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 I
bedew this eye, as did I then at the tomb when she perished. The whole host
of the Grecian army was present before the tomb, at the sacrifice of thy
daughter. But the son of Achilles taking Polyxena by the hand, placed her
on the summit of the mound; but I stood near him: and there followed a
chosen band of illustrious youths in readiness to restrain with their hands
thy daughter's struggles; then the son of Achilles took a full-crowned
goblet of entire gold, and poured forth libations to his deceased father;
and makes signal to me to proclaim silence through all the Grecian host.
And I standing forth in the midst, thus spoke: "Be silent, O ye Greeks, let
all the people remain silent; silence, be still:" and I made the people
perfectly still. But he said, "O son of Peleus, O my father, accept these
libations which have the power of soothing, and which speed the dead on
their way; and come, that thou mayest drink the pure purple blood of this
virgin, which both the army and myself offer unto thee; but be propitious
to us, and grant us to weigh anchor, and to loose the cables of our ships,
and to return each to his country, having met with a prosperous return from
Troy." Thus much he said, and all the army joined in the prayer. Then
taking by the hilt his sword decked with gold, he drew it from its
scabbard, and made signs to the chosen youths of the Greeks to hold the
virgin. But she, when she perceived it,[11] uttered this speech: "O
Argives, ye that destroyed my city, I die willingly; let none touch my
body; for I will offer my neck to the sword with a good heart. But, by the
Gods, let me go free while ye kill me, that I may die free, for to be
classed as a slave among the dead, when a queen, is what I am ashamed of."
But the people murmured assent, and king Agamemnon ordered the young men to
quit the virgin; [but they, soon as they heard the last words of him who
had the seat of chief authority among them, let go their hold,] and she, on
hearing this speech of her lords, took her robe, and rent it, beginning
from the top of her shoulder down to her waist: and showed her breasts and
bosom beauteous, as a statue's, and bending her knee on the ground, spoke
words the most piteous ever heard, "Lo! strike, if this bosom thou
desirest, O youth; or wouldest thou rather under the neck, here is this
throat prepared." But he at once resolved and unresolved through pity of
the virgin, cuts with the sword the passage of her breath; and fountains of
blood burst forth. But she, e'en in death, showed much care to fall
decently, and to veil from the eyes of men what ought to be concealed. But
after that she breathed forth her spirit under the fatal blow, not one of
the Greeks exercised the same offices; but some scattered leaves from their
hands on the dead; some heap the funeral pile, bringing whole trunks of
pines: but he that would not bring, heard rebukes of this sort from him
that was thus employed: "Standest thou idle, thou man of most mean spirit?
Hast in thy hand no robe, no ornament for the maiden? Hast thou naught to
give to her so exceeding brave in heart and most noble in soul?" These
things I tell thee of the death of thy daughter, but I behold thee at once
the most happy, at once the most unhappy of all women in thine offspring.
CHOR. Dreadful calamities have risen fierce against the house of Priam;
such the hard fate of the Gods.
HEC. O daughter! which of my ills I shall first attend to, amidst such a
multitude, I know not: for if I touch on any, another does not suffer me;
and thence again some fresh grief draws me aside, succeeding miseries upon
miseries. And now I can not obliterate from my mind thy sufferings, so as
not to bewail them: but excess of grief hast thou taken away, having been
reported to me as noble. Is it then no paradox, if land indeed naturally
bad, when blest with a favorable season from heaven, bears well the ear;
but good land, robbed of the advantages it ought to have, brings forth bad
fruit: but ever among men, the bad by nature is nothing else but bad; the
good always good, nor under misfortune does he degenerate from his nature,
but is the same good man? Is it, that the parents cause this difference, or
the education? The being brought up nobly hath indeed in it the knowledge
and principles of goodness; but if one is acquainted well with this, he
knows what is vicious, having already learned it by the rule of virtue. And
this indeed has my mind been ejaculating in vain. But do thou go, and
signify these things to the Greeks, that no one be suffered to touch my
daughter, but bid them keep off the multitude. In so vast an army the
rabble are riotous, and the sailors' uncontrolled insolence is fiercer than
fire; and he is evil, who does not evil. But do thou, my old attendant,
taking an urn, fill it with sea water, and bring it hither, that I may wash
my girl in her last bath, the bride no bride now, and the virgin no longer
a virgin, wash her, and lay her out; according to her merits--whence can I?
This I can not; but as I can, I will, for what can I do! And collecting
ornaments from among the captured women, who dwell beside me in these
tents, if any one, unobserved by our new lords, has by her any stolen
memorial of her home. O state of my house, O mansions once happy! O Priam,
of vast wealth possessed, and supremely blest in thine offspring, and I
too, this aged woman, the mother of such children! How have we come to
nothing, bereft of our former grandeur! And yet still forsooth we are
elated, one of us in his gorgeous palaces; another, when honored among his
citizens. These are nothing. In vain the counsels of the mind, and the
tongue's boast. He is most blest, to whom from day to day no evil happens.