19
beyond words, beyond sounds. When one innocent death follows
another and hope for justice and recognition by the gods
disappears, words stick in the throat. Besides, every song now
reminds her of songs in earlier happier times when they were
accompanied by dancing rather than dirges. In the Funeral
Oration, Pericles had lamented his inability to provide the
appropriate praise of his fallen fellow citizens. Hecuba has no
words for her sufferings which bring neither wisdom nor hope but a
speechless agony only a contorting body can express.
She does have one hope: that poets will keep Troy alive in
song. Perhaps the city’s desolation and its abandonment by the
gods is its special fate. Perhaps the very scope of devastation and
gratuitous cruelty will be redeemed by song. But as the suffering
mounts the hope seems too much and beside the point.
Cassandra
Cassandra is chosen by Agamemnon. But unlike her mother,
she rejoices (at least initially) because she knows what others do
not: that she will be an instrument in her captor’s death and so an
avenging spirit. Besides, a kind of vengeance has already occurred
despite the "fact" that the Trojans lost. After all, the Greeks died far
from their home in a foreign place far from their loved ones and the
proper honor and mourning due dead heroes. Moreover, they
fought for conquest rather than for their homeland and people.
Given this, and what she knows to be the ignominious death
awaiting Agamemnon, Hector’s fate is not so terrible after all.
Convention