1 EURIPIDES' TROJAN WOMEN PREFACE, TRANSLATION, and ...

[Aside]
These men in their high station, who are reputed to be wise,
are really not much better than ordinary men like us.
This great lord of the Greeks, the son of Atreus,
lusts after this mad girl. Poor as I am,
I’d not have asked for a girl like her.
[To Cassandra]
You there, you’re not right in your mind,
so the insults you gave to Greece, and all your praise
of the Trojans, I throw to the winds; I didn’t hear a word.
Now follow me to the ship: a fine bride for our leader.
[To Hecuba]
And you there, go with the son of Laertes when he comes
for you; people say that Penelope, Odysseus’ wife,
whom you will serve, is a good woman.
Cassandra
Filthy slave. Why do we give him the honourable name of herald,
a man whom everyone hates, a servant to tyrants and government.
He says my mother will go to Odysseus’ halls, but Apollo told me
that she would die here. I won’t insult her by mentioning the rest.
Odysseus does not know the sufferings in store for him. My sorrows
along with Troy’s are golden by comparison. He will add ten years
to the ten he spent here until he finally reaches his land, all alone,
without his men. He will see the narrow straits between rocks
where fierce Charybdis lives, and the Cyclops who eats raw meat
and roams in the mountains; Ligurian Circe who turns men into swine;
shipwrecks on the salty sea; lotus addictions; the sacred cattle of the sun,
whose slaughtered flesh will speak, a grim sound for Odysseus;
but to make a long story short, he will visit Hades, the underworld, then
finally escape the sea, and reach home, only to find a thousand more miseries.
Why do I sling these arrows at
Odysseus’ outrageous fortune?
Go! Take me quickly to my marriage in hell!
Oh you, leader of the Greeks,
Who prided yourself on your great achievements!
You, vile man, will be buried
Like a thief in the night, not in the day.
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