Opening Hecuba — Euripides in Plato Scroll… Continue →
Euripides · E. P. Coleridge (1891), modernised by Perseus
Scene: Before Agamemnon’s tent in the Greek camp upon the shore of the Thracian Chersonese. The Ghost of Polydorus appears. 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 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. 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 to carry weapons or to …
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