Opening The Phoenician Women — Euripides in Plato Scroll… Continue →
Euripides · E. P. Coleridge (1891), modernised by Perseus
Before the royal palace of Thebes. O Sun-god, you who cut your path in heaven’s stars, mounted on a chariot inlaid with gold and whirling out your flame with swift horses, what an unfortunate beam you shed on Thebes, the day that Cadmus left Phoenicia’s realm beside the sea and reached this land! He married at that time Harmonia, the daughter of Cypris, and begot Polydorus from whom they say Labdacus was born, and Laius from him. I am known as the daughter of Menoeceus, and Creon is my brother by the same mother. They call me Jocasta, for so my father named me, and I am married to Laius. Now when he was still childless after being married to me a long time in the palace, he went and questioned Phoebus, and asked for us both to have sons for the house. But the god said: “Lord of Thebes famous for horses, do not sow a furrow of children against the will of the gods; for if you beget a …
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