Euripides, Hecuba 59–153: Parodos: Hecuba's dream and the Greek decision to sacrifice Polyxena

Guide these aged steps, my servants, forth before the house; guide and support your fellow-slave, once your queen, you maids of Troy. Grasp my aged hand, take me, support me, guide me, lift me up; and I will lean upon your bent arm as on a staff and quicken my halting footsteps onwards. O dazzling light of Zeus! O gloom of night! why am I thus scared by fearful visions of the night? O lady Earth, mother of dreams that fly on sable wings! I am seeking to avert the vision of the night, the sight of horror which I learned from my dreams about my son, who is safe in Thrace, and Polyxena, my dear daughter. You gods of this land! preserve my son, the last and only anchor of my house, now settled in Thrace, the land of snow, safe in the keeping of his father’s friend. Some fresh disaster is in store, a new strain of sorrow will be added to our woe. Such ceaseless thrills of terror never wrung my heart before. Oh! where, you Trojan maidens, can I find inspired Helenus or Cassandra, that they may read me my dream? For I saw a dappled deer mangled by a wolf’s bloody fangs, torn from my knees by force, piteously. And this too filled me with fear; over the summit of his tomb appeared Achilles’ phantom, and for his prize he would have one of the luckless maids of Troy. Therefore, I implore you, divine powers, avert this horror from my daughter, from my child.

Hecuba, I have hastened away to you, leaving my master’s tent, where the lot assigned me as his slave, when I was driven from the city of Ilium, hunted by Achaeans at the point of the spear; no alleviation do I bring for your sufferings; no, I have laden myself with heavy news, and am a herald of sorrow to you, lady. It is said the Achaeans have determined in full assembly to offer your daughter in sacrifice to Achilles; for you know how one day he appeared standing on his tomb in golden armor, and stayed the sea-borne ships, though they had their sails already hoisted, with this pealing cry: Where away so fast, you Danaids, leaving my tomb without its prize? A violent dispute with stormy altercation arose, and opinion was divided in the warrior army of Hellas, some being in favor of offering the sacrifice at the tomb, others dissenting. There was Agamemnon, all eagerness in your interest, because of his love for the frenzied prophetess; but the two sons of Theseus, scions of Athens, though supporting different proposals, yet agreed on the same decision, which was to crown Achilles’ tomb with fresh blood; for they said they never would set Cassandra’s bed before Achilles’ valor.

Now the zeal of the rival disputants was almost equal, until that shifty, smooth-mouthed liar, the son of Laertes, whose tongue is always at the service of the mob, persuaded the army not to put aside the best of all the Danaids for want of a servant-maid’s sacrifice, nor have it said by any of the dead that stand beside Persephone that the Danaids have left the plains of Troy without gratitude for their companions who died for Hellas. Odysseus will be here in an instant, to drag the tender maiden from your breast and tear her from your aged arms. Go to the temples, go to the altars, at Agamemnon’s knees sit as a suppliant! Invoke the gods, both those in heaven and those beneath the earth. For either your prayers will avail to spare you the loss of your unhappy child, or you must see your daughter fall before the tomb, her crimson blood spurting in deep dark jets from her neck encircled with gold.