Chapter 4
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 bear 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
THE TROJAN WOMEN
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[45]; 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! Oh, ere thy bosom break....
HECUBA.
Lo, I have seen the open hand of God[46]; 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[47], O wherefore fleëst thou, Lord of the Phrygian, Father that made us? 'Tis we, thy children; shall no man aid us? 'Tis we, thy children! Seëst thou, seëst thou?
_Others_.
He seëth, 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[48], 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[49] And the sea's foaming.
[_The trumpet sounds again, and the Women go out in the darkness._
NOTES ON THE TROJAN WOMEN
[1] 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.
[2] A steed marvellous.]--See below, on p. 36.
[3] 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.
[4] Laotian 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.
[5] 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_.
[6] 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.
[7] 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.
[8]--Ajax the Less, son of Oïleus, 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.
[9] 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.)
[10] Castor.]--Helen's brother: the Eurôtas, the river of her home, Sparta.
[11] Fifty seeds.]--Priam had fifty children, nineteen of them children of Hecuba (_Il_. vi. 451, &c.).
[12] Pirênê.]--The celebrated spring on the hill of Corinth. Drawing water was a typical employment of slaves.
[13] 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 Penêüs 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.
[14] 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.)
[15] 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.)
[16] 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.
[17] 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.
[18] 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.
[19] Hymen.]--She addresses the Torch. The shadowy Marriage-god "Hymen" was a torch and a cry as much as anything more personal. As a torch he is the sign both of marriage and of death, of sunrise and of the consuming fire. The full Moon was specially connected with marriage ceremonies.
[20] Loxias.]--The name of Apollo as an Oracular God.
[21] Cassandra's visions.]--The allusions are to the various sufferings of Odysseus, as narrated in the _Odyssey_, and to the tragedies of the house of Atreus, as told for instance in Aeschylus' _Oresteia_. Agamemnon together with Cassandra, and in part because he brought Cassandra, was murdered--felled with an axe--on his return home by his wife Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Their bodies were cast into a pit among the rocks. In vengeance for this, Orestes, Agamemnon's son, committed "mother-murder," and in consequence was driven by the Erinyes (Furies) of his mother into madness and exile.
[22] This their king so wise.]--Agamemnon made the war for the sake of his brother Menelaus, and slew his daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice at Aulis, to enable the ships to sail for Troy.
[23] Hector and Paris.]--The point about Hector is clear, but as to Paris, the feeling that, after all, it was a glory that he and the half-divine Helen loved each other, is scarcely to be found anywhere else in Greek literature. (Cf., however, Isocrates' "Praise of Helen.") Paris and Helen were never idealised like Launcelot and Guinevere, or Tristram and Iseult.
[24] A wise queen.]--Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus.
[25] O Heralds, yea, Voices of Death.]--There is a play on the word for "heralds" in the Greek here, which I have evaded by a paraphrase. ([Greek: Kaer-ukes] as though from [Greek: Kaer] the death-spirit, "the one thing abhorred of all mortal men.")
[26] That in this place she dies.]--The death of Hecuba is connected with a certain heap of stones on the shore of the Hellespont, called _Kunossêma_, or "Dog's Tomb." According to one tradition (Eur. _Hec_. 1259 ff.) she threw herself off the ship into the sea; according to another she was stoned by the Greeks for her curses upon the fleet; but in both she is changed after death into a sort of Hell-hound. M. Victor Bérard suggests that the dog first comes into the story owing to the accidental resemblance of the (hypothetical) Semitic word _S'qoulah_, "Stone" or "Stoning," and the Greek _Skulax_, dog. The Homeric Scylla (_Skulla_) was also both a Stone and a Dog (_Phéneciens et Odyssée_, i. 213). Of course in the present passage there is no direct reference to these wild sailor-stories.
[27] The wind comes quick.]--_i.e._. The storm of the Prologue. Three Powers: the three Erinyes.
[28] ff., Chorus.]--The Wooden Horse is always difficult to understand, and seems to have an obscuring effect on the language of poets who treat of it. I cannot help suspecting that the story arises from a real historical incident misunderstood. Troy, we are told, was still holding out after ten years and could not be taken, until at last by the divine suggestions of Athena, a certain Epeios devised a "Wooden Horse."
What was the "device"? According to the _Odyssey_ and most Greek poets, it was a gigantic wooden figure of a horse. A party of heroes, led by Odysseus, got inside it and waited. The Greeks made a show of giving up the siege and sailed away, but only as far as Tenedos. The Trojans came out and found the horse, and after wondering greatly what it was meant for and what to do with it, made a breach in their walls and dragged it into the Citadel as a thank-offering to Pallas. In the night the Greeks returned; the heroes in the horse came out and opened the gates, and Troy was captured.
It seems possible that the "device" really was the building of a wooden siege-tower, as high as the walls, with a projecting and revolving neck. Such engines were (1) capable of being used at the time in Asia, as a rare and extraordinary device, because they exist on early Assyrian monuments; (2) certain to be misunderstood in Greek legendary tradition, because they were not used in Greek warfare till many centuries later. (First, perhaps, at the sieges of Perinthus and Byzantium by Philip of Macedon, 340 B.C.)
It is noteworthy that in the great picture by Polygnôtus in the Leschê at Delphi "above the wall of Troy appears the head alone of the Wooden Horse" (_Paus_. x. 26). Aeschylus also (_Ag_. 816) has some obscure phrases pointing in the same direction: "A horse's brood, a shield-bearing people, launched with a leap about the Pleiads' setting, sprang clear above the wall," &c. Euripides here treats the horse metaphorically as a sort of war-horse trampling Troy.
[29] Her that spareth not, Heaven's yokeless rider.]--Athena like a northern Valkyrie, as often in the _Iliad_. If one tries to imagine what Athena, the War-Goddess worshipped by the Athenian mob, was like--what a mixture of bad national passions, of superstition and statecraft, of slip-shod unimaginative idealisation--one may partly understand why Euripides made her so evil. Allegorists and high-minded philosophers might make Athena entirely noble by concentrating their minds on the beautiful elements in the tradition, and forgetting or explaining away all that was savage; he was determined to pin her down to the worst facts recorded of her, and let people worship such a being if they liked!
[30] To Artemis.]--Maidens at the shrine of Artemis are a fixed datum in the tradition. (Cf. _Hec_. 935 ff.)
[31] Andromache and Hecuba.]--This very beautiful scene is perhaps marred to most modern readers by an element which is merely a part of the convention of ancient mourning. Each of the mourners cries: "There is no affliction like mine!" and then proceeds to argue, as it were, against the other's counter claim. One can only say that it was, after all, what they expected of each other; and I believe the same convention exists in most places where keening or wailing is an actual practice.
[32] Even as the sound of a song.]--I have filled in some words which seem to be missing in the Greek here.