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Nurse
I will do so. But there is doubt whether I shall persuade [185] my mistress. Still, I will make you a further present of my labor, though she glowers at the servants with the look of a lioness with cubs when any of them approaches her with something to say. [190] You would be right to call men of old foolish, not at all wise: for while they invented songs for festivities, banquets, and dinners and added pleasant sounds to human life, [195] no one discovered how to put an end to mortals' bitter griefs with music and song sung to the lyre. It is because of these griefs that deaths and terrible disasters overthrow houses. It would have been a gain for mortals [200] to cure these ills by song. Where there are feasts of plenty, why do they raise the loud song to no purpose? The abundance of the feast at hand provides mortals with its own pleasure.Exit Nurse into the house.
Euripides. Euripides, with an English translation by David Kovacs. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. forthcoming.
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