Parodos
[Choral]
Woe for your life!
Polyxena
Tell it, hide it no longer. Ah mother! how I dread, I dread
the import of your loud laments.
185
Hecuba
Ah my daughter! a luckless mother’s child!
Polyxena
Why do you tell me this?
Hecuba
The Argives with one consent are eager for your sacrifice to the son of Peleus
Polyxena
Ah! my mother! how can you speak of such a dire mischance? Tell me all, mother, yes all!
Hecuba
It is an ill-boding rumor I tell, my child;
they bring me word that sentence is passed upon your life by the Argives’ vote.
195
Polyxena
Alas, for your cruel sufferings, my persecuted mother! woe for your life of grief! What grievous outrage
has some fiend sent on you, hateful, horrible? No more shall I your daughter share your bondage, hapless youth on hapless age attending.
200
For you, alas! will see me, your hapless child, torn from your arms like a calf of the hills, and sent beneath the darkness of the earth with severed throat for Hades, where with the dead
205
shall I be laid, ah me! For your unhappiness I weep with plaintive wail, mother; but for my own life, its ruin and its outrage, never a tear I shed; no, death has become to me
210
a happier lot than life.
215
