Here's a passage I translated from Euripides' Herakles. Hercules comes to after recovering from one of his berserk spells.
I’m alive, and can see things I should,
Like heaven and earth and shafts of sunlight.
But what terrible turmoil and confusion of mind
I’ve fallen into! What warm, shallow breaths
Come unsteadily from my lungs!
Hey, how did I come to be sitting,
Stout chest and arms bound, chained like a ship
To a stone pillar split in two, among corpses?
Scattered on the ground lie my bow and arrows,
Which once protected my arms and flanks
And were protected by me. Having been sent
To Hades and back by Eurystheus,
Surely I haven’t gone back there already?
Yet I behold neither Sisypheus’ boulder,
Nor Demeter’s daughter Persephone,
Nor Pluto’s staff. All this amazes me:
In all my helplessness, where, oh where am I?
Help! Will some friend from near or far cure me
Of whatever caused this bewilderment?
In this passage from The Phoenician Women, Eteocles, King of Thebes, tells his mother Jocasta his response to his brother Polynices' attempt to conquer the city.
For I’ll hide nothing, Mother, and say this:
I’d go to the risings of the stars in the sky
And beneath the earth, if I could possess this,
The greatest of divinities, Sovereignty!
So I don’t wish, Mother, to give up this prize
To another, rather than keep it myself:
For he who forsakes the greater advantage for
The lesser is a coward. Moreover I’m ashamed,
That my brother came armed and plundered this
land
To get what he wanted; for Thebes would be
disgraced
If I feared Mycenaean power enough
To yield him my staff. He shouldn’t have
Used weapons, Mother, to try and reconcile;
For words can accomplish everything
That even cold steel can. Yet, if he wishes
To live in this land as a common citizen,
He may; but I won’t willingly yield my throne!
In a fragment from a lost play, the leader of a group of mystic cannibals greets King Minos of Crete:
O Son of Phoenician Europa
And the great Zeus, ruling over
Crete and its hundred towns,
I’ve come here, forsaking the sacred temples...
Chaste lives we’ve led since becoming
Mystics to Zeus of Mt. Ida
And Zagreus’ herdsmen in the night,
Making feasts of raw flesh,
For Mother Cybele of the mountains raising the
torch
With the Curetes,
Sanctified as priests of Bacchus.
A famous passage:
Alas and alack, how true the old saying:
We the aged are nothing but noise and spectre,
Creeping along as copies of dreams,
Our minds not there, though we think ourselves
sane.
The story of creation:
And the story isn’t mine, but comes from my
mother,
How Heaven and Earth were a single form;
When they were moved apart
All was created and sent forth into the light,
Trees, winged ones, beasts, sea-fed beings,
And mortal men.
