HECUBA:
Do you smell the stench in your designs? 270
You admit that I treated you well.
But are you fair to me? No!
You use your power to cause me pain.
You people who grew up ignorant of gratitude,
who lust for acclaim bought by crowd-coaxing tongues
I do not want to know a single, one of you
who think nothing of abusing friends
so long as your smooth speeches lull the mob.

What chicanery tricked the Greeks 280
into voting slaughter of this child?
Do they feel bound to make human sacrifice
on that tomb where they should kill a steer?
Or if Achilles wants a death to pay for his death,
what justice that he target her for slaughter?
She never injured him—not once!

Helen—he must claim
her blood to soak his tomb.
She killed him. She led him to Troy.
And if the captive picked for death must be
the one most beautiful, we are exempt.
Helen’s face and form command all eyes, 290
and Helen’s acts are not less wrong than ours.

Justice—I appeal first for justice.
And more: the debt you owe me now comes due.
Bear with me. You admit clinging to my hand,
touching this old cheek, kneeling to beg my mercy.

(Hecuba kneels in suppliance, touching
Odysseus' knees. As she mentions the ritual
gestures of supplication, she
performs them.)

My turn now. I cling, I touch, I call in
your debt of gratitude, I beg your mercy.
Do not tear my child from my arms.
Do not kill her. Enough of my children have died.
In her I remember joy and forget great loss. 300
She is my better self, my consolation,
my country, nurse, staff, guide.

The strong should not abuse their strength,
nor the fortunate think Chance will bless them forever.
I know. Once I was blessed. Not now.
One single day saw all I lived for lost.

(Hecuba again touches Odysseus' bearded
cheek in supplication.)

But, O my friend, show me respect,
take pity. Go to the Greek army.
Warn that there will be just cause for anger
if you now kill women whom you did not kill 310
when first you tore them from their altars.
Then you took pity.
And your laws forbid equally
spilling the blood of free man and slave.
Your prestige counts. No matter how you speak,
you will persuade them. High repute and low
may speak the same words but not with the same force.

CHORUS:
No human heart is set so hard
that hearing the grave music of your dirge,
your keening, would not bring tears. 320

(Odysseus pulls Hecuba to her feet and moves away from her.)

ODYSSEUS:
Hecuba, be instructed.
Do not let your imagination
find an enemy in one who gives you sound advice.
I stand ready to save your person because chance
let it save mine. I can say nothing more
nor retract one thing that has been said.
Troy is taken. The army’s chief made his demand.
For him your daughter will be sacrificed.
Most countries show weakness—you know this—
when the man truly noble and brave 330
fails to be rewarded more than baser men.
We think, woman, that Achilles deserves full honors.
He died, our finest man, for Greece.
Regard him alive as a friend, disregard him
now he’s dead—would that not shame us?

So much for that. But what will people say
if troops muster again and war comes?
Will we choose to fight or to put our own lives first
in a world where our dead lie dishonored?
As for me, each day that I live may bring 340
next to nothing. Yet, I have everything my life needs.
But I want my tomb thought worthy of tribute.
Such recognition endures.

But if you say, Pity me, I suffer,
I answer, Some of us are not less sorrow-struck—
grey-haired women, old men, brides, too,
deprived of their highborn young husbands
whose corpses rot covered by Troy’s dust.

Accept your lot.
And we—if we do wrong to honor courage, 350
then we stand convicted of our ignorance.
But you foreigners do not treat friends as friends
nor pay respect to those who died
in a moral cause.
Thus, Greece is fortune-blessed
while you barbarians receive
exactly what your notions call for.

CHORUS:
(wailing) The slave’s lot—to know pure evil without cease,
to bear what no one ought, to be crushed by force!

HECUBA:
Daughter, oh my words about your killing, 360
put vainly in the air, disappear.

(Polyxena comes forward.)

But you—if you have more strength than your mother,
be quick, become a nightingale singing notes
so clear they stop this theft of life.
Stir pity. Grasp Odysseus’ knees. Persuade.
You can change his mind, for he has children, too.
Make him pity the chance that strikes a child.

POLYXENA:
I see, Odysseus, that your right hand
hides inside your cloak and your face turns aside
so that I cannot touch your bearded cheek. 370
At ease! You have escaped the Zeus
who guards all suppliants.
Yes, I will go. Necessity is kind,
for I wish to die. If not, I’d seem
a woman broken but rejecting death.

Why should I live? My earliest memory:
my father lord over all Trojans.
And I grew, cherished, reared with bright hope
for a king’s bride. Not small the rivalry
about whose court, whose fire would give me welcome. 380
And I, degraded now, was princess
among Trojan women, most admired of her virgins,
a goddess except in one way—I must die.

But now I am slave. That name alone,
harsh name, makes me lust for death.
I might chance, too, on a brutal master
who’d haggle and trade silver coins for me—
sister to Hector and the many others,
and he’d constrain me to his needs—grind corn, make
bread, sweep dirt from his house, stand at the loom, 390
each day know grief. He’ll force constraint on me.
And a slave, bought who knows where, will foul
my bed that was reserved for kings.
No! I forfeit my view of this sunlight-
free—as I hand my body to the god of death.

Lead me, Odysseus. Let this contest for me stop.
For I can see no hope, no grounds to think
that glory might again invest our days.
And you, mother, try not to stop us
with speeches or tugging hands. But agree that I should 400
die before my dignity is made ugly by shame.
One not accustomed to the taste of cruelty
endures it but bends her neck to the yoke of anguish.
Dying would be better luck than living,
for life without moral beauty inflicts endless pain."