Trojanwomen
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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that the crafty villain Odysseus won.
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Chorus
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Alas! alas! you, O child, shall earth take to her breast, a cause for bitter weeping. Mourn, you mother!
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Chorus
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Wail for the dead.
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Chorus
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Woe indeed for your unending sorrow!
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Hecuba
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Your wounds in part I will bind up with bandages, a wretched healer in name alone, without reality; but for the rest your father must look to that among the dead.
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Chorus
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Smite, oh smite upon your head with frequent blow of hand. Woe is me!
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Hecuba
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My kind, good friends—
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Chorus
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Speak out, Hecuba, the word that was on your lips.
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Hecuba
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It seems the only things that heaven concerns itself about are my troubles and Troy hateful in their eyes above all other cities. In vain did we sacrifice to them. But if the god had not caught us in his grip and plunged us headlong beneath the earth, we should have been unheard of, and not ever sung in Muses’ songs,
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furnishing to bards of after-days a subject for their minstrelsy. Go, bury now in his poor tomb the dead, wreathed all duly as befits a corpse. And yet I think it makes little difference to the dead, if they get a gorgeous funeral;
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but this is a cause of idle pride to the living. The corpse is carried off to burial.
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Chorus Leader
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Alas! for your unhappy mother, who over your corpse has closed the high hopes of her life! Born of a noble stock, counted most happy in your lot,
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ah! what a tragic death is yours! Ha! who are those I see on yonder pinnacles darting to and fro with flaming torches in their hands? Some new calamity wiII soon alight on Troy.
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Talthybius
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You captains whose allotted task it is to fire this town of Priam, to you I speak. No longer keep the fire-brand idle in your hands, but launch the flame, that when we have destroyed the city of Ilium we may set forth in gladness on our homeward voyage from Troy.
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And you, you sons of Troy, to let my orders take at once a double form—start for the Achaean ships for your departure from the land, as soon as the leaders of the army blow loud and clear upon the trumpet. And you, unhappy grey-haired lady,
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follow; for here come servants from Odysseus to fetch you, for to him you are assigned by lot to be a slave far from your country.
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Hecuba
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Ah, woe is me! This surely is the last, the utmost limit, of all my sorrows; I go forth from my land; my city is ablaze with flame.
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Yet, you aged foot, make one painful struggle to haste, that I may say a farewell to this wretched town. O Troy, that before had such a grand career among barbarian towns, soon will you be bereft of that splendid name. They are burning you, and leading us even now from our land
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to slavery. O gods! Yet why do I call on the gods? They did not hearken ever before to our call. Come, let us rush into the flames, for to die with my country in its blazing ruin would be a noble death for me.
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Talthybius
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Your sorrows drive you frantic, poor lady.
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Go, lead her away, make no delay, for you must deliver her into the hand of Odysseus, conveying to him his prize.
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Hecuba
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Woe! oh woe! Son of Cronos, prince of Phrygia, father of our race,
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do you behold our sufferings now, unworthy of the stock of Dardanus?
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Chorus
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He sees them, but our mighty city is a city no more, and Troy’s day is done.
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Hecuba
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Woe! oh woe!
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Ilium is ablaze; the homes of Pergamos and its towering walls are now one sheet of flame.
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Chorus
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As the smoke soars on wings to heaven, so sinks our city to the ground before the spear.
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With furious haste both fire and enemy spear devour each house.
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Hecuba
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Oh, earth, nourisher of my children!
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Chorus
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Ah, ah!
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Hecuba
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Hearken, my children, hear your mother’s voice.
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Chorus
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You are calling on the dead with voice of lamentation.
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Hecuba
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Yes, as I stretch my aged limbs upon the ground, and beat upon the earth with both my hands.
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Chorus
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I follow you and kneel, invoking from the nether world my hapless husband.
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Hecuba
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I am being dragged and hurried away—
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Chorus
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The sorrow, the sorrow of that cry!
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Hecuba
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To dwell beneath a master’s roof!
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Chorus
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From my own country!
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Hecuba
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Woe is me! O Priam, Priam, slain, unburied, left without a friend, nothing do you know of my cruel fate.
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Chorus
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No, for over his eyes black death has drawn his pall, a pure man slain by the impure.
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Hecuba
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Woe for the temples of the gods and for our dear city!
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Chorus
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Ah, ah!
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Hecuba
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Murderous flame and enemy spear are now your lot.
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Chorus
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Soon will you tumble to your own loved soil, and be forgotten.
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Hecuba
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And the dust, mounting to heaven on wings like smoke, will rob me of the sight of my home.
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Chorus
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The name of my country wiII pass into obscurity; all is scattered far and wide, and hapless Troy has ceased to be.
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Hecuba
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Did you know, did you hear?
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Chorus
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Yes, it was the crash of the citadel.
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Hecuba
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The shock, the shock—
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Chorus
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Will overwhelm our city utterly.
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Hecuba
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O woe is me! trembling, quaking limbs, support my footsteps! away! to face
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the day that begins your slavery.
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Chorus
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Woe for our unhappy town! And yet let us advance to the Achaean fleet.
