Hecuba
Ah me! it is the corpse of my son Polydorus I behold, whom the Thracian man was keeping safe for me in his halls. Alas! this is the end of all; my life is over.
chanting
O my son, my son,
[685]
alas! I now begin the laments, a frantic strain I learned just now from some avenging fiend.
Maid-servant
What! so you knew your son's fate, poor lady?
Hecuba
I cannot, cannot credit this fresh sight I see.
chanting
[690]
One woe succeeds to another; no day will ever pass without groans and tears.
Chorus Leader
Alas! poor lady, our sufferings are cruel indeed.
Hecuba
chanting
O my son, child of a luckless mother,
[695]
what was the manner of your death? by what fate do you lie here? by whose hands?
Maid-servant
I do not know. I found him on the sea-shore.
Hecuba
chanting
Cast up on the smooth sand, or thrown there
[700]
after the murderous blow?
Maid-servant
The waves had washed him ashore.
Hecuba
chanting
Alas! alas! I now know the vision I saw in my sleep; the dusky-winged phantom
[705]
did not escape me, the vision I saw of you, my son, now no more within the bright sunshine.
Chorus Leader
Who slew him then? Can your dream-lore tell us that?
Hecuba
chanting
[710]
It was my own, own friend, the knight of Thrace, with whom his aged father had placed the boy in hiding.
Chorus Leader
O horror! what will you say? did he slay him to get the gold?
Hecuba
chanting
O dreadful crime! O deed without a name! beyond wonder!
[715]
impious! intolerable! Where are the laws between guest and host? Accursed of men! how have you mangled his flesh, slashing the poor child's limbs
[720]
with ruthless sword, lost to all sense of pity!
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Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Hecuba, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
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