POLYX. O mother, why dost thou call! proclaiming what new affliction hast
thou frighted me from the tent, as some bird from its nest, with this
alarm?
HEC. Alas! my child!
POLYX. Why address me in words of ill omen? This is an evil prelude.
HEC. Alas! for thy life.
POLYX. Speak, conceal it no longer from me. I fear, I fear, my mother; why
I pray dost thou groan?
HEC. O child, child of an unhappy mother!
POLYX. Why sayest thou this?
HEC. My child, the common decree of the Greeks unites to slay thee at the
tomb of the son of Peleus.
POLYX. Alas, my mother! how are you relating unenviable ills? Tell me, tell
me, my mother.
HEC. I declare, my child, the ill-omened report, they bring word that a
decree has passed by the vote of the Greeks regarding thy life.
POLYX. O thou that hast borne affliction! O thou wretched on every side! O
mother unhappy in your life, what most hated and most unutterable calamity
has some destiny again sent against thee! This child is no longer thine; no
longer indeed shall I miserable share slavery with miserable age. For as a
mountain whelp or heifer shalt thou wretched behold me wretched torn from
thine arms, and sent down beneath the darkness of the earth a victim to
Pluto, where I shall lie bound in misery with the dead. But it is for thee
indeed, my afflicted mother, that I lament in these mournful strains, but
for my life, my wrongs, my fate, I mourn not; but death, a better lot, has
befallen me.
CHOR. But see Ulysses advances with hasty step, to declare to thee, Hecuba,
some new determination.