Epeisodion 6
Messenger
he groaned and said in bitter lament, Ah, misery, am I now the prophet of evil? Am I going on the path
most lined with grief of all that I have walked before? My son’s
voice greets me. Go, my servants,
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hurry closer, and when
you have reached the tomb, enter the opening where the stones of the
mound have been torn away, up to the cell’s very mouth. See if it is
Haemon’s voice that I recognize, or if I am cheated by the
gods.
1215
This search, at our desperate master’s word,
we went to make, and in the furthest part of the tomb
we saw her hanging by the neck, fastened by a halter of fine linen
threads, while he was embracing her with arms thrown around her waist,
bewailing the loss of his bride to the spirits below, as well as his
father’s deeds, and his grief-filled marriage.
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But his father, when he saw him, cried aloud with a
dreadful cry and went in and called to him with a voice of wailing: Ah, unhappy boy, what have you done! What plan have
you seized on? By what misfortune have you lost your reason?
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Come out, my son, I pray
you, I beg you! But the boy glared at him with savage eyes, spat
in his face, and without a word in response drew his twin-edged sword.
As his father rushed out in flight, he missed his aim. Then the
ill-fated boy was enraged with himself
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and straightway stretched himself over his sword and
drove it, half its length, into his side. Still conscious, he clasped
the maiden in his faint embrace, and, as he gasped, he shot onto her
pale cheek a swift stream of oozing blood.
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Corpse enfolding corpse he lay, having won his marriage
rites, poor boy, not here, but in Hades’ palace, and having shown to
mankind by how much the failure to reason wisely is the most severe of
all afflictions assigned to man. Eurydice departs into the
house.
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Chorus
What would you infer from this? The lady
has turned back and gone without a word, either for
good or for evil.
1245
Messenger
I, too, am startled. Still I am nourished by the hope that
at the grave news of her son she thinks it unworthy to make her laments
before the city, but in the shelter of her home will set her handmaids
to mourn the house’s grief.
For she is not unhabituated to discretion, that she
should err.
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Chorus
I do not know. But to me, in any case, a silence too strict
seems to promise trouble just as much as a fruitless abundance of
weeping.
Messenger
I will find out whether she is not, in fact, hiding some
repressed plan in the darkness of her passionate heart.
I will go in, since you are right—in an excess of
silence, too, there may be trouble. Exit Messenger.
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