Epeisodion 5
KASSANDRA.
There’s no avoidance, — strangers, no some time more!
CHOROS.
He last is, anyhow, by time advantaged.
1300
KASSANDRA.
It comes, the day: I shall by flight gain little.
CHOROS.
But know thou patient art from thy brave spirit!
KASSANDRA.
Such things hears no one of the happy-fortuned.
CHOROS.
But gloriously to die — for man is grace, sure.
KASSANDRA.
Ah, sire, for thee and for thy noble children!
1305
CHOROS.
But what thing is it? What fear turns thee backwards?
CHOROS.
Why this Alas! if ’t is no spirit’s loathing?
KASSANDRA.
Slaughter blood-dripping does the household smell of!
CHOROS.
How else? This scent is of hearth-sacrifices.
1310
KASSANDRA.
Such kind of steam as from a tomb is proper!
CHOROS.
No Surian honour to the House thou speak’st of!
KASSANDRA.
But I will go, — even in the household wailing
My fate and Agamemnon’s. Life suffice me!
I cry not ah — as bird at bush — through terror
Idly! to me, the dead this much bear witness:
When, for me — woman, there shall die a woman,
And, for a man ill-wived, a man shall perish!
This hospitality I ask as dying.
1320
CHOROS.
O sufferer, thee — thy foretold fate I pity.
KASSANDRA.
Yet once for all, to speak a speech, I fain am:
No dirge, mine for myself! The sun I pray to,
Fronting his last light! — to my own avengers —
That from my hateful slayers they exact too
1325
Pay for the dead slave — easy-managed hand’s work!
CHOROS.
Alas for mortal matters! Happy-fortuned, —
Why, any shade would turn them: if unhappy,
