Maid-servant
You speak of the living; but the dead you do not weep is here. Mark well the body now laid bare; is not this a sight to fill you with wonder, and upset your hopes?
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. O my son, my son, 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. 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 O my son, child of a luckless mother, 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 Cast up on the smooth sand, or thrown there after the murderous blow?
Maid-servant The waves had washed him ashore.
Hecuba Alas! alas! I now know the vision I saw in my sleep; the dusky-winged phantom 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 It was my own familiar 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 O dreadful crime! O deed without a name! beyond wonder! 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 with ruthless sword, lost to all sense of pity!
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