Andromeda

Fragments from a Lost Tragedy of Euripides

Translated by Patrick Rourke

Dramatis Personae

  • Andromeda
  • Echo
  • Chorus of Phoenician girls
  • Perseus
  • Kepheus
  • Kassiopeia (?)

[It is sunrise on a strand of beach along Phoenicia’s shore. On a rock outcropping, a beautiful young girl is chained. She is Andromeda, daughter of Kepheus and Kassiopeia. As the sky brightens Andromeda raises her head and sings a lament to the departing Night.]

Andromeda

Sacred Night,
in your chariot
hunting your way
along the starry limb
of high Olympus’
holy element,         [Echo: – Lament!]

Why must I, Andromeda,
find my share of evils
before all others,
and come here
to this precipice
of death?         [Echo: – of death!]

. . .

[A Chorus of young women of Phoenicia enters, picking their way along the rocks.]

Chorus

Now take care,
step here, step there,
the lookouts out in front . . .     [Echo: – Hunt!]

. . .

Andromeda

Dear girls, dear friends . . .

. . .

[As Andromeda sings, the echo continues. Andromeda explains to her friends that she has been exposed here by her father as a sacrifice to Ketos, the whale. The chorus commisserate. Then Andromeda points out the echo, which she doesn’t understand, calling it a voice mocking her in her tears. The chorus explains that it is Echo, and tells her Echo’s story: that she once loved a man called Narcissus, who did not requite her love, and never answered her when she spoke; she pined away, finally leaping from the rocks near her home to her death; but the gods rescued her voice, so that never again would anyone who called out among the rocks be answered only by silence.]

Chorus

Echo, answering your words
not with words of her own . . .     [Echo: – Alone!]

. . .

Andromeda

I call you, Echo,
hiding in your caves:
Leave off, permit me
to take my fill
of lamentation
with these, my dear friends.     [Echo: – Ends!]

. . .

[The echo ceases, and the chorus again take up their commiserations.]

Chorus

A merciless man,
your father,
to abandon you out here
on this strand,
where Hades will find you
exposed,
and the whale will
devour you!

A patriotic sacrifice!

. . .

[Andromeda responds.]

Andromeda

See me now:

All the promises
of my childhood
must remain unfulfilled –
there will be no bridal songs,
no dances on my wedding day.

In their stead,
I stand here alone
locked in braided chains,
exposed, awaiting the arrival
not of a husband as his bride,
but of a whale, as its nourishment.

Sing to me now, my friends,
not wedding songs,
no, but dirges.

Friends, I am suffering;
sing of my sufferings.
Let them all know,
all of my kinsfolk
and my family,
tell them my anguish.

But now, against
all these disasters
I entreat the light above
to shield me from the darkness
of Hades, the land of many tears.

I am accursed,
persecuted by a god.
No one will see my death,
no one will pluck me away
before death’s arrival.

If only one of the stars above
would rain down fire
and consume me, saving me
from the horror that awaits.

But I do not want to see
the fires of immortality,
at the price of my body
hung here, slaughtered,
for some god’s pleasure,
and my soul, embarking
on the swift journey
down to death’s darker regions.

. . .

[Perseus wanders in on winged feet. He is immediately struck by Andromeda’s beauty of form and voice, and her solitary vigil.]

Perseus

Wait. Who is this girl?
How beautifully she carries herself.

What are these waters?
Who is this siren?

. . .

[continues]

Notes

“Sacred Night”: The sequence of this opening lyric has been reconstructed on the model of the parodos to Euripides’ Orestes; it is parodied (almost complete) in Aristophanes̓ Women at the Festival of Torch Bearers (Thesmophoriazusai, the Thesmophoria being an important religious festival for women in Ancient Athens). Translating the first words of this lyric required avoidance of the translators worst possible pitfall: the line, O hiera nyx, is literally “O Holy Night.” I defy any English-speaking reader to hear these words and not complete them with “The stars are brightly shining . . .” Fortunately, the lyric was imitated in Ennius̓ version of Andromeda, and one of the few surviving fragments offers Sacra nox. Hence the translation, “Sacred Night.”