HEC. I am dead, before my death, beneath my ills.

POLYX. Lead me, Ulysses, having covered my face with a veil, since, before
I am sacrificed indeed, I am melted in heart at my mother's plaints, her
also I melt by my lamentations. O light, for yet it is allowed me to
express thy name, but I have no share in thee, except during the time that
I am going between the sword and the pyre of Achilles.

HEC. Ah me! I faint; and my limbs fail me.--O daughter, touch thy mother,
stretch forth thy hand--give it me--leave me not childless--I am lost, my
friends. Would that I might see the Spartan Helen, the sister of the twin
sons of Jove, thus, for through her bright eyes that most vile woman
destroyed the happy Troy.

CHOR. Gale, gale of the sea,[8] which waftest the swift barks bounding
through the waves through the surge of the ocean, whither wilt thou bear me
hapless? To whose mansion shall I come, a purchased slave? Or to the port
of the Doric or Phthian shore, where they report that Apidanus, the most
beautiful father of floods, enriches the plains? or wilt thou bear me
hapless urged by the maritime oar, passing a life of misery in my
prison-house, to that island[9] where both the first-born palm tree and the
laurel shot forth their hallowed branches to their beloved Latona, emblem
of the divine parturition? And with the Delian nymphs shall I celebrate in
song the golden chaplet and bow of Diana? Or, in the Athenian city, shall I
upon the saffron robe harness the steeds to the car of Minerva splendid in
her chariot, representing them in embroidery upon the splendid looms of
brilliant threads, or the race of Titans, which Jove the son of Saturn
sends to eternal rest with his flaming lightning? Alas, my children! Alas,
my ancestors, and my paternal land, which is overthrown, buried in smoke,
captured by the Argive sword! but I indeed am[10] a slave in a foreign