Dionysus raging on the hills strike the Thracian womana amid the thickets: who, smitten by the god, strains a wild eye and shakes her naked head dark-garlanded with ivy. So Cassandra, starting from her winged wits, raged god-maddened; and, beating ever and again hair and breast, she cried with frenzied voice:
ãO wretched men! why rage ye possessed, dragging this unfriendly horse, hasting to your last night and the end of war and the sleep that knows no waking? This warlike rout comes from the foemen. Surely now the travail of the dreams of poor Hecabeb bears fruit. The long deferred year comes to an end with the resolving of the war. Such a company of chieftains comes, whom the mighty horse shall bring forth in the darkest night, flashing in their armour for battle; now shall warriors most perfect leap to earth and rush to the fray. For not women shall deliver the labouring steed in its travail and attend the birth of men, but she that wrought it shall herself be its Lady of Deliverance; Athena, sacker of cities, midwife of a dolorous birth, shall herself undo the pregnant belly and utter her cry. Lo! now there is rolled within the towers a purple sea of blood outpoured, a wave of death; about the hands of women, sharing the common doom, the bonds of bridal are twined: beneath the wooden planks lurks hidden fire. Alas! for my woes, alas! for thee, city of my fathers, soon shalt thou be fine dust: gone is the handiwork of the immortals, gone utterly the foundations of Laomedon. And
a Bacchant.
b Before she gave birth to Paris, Hecabe dreamed that she had borne a firebrand. The seers interpreted this to mean that her child would be fatal to Troy and advised that it should be put to death (Hyginus, Fab. 91 and 249; Apollod. iii. 12. 5; Eur. Troad. 922; Verg. Aen. vii. 320, etc.).