And she made answer, “Sir, and King, thy fate
That comes on all men horn hath come on thee;
This shepherd is thine own child verily.”[[17]]
Here, then, is the real beginning of the story of Cassandra. For the old king would not be warned against his fate. He welcomed his boy as one returned from death. A great festival was made in his honour; and of all the many sons of Priam there was not one so dearly loved. Joy and merriment filled the city. All the warning oracles which had spoken at the birth of Paris were forgotten. Nothing but thanksgiving was heard for the restoration of the fair young prince; and amid it all, Cassandra knew that when she placed his hand in the hand of Priam, Destiny had wrought for the fall of Troy.
The years passed speedily at first, untouched by care; and then more slowly, big with events. First the sailing of Paris. Then, after Helen came back with him to Troy, an interval when the Trojans waited, wondering how the Greeks would repay the insult. Finally, the arrival of the Greek fleet and the beginning of the Siege.
Priam was not unsupported in his long ordeal. Neighbouring princes joined him against the hostile Greeks, some in the hope of reward and some for the sake of friendship. There was one warrior, Othryoneus, who came because he loved Cassandra. He brought no ‘gifts of wooing,’ but made a promise to the king “of a mighty deed, namely, that he would drive perforce out of Troy-land the sons of the Achaians.” Priam consented to his suit; but we are not told what Cassandra thought of it. Probably she was not consulted. It is conceivable, so tender was her love of home and country, that to reward the hero who would save them, she would even consent to lay aside her holy office; to recall her soaring spirit to dwell beside the hearth. But the eye which saw so far knew that it need not consider the present problem. Before the end, Cassandra saw the valiant man who loved her lying pierced by the spear of Idomeneus.
That was toward the end of the war; and in the penultimate scene of it, the bringing-in of Hector’s body, Cassandra appears again. She had watched all that fearful night, when the old king went out to the Greek camp to beg of Achilles for the body of his great son. And in the cold light of dawn, straining her eyes from Pergamos and weary with her vigil, she was the first to see the mournful procession. “Then beheld she him that lay upon the bier behind the mules, and thereat she wailed and cried aloud throughout all the town.” The people wakened at her terrible cry, and coming out of their houses, they followed her down to the gate to meet the unhappy king.
Hector’s death was the beginning of the end. Troy fell. Its brave men were slaughtered, its palaces burnt, its altars dishonoured; and worst of all, its women and children were carried off as slaves. Of this the Iliad does not speak; but it was an event which seized and held fast the imagination of the Attic dramatists. The glory of war, which throws a glamour over the fighting in the epic, gives place in the later poets to the pain and horror of it. Not because they were less brave: Æschylus fought at the great Greek victory of Marathon; but because an advancing civilization had brought a more reflective mind, a more humane temper, and the birth of sacred pity.
The Troades, to which we come next for the story of Cassandra, breathes throughout the pitiful spirit of the poet Euripides. It relates what befell the women of the royal household after the sack of the city. As grey daylight comes we see the figure of the aged queen, prostrate before the charred walls of the town. She rises feebly, moaning in a bewilderment of grief and physical weakness. To her approach, one after another, furtively, the frightened Trojan women who form the Chorus of the play. Her crying has wakened them, and they steal out to try to discover what fate is in store for them. Even while they ask, a messenger Talthybius, arrives from the Greek ships. In curt phrases he replies to the queen’s anguished inquiries about her daughters. They have been assigned to certain of the Greek chiefs, he says: Andromache to Neoptolemus, she herself to Odysseus, and Polyxena (he speaks ambiguously, to hide a grimmer fact) to serve at the tomb of Achilles. The stricken queen asks about each in turn.
Hecuba. Say how Cassandra’s portion lies.