CHORUS

It was the beginning of terrible sorrows
when the son of Maia and Zeus went into the glen of Ida, leading
a lovely team of three—three
goddesses. Armed with their beauty
for the hateful contest, they came
to the shepherd’s lonely hearth—
to that wild place, to the poor door
where the shepherd kept his solitude.

(Antistrophe)
When they came among the branches
and leaves of the shadowed glen, they bathed
their shining bodies in the splashing
mountain spring. And then they stood
in radiance before the son of Priam,
vying as rivals with hot words.
Aphrodite snared him in deceit—
words sweet to hear, but fatal
for the Phrygian city,
fatal to the walls of Troy.


If only she who gave birth to this evil
had raised him overhead and thrown
him far away before he came
to Ida’s slope. Cassandra cried out-
imploring the elders, she cried for his death.
Beside the laurel of prophecy she shouted
against the blight on Priam’s city.
Whom did she not approach?

(Antistrophe)
For then the women of Troy would never
have been harnessed to slavery’s yoke.
And woman, you would still be
living within your royal house. Then
the Greeks would have escaped a decade
full of agony, and young spearmen
would not have struggled to the death around
the walls of Troy. No beds would be bereft
of lovers, no old men would be bereft of sons.