Yes, surely; but I want to learn your wishes, whether you have come to help Achaeans or Phrygians.AthenaI wish to give my former foes, the Trojans, joy, and on the Achaean army impose a bitter return.PoseidonWhy do you leap thus from mood to mood? Your love and hate both go too far, on whomever centred.AthenaDo you not know the insult done to me and to the shrine I love?PoseidonI do: when Aias dragged away Cassandra by force.AthenaYes, and the Achaeans did nothing, said nothing to him.PoseidonAnd yet it was by your mighty aid they sacked Ilium.AthenaFor which cause I would join with you to do them harm.PoseidonMy powers are ready at your will. What is your intent?AthenaI will impose on them a return that is no return.PoseidonWhile they stay on shore, or as they cross the salt sea?AthenaWhen they have set sail from Ilium for their homes. On them will Zeus also send his rain and fearful hail, and inky tempests from the sky; and he promises to grant me his thunder-bolts to hurl on the Achaeans and fire their ships. And you, for your part, make the Aegean strait to roar with mighty billows and whirlpools, and fill Euboea’s hollow bay with corpses, that Achaeans may learn henceforth to reverence my temples and regard all other deities.PoseidonSo shall it be, for this favor needs only a few words. I will vex the broad Aegean sea; and the beach of Myconos and the reefs round Delos, Scyros and Lemnos too, and the cliffs of Caphareus shall be strewn with many a corpse. You go to Olympus, and taking from your father’s hand his lightning bolts, keep careful watch against the hour when Argos’ army lets slip its cables. A fool is he who sacks the towns of men, with shrines and tombs, the dead man’s hallowed home, for at the last he makes a desert round himself and dies.

HecubaLift your head, unhappy one, from the ground; raise up your neck; this is Troy no more, no longer am I queen in Ilium. Though fortune change, endure your lot; sail with the stream, and follow fortune’s tack, do not steer your ship of life against the tide, since chance must guide your course. Ah me! ah me! What else but tears is now my hapless lot, whose country, children, husband, all are lost? Ah! the high-blown pride of ancestors, humbled! how brought to nothing after all!