Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 528–589: First episode: Agamemnon fears Odysseus and the army; choral song on Aphrodite

Don’t you think, then, he will arise among the Argives and tell them the oracles that Calchas delivered, saying of me that I undertook to offer Artemis a victim, and after all am proving false? Then, when he has carried the army away with him, he will bid the Argives slay us and sacrifice the girl; and if I escape to Argos, they will come and destroy the place, razing it to the ground, Cyclopean walls and all. That is my trouble. Woe is me! to what perplexities the gods have brought me at this pass! Take one precaution for me, Menelaus, as you go through the army, that Clytemnestra does not learn this, till I have taken my child and devoted her to death, that my affliction may be attended with the fewest tears. And you, foreign women, keep silence.

Happy are they who find the goddess come in moderate might, sharing with self-restraint in Aphrodite’s gift of marriage and enjoying calm and rest from frenzied passions, where the Love-god, golden-haired, stretches his charmed bow with twin arrows, and one is aimed at happiness, the other at life’s confusion. O lady Cypris, queen of beauty! far from my bridal bower I ban the last. Be mine delight in moderation and pure desires, and may I have a share in love, but shun excess!

Men’s natures vary, and their habits differ, but virtue is always manifest. Likewise the training that come of education conduces greatly to virtue; for not only is modesty wisdom, but it has also the rare grace of seeing by its better judgment what is right; whereby a glory, ever young, is shed over life by reputation. A great thing it is to hunt virtue, for women when they love secretly; while in men, an inborn sense of order, shown in countless ways, adds to a city’s greatness.

You came, O Paris, to the place where you were reared to herd the cows among the white heifers of Ida, piping in foreign strain and breathing on your reeds an echo of the Phrygian airs Olympus played. Full-uddered cows were browsing at the spot where that verdict between goddesses was awaiting you—the cause of your going to Hellas to stand before the ivory palace, kindling love in Helen’s entranced eyes and feeling its flutter in your own breast; from which the fiend of strife brought Hellas with her spear and ships to the towers of Troy.