494'Daughter, your mother's last grief (for what else is left?), daughter, you lie dead, and I see your wound, which is my wound, and so that I should lose none of my family without bloodshed, you too have a wound! 497But you, because you were a woman, I thought safe from the sword: woman though you are, you have fallen by the sword, and the same Achilles who destroyed so many of your brothers has destroyed you, the ruin of Troy and the robber of my children. 501But when he fell by the arrows of Paris and Phoebus, "Now surely," I said, "Achilles is not to be feared!" 503Even now he was to be feared by me: the very ash of the buried man rages against this family; even in his tomb we have felt him as an enemy.
505It was for the grandson of Aeacus that I was fruitful! 505Mighty Ilium lies low, and with a grievous outcome the public disaster is ended, — but ended nonetheless; 507for me alone Pergamum remains, and my grief is still running its course: lately the greatest of all, powerful in so many sons-in-law and sons and daughters-in-law and in my husband, now I am dragged into exile, destitute, torn from the tombs of my family, a gift for Penelope; 511and she, pointing me out to the mothers of Ithaca as I spin my allotted wool, will say, "This is that famous mother of Hector, this is the wife of Priam!" 514And after so many lost, now you, who alone lightened your mother's grief, have made atonement at an enemy's tomb!
516I have borne an offering for an enemy's dead! 516For what do I remain, iron-hearted? 517Or why do I delay? 517For what do you keep me, long-lived old age? 518For what, cruel gods, unless to see new deaths, do you prolong a long-lived old woman? 519Who would think that Priam could be called happy after Pergamum was destroyed? 521He is happy in his death, and does not see you, my daughter, slain, and he left his life and his kingdom together. 523But, I suppose, you will be dowered with a funeral, royal maiden, and your body will be laid in the tombs of your ancestors. 525That is not the fortune of our house: your gifts will be your mother's weeping and a handful of foreign sand!
527We have lost everything: what remains, a reason for me to endure living for a short time, is the child most dear to his mother, now my only one, once the youngest of the male line, Polydorus, entrusted to the Ismarian king on these shores. 531Why meanwhile do I delay to wash her cruel wounds with water, and her face spattered with pitiless blood?' 533She spoke, and went towards the shore with an old woman's step, tearing her white hair. 534'Give me an urn, Trojan women,' the unhappy woman had said, to draw clear water: she sees the body of Polydorus cast up on the shore, and the huge wounds made by Thracian weapons!
538The Trojan women cry out: she was struck dumb with grief, and grief itself devours alike her voice and the tears welling up within, and, very like a hard rock, she is numb, and now fixes her eyes on the ground before her, at times lifts her grim face to the sky, now gazes at the face of her son as he lies there, now at his wounds, his wounds above all, and she arms herself and marshals her anger. 545As soon as she blazed up with it, as if she were still a queen, she resolved to take vengeance and is wholly absorbed in the image of punishment, and as a lioness rages when robbed of her suckling cub and, finding the tracks of its feet, follows the enemy she does not see, so Hecuba, after she has mingled anger with grief, not forgetting her spirit, forgetting her years, goes to Polymestor, the author of the dreadful murder, and asks for a meeting: for she says she wishes to show him gold left in hiding for him, to give to her son.
554The Odrysian believed her, and, accustomed to the love of gain, came to the secret place. 555Then, cunning, with flattering lips, he said, 'Make no delay, Hecuba, give the gifts for your son! 557All that you give, and what you gave before, will be his, I swear by the gods above.' 558She looks fiercely at him as he speaks and swears falsely, and she boils with swelling rage, and so, seizing him, she calls on the band of captive mothers and plunges her fingers into his treacherous eyes and forces the eyes from their sockets (anger makes her deadly) and sinks her hands in, and, defiled with his guilty blood, she gouges out not his sight (for none is left) but the places of his sight.
565The Thracian people, provoked by the disaster of their tyrant, began to attack the Trojan woman with a shower of weapons and stones. 567But she pursues with snapping jaws a stone thrown at her, with a hoarse growl, and, her mouth set for words, she barked when she tried to speak: the place still exists and takes its name from the event, and she, long mindful of her old sufferings, even then howled mournfully through the Sithonian fields. 572Her fortune had moved both her Trojans and the Pelasgian enemy, her fortune had moved all the gods too, all of them, so much that even Jupiter's wife and sister herself denied that Hecuba had deserved that end.