Part 4
[_Strophe_ 1. And hast thou turned from the Altar of frankincense, And given to the Greek thy temple of Ilion? The flame of the cakes of corn, is it gone from hence, The myrrh on the air and the wreathed towers gone? And Ida, dark Ida, where the wild ivy grows, The glens that run as rivers from the summer-broken snows, And the Rock, is it forgotten, where the first sunbeam glows, The lit house most holy of the Dawn?
_Others._
[_Antistrophe_ 1. The sacrifice is gone and the sound of joy, The dancing under the stars and the night-long prayer: The Golden Images and the Moons of Troy, The Twelve Moons and the mighty names they bear: My heart, my heart crieth, O Lord Zeus on high, Were they all to thee as nothing, thou throned in the sky, Throned in the fire-cloud, where a City, near to die, Passeth in the wind and the flare?
_A Woman._
[_Strophe_ 2. Dear one, O husband mine, Thou in the dim dominions Driftest with waterless lips, Unburied; and me the ships Shall bear o'er the bitter brine, Storm-birds upon angry pinions, Where the towers of the Giants shine O'er Argos cloudily, And the riders ride by the sea.
_Others._
And children still in the Gate Crowd and cry, A multitude desolate, Voices that float and wait As the tears run dry: 'Mother, alone on the shore They drive me, far from thee: Lo, the dip of the oar, The black hull on the sea! Is it the Isle Immortal, Salamis, waits for me? Is it the Rock that broods Over the sundered floods Of Corinth, the ancient portal Of Pelops' sovranty?'
_A Woman._
[_Antistrophe_ 2. Out in the waste of foam, Where rideth dark Menelaus, Come to us there, O white And jagged, with wild sea-light And crashing of oar-blades, come, O thunder of God, and slay us: While our tears are wet for home, While out in the storm go we, Slaves of our enemy!
_Others._
And, God, may Helen be there, With mirror of gold, Decking her face so fair, Girl-like; and hear, and stare, And turn death-cold: Never, ah, never more The hearth of her home to see, Nor sand of the Spartan shore, Nor tombs where her fathers be, Nor Athena's bronzen Dwelling, Nor the towers of Pitane; For her face was a dark desire Upon Greece, and shame like fire, And her dead are welling, welling, From red Simois to the sea!
* * * * *
[TALTHYBIUS, _followed by one or two Soldiers and bearing the child_ ASTYANAX, _dead, is seen approaching_.
LEADER.
Ah, change on change! Yet each one racks This land with evil manifold; Unhappy wives of Troy, behold, They bear the dead Astyanax, Our prince, whom bitter Greeks this hour Have hurled to death from Ilion's tower.
TALTHYBIUS.
One galley, Hecuba, there lingereth yet, Lapping the wave, to gather the last freight Of Pyrrhus' spoils for Thessaly. The chief Himself long since hath parted, much in grief For Peleus' sake, his grandsire, whom, men say, Acastus, Pelias' son, in war array Hath driven to exile. Loath enough before Was he to linger, and now goes the more In haste, bearing Andromache, his prize. 'Tis she hath charmed these tears into mine eyes, Weeping her fatherland, as o'er the wave She gazed, and speaking words to Hector's grave. Howbeit, she prayed us that due rites be done For burial of this babe, thine Hector's son, That now from Ilion's tower is fallen and dead. And, lo! this great bronze-fronted shield, the dread Of many a Greek, that Hector held in fray, O never in God's name--so did she pray-- Be this borne forth to hang in Peleus' hall Or that dark bridal chamber, that the wall May hurt her eyes; but here, in Troy o'erthrown, Instead of cedar wood and vaulted stone, Be this her child's last house. . . . And in thine hands She bade me lay him, to be swathed in bands Of death and garments, such as rest to thee In these thy fallen fortunes; seeing that she Hath gone her ways, and, for her master's haste, May no more fold the babe unto his rest. Howbeit, so soon as he is garlanded And robed, we will heap earth above his head And lift our sails. . . . See all be swiftly done, As thou art bidden. I have saved thee one Labour. For as I passed Scamander's stream Hard by, I let the waters run on him, And cleansed his wounds.--See, I will go forth now And break the hard earth for his grave: so thou And I will haste together, to set free Our oars at last to beat the homeward sea!
