Euripides

None of mortals is prosperous or happy to the last, for none was ever born to a painless life.

Ah! who was the mother that bare you? your father, who was he? or your sister, if haply ye had one? of what a gallant pair of brothers will she be bereft! Who knows on whom such strokes of fate will fall? for all that Heaven decrees, proceeds unseen, and no man knoweth of the ills in store; for Fate misleads us into doubtful paths.

Jocasta
Well then, first I ask thee what I long to have answered. What means exile from one’s country? is it a great evil?
Polyneices
The greatest; harder to bear than tell.
Jocasta
What is it like? what is it galls the exile?
Polyneices
One thing most of all; he cannot speak his mind.
Jocasta
This is a slave’s lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks.
Polyneices
The follies of his rulers must he bear.
Jocasta
That too is bitter, to join in the folly of fools.
Polyneices
Yet to gain our ends we must submit against our nature.
Jocasta
Hope, they say, is the exile’s food.
Polyneices
Aye, hope that looks so fair; but she is ever in the future.
Jocasta
But doth not time expose her futility?
Polyneices
She hath a certain winsome charm in misfortune.
Jocasta
Whence hadst thou means to live, ere thy marriage found it for thee?
Polyneices
One while I had enough for the day, and then maybe I had it not.
Jocasta
Did not thy father’s friends and whilom guests assist thee?
Polyneices
Seek to be prosperous; once let fortune lour, and the aid supplied by friends is naught.
Jocasta
Did not thy noble breeding exalt thy horn for thee?
Polyneices
Poverty is a curse; breeding would not find me food.
Jocasta
Man’s dearest treasure then, it seems, is his country.
Polyneices
No words of thine could tell how dear.

Not now for the first time I think this human life a shadow; yea, and without shrinking I will say that they amongst men who pretend to wisdom and expend deep thought on words do incur a serious charge of folly; for amongst mortals no man is happy; wealth may pour in and make one luckier than another, but none can happy be.

Phaedra
What is it they mean when they talk of people being in “love?”
Nurse
At once the sweetest and the bitterest thing, my child.

For here is a man of no account in Argos, with no family reputation to boast, one of the common herd, proved a very hero. A truce to your folly! ye self-deceivers, swollen with idle fancies; learn to judge men by their converse, and by their habits decide who are noble.

So it was all in vain I reared you, O my sons; in vain did suffer, racked with anguish, enduring the cruel pangs of childbirth. ’Fore Heaven I once had hope, poor me! high hope of ye that you would nurse me in my age and deck my corpse with loving hands, a boon we mortals covet; but now is my sweet fancy dead and gone; for I must lose you both and in bitterness and sorrow drag through life. And ye shall never with fond eyes see your mother more, for o’er your life there comes a change.

What sweet relief to sufferers ’tis to weep, to mourn, lament, and chant the dirge that tells of grief!

Foolish mortal he! who thinks his luck secure and so rejoices; for fortune, like a madman in her moods, springs towards this man, then towards that; and none ever experiences the same unchanging luck.

The sweetest news we could receive would be that some sailor had come from the land of Hellas to end the toil of my wretched slavery. For even in dreams may I be with my home and my father’s city, enjoying pleasant sleep, a delight shared with the fortunate.