too, this aged woman, the mother of such children! How have we come to
nothing, bereft of our former grandeur! And yet still forsooth we are
elated, one of us in his gorgeous palaces; another, when honored among his
citizens. These are nothing. In vain the counsels of the mind, and the
tongue's boast. He is most blest, to whom from day to day no evil happens.

CHORUS.

Against me was it fated that calamity, against me was it fated that woe
should spring, when Paris first hewed the pine in Ida's forest, preparing
to cut his way over the ocean surge to the bed of Helen, the fairest that
the sun's golden beams shine upon. For toils, and fate more stern than
toils, close us round: and from the folly of one came a public calamity
fatal to the land of Simois, and woes springing from other woes: and when
the dispute was decided, which the shepherd decided between the three
daughters of the blessed Gods on Ida's top, for war, and slaughter, and the
desolation of my palaces. And many a Spartan virgin at her home on the
banks of the fair-flowing Eurotas sighs while bathed in tears: and many an
aged matron strikes her hand against her hoary head, for her children who
have perished, and tears her cheek making her nails all blood-stained with
her wounds.

FEMALE ATTENDANT, CHORUS, HECUBA.

ATT. O attendants, where, I pray, is the all-wretched Hecuba, who surpasses
the whole race of man and woman kind in calamities? no one shall wrest from
her the crown.

CHOR. But what dost thou want, O wretch, in thy words of ill omen? for thy
messages of woe never rest.