[_He goes out with his Soldiers, leaving the body of the Child in_ HECUBA's _arms_.
HECUBA.
Set the great orb of Hector's shield to lie Here on the ground. 'Tis bitter that mine eye Should see it. . . . O ye Argives, was your spear Keen, and your hearts so low and cold, to fear This babe? 'Twas a strange murder for brave men! For fear this babe some day might raise again His fallen land! Had ye so little pride? While Hector fought, and thousands at his side, Ye smote us, and we perished; and now, now, When all are dead and Ilion lieth low, Ye dread this innocent! I deem it not Wisdom, that rage of fear that hath no thought. . . . Ah, what a death hath found thee, little one! Hadst thou but fallen fighting, hadst thou known Strong youth and love and all the majesty Of godlike kings, then had we spoken of thee As of one blessed . . . could in any wise These days know blessedness. But now thine eyes Have seen, thy lips have tasted, but thy soul No knowledge had nor usage of the whole Rich life that lapt thee round. . . . Poor little child! Was it our ancient wall, the circuit piled By loving Gods, so savagely hath rent Thy curls, these little flowers innocent That were thy mother's garden, where she laid Her kisses; here, just where the bone-edge frayed Grins white above--Ah heaven, I will not see! Ye tender arms, the same dear mould have ye As his; how from the shoulder loose ye drop And weak! And dear proud lips, so full of hope And closed for ever! What false words ye said At daybreak, when he crept into my bed, Called me kind names, and promised: 'Grandmother, When thou art dead, I will cut close my hair, And lead out all the captains to ride by Thy tomb.' Why didst thou cheat me so? 'Tis I, Old, homeless, childless, that for thee must shed Cold tears, so young, so miserably dead. Dear God, the pattering welcomes of thy feet, The nursing in my lap; and O, the sweet Falling asleep together! All is gone. How should a poet carve the funeral stone To tell thy story true? 'There lieth here A babe whom the Greeks feared, and in their fear Slew him.' Aye, Greece will bless the tale it tells! Child, they have left thee beggared of all else In Hector's house; but one thing shalt thou keep, This war-shield bronzen-barred, wherein to sleep. Alas, thou guardian true of Hector's fair Left arm, how art thou masterless! And there I see his handgrip printed on thy hold; And deep stains of the precious sweat, that rolled In battle from the brows and beard of him, Drop after drop, are writ about thy rim. Go, bring them--such poor garments hazardous As these days leave. God hath not granted us Wherewith to make much pride. But all I can, I give thee, Child of Troy.--O vain is man, Who glorieth in his joy and hath no fears: While to and fro the chances of the years Dance like an idiot in the wind! And none By any strength hath his own fortune won.
[_During these lines several Women are seen approaching with garlands and raiment in their hands._
LEADER.
Lo these, who hear thee raiment harvested From Ilion's slain, to fold upon the dead.
[_During the following scene_ HECUBA _gradually takes the garments and wraps them about the Child_.
HECUBA.
O not in pride for speeding of the car Beyond thy peers, not for the shaft of war True aimed, as Phrygians use; not any prize Of joy for thee, nor splendour in men's eyes, Thy father's mother lays these offerings About thee, from the many fragrant things That were all thine of old. But now no more. One woman, loathed of God, hath broke the door And robbed thy treasure-house, and thy warm breath Made cold, and trod thy people down to death!
CHORUS.
_Some Women._
Deep in the heart of me I feel thine hand, Mother: and is it he Dead here, our prince to be, And lord of the land?
HECUBA.
Glory of Phrygian raiment, which my thought Kept for thy bridal day with some far-sought Queen of the East, folds thee for evermore. And thou, grey Mother, Mother-Shield that bore A thousand days of glory, thy last crown Is here. . . . Dear Hector's shield! Thou shalt lie down Undying with the dead, and lordlier there Than all the gold Odysseus' breast can bear, The evil and the strong!
CHORUS.
_Some Women._
Child of the Shield-bearer, Alas, Hector's child! Great Earth, the All-mother, Taketh thee unto her With wailing wild!
_Others._
Mother of misery, Give Death his song! (HEC. Woe!) Aye and bitterly (HEC. Woe!) We too weep for thee, And the infinite wrong!
[_During these lines_ HECUBA, _kneeling by the body, has been performing a funeral rite symbolically staunching the dead Child's wounds_.
