Stasimon 1
[Episode]
Oh, oh! Now smite the close-shorn head!
Hecuba
tear your cheeks with your nails! Ah me! I have fallen as a slave to a treacherous foe I hate, a monster of lawlessness,
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one that by his double tongue has turned against us all that once was friendly in his camp, changing this for that and that for this again. Oh weep for me, you Trojan women! Lost and ill-fated!
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Ah woe! a victim to a most unhappy lot!
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Chorus Leader
Your fate, royal mistress, now you know; but for me, what Helene or Achaean is master of my destiny?
Talthybius
Go, servants, and bring Cassandra forth to me here
at once, that I may place her in our captain’s hands, and then conduct to the rest of the chiefs the captives each has had assigned. Ha! what is the blaze of torches there within? What are they doing? Are they firing the chambers,
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because they must leave this land and be carried away to Argos? Are they setting themselves aflame in their longing for death? Truly the free bear their troubles in cases like this with a stiff neck. Open up! lest their deed, which suits them well
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but finds small favor with the Achaeans, bring blame on me.
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Hecuba
It is not that they are setting anything ablaze, but my child Cassandra, frenzied maid, comes rushing wildly here.
Cassandra
Bring the light, uplift and show its flame! I am doing the god’s service, see! see! making his shrine to glow with tapers bright.
O Hymen, lord of marriage! blessed is the bridegroom; blessed am I also, soon to wed a princely lord in Argos. Hail Hymen, lord of marriage!
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Since you, my mother, are busied with tears and lamentations in your mourning for my father’s death and for our country dear, I at my own nuptials
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am making this torch to blaze and show its light, giving to you, O Hymen, giving, O Hecate, a light, at the maiden’s wedding, as the custom is.
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Nimbly lift the foot; lead the dance on high, with cries of joy, as if to greet my father’s happy fate. The dance is sacred. Come, Phoebus, now, for it is in your temple
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among your bay-trees that I minister. Hail Hymen, god of marriage! Hymen, hail! Dance, mother, and laugh! link your steps with me, and circle in the delightful measure, now here, now there.
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Salute the bride on her wedding-day with hymns and cries of joy. Come, you maids of Phrygia in fair raiment, sing my marriage
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with the husband fate ordains that I should wed.
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Chorus Leader
Hold the frantic maiden, royal mistress, lest with nimble foot she rush to the Argive army.
Hecuba
You god of fire, it is yours to light the bridal torch for men, but piteous is the flame you kindle here,
beyond my blackest expectation. Ah, my child! how little did I ever dream that such would be your marriage, a captive, and of Argos too! Give up the torch to me; you do not bear its blaze aright in your wild frantic course, nor have your afflictions left you in your sober senses,
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but still you are as frantic as before. Take in those torches, Trojan friends, and for her wedding madrigals weep your tears instead.
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Cassandra
O mother, crown my head with victor’s wreaths; rejoice in my royal match; lead me
and if you find me unwilling at all, thrust me there by force; for if Loxias is indeed a prophet, Agamemnon, that famous king of the Achaeans, will find in me a bride more vexatious than Helen. For I will slay him and lay waste his home
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to avenge my father’s and my brothers’ death. But let that go; I will not tell of that axe which shall sever my neck and the necks of others, or of the conflict ending in a mother’s death, which my marriage shall cause, nor of the overthrow of Atreus’ house.
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But I, for all my frenzy, will so far rise above my frantic fit, that I will prove this city happier far than those Achaeans, who for the sake of one woman and one passion have lost a countless army in hunting Helen.
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Their captain too, whom men call wise, has lost for what he hated most what most he prized, yielding to his brother for a woman’s sake—and she was willing and not taken by force—the joy he had of his own children in his home. For from the day that they landed upon Scamander’s strand, their doom began,
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not for loss of stolen frontier nor yet for fatherland with high towers; whomever Ares took, those never saw their children again, nor were they shrouded for the tomb by hand of wife, but in a foreign land they lie. At home the case was still the same;
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wives were dying widows, parents were left childless in their homes, having reared their sons for others, and none is left to make libations of blood upon the ground before their tombs. Truly to such praise as this their army can make an ample claim. It is better to pass by their shame in silence, nor may mine be the Muse
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to tell that evil tale.
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