Parodos
[Episode]
Whom speak’st thou of? Keep watch upon thy tongue lest it some mischief cause.
100
Attendants
Cypris I mean, whose image is stationed o’er thy gate.
Hippolytus
I greet her from afar, preserving still my chastity.
Att
Yet is she an august goddess, far renowned on earth.
Hippolytus
’Mongst gods as well as men we have our several preferences.
Attendants
I wish thee luck, and wisdom too, so far as thou dost need it.
105
Hippolytus
No god, whose worship craves the night, hath charms for me.
Attendants
My son, we should avail us of the gifts that gods confer.
Hippolytus
Go in, my faithful followers, and make ready food within the house; a well-filled board hath charms after the chase is o’er.
Rub down my steeds ye must, that when I have had my all I may yoke them to the chariot and give them proper exercise.
110
As for thy Queen of Love, a long farewell to her.
Attendants
Meantime I with sober mind, for I must not copy my young master,
do offer up my prayer to thy image, lady Cypris, in such words as it becomes a slave to use. But thou should’st pardon all, who, in youth’s impetuous heat, speak idle words of thee; make as though thou hearest not,
115
for gods must needs be wiser than the sons of men.
120
[Choral 1]
A rock there is, where, as they say, the ocean dew distils, and from its beetling brow it pours a copious stream for pitchers to be dipped therein;
Chorus
’twas here I had a friend washing robes of purple in the trickling stream, and she was spreading them out on the face of a warm sunny rock; from her
125
I had the tidings, first of all, that my mistress
130
she was wasting on the bed of sickness, pent within her house, a thin veil o’ershadowing her head of golden hair.
And this is the third day I hear that she hath closed her lovely lips and denied her chaste body all sustenance, eager to hide her suffering
135
and reach death’s cheerless bourn.
140
