Cassandra
Oh, oh! What fire! It comes upon me! Woe, woe! Lycean Apollo! Ah me, ah me! This two-footed lioness, who mates with a wolf in the absence of the noble lion, will slay me, miserable as I am. Brewing as it were a drug, she vows that with her wrath she will mix requital for me too, while she whets her sword against her husband, to take murderous vengeance for bringing me here. Why then do I bear these mockeries of myself, this wand, these prophetic chaplets on my neck? You at least I will destroy before I die myself. To destruction with you! And fallen there, thus do I repay you. Enrich with doom some other in my place. Look, Apollo himself is stripping me of my prophetic garb—he that saw me mocked to bitter scorn, even in this bravery, by friends turned foes, with one accord, in vain—but, like some vagrant mountebank, called beggar, wretch, starveling, I bore it all. And now the prophet, having undone me, his prophetess, has brought me to this lethal pass. Instead of my father’s altar a block awaits me, where I am to be butchered in a hot and bloody sacrifice. Yet, we shall not die unavenged by the gods; for there shall come in turn another, our avenger, a scion of the race, to slay his mother and exact requital for his sire; an exile, a wanderer, a stranger from this land, he shall return to put the coping-stone upon these unspeakable iniquities of his house. For the gods have sworn a mighty oath that his slain father’s outstretched corpse shall bring him home. Why then thus raise my voice in pitiful lament? Since first I saw the city of Ilium fare what it has fared, while her captors, by the gods’ sentence, are coming to such an end, I will go in and meet my fate. I will dare to die. This door I greet as the gates of Death. And I pray that, dealt a mortal stroke, without a struggle, my life-blood ebbing away in easy death, I may close these eyes.
Chorus O woman, pitiful exceedingly and exceeding wise, long has been your speech. But if, in truth, you have knowledge of your own death, how can you step with calm courage to the altar like an ox, driven by the god?
Cassandra There is no escape; no, my friends, there is none any more.
Chorus Yet he that is last has the advantage in respect of time.
Cassandra The day has come; flight would profit me but little.
Chorus Well, be assured, you brave suffering with a courageous spirit.
Cassandra None who is happy is commended thus.
Chorus Yet surely to die nobly is a blessing for mortals.
Cassandra Alas for you, my father and for your noble children!
Chorus What ails you? What terror turns you back?
Cassandra Alas, alas!
Chorus Why do you cry alas? Unless perhaps there is some horror in your soul.
Cassandra This house stinks of blood-dripping slaughter.
Chorus And what of that? It is just the savor of victims at the hearth.
Cassandra It is like a breath from a charnel-house.
Chorus You are not speaking of proud Syrian incense for the house.
Cassandra Nay, I will go to bewail also within the palace my own and Agamemnon’s fate. Enough of life! Alas, my friends, not with vain terror do I shrink, as a bird that fears a bush. After I am dead, bear witness for me of this—when for me, a woman, another woman shall be slain, and for an ill-wedded man another man shall fall. I claim this favor from you now that my hour is come.
Chorus Poor woman, I pity you for your death foretold.
Cassandra Yet once more I would like to speak, but not a dirge. I pray to the sun, in presence of his latest light, that my enemies may at the same time pay to my avengers a bloody penalty for slaughtering a slave, an easy prey. Alas for human fortune! When prosperous, a mere shadow can overturn it; if misfortune strikes, the dash of a wet sponge blots out the drawing. And this last I deem far more pitiable than that.
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