Hecuba does not as yet catch the import of these words.
Cassandra now enters, waving a torch, and celebrates in a mad refrain her approaching union with Agamemnon. Hecuba remonstrates with her for her unseemly joy; whereupon Cassandra declares that she rejoices in the prospect of the vengeance upon Agamemnon which is to be wrought out through this union. She contrasts the lot of the Greeks and Trojans during the past ten years, and finds that the latter have been far happier; and even in her fall, the woes of Troy are far less than those that await the Greek chieftains. She then prophesies in detail the trials that await Ulysses, and the dire result of her union with Agamemnon:
Thou shalt bear me
A fury, an Erinys from this land.
Hecuba here falls in a faint, and, upon being revived, again recounts her former high estate, sadly contrasts with that her present condition, and shudders at the lot of the slave which awaits her:
Then deem not of the great
Now flourishing as happy, ere they die.
First episode.—Talthybius announces that the shade of Achilles has appeared with the demand that Polyxena be sacrificed upon the hero's tomb.
Enter Pyrrhus and Agamemnon, the former demanding that his father's request be carried out, the latter resisting the demand as too barbarous to be entertained. It is finally agreed to leave the decision to Calchas. He is accordingly summoned, and at once declares that only by the death of the maiden can the Greeks be allowed to set sail for home. And not this alone, but Astyanax also must be sacrificed—hurled from the lofty Scaean tower of Troy.
First choral interlude.—The chorus graphically describes the wooden horse, its joyful reception by the Trojans into the city, their sense of relief from danger, and their holiday spirit; and at last their horrible awakening to death at the hands of the Greeks within the walls.