HECTOR.
Always I knew it. Had we any need
Of seers to tell this was Odysseus' deed?
For me, what could I else, when I beheld
The hosts of Argos camped upon this field,
What but with prayers and heralds bid my friend
Come forth and fight for Ilion ere the end?
He owed me that.-Yet, now my friend is slain,
His sorrow is my sorrow. On this plain
I will uplift a wondrous sepulchre,
And burn about it gifts beyond compare
Of robes and frankincense. To Troy's relief
He came in love and parteth in great grief.
MUSE.
My son shall not be laid in any grave1
Of darkness; thus much guerdon will I crave
Of Death's eternal bride, the heavenly-born
Maid of Demeter, Life of fruits and corn,
To set this one soul free. She owes me yet,
For Orpheus widowed, an abiding debt.
To me he still must be--that know I well--
As one in death, who sees not. Where I dwell
He must not come, nor see his mother's face.
Alone for ever, in a caverned place
Of silver-veinèd earth, hid from men's sight,
A Man yet Spirit, he shall live in light:
As under far Pangaion Orpheus lies,
Priest of great light and worshipped of the wise.
Howbeit an easier anguish even to me
Falls than to Thetis in her azure sea;
For her son too shall die; and sorrowing,
First on the hills our band for thee shall sing,
Then for Achilles by the weeping wave.
Pallas could murder thee, but shall not save
Thy foe; too swift Apollo's bolt shall fly.
O fleshly loves of sad mortality,
O bitter motherhood of these that die,
She that hath wisdom will endure her doom,
The days of emptiness, the fruitless womb;
Not love, not bear love's children to the tomb.
The VISION rises through the air and vanishes.
LEADER.
The dead man sleepeth in his mother's care;2
But we who battle still-behold, the glare
Of dawn that rises. Doth thy purpose hold,
Hector, our arms are ready as of old.
HECTOR.
March on; and bid the allies with all speed
Be armed, bind fast the yoke upon the steed,
Then wait with torches burning, till we sound
The Tuscan trump.-This day we shall confound,
God tells me, their Greek phalanx, break their high
Rampart and fire the galleys where they lie.
Pointing to the dawn.
Yon first red arrow of the Sun, that brings
The dawn to Troy, hath freedom on his wings.
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1 P. 52, 1. 962 ff., My son shall not be laid in any grave.]-Like other Northern barbaric princes, such as Orpheus (1. 972 below) and Zalmoxis (Herodotus, iv. 95) and Holgar the Dane, Rhesus lies in a hidden chamber beneath the earth, watching, apparently, for the day of uttermost need when he must rise to help his people. There is no other passage in Greek tragedy where such a fate is attributed to a hero, though the position of Darius in the Persae and Agamemnon in the Choephori or the Electra is in some ways analogous.
The last lines of the Muse have a very Euripidean ring: cf. Medea, l. 1090 (p. 61, "My thoughts have roamed a cloudy land"), Alcestis, 1. 882.2 P. 54, 11. 983-end. This curious and moving end -not in death or peace but in a girding of tired men to greater toil-reminds one of the last words of The Trojan Women: "Forth to the long Greek ships And the sea's foaming," and the last words of the Chanson de Roland there quoted. The Trojans evidently go forth under the shadow of disaster, though with firmness and courage. The stage direction is of course purely conjectural. If Diomedes left some sign of Dolon's death for Hector to see, as he probably must have done, then Hector must at some time or other see it. If so, this seems to be the place.
The Rhesus of Euripides. Translated into English rhyming verse with explanatory notes by Gilbert Murray, LL.D., D.Litt, F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. Euripides. Gilbert Murray. New York. Oxford University Press. 1913.
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