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Chorus
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Alas, alas! What piteous dirge will you devise to mourn the outrage done you? No more through Ida’s looms
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shall I ply the shuttle to and fro. I look my last on my children’s bodies, my last; I shall endure surpassing misery, it may be as the unwilling bride of some Hellene (perish the night and fortune that brings me to this!);
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it may be as a wretched slave from Peirene’s sacred fount I shall draw their store of water. Oh! may it be ours to come to Theseus’ famous realm, a land of joy.
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Never, never let me see Eurotas’ swirling tide, hateful home of Helen, there to meet and be the slave of Menelaus, whose hand laid Troy waste!
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Chorus
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That holy land by Peneus fed,
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nestling in all its beauty at Olympus’ foot, is said, so have I heard, to be a very granary of wealth and teeming fruitfulness; next to the sacred soil of Theseus, I could wish to reach that land.
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They tell me too Hephaestus’ home, beneath the shadow of Aetna, fronting Phoenicia, the mother of Sicilian hills, is famous for the crowns it gives to valor. Or may I find a home on that shore which lies very near
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Ionia’s sea, a land watered by Crathis, lovely stream, that dyes the hair an auburn tint, feeding with its holy waves and making glad the home of heroes.
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Andromache
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Come to me, my husband, come to me!
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Hecuba
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Ah, hapless wife! you call on my son who lies in the tomb.
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Andromache
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Your wife’s defender!
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Hecuba
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Oh, you, who before made the Achaeans grieve, eldest of the sons I bore to Priam, take me to your rest in Hades’ halls!
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Chorus
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In vain, it seems, you Phrygian boy Ganymede, a son of Tros. pacing with dainty step among your golden chalices, do you fill high the cup of Zeus, a lovely service;
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the land of your birth is being consumed by fire. The shore re-echoes to our cries; and, as a bird bewails its young,
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so we bewail our husbands or our children, or our old mothers. The dew-fed springs where you bathed, the course where you trained,
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are now no more; but you beside the throne of Zeus are sitting with a calm, sweet smile upon your fair young face, while the spear of Hellas has destroyed the land of Priam.
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Chorus
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Ah! Love, Love, who once sought these Dardanian halls, deep-seated in the hearts of heavenly gods, how high you made Troy to tower in those days,
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allying her with deities! But I will cease to urge reproaches against Zeus; for white-winged dawn, whose light is dear to man,
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turned a baleful eye upon our land and watched the ruin of our citadel, though she had within her bridal bower a husband to give her children, Referring to he union of Aurora and Tithonus from this land,
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whom once a chariot of gold spangled stars caught up and carried there, great source of hope to his native country ; but all the love the gods once had for Troy is passed away.
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Chorus
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Ah! my loved husband, you are a wandering spectre;
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unwashed, unburied lies your corpse, while over the sea the ship sped by wings will carry me to Argos, land of steeds, where stand Cyclopian walls of stone reaching to heaven. There in the gate the children gather,
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and weep their piteous lamentation; they cry, they cry: Mother, alas! torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship
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to row me over the deep to sacred Salamis or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.
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Chorus
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Oh may the sacred blazing thunderbolt of the Aegean, hurled in might, smite the ship of Menelaus full in the middle, on its way in mid-sea,
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since he is carrying me away in bitter sorrow from the shores of Ilium to be a slave in Hellas, while the daughter of Zeus still keeps her golden mirrors, delight of maidens’ hearts.
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Never may he reach his home in Laconia or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of Pitane Part of Sparta was so called. or the temple of the goddess Athena of the Brazen House, a temple on the acropolis. with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on Hellas through its length and breadth and woful anguish
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on the streams of Simois!
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Andromache
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These great griefs—
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Hecuba
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Unhappy one, bitter these woes to bear.
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Andromache
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Our city ruined—
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Hecuba
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And sorrow to sorrow added.
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Andromache
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Through the will of angry heaven, since the day that son i.e., Paris, who had been exposed to die on account of an oracle foretelling the misery he would cause if he grew to man’s estate; but shepherds had found him on the hills and reared him. of yours escaped death, he that for a hated bride brought destruction on the Trojan citadel. There lie the gory corpses of the slain by the shrine of Pallas for vultures to carry off;
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and Troy has come to slavery’s yoke.
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Hecuba
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O my country, O unhappy land—
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Andromache
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I weep for you now left behind.
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Hecuba
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Now do you behold your piteous end.
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Andromache
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And you, my house, where I gave birth.
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Hecuba
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O my children! bereft of her city as your mother is, she now is losing you. Oh, what mourning and what sorrow! . . .
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oh, what endless streams of tears in our houses! The dead alone forget their griefs and never shed a tear.
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Chorus Leader
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What sweet relief to sufferers it is to weep, to mourn, lament, and chant the dirge that tells of grief!
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Andromache
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Do you see this, mother of that man, Hector, who once laid low in battle many a son of Argos?
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Hecuba
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I see that it is heaven’s way to exalt what men accounted nothing, and ruin what they most esteemed.
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Andromache
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Hence with my child as booty am I borne; the noble
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are brought to slavery—a bitter change.
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Hecuba
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This is necessity’s grim law; it was just now that Cassandra was torn with brutal violence from my arms.
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Andromache
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Alas, alas! it seems a second Aias has appeared to wrong your daughter; but there are other ills for you.