The Trojan Women (1060-1175)

All me! ah me! new troubles fall on my country, to take the place of those that still are fresh! Behold,

you hapless wives of Troy, the corpse of Astyanax, whom the Danaids have cruelly slain by hurling him from the battlements.

Hecuba, one ship alone delays its plashing oars,

and it is soon to sail to the shores of Phthia freighted with the remnant of the spoils of Achilles’ son; for Neoptolemus is already out at sea, having heard that new calamities have befallen Peleus, for Acastus, son of Pelias, has banished him from the realm. Therefore he is gone, too quick to indulge in any delay,

and with him goes Andromache, who drew many tears from me when she set out from the land, wailing her country and crying her farewell to Hector’s tomb. And she begged her master leave to bury this poor dead child of Hector

who breathed his last when hurled from the turrets; entreating too that he would not carry this shield, the terror of the Achaeans—this shield with plates of brass with which his father would gird himself—to the home of Peleus or to the same bridal bower where she, Andromache,

the mother of this corpse, would be wed, a bitter sight to her, but let her bury the child in it instead of in a coffin of cedar or a tomb of stone, and to your hands commit the corpse that you may deck it with robes and garlands as best you can with your present means;

for she is far away and her master’s haste prevented her from burying the child herself. So we, when you have decked the corpse, will heap the earth above and set upon it a spear; but do you with your best speed perform your allotted task;

one toil however I have already spared you, for I crossed Scamander’s stream and bathed the corpse and cleansed its wounds. But now I will go to dig a grave for hiin, that our united efforts

shortening our task may speed our ship towards home. Exit Talthybius.

Place the shield upon the ground, Hector’s shield so deftly rounded, a piteous sight, a bitter grief for me to see. O you Achaeans, more reason have you to boast of your prowess than your wisdom. Why have you in terror of this child

been guilty of a murder never matched before? Did you fear that some day he would rear again the fallen walls of Troy? It seems then you were nothing after all, when, though Hector’s fortunes in the war were prosperous and he had ten thousand other arms to back him, we still were daily overmatched; and yet, now that our city is taken and every Phrygian slain,

you fear a tender child like this! I do not commend the fear of one who fears but never yet has reasoned out the cause.

Ah! my beloved, yours is a piteous death indeed! If you had died for your city, when you had tasted of the sweets of manhood, of marriage, and of godlike power over others,

then were you blessed, if anything here is blessed. But now after one glimpse, one dream of them, you know them no more, my child, and have no joy of them, though heir to all. Ah, poor child! how sadly have your own father’s walls, those towers that Loxias reared, shorn from your head

the locks your mother fondled, and so often caressed, from which through fractured bones the face of murder grins—briefly to dismiss my shocking theme. O hands, how sweet the likeness you retain of his father, and yet you lie Iimp in your sockets before me!