and weep their piteous lamentation; they cry, they cry: Mother, alas! torn from your sight, the Achaeans bear me away from you to their dark ship to row me over the deep to sacred Salamis or to the hill on the Isthmus, that overlooks two seas, the seat that holds the gates of Pelops.

ChorusOh may the sacred blazing thunderbolt of the Aegean, hurled in might, smite the ship of Menelaus full in the middle, on its way in mid-sea, since he is carrying me away in bitter sorrow from the shores of Ilium to be a slave in Hellas, while the daughter of Zeus still keeps her golden mirrors, delight of maidens’ hearts. Never may he reach his home in Laconia or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of Pitane Part of Sparta was so called. or the temple of the goddess Athena of the Brazen House, a temple on the acropolis. with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on Hellas through its length and breadth and woful anguish on the streams of Simois!

Enter Talthybius and attendants, bearing the corpse of Astyanax on Hector’s shield.Chorus LeaderAll me! ah me! new troubles fall on my country, to take the place of those that still are fresh! Behold, you hapless wives of Troy, the corpse of Astyanax, whom the Danaids have cruelly slain by hurling him from the battlements.