Euripides, Trojan Women 512–567: First choral song: the wooden horse and the sack of Troy

Sing me, Muse, a tale of Troy, a funeral dirge in strains unheard as yet, with tears; for now I will uplift for Troy a piteous chant, telling how I met my doom and fell a wretched captive to the Argives by reason of a four-footed beast that moved on wheels, when Achaea’s sons left at our.gates that horse, loud rumbling to the sky, with its trappings of gold and its freight of warriors; and our people cried out as they stood upon the rocky citadel, Up now, you whose toil is over, and drag this sacred image to the shrine of the Zeus-born maiden, goddess of our Ilium! Forth from his house came every youth and every grey-head too; and with songs of joy they took the fatal snare within.

Then hastened all the race of Phrygia to the gates, to make the goddess a present of an Argive band ambushed in the polished mountain-pine, Dardania’s ruin, a welcome gift to be to her, the virgin queen of deathless steeds; and with nooses of cord they dragged it, as it had been a ship’s dark hull, to the stone-built temple of the goddess Pallas, and set it on that floor so soon to drink our country’s blood. But, as they labored and made merry, came on the pitchy night; loud the Libyan flute was sounding, and Phrygian songs awoke, while maidens beat the ground with airy foot, uplifting their glad song; and in the halls a blaze of torchlight shed its flickering shadows on sleeping eyes.

In that hour around the house I was singing as I danced to that maiden of the hills, the child of Zeus; when there rang along the town a cry of death which filled the homes of Troy, and babies in terror clung about their mothers’ skirts, as forth from their ambush came the warrior-band, the handiwork of maiden Pallas. Soon the altars ran with Phrygian blood, and desolation reigned over every bed where young men lay beheaded, a glorious crown for Hellas won, for her, the nurse of youth, but for our Phrygian fatherland a bitter grief.