ther land as an exile [1025] before I have the enjoyment of you and see you happy, before I have tended to your baths3 and wives and marriage-beds and held the wedding-torches aloft. How wretched my self-will has made me! It was all in vain, I see, that I brought you up, [1030] all in vain that I labored and was wracked with toils, enduring harsh pains in childbirth. Truly, many were the hopes that I, poor fool, once had in you, that you would tend me in my old age and when I died dress me for burial with your own hands, [1035] an enviable fate for mortals. But now this sweet imagining has perished. For bereft of you I shall live out my life in pain and grief. And you will no longer see your mother with loving eyes but pass into another manner of life.[1040] Oh! What is the meaning of your glance at me, children? Why do you smile at me this last smile of yours? Alas, what am I to do? My courage is gone, women, ever since I saw the bright faces of the children. I cannot do it. Farewell, my former [1045] designs! I shall take my children out of the land. Why should I wound their father with their pain and win for myself pain twice as great? I shall not: farewell, my designs! 1 The grim word-play is untranslatable: katagmeans both ‘bring home (from exile)’ and ‘bring down.’ 2 To the children this means Corinth, to Medea it means the nether world. Such veiled discourse is characteristic of this speech, with the exception of the bracketed section below. 3 A special bath for the bride and the groom preceded the wedding. ChorusO earth, o ray of the Sun that lightens all, turn your gaze, o turn it to this ruinous woman before she lays her bloody murderous hands upon her children! [1255] They are sprung from your race of gold, and it is a fearful thing for the blood of a god to be spilt upon the ground by the hands of mortal men. O light begotten of Zeus, check the cruel and murderous Fury, take her from this house ...
