EURIPIDES
Nurse
I will, but I doubt if I'll manage
To win my mistress over. 185
But still 111 attempt it to please you.
Such a look she will flash on her servants
If any comes near with a message,
Like a lioness, guarding her cubs.
It is right, I think, to consider 190
Both stupid and lacking in foresight
Those poets of old who wrote songs
For revels and dinners and banquets,
Pleasant sounds for men living at ease;
But none of them all has discovered 195
How to put to an end with their singing
Or musical instruments grief,
Bitter grief, from which death and disaster
Cheat the hopes of a house. Yet how good
If music could cure men of this I But why raise 200
To no purpose the voice at a banquet? For there is
Already abundance of pleasure for men
With a joy of its own.
(The Nurse goes into the house?)
Chorus
I heard a shriek that is laden with sorrow.
Shrilling out her hard grief she cries out 205
Upon him who betrayed both her bed and her marriage.
Wronged, she calls on the gods,
On the justice of Zeus, the oath sworn,
Which brought her away
To the opposite shore,of the Greeks 210
Through the gloomy salt straits to the gateway
Of the salty unlimited sea.
(Medea, attended by servants, comes out of the house.)
Medea
Women of Corinth, I have come outside to you
Lest you should be indignant with, me; for I know 215