(AGAMEMNON exits, offstage.)
CHORUS
Soon these ships will sail, carrying an army,
travelling though the silver waters of Simois
until they arrive at the rocky shore below Troy.
In that city, I have heard, lives Kassandra,
the princess who shakes with Apollo’s prophecies,
her hair swirling round her in the sunlight as she speaks.
The Trojans will stand upon their walls and watch
as the broad prows of the Achaean ships
ride the waves, nearing the Simois rivulets.
They will watch the ships that seek for Helen,
sister to Kastor and Pollux,
the twin children of Zeus
the twin stars in the heavens.
May we never feel the fear that the women will feel
in golden Lydia and in Phrygia, near Troy.
May we never stand by our looms and ask,
“Who shall grab hold of my hair
and drag me, weeping, from my home?”
This misery is the fault of the swan’s daughter,
the swan that was Zeus in disguise,
if that story of her birth can be believed,
if that story is not merely the invention of frivolous poets.