HECUBA.
I make thee whole; I bind thy wounds, O little vanished soul. This wound and this I heal with linen white: O emptiness of aid! . . . Yet let the rite Be spoken. This and . . . Nay, not I, but he, Thy father far away shall comfort thee!
[_She bows her head to the ground and remains motionless and unseeing._
CHORUS.
Beat, beat thine head: Beat with the wailing chime Of hands lifted in time: Beat and bleed for the dead. Woe is me for the dead!
HECUBA.
O Women! Ye, mine own . . .
[_She rises bewildered, as though she had seen a vision._
LEADER.
Hecuba, speak! Thine are we all. Oh, ere thy bosom break . . .
HECUBA.
Lo, I have seen the open hand of God; And in it nothing, nothing, save the rod Of mine affliction, and the eternal hate, Beyond all lands, chosen and lifted great For Troy! Vain, vain were prayer and incense-swell And bulls' blood on the altars! . . . All is well. Had He not turned us in His hand, and thrust Our high things low and shook our hills as dust, We had not been this splendour, and our wrong An everlasting music for the song Of earth and heaven! Go, women: lay our dead In his low sepulchre. He hath his meed Of robing. And, methinks, but little care Toucheth the tomb, if they that moulder there Have rich encerement. 'Tis we, 'tis we, That dream, we living and our vanity!
[_The Women bear out the dead Child upon the shield, singing, when presently flames of fire and dim forms are seen among the ruins of the City._
CHORUS.
_Some Women._
Woe for the mother that bare thee, child, Thread so frail of a hope so high, That Time hath broken: and all men smiled About thy cradle, and, passing by, Spoke of thy father's majesty. Low, low, thou liest!
_Others._
Ha! Who be these on the crested rock? Fiery hands in the dusk, and a shock Of torches flung! What lingereth still O wounded City, of unknown ill, Ere yet thou diest?
TALTHYBIUS (_coming out through the ruined Wall_).
Ye Captains that have charge to wreck this keep Of Priam's City, let your torches sleep No more! Up, fling the fire into her heart! Then have we done with Ilion, and may part In joy to Hellas from this evil land. And ye--so hath one word two faces--stand, Daughters of Troy, till on your ruined wall The echo of my master's trumpet call In signal breaks: then, forward to the sea, Where the long ships lie waiting. And for thee, O ancient woman most unfortunate, Follow: Odysseus' men be here, and wait To guide thee. . . . 'Tis to him thou go'st for thrall.
HECUBA.
Ah, me! and is it come, the end of all, The very crest and summit of my days? I go forth from my land, and all its ways Are filled with fire! Bear me, O aged feet, A little nearer: I must gaze, and greet My poor town ere she fall. Farewell, farewell! O thou whose breath was mighty on the swell Of orient winds, my Troy! Even thy name Shall soon be taken from thee. Lo, the flame Hath thee, and we, thy children, pass away To slavery . . . God! O God of mercy! . . . Nay: Why call I on the Gods? They know, they know, My prayers, and would not hear them long ago. Quick, to the flames! O, in thine agony, My Troy, mine own, take me to die with thee!
[_She springs toward the flames, but is seized and held by the Soldiers._
TALTHYBIUS.
Back! Thou art drunken with thy miseries, Poor woman!--Hold her fast, men, till it please Odysseus that she come. She was his lot Chosen from all and portioned. Lose her not!
[_He goes to watch over the burning of the City. The dusk deepens._
CHORUS.
_Divers Women._
Woe, woe, woe! Thou of the Ages, O wherefore fleest thou, Lord of the Phrygian, Father that made us? 'Tis we, thy children; shall no man aid us? 'Tis we, thy children! Seest thou, seest thou?
_Others._
He seeth, only his heart is pitiless; And the land dies: yea, she, She of the Mighty Cities perisheth citiless! Troy shall no more be!
_Others._
Woe, woe, woe! Ilion shineth afar! Fire in the deeps thereof, Fire in the heights above, And crested walls of War!
_Others._
As smoke on the wing of heaven Climbeth and scattereth, Torn of the spear and driven, The land crieth for death: O stormy battlements that red fire hath riven, And the sword's angry breath!
[_A new thought comes to_ HECUBA; _she kneels and beats the earth with her hands_.
HECUBA.
