but finds small favor with the Achaeans, bring blame on me.HecubaIt is not that they are setting anything ablaze, but my child Cassandra, frenzied maid, comes rushing wildly here.

CassandraBring the light, uplift and show its flame! I am doing the god’s service, see! see! making his shrine to glow with tapers bright. O Hymen, lord of marriage! blessed is the bridegroom; blessed am I also, soon to wed a princely lord in Argos. Hail Hymen, lord of marriage! Since you, my mother, are busied with tears and lamentations in your mourning for my father’s death and for our country dear, I at my own nuptials am making this torch to blaze and show its light, giving to you, O Hymen, giving, O Hecate, a light, at the maiden’s wedding, as the custom is. Nimbly lift the foot; lead the dance on high, with cries of joy, as if to greet my father’s happy fate. The dance is sacred. Come, Phoebus, now, for it is in your temple among your bay-trees that I minister. Hail Hymen, god of marriage! Hymen, hail! Dance, mother, and laugh! link your steps with me, and circle in the delightful measure, now here, now there. Salute the bride on her wedding-day with hymns and cries of joy. Come, you maids of Phrygia in fair raiment, sing my marriage with the husband fate ordains that I should wed.

Chorus LeaderHold the frantic maiden, royal mistress, lest with nimble foot she rush to the Argive army.HecubaYou god of fire, it is yours to light the bridal torch for men, but piteous is the flame you kindle here, beyond my blackest expectation. Ah, my child! how little did I ever dream that such would be your marriage, a captive, and of Argos too! Give up the torch to me; you do not bear its blaze aright in your wild frantic course, nor have your afflictions left you in your sober senses, but still you are as frantic as before. Take in those torches, Trojan friends, and for her wedding madrigals weep your tears instead.CassandraO mother, crown my head with victor’s wreaths; rejoice in my royal match; lead me and if you find me unwilling at all, thrust me there by force; for if Loxias is indeed a prophet, Agamemnon, that famous king of the Achaeans, will find in me a bride more vexatious than Helen. For I will slay him and lay waste his home to avenge my father’s and my brothers’ death. But let that go; I will not tell of that axe which shall sever my neck and the necks of others, or of the conflict ending in a mother’s death, which my marriage shall cause, nor of the overthrow of Atreus’ house. But I, for all my frenzy, will so far rise above my frantic fit, that I will prove this city happier far than those Achaeans, who for the sake of one woman and one passion have lost a countless army in hunting Helen.