Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 2- Edward P. Coleridge (1913).djvu/145

 HECUBA. Ghost. Lo ! I am come from out the charnel-house and gates of gloom, where Hades dwells apart from gods, I Polydore, a son of Hecuba the daughter of Cisseus and of Priam. Now my father, when Phrygia's capital was threat- ened with destruction by the spear of Hellas, took alarm and conveyed me secretly from the land of Troy unto Poly- mestor's house, his friend in Thrace, who sows these ^ fruitful plains of Chersonese, curbing by his might a nation delighting in horses. And with me my father sent great store of gold by stealth, that, if ever Ilium's walls should fall, his children that survived might not want for means to live, I was the youngest of Priam's sons ; and this it was that caused my stealthy removal from the land; for my childish arm availed not to carry weapons or to wield the spear. So long then as the bulwarks of our land stood firm, and Troy's battlements abode unshaken, and my brother Hector prospered in his warring, I, poor child, grew up and flourished, like some vigorous shoot, at the court of the Thracian, my father's friend. But when Troy fell and Hector lost his life and my father's hearth was rooted up, and himself fell butchered at the god-built altar by the hands of Achilles' murderous son; then did my father's friend slay me his helpless guest for the sake of the gold, and thereafter cast me into the swell of the sea, to keep the gold for himself in his house. And there I lie one time upon the strand, another in the salt sea's surge, drifting ever
 * t{jvS Hermann for Trjv.