Hector
To your quarters now, for it is night. For you I will myself point out a spot where your army can watch this night apart from our array. Our password is Phoebus, if perhaps there should be need of it; hear and remember it, and tell it to the Thracian army. You must advance in front of our ranks and keep a watchful guard, and receive Dolon, who went to spy on the ships, for he, if he is safe, is even now approaching the camp of Troy.
Chorus
Whose watch is it? who relieves me? night’s earlier stars are on the wane, and the seven Pleiads mount the sky; in the middle of the heavens the eagle floats. Rouse yourselves, why delay? Up from your beds to the watch! Do you not see the moonlight? Dawn is near, dawn is coming, and lo! a star that heralds it. Who was told off to the first watch? The son of Mygdon, whom they call Coroebus. Who after him? The Paeonian contingent roused the Cilicians, and the Mysians us. Is it not then high time we went and roused the Lycians for the fifth watch, as the lot decided?
Chorus
Hark! hark! a sound; sitting on her blood-stained nest by Simois, she sings with voice of many trills her piteous plaint, the nightingale that slew her child. Already on Ida they are pasturing the flocks, and over the night I catch the shrill pipe’s note. Sleep charms my eyes, for sleep is sweetest at dawn to tired eyelids. Why does not our scout draw near, whom Hector sent to spy on the fleet? He is so long away, I have my fears. Is it possible he has plunged into a hidden ambush and been slain? Perhaps. I am afraid. My counsel is we go and rouse the Lycians for the fifth watch, as the lot ordained.
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