Stasimon 1
[Choral]
Happy are they who find the goddess come in moderate might, sharing with self-restraint
Chorus
in Aphrodite’s gift of marriage and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied passions, where the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows,
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and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life’s confusion. O lady Cypris, queen of beauty! far from my bridal bower I ban the last. Be mine delight in moderation
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and pure desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess!
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Men’s natures vary, and their habits differ,
but virtue is always manifest. Likewise the training that come of education conduces greatly to virtue; for not only is modesty wisdom, but it has also the rare graceἐξαλλάσσουσαν χάριν. Liddell and Scott render as above. Paley follows Hermann in rendering a compensating pleasure. The whole of this chorus is so full, however, of corruption, and possibly interpolation, that it is not unlikely that this phrase was not of Euripides’ coining.
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of seeing by its better judgment what is right; whereby a glory, ever young, is shed over life by reputation. A great thing it is to hunt virtue, for women when they love
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secretly; while in men, an inborn sense of order, shown in countless ways,Reading κόσμος ἐνὼν ὁ μυριπληθὴς with Markland, but here again it is hopeless to recover the true reading. adds to a city’s greatness.
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You came, O Paris, to the place where you were reared to herd the cows
among the white heifers of Ida, piping in foreign strain and breathing on your reeds an echo of the Phrygian airs Olympus played. Full-uddered cows were browsing at the spot
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whereReading ὄθι with Hartung. that verdict between goddesses was awaiting you—the cause of your going to Hellas to stand before the ivory palace, kindling love in Helen’s
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entranced eyes and feeling its flutter in your own breast; from which the fiend of strife brought Hellas with her spear and ships to the towers of Troy.
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