The agéd Priam ruined Troy and thee,
The infant not destroying, at his birth
Denounced a baleful firebrand.
Blame should also fall upon Venus, since through her influence Helen came into the power of Paris.
Hecuba refutes the excuses of Helen. She scouts the idea that Venus brought Paris to Sparta. The only Venus that had influenced Helen was her own passion inflamed by the beauty of Paris:
My son was with surpassing beauty graced;
And thy fond passion, when he struck thy sight,
Became a Venus.
As for the excuse that she was borne away by force, no Spartan was aware of that, no cries were heard. Hecuba ends by urging Menelaüs to carry out his threat. This, he repeats, it is his purpose to do.
Third episode.—Helen approaches the Trojan women, saying that she has been sent by the Greeks to deck Polyxena for marriage with Pyrrhus, this being a ruse to trick the girl into an unresisting preparation for her death. This news Polyxena, though mute, receives with horror.