LEADER.

  Out on the smoke she goeth,
  And her name no man knoweth;
And the cloud is northward, southward; Troy is gone
  for ever!

[A great crash is heard, and the Wall is lost in smoke and darkness.

HECUBA.

Ha!  Marked ye?  Heard ye?  The crash of the
     towers that fall!

LEADER.

     All is gone!

HECUBA.

Wrath in the earth and quaking and a flood that
     sweepeth all,

LEADER.

     And passeth on!
     [The Greek trumpet sounds.

HECUBA.

Farewell!—­O spirit grey,
  Whatso is coming,
Fail not from under me. 
Weak limbs, why tremble ye? 
Forth where the new long day
Dawneth to slavery!

CHORUS.

Farewell from parting lips,
Farewell!—­Come, I and thou,
Whatso may wait us now,
Forth to the long Greek ships[49]
   And the sea’s foaming.

[The trumpet sounds again, and the Women go out in the darkness.

NOTES ON THE TROJAN WOMEN

[1] Poseidon.]—­In the Iliad Poseidon is the enemy of Troy, here the friend.  This sort of confusion comes from the fact that the Trojans and their Greek enemies were largely of the same blood, with the same tribal gods.  To the Trojans, Athena the War-Goddess was, of course, their War-Goddess, the protectress of their citadel.  Poseidon, god of the sea and its merchandise, and Apollo (possibly a local shepherd god?), were their natural friends and had actually built their city wall for love of the good old king, Laomedon.  Zeus, the great father, had Mount Ida for his holy hill and Troy for his peculiar city. (Cf. on p. 63.)

To suit the Greek point of view all this had to be changed or explained away.  In the Iliad generally Athena is the proper War-Goddess of the Greeks.  Poseidon had indeed built the wall for Laomedon, but Laomedon had cheated him of his reward—­as afterwards he cheated Heracles, and the Argonauts and everybody else!  So Poseidon hated Troy.  Troy is chiefly defended by the barbarian Ares, the oriental Aphrodite, by its own rivers Scamander and Simois and suchlike inferior or unprincipled gods.

Yet traces of the other tradition remain.  Homer knows that Athena is specially worshipped in Troy.  He knows that Apollo, who had built the wall with Poseidon, and had the same experience of Laomedon, still loves the Trojans.  Zeus himself, though eventually in obedience to destiny he permits the fall of the city, nevertheless has a great tenderness towards it.

[2] A steed marvellous.]—­See below, on p. 36.

[3] go forth from great Ilion, &c.]—­The correct ancient doctrine.  When your gods forsook you, there was no more hope.  Conversely, when your state became desperate, evidently your gods were forsaking you.  From another point of view, also, when the city was desolate and unable to worship its gods, the gods of that city were no more.