The Ghost vanishes. Hecuba enters from the tent of Agamemnon, supported by her attendants, captive Trojan women.
Hecuba
Guide these aged steps, my servants, forth before the house;
[60]
guide and support your fellow-slave, once your queen, you maids of Troy. Grasp my aged hand, take me, support me, guide me, lift me up;
[65]
and I will lean upon your bent arm as on a staff and quicken my halting footsteps onwards.
O dazzling light of Zeus! O gloom of night! why am I thus scared by
[70]
fearful visions of the night? O lady Earth, mother of dreams that fly on sable wings! I am seeking to avert the vision of the night, the sight of horror which I learned from my dreams
[75]
about my son, who is safe in Thrace, and Polyxena, my dear daughter. You gods of this land! preserve my son,
[80]
the last and only anchor of my house, now settled in Thrace, the land of snow, safe in the keeping of his father's friend. Some fresh disaster is in store, a new strain of sorrow will be added to our woe.
[85]
Such ceaseless thrills of terror never wrung my heart before. Oh! where, you Trojan maidens, can I find inspired Helenus or Cassandra, that they may read me my dream?
[90]
For I saw a dappled deer mangled by a wolf's bloody fangs, torn from my knees by force, piteously. And this too filled me with fear; over the summit of his tomb appeared Achilles' phantom, and for his prize
[95]
he would have one of the luckless maids of Troy. Therefore, I implore you, divine powers, avert this horror from my daughter, from my child.
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Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Hecuba, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.