CHORUS:The meeting place
Of debt to Justice and to the gods
Is a terrible, terrible place.ΧΟΡΟΣ:[τὸ γὰρ ὑπέγγυον
Δίκᾳ καὶ θεοῖσιν οὐ συμπίτνει:
ὀλέθριον ὀλέθριον κακόν.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Hecuba [Hekabe; Ἑκάβη], l. 1028ff (c. 424 BC) [tr. @sentantiq (2020)]
(Source)
To Polymestor as he unknowingly goes to suffer Hecuba's bloody vengeance.
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:For twofold ruin doth impend
O'er him who human laws pursue,
And righteous Gods indignant view.
[tr. Wodhull (1809)]For where the rites of hospitality coincide with justice, and with the Gods, on the villain who dares to violate these destructive, destructive indeed impends the evil.
[tr. Edwards (1826)]For wherever it cometh to pass that the rightful demand
Of justice's claim and the laws of the Gods be at one,
Then is ruinous bane for the sinner, O ruinous bane!
[tr. Way (Loeb) (1894)]When the Gods and Justice meet,
And the Pledge that is forfeited,
The end is Ruin.
[tr. Sheppard (1924)]For the rights of justice and of the gods do not fall together; there is ruin full of death and doom.
[tr. Coleridge (1938)]Justice and the gods
exact the loan at last.
[tr. Arrowsmith (1958)]When the gods call in their debt
and Justice wants your scalp as well,
better for you if you were dead
as your life will be one long hell.
[tr. Harrison (2005)]Because when Justice and Heaven are both transgressed, there will be doom. Doom and more doom!
[tr. Theodoridis (2007)]Where justice and the gods converge, there’s a maelstrom.
[tr. Karden/Street (2011)]