[_Strophe._ O Earth, Earth of my children; hearken! and O mine own, _Ye_ have hearts and forget not, _ye_ in the darkness lying!
LEADER.
Now hast thou found thy prayer, crying to them that are gone.
HECUBA.
Surely my knees are weary, but I kneel above your head; Hearken, O ye so silent! My hands beat your bed!
LEADER.
I, I am near thee; I kneel to thy dead to hear thee, Kneel to mine own in the darkness; O husband, hear my crying!
HECUBA.
Even as the beasts they drive, even as the loads they bear,
LEADER.
(Pain; O pain!)
HECUBA.
We go to the house of bondage. Hear, ye dead, O hear!
LEADER.
(Go, and come not again!)
HECUBA.
Priam, mine own Priam, Lying so lowly, Thou in thy nothingness, Shelterless, comfortless, See'st thou the thing I am? Know'st thou my bitter stress?
LEADER.
Nay, thou art naught to him! Out of the strife there came, Out of the noise and shame, Making his eyelids dim, Death, the Most Holy!
[_The fire and smoke rise constantly higher._
HECUBA.
[_Antistrophe._ O high houses of Gods, beloved streets of my birth, Ye have found the way of the sword, the fiery and blood-red river!
LEADER.
Fall, and men shall forget you! Ye shall lie in the gentle earth.
HECUBA.
The dust as smoke riseth; it spreadeth wide its wing; It maketh me as a shadow, and my City a vanished thing!
LEADER.
Out on the smoke she goeth, And her name no man knoweth; And the cloud is northward, southward; Troy is gone for ever!
[_A great crash is heard, and the Wall is lost in smoke and darkness._
HECUBA.
Ha! Marked ye? Heard ye? The crash of the towers that fall!
LEADER.
All is gone!
HECUBA.
Wrath in the earth and quaking and a flood that sweepeth all,
LEADER.
And passeth on!
[_The Greek trumpet sounds._
HECUBA.
Farewell!--O spirit grey, Whatso is coming, Fail not from under me. Weak limbs, why tremble ye? Forth where the new long day Dawneth to slavery!
CHORUS.
Farewell from parting lips, Farewell!--Come, I and thou, Whatso may wait us now, Forth to the long Greek ships And the sea's foaming.
[_The trumpet sounds again, and the Women go out in the darkness._
NOTES ON THE TROJAN WOMEN
P. 11, l. 5, Poseidon.]--In the _Iliad_ Poseidon is the enemy of Troy, here the friend. This sort of confusion comes from the fact that the Trojans and their Greek enemies were largely of the same blood, with the same tribal gods. To the Trojans, Athena the War-Goddess was, of course, _their_ War-Goddess, the protectress of their citadel. Poseidon, god of the sea and its merchandise, and Apollo (possibly a local shepherd god?), were their natural friends and had actually built their city wall for love of the good old king, Laomedon. Zeus, the great father, had Mount Ida for his holy hill and Troy for his peculiar city. (Cf. on p. 63.)
To suit the Greek point of view all this had to be changed or explained away. In the _Iliad_ generally Athena is the proper War-Goddess of the Greeks. Poseidon had indeed built the wall for Laomedon, but Laomedon had cheated him of his reward--as afterwards he cheated Heracles, and the Argonauts and everybody else! So Poseidon hated Troy. Troy is chiefly defended by the barbarian Ares, the oriental Aphrodite, by its own rivers Scamander and Simois and suchlike inferior or unprincipled gods.
Yet traces of the other tradition remain. Homer knows that Athena is specially worshipped in Troy. He knows that Apollo, who had built the wall with Poseidon, and had the same experience of Laomedon, still loves the Trojans. Zeus himself, though eventually in obedience to destiny he permits the fall of the city, nevertheless has a great tenderness towards it.
P. 11, l. 11, A steed marvellous.]--See below, on p. 36.
P. 12, l. 25, I go forth from great Ilion, &c.]--The correct ancient doctrine. When your gods forsook you, there was no more hope. Conversely, when your state became desperate, evidently your gods were forsaking you. From another point of view, also, when the city was desolate and unable to worship its gods, the gods of that city were no more.
P. 12, l. 34, Laconian Tyndarid.]--Helen was the child of Zeus and Leda, and sister of Castor and Polydeuces; but her human father was Tyndareus, an old Spartan king. She is treated as "a prisoner and a prize," _i.e._, as a captured enemy, not as a Greek princess delivered from the Trojans.
