Clytemnestra
Stay; why seek to escape? give me your hand, a prelude to a happy marriage.
Achilles
What is it you say? I give you my hand? To lay a finger where I have no right, I could never meet Agamemnon's eye.
Clytemnestra
[835]
The best of rights you have, seeing it is my child you will wed, O son of the sea-goddess, daughter of Nereus.
Achilles
What wedding do you speak of? Words fail me, lady; can your wits have gone astray and are you inventing this?
Clytemnestra
All men are naturally shy in the presence of new relations,
[840]
when these remind them of their wedding.
Achilles
Lady, I have never courted your daughter, nor have the sons of Atreus ever mentioned marriage to me.
Clytemnestra
What can it mean? Your turn now to marvel at my words, for yours are very strange to me.
Achilles
[845]
Hazard a guess; that we can both do in this matter; for it may be we are both correct in our statements.
Clytemnestra
What! have I suffered such indignity? The marriage I am courting has no reality it seems; I am ashmed of it.
Achilles
Some one perhaps has made a mock of you and me;
[850]
pay no heed to it; make light of it.
Clytemnestra
Farewell; I can no longer face you with unfaltering eyes, after being made a liar and suffering undeservedly.
Achilles
It is “farewell” I bid you too, lady; and I go within the tent to seek your husband.
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Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, translated by E. P. Coleridge. Volume II. London. George Bell and Sons. 1891.
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