Iphagenia in Aulis by Euripides
Iphagenia:
Listen, mother, listen.
You know nothing can change what is going to happen.
I must die. And I want it.
My father was right: on me depends the sailing of the ships and the defeat of Troy.
What is so precious about this life of mine?
I give my mortal self to Greece for sacrifice t destroy our enemies.
This will be my monument in times to come.
This will be my children. This will be my marriage.
This, this will be my fame.
Remember what they say: men, and women too, must endure.
I say an old, worn, ancient thing and yet it is a true thing.
Nothing's new or changes, but each of us must learn to discover anew.
You must not weep. I am happy, dying.
Life is brief and brutish.
By how we live we make it have a little meaning and have a little brightness, as light braves the darkness...
O I love you very much.
Take from me a lock of hair and let's have no more weeping.
Fetch me my wedding veil and give me wreaths to wind around my head.
Bring them. You are not my women.
You shall come with me and dance around Artemis' alter.
Let us praise and honour her and dance the wedding dance.
I give myself to her.
If Achilles had married me I should have been given to hot Aphrodite as other women are.
But I will worship Artemis and so I will be free, clean and bright and strong.
I am the bride not of Greece.
I love you. Take me. Take me.
I am conqueror of Troy, of Ilion.
Come women, sing, since to Artemis, protector of travellers and of the army waiting.
Now sing of my country's earth and of my home, Mycenae.
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