Stasimon 5
[Episode]
Alone, and ask no other mourner’s song.
LEADER.
Hector, thou hearest. We were guiltless here,P. 52, l. 950. These short speeches between Hector and the Leader of the Guard make a jarring note in the midst of the Muse’s lament. Perhaps it would not be so if we knew how the play was produced, but at present this seems like one of several marks of comparative crudity in technique which mark the play, amid all its daring and inventiveness.
950
And falsely spake that Thracian charioteer.
HECTOR.
Always I knew it. Had we any need
Of seers to tell this was Odysseus’ deed?
For me, what could I else, when I beheld
The hosts of Argos camped upon this field,
What but with prayers and heralds bid my friend
955
Come forth and fight for Ilion ere the end?
He owed me that.—Yet, now my friend is slain,
His sorrow is my sorrow. On this plain
I will uplift a wondrous sepulchre,
And burn about it gifts beyond compare
Of robes and frankincense. To Troy’s relief
960
He came in love and parteth in great grief.
MUSE.
My son shall not be laid in any graveP. 52, 1. 962 ff., My son shall not be laid in any grave.]—Like other Northern barbaric princes, such as Orpheus (1. 972 below) and Zalmoxis (Herodotus, iv. 95) and Holgar the Dane, Rhesus lies in a hidden chamber beneath the earth, watching, apparently, for the day of uttermost need when he must rise to help his people. There is no other passage in Greek tragedy where such a fate is attributed to a hero, though the position of Darius in the Persae and Agamemnon in the Choephori or the Electra is in some ways analogous.
The last lines of the Muse have a very Euripidean ring: cf. Medea, l. 1090 (p. 61, My thoughts have roamed a cloudy land), Alcestis, 1. 882.
Of darkness; thus much guerdon will I crave
Of Death’s eternal bride, the heavenly-born
Maid of Demeter, Life of fruits and corn,
To set this one soul free. She owes me yet,
965
