553 [Adverbialsätze der Absicht, durch hina, oft auch hôs, hopôs, ophra (ep. u. lyr.), damit, [heôs ep.] (negativ hina mê, hôs mê u. s. w., auch bloss mê [lat. ne], damit nicht), eingeleitet).]

    Cross references from Sir Richard Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Antigone:
    * [1-99]

    Cross references from Sir Richard Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Ajax:
    * [201-595]
    * [974-1184]


    Preferred URL for linking to this page: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Eur.+Hec.+1

    The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

    This text is based on the following book(s):
    Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Hecuba, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
    OCLC: 42737896


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