_Atreus:_ Well do I know the cause of thy complaint: Because I have forestalled thee in the deed. Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed 1105 This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first To set it forth. This was thy fell intent, To arrange a feast like this unknown to me, And with their mother's aid attack my sons, And with a like destruction lay them low. But this one thing opposed--thou thought'st them thine. _Thyestes:_ The gods will grant me vengeance. Unto them 1110 Do I intrust thy fitting penalty. _Atreus:_ And to thy sons do I deliver thee. TROADES TROADES DRAMATIS PERSONAE _Agamemnon_ King of the Greek forces in the war against Troy. _Pyrrhus_ Son of Achilles, one of the active leaders in the final events of the war. _Ulysses_ King of Ithaca, one of the most powerful and crafty of the Greek chiefs before Troy. _Calchas_ A priest and prophet among the Greeks. _Talthybius_ A Greek messenger. _An Old Man_ Faithful to Andromache. _Astyanax_ Little son of Hector and Andromache. _Hecuba_ Widow of Priam, one of the Trojan captives. _Andromache_ Widow of Hector, a Trojan captive. _Helena_ Wife of Menelaüs, king of Sparta, and afterward of Paris, a prince of Troy; the exciting cause of the Trojan war. _Polyxena_ Daughter of Hecuba and Priam (_persona muta_). _Chorus_ Of captive Trojan women. THE SCENE is laid on the seashore, with the smouldering ruins of Troy in the background. The time is the day before the embarkation of the Greeks on their homeward journey. _The long and toilsome siege of Troy is done. Her stately palaces and massive walls have been overthrown and lie darkening the sky with their still smouldering ruins. Her heroic defenders are either slain or scattered seeking other homes in distant lands. The victorious Greeks have gathered the rich spoils of Troy upon the shore, among these, the Trojan women who have suffered the usual fate of women when a city is sacked. They await the lot which shall assign them to their Grecian lords and scatter them among the cities of their foes. All things are ready for the start._ _But now the ghost of Achilles has risen from the tomb, and demanded that Polyxena be sacrificed to him before the Greeks shall be allowed to sail away. And Calchas, also, bids that Astyanax be slain, for only thus can Greece be safe from any future Trojan war. And thus the Trojan captives who have so long endured the pains of war, must suffer still this double tragedy._ ACT I