Not ten years’ war, nor to their widowed homes
The barred return of heroes could suffice
To fill the cup of evil, which the gods,
Dooming one deed of all the deeds of men,
The folly of one woman and one man,
Have heaped upon us. Now the unending slaughter
Falls on this house. Was joy, or woe, my crime?
To have had, or lost the best of all the Greeks?
My patience, watching twenty years, or now
To have yielded but a little? O ye high gods,