On thy firm base e'en now thou mightst have stood.
To him appears Minerva, who, though she had indeed helped the Greeks to their final triumph over Troy, had been turned against them by the outrage of Cassandra on the night of Troy's overthrow. She now makes common cause with Neptune, and plans for the harassing of the Greek fleet by storm and flood on the homeward voyage. The Greeks are to be taught a lesson of reverence:
Unwise is he, whoe'er of mortals storms
Beleaguered towns, and crushed in ruins wastes
The temples of the gods, the hallowed tombs
Where sleep the dead; for he shall perish soon.
[The two gods disappear.]
Hecuba, lying prone upon the ground before Agamemnon's tent, gives voice to her sufferings of body and of spirit; laments her accumulated losses of home, friends, station, liberty; blames Helen for all, and calls upon the chorus of captive women to join her in lamentation.
Prologue.—Hecuba bewails the fall of Troy, and draws from it a warning to all who are high in power:
For of a truth did fortune never show