HERM.  Alas me! who are these I see?

ORES. (advancing) Thou must be silent; for thou art come to preserve us, not thyself.

ELEC.  Hold her, hold her; and pointing a sword to her neck be silent, that Menelaus may know, that having found men, not Phrygian cowards, he has treated them in a manner he should treat cowards.  What ho! what ho! my friends, make a noise, a noise, and shout before the palace, that the murder that is perpetrated spread not a dread alarm among the Argives, so that they run to assist to the king’s palace, before I plainly see the slaughtered Helen lying weltering in her blood within the house, or else we hear the report from some of her attendants.  For part of the havoc I know, and part not accurately.

CHOR.  With justice came the vengeance of the Gods on Helen.  For she filled the whole of Greece with tears on account of the ruthless, ruthless Idean Paris, who brought the Grecian state to Ilium.  But be silent, for the bolts of the royal mansion resound, for some one of the Phrygians comes forth, from whom we shall hear of the affairs within the house, in what state they are.

PHRYGIAN, CHORUS.

PHRY.  I have escaped from death by the Argive sword in these barbaric slippers, climbing over the cedar beams of the bed and the Doric triglyphs, by the flight of a barbarian.[38] Thou art gone, thou art gone, O my country, my country!  Alas me! whither can I escape, O strangers, flying through the hoary air, or the sea, which the Ocean, with head in shape like a bull’s, rolling with his arms encircles the earth?

CHOR.  But what is the matter, O attendant of Helen, thou man of Ida?

PHRY.  O Ilion, Ilion! alas me!  O thou fertile Phrygian city, thou sacred mount of Ida, how do I lament for thee destroyed, a sad,[39] sad strain for my barbaric voice, on account of that form of the hapless, hapless Helen, born from a bird, the offspring of the beauteous Leda in shape of a swan, the fiend of the splendid Apollonian Pergamus!  Alas!  Oh! lamentations! lamentations!  O wretched Dardania, warlike school[40] of Ganymede, the companion of Jove!

CHOR.  Relate to us clearly each circumstance that happened in the house, for I do not understand your former account, but merely conjecture.

PHRY. [Greek:  Ailinon, ailinon], the Barbarians begin the song of death in the language of Asia, Alas! alas! when the blood of kings has been poured on the earth by the ruthless swords of death.  There came to the palace (that I may relate each circumstance) two Grecians, lions, of the one the leader of the Grecian host was said to be the father, the other the son of Strophius, a man of dark design; such was Ulysses, secretly treacherous, but faithful to his friends, bold in battle, skilled in war, cruel as the dragon.  May he perish for his deep concealed design, the worker of evil!  But they having advanced within her chamber, whom the archer Paris had as his wife, their