It guards the drops of bounteous purple, ever fresh,
As silver precious, raiment’s dye. Our house, my lord,
With God’s help hath sufficient store of these. Our halls
Are far from understanding ways of poverty.”
As she turns to follow her victim she prays:—
“O Zeus! O Zeus Fulfiller! these my prayers fulfil.”
The captive Cassandra is left without. Before her searching but futile insight pass by-gone scenes in the bloodguilty palace to which she has just come as a stranger. She points to the murdered infants of Thyestes and their “roasted flesh upon which their father banqueted.” Then her prophetic vision forecasts the details presently to be enacted: Agamemnon’s death and her own, the welcoming bath, the ensnaring robe, “hand after hand outstretching blow on blow.” As she goes in to her death she utters lines unsurpassed in Greek tragedy, if anywhere, for the pathos of self-abnegating contrast between the littleness of the individual and the wider aspects of the universal:—
“O life of mortal men! If that it fareth well,
’Tis like a painting sketch’d, but, comes adversity,
The wet sponge, blurring, touches and the picture’s gone!