Peleus.
(Ant. 1)
Woe's me for the deadly alliance
That hath blasted my city, mine home!
Ah my son, that the curse-haunted line[1]
Of thy bride,—unto me, unto mine
Evil-boding,—had trapped not my scion's 1190
Dear limbs in the toils of the tomb,
In the net of Hermionê's flinging!
O that lightning had first dealt her doom!
And alas that the arrow, death-bringing[2]
To thy sire, stirred a man, for defiance
Of a God, against Phœbus to come!
Chorus.
(Str. 2)
With a wail ringing up to the sky
In the measures of Hades' abiders will I
Uplift for my lord stricken low lamentation's outcry.
Peleus.
(Ant. 2)
With a wail to the heavens upborne 1200
I take up the strain, ah me, and I mourn
And I weep, the unblest, the ill-fated, the eld-forlorn.
Chorus.
(Str. 3)
'Tis God's doom: thine affliction God hath wrought.
- ↑ Taking ἐμὸν γένος in apposition to παῖ and τέκνον, (the repetition enhancing the pathos,) and understanding τὸ δυσώνυμον σῶν λεχέων as the ill-omened nature of the alliance with the daughter of Helen and the niece of Klytemnestra, the latter of whom had literally "flung around her lord the net of Hades."
- ↑ See ll. 52, 53. The arrow of Paris, which slew Achilles, was guided by Apollo.
