The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I | Page 9

ye breasts that tenderly nursed me.
HEC. O daughter of an untimely and unhappy fate.
POLYX. Farewell, O mother, farewell Cassandra too.
HEC. Others farewell, but this is not for thy mother.
POLYX. Farewell, my brother Polydore, among the warlike Thracians.
HEC. If he lives at least: but I doubt, so unfortunate am I in every
thing.
POLTX. He lives, and shall close thy dying eye.
HEC. I am dead, before my death, beneath my ills.
POLYX. Lead me, Ulysses, having covered my face with a veil, since,
before I am sacrificed indeed, I am melted in heart at my mother's
plaints, her also I melt by my lamentations. O light, for yet it is allowed
me to express thy name, but I have no share in thee, except during the
time that I am going between the sword and the pyre of Achilles.
HEC. Ah me! I faint; and my limbs fail me.--O daughter, touch thy
mother, stretch forth thy hand--give it me--leave me not childless--I am
lost, my friends. Would that I might see the Spartan Helen, the sister of
the twin sons of Jove, thus, for through her bright eyes that most vile
woman destroyed the happy Troy.
CHOR. Gale, gale of the sea,[8] which waftest the swift barks
bounding through the waves through the surge of the ocean, whither
wilt thou bear me hapless? To whose mansion shall I come, a
purchased slave? Or to the port of the Doric or Phthian shore, where
they report that Apidanus, the most beautiful father of floods, enriches
the plains? or wilt thou bear me hapless urged by the maritime oar,
passing a life of misery in my prison-house, to that island[9] where
both the first-born palm tree and the laurel shot forth their hallowed
branches to their beloved Latona, emblem of the divine parturition?

And with the Delian nymphs shall I celebrate in song the golden
chaplet and bow of Diana? Or, in the Athenian city, shall I upon the
saffron robe harness the steeds to the car of Minerva splendid in her
chariot, representing them in embroidery upon the splendid looms of
brilliant threads, or the race of Titans, which Jove the son of Saturn
sends to eternal rest with his flaming lightning? Alas, my children!
Alas, my ancestors, and my paternal land, which is overthrown, buried
in smoke, captured by the Argive sword! but I indeed am[10] a slave in
a foreign country, having left Asia the slave of Europe, having changed
my bridal chamber for the grave.
TALTHYBIUS, HECUBA, CHORUS.
TAL. Tell me, ye Trojan dames, where can I find Hecuba, late the
queen of Troy?
CHOR. Not far from thee, O Talthybius, she is lying stretched on the
ground, muffled in her robes.
TAL. O Jupiter, what shall I say? Shall I say that thou beholdest
mortals? or that they have to no end or purpose entertained false
notions, who suppose the existence of a race of Deities, and that fortune
has the sovereign control over men? Was not this the queen of the
opulent Phrygians? was not this the wife of the all-blest Priam? And
now all her city is overthrown by the spear, but she a captive, aged,
childless, lies on the ground defiling her ill-fated head with the dust.
Alas! alas! I too am old, but rather may death be my portion before I
am involved in any such debasing fortune; stand up, oh unhappy, raise
thy side, and lift up thy hoary head.
HEC. Let me alone: who art thou that sufferest not my body to rest?
why dost thou, whoever thou art, disturb me from my sadness?
TAL. I am here, Talthybius, the herald of the Greeks, Agamemnon
having sent me for thee, O lady.
HEC. Hast thou come then, thou dearest of men, it having been decreed
by the Greeks to slay me too upon the tomb? Thou wouldest bring dear

news indeed. Then haste we, let us speed with all our might: lead on,
old man.
TAL. I am here and come to thee, O lady, that thou mayest entomb thy
dead daughter. Both the two sons of Atreus and the Grecian host send
me.
HEC. Alas! what wilt thou say? Art thou not come for me as doomed to
death, but to bring this cruel message? Thou art dead, my child, torn
from thy mother; and I am childless as far as regards thee; oh! wretch
that I am. But how did ye slay her? was it with becoming reverence? Or
did ye proceed in your butchery as with an enemy, O old man? Tell me,
though you will relate no pleasing tale.
TAL. Twice, O lady, thou desirest me to indulge in tears through pity
for thy daughter; for both now while relating the mournful
circumstance shall