And I, whose slave am I,
The shaken head, the arm that creepeth by,
Staff-crutched, like to fall?
Talthybius
Odysseus [17], Ithaca's king, hath thee for thrall.
Hecuba
Beat, beat the crownless head:
Rend the cheek till the tears run red!
A lying man and a pitiless
Shall be lord of me, a heart full-flown
With scorn of righteousness:
O heart of a beast where law is none,
Where all things change so that lust be fed,
The oath and the deed, the right and the wrong,
Even the hate of the forked tongue:
Even the hate turns and is cold,
False as the love that was false of old!
O Women of Troy, weep for me!
Yea, I am gone: I am gone my ways.
Mine is the crown of misery,
The bitterest day of all our days.
[17] Odysseus.] -- In Euripides generally Odysseus is the type of the successful unscrupulous man, as soldier and politician -- the incarnation of what the poet most hated. In Homer of course he is totally different.
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