me, beseech thy sire that thy sister die not. Even in babes there is wont
to be some sense of evil. Behold, O father, he silently implores thee. But
respect my prayer, and have pity on my years. Yea, by thy beard we, two
dear ones, implore thee; the one is yet a nursling, but the other grown up.
In one brief saying I will overcome all arguments. This light of heaven is
sweetest of things for men to behold, but that below is naught; and mad is
he who seeks to die. To live dishonorably is better than to die gloriously.

CHOR. O wretched Helen, through thee and thy nuptials there is come a
contest for the Atrides and their children.

AG. I can understand what merits pity, and what not; and I love my
children, for [otherwise] I were mad. And dreadful 'tis for me[88] to dare
these things, O woman, and dreadful not to do so--for so I must needs act.
Thou seest how great is this naval host, and how many are the chieftains of
brazen arms among the Greeks, to whom there is not a power of arriving at
the towers of Troy, unless I sacrifice you, as the seer Calchas says, nor
can we take the renowned plain of Troy. But a certain passion has maddened
the army of the Greeks, to sail as quickly as possible upon the land of the
barbarians, and to put a stop to the rapes of Grecian wives. And they will
slay my daughters at Argos, and you, and me, if I break through the
commands of the Goddess. It is not Menelaus who has enslaved me, O
daughter, nor have I followed his device, but Greece, for whom I, will or
nill, must needs offer thee. And I am inferior on this head. For it
behooves her, [Helen,] as far as thou, O daughter, art concerned, to be
free, nor for us, being Greeks, to be plundered perforce of our wives by
barbarians.

CLY. O child! O ye stranger women! O wretched me for thy death! Thy father
flees from thee, giving thee up to Hades.

IPH. Alas for me! mother, mother. The same song suits both of us on account
of our fortunes, and no more to me is the light, nor this bright beam of
the sun. Alas! alas! thou snow-smitten wood of Troy, and mountains of Ida,
where once on a time Priam exposed a tender infant, having separated him
from his mother, that he might meet with deadly fate, Paris, who was styled
Idaean, Idaean [Paris] in the city of the Phrygians. Would that the herdsman
Paris, who was nurtured in care of steers, had ne'er dwelt near the white
stream, where are the fountains of the Nymphs, and the meadow flourishing
wi