P. 12, l. 40, In secret slain.]--Because the Greeks were ashamed of the bloody deed. See below, p. 42, and the scene on this subject in the _Hecuba_.
P. 12, l. 42, Cassandra.]--In the _Agamemnon_ the story is more clearly told, that Cassandra was loved by Apollo and endowed by him with the power of prophecy; then in some way she rejected or betrayed him, and he set upon her the curse that though seeing the truth she should never be believed. The figure of Cassandra in this play is not inconsistent with that version, but it makes a different impression. She is here a dedicated virgin, and her mystic love for Apollo does not seem to have suffered any breach.
P. 13, l. 47, Pallas.]--(See above.) The historical explanation of the Trojan Pallas and the Greek Pallas is simple enough, but as soon as the two are mythologically personified and made one, there emerges just such a bitter and ruthless goddess as Euripides, in his revolt against the current mythology, loved to depict. But it is not only the mythology that he is attacking. He seems really to feel that if there are conscious gods ruling the world, they are cruel or "inhuman" beings.
P. 15, l. 70.]--Ajax the Less, son of Oileus, either ravished or attempted to ravish Cassandra (the story occurs in both forms) while she was clinging to the Palladium or image of Pallas. It is one of the great typical sins of the Sack of Troy, often depicted on vases.
P. 17, l. 123, Faces of ships.]--Homeric ships had prows shaped and painted to look like birds' or beasts' heads. A ship was always a wonderfully live and vivid thing to the Greek poets. (Cf. p. 64.)
P. 18, l. 132, Castor.]--Helen's brother: the Eurotas, the river of her home, Sparta.
P. 18, l. 135, Fifty seeds.]--Priam had fifty children, nineteen of them children of Hecuba (_Il._ vi. 451, &c.).
P. 22, l. 205, Pirene.]--The celebrated spring on the hill of Corinth. Drawing water was a typical employment of slaves.
P. 22, l. 219 ff., Theseus' land, &c.]--Theseus' land is Attica. The poet, in the midst of his bitterness over the present conduct of his city, clings the more to its old fame for humanity. The "land high-born" where the Peneues flows round the base of Mount Olympus in northern Thessaly is one of the haunts of Euripides' dreams in many plays. Cf. _Bacchae_, 410 (p. 97 in my translation). Mount Aetna fronts the "Tyrians' citadel," _i.e._, Carthage, built by the Phoenicians. The "sister land" is the district of Sybaris in South Italy, where the river Crathis has, or had, a red-gold colour, which makes golden the hair of men and the fleeces of sheep; and the water never lost its freshness.
P. 23, l. 235.]--Talthybius is a loyal soldier with every wish to be kind. But he is naturally in good spirits over the satisfactory end of the war, and his tact is not sufficient to enable him to understand the Trojan Women's feelings. Yet in the end, since he has to see and do the cruelties which his Chiefs only order from a distance, the real nature of his work forces itself upon him, and he feels and speaks at times almost like a Trojan. It is worth noticing how the Trojan Women generally avoid addressing him. (Cf. pp. 48, 67, 74.)
P. 24, l. 256, The haunted keys (literally, "with God through them, penetrating them").]--Cassandra was his Key-bearer, holding the door of his Holy Place. (Cf. _Hip._ 540, p. 30.)
P. 25, l. 270, She hath a toil, &c.]--There is something true and pathetic about this curious blindness which prevents Hecuba from understanding "so plain a riddle." (Cf. below, p. 42.) She takes the watching of a Tomb to be some strange Greek custom, and does not seek to have it explained further.
P. 26, l. 277, Odysseus.]--In Euripides generally Odysseus is the type of the successful unscrupulous man, as soldier and politician--the incarnation of what the poet most hated. In Homer of course he is totally different.
P. 27, l. 301, Burn themselves and die.]--Women under these circumstances did commit suicide in Euripides' day, as they have ever since. It is rather curious that none of the characters of the play, not even Andromache, kills herself. The explanation must be that no such suicide was recorded in the tradition (though cf. below, on p. 33); a significant fact, suggesting that in the Homeric age, when this kind of treatment of women captives was regular, the victims did not suffer quite so terribly under it.