remains, I will not taunt her with. Little knows he, the luckless

wight, the sufferings that await him; or how these ills I and my
Phrygians endure shall one day seem to him precious as gold. For

beyond the ten long years spent at Troy he shall drag out other ten
and then come to his country all alone, by the route where fell

Charybdis lurks in a narrow channel 'twixt the rocks; past Cyclops the
savage shepherd, and Ligurian Circe that turneth men to swine;

shipwrecked oft upon the salt sea-wave; fain to eat the lotus, and the
sacred cattle of the sun, whose flesh shall utter in the days to

come a human voice, fraught with misery to Odysseus. But to briefly
end this history, he shall descend alive to Hades, and, though he

'scape the waters' flood, yet shall he find a thousand troubles in his
home when he arrives. Enough why do I recount the troubles of

Odysseus? Lead on, that I forthwith may wed my husband for his home in
Hades' halls. Base thou art, and basely shalt thou be buried, in the

dead of night when day is done, thou captain of that host of Danai,
who thinkest so proudly of thy fortune! Yea, and my corpse cast

forth in nakedness shall the rocky chasm with its flood of wintry
waters give to wild beasts to make their meal upon, hard by my

husband's tomb, me the handmaid of Apollo. Farewell, ye garlands of
that god most dear to me! farewell, ye mystic symbols! I here resign

your feasts, my joy in days gone by. Go, I tear ye from my body, that,
while yet mine honour is intact, I may give them to the rushing

winds to waft to thee, my prince of prophecy I Where is yon
general's ship? Whither must I go to take my place thereon? Lose no

further time in watching for a favouring breeze to fill thy sails,
doomed as thou art to carry from this land one of the three avenging

spirits. Fare thee well, mother mine! dry thy tears, O country dear!
yet a little while, my brothers sleeping in the tomb and my own father

true, and ye shall welcome me; yet shall victory crown my advent
'mongst the dead, when I have overthrown the home of our destroyers,

the house of the sons of Atreus.
Exeunt TALTHYBIUS and CASSANDRA

CHORUS
Ye guardians of the grey-haired Hecuba, see how your mistress is

sinking speechless to the ground! Take hold of her! will ye let her
fall, ye worthless slaves? lift up again, from where it lies, her

silvered head.
HECUBA

Leave me lying where I fell, my maidens unwelcome service grows
not welcome ever-my sufferings now, my troubles past, afflictions

yet to come, all claim this lowly posture. Gods of heaven! small
help I find in calling such allies, yet is there something in the form

of invoking heaven, whenso we fall on evil days. First will I
descant upon my former blessings; so shall I inspire the greater

pity for my present woes. Born to royal estate and wedded to a royal
lord, I was the mother of a race of gallant sons; no mere ciphers

they, but Phrygia's chiefest pride, children such as no Trojan or
Hellenic or barbarian mother ever had to boast. All these have I

seen slain by the spear of Hellas, and at their tombs have I shorn off
my hair; with these my eyes I saw their sire, my Priam, butchered on

his own hearth, and my city captured, nor did others bring this bitter
news to me. The maidens I brought up to see chosen for some marriage

high, for strangers have I reared them, and seen them snatched away.
Nevermore can I hope to be seen by them, nor shall my eyes behold them

ever in the days to come. And last, to crown my misery, shall I be
brought to Hellas, a slave in my old age. And there the tasks that

least befit the evening of my life will they impose on me, to watch
their gates and keep the keys, me Hector's mother, or bake their

bread, and on the ground instead of my royal bed lay down my
shrunken limbs, with tattered rags about my wasted frame. a shameful

garb for those who once were prosperous. Ah, woe is me! and this is
what I bear and am to bear for one weak woman's wooing! O my daughter,

O Cassandra! whom gods have summoned to their frenzied train, how
cruel the lot that ends thy virgin days! And thou, Polyxena! my

child of sorrow, where, oh! where art thou? None of all the many
sons and daughters have I born comes to aid a wretched mother. Why

then raise me up? What hope is left us? Guide me, who erst trod so
daintily the streets of Troy, but now am but a slave, to a bed upon

the ground, nigh some rocky ridge, that thence I may cast me down
and perish, after I have wasted my body with weeping. Of all the

prosperous crowd, count none a happy man before he die.
CHORUS

Sing me, Muse, a tale of Troy, a funeral dirge in strains
unheard as yet, with tears the while; for now will I uplift for Troy a

piteous chant, telling how I met my doom and fell a wretched captive
to the Argives by reason of a four-footed beast that moved on

wheels, in the hour that Achaea's sons left at our gates that horse,
loud rumbling on its way, with its trappings of gold and its freight

of warriors; and our folk cried out as they stood upon the rocky
citadel, "Up now ye whose toil is o'er, and drag this sacred image

to the shrine of the Zeus-born maiden, goddess of our Ilium!" Forth
from his house came every youth and every grey-head too; and with

songs of joy they took the fatal snare within. Then hastened all the
race of Phrygia to the gates, to make the goddess a present of an

Argive band ambushed in the polished mountain-pine, Dardania's ruin, a
welcome gift to be to her, the virgin queen of deathless steeds; and

with nooses of cord they dragged it, as it had been a ship's dark
hull, to the stone-built fane of the goddess Pallas, and set it on

that floor so soon to drink our country's blood. But, as they laboured
and made merry, came on the pitchy night; loud the Libyan flute was

sounding, and Phrygian songs awoke, while maidens beat the ground with
airy foot, uplifting their gladsome song; and in the halls a blaze

of torchlight shed its flickering shadows on sleeping eyes. In that
hour around the house was I singing as I danced to that maiden of

the hills, the child of Zeus; when lo! there rang along the town a cry
of death which filled the homes of Troy, and little babes in terror

clung about their mothers' skirts, as forth from their ambush came the
warrior-band, the handiwork of maiden Pallas. Anon the altars ran with

Phrygian blood, and desolation reigned o'er every bed where young
men lay beheaded, a glorious crown for Hellas won, ay, for her, the

nurse of youth, but for our Phrygian fatherland a bitter grief.
Look, Hecuba! dost see Andromache advancing hither on a foreign car?

and with her, clasped to her throbbing breast, is her dear Astyanax,
Hector's child.

Enter ANDROMACHE.
HECUBA

Whither art thou borne, unhappy wife, mounted on that car, side by
side with Hector's brazen arms and Phrygian spoils of war, with

which Achilles' son will deck the shrines of Phthia on his return from
Troy?

ANDROMACHE
My Achaean masters drag me hence.

HECUBA
Woe is thee!

ANDROMACHE
Why dost thou in note of woe utter the dirge that is mine?

HECUBA
Ah me!

ANDROMACHE
For these sorrows.

HECUBA
O Zeus!

ANDROMACHE
And for this calamity.

HECUBA