First choral interlude.—The chorus maintains that all perishes with the body; the soul goes out into nothingness:
For when within the tomb we're laid,
No soul remains, no hov'ring shade.
Like curling smoke, like clouds before the blast,
This animating spirit soon has passed.
The evident purpose of these considerations is to discount the story that Achilles' shade could have appeared with its demand for the death of Polyxena.
Second episode.—The appearance of Andromache with Astyanax in her arms, borne captive on a Grecian car, is a signal for general mourning. She announces her own chief cause of woe:
I, with my child, am led away, the spoil
Of war; th' illustrious progeny of kings,
Oh, fatal change, is sunk to slavery.