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Invocation: Talking with the Muse Poet: Tell us, muse, of Troy's dark days;of the House of Priam's fall;of Hector, the old king's bravest son,killed at the Trojan wall.Sing of his daughter, the priestess Cassandra,Apollo's tragic seer;sing of the fate she prophesiedthat the Trojans refused to hear.Muse: Stories told of gods and menstill echo in your ears,ancient voices drifting downvast corridors of years.Poet: Sing of their brother, the shepherd Paris;sing of the bride he stole -- Helen, wife of the Spartan king -- who yielded her heart and soul,abandoning home and family,all for a handsome face.Tell us, muse, of the Greek ships launched,avenging the king's disgrace.Muse: Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus,Ovid, Euripides -- listen! No one living's heardvoices as great as these.Poet: Sing of Achilles, the fiercest warriorto sail from the isles of Greece;of Ithaca's shrewd Odysseus,who fought, though he longed for peace.Muse: Words repeated many times -- what is left to tell?Let the heroes speak themselves;ask the gods as well.Poet: Tell us again of the wooden horse;give us an ageless rhymeof heroes and battles, of meddling gods,and a city lost to time. But this is evil, see!Now once again the pain of grim, true prophecyShivers my whirling brain in a storm of things foreseen. -- Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 480 B.C. Cassandra's ChantI,Cassandra, see it all -- the horse's belly swarming with Greeks,our city's fallin fire and blood,a bitter end -- before it happens,again and again.This hated gift -- my second sight -- brings images struck with Apollo's lightunbidden to my inner eye;my mind, the prison where I must watchmy people diebefore it happens,again and again,in fire and blood -- a bitter end. What good are the oracles to men?Words, more words, and the hurt comesupon us...terror and the truth. -- Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 480 B.C. Trojan Chant IO daughter of Priam,princess,priestess,farsighted sister of Hector,release usfrom ominous portents,your visions of doom,prophetess,pythoness,voice of the tomb!Be silent,Cassandra;your prophesies grieve us.Calamity chanter,dark oracle -- leave us!O daughter of Priam,princess,priestess,farsighted sister of Hector,release usfrom ominous portents,your visions of doom,prophetess,pythoness,voice of the tomb! Paris...Eloped with a young bride, seduced her, stole her,Which opened a long war against the Trojans.A thousand ships and every living GreekAnd their allies set sail. -- Ovid, The Metamorphoses, Book XII, 8 A.D. Aphrodite Explains EverythingTruly, I tell you, the Trojans' fallhad little to do with a wooden horse.If my fellow Olympians hadn't conspiredwith mortals to turn aside love's true course,then true love would conquer, peace would reign,and Troy would be standing. Let me explain:When Paris, the handsomest man in Troy,met Helen, the fairest woman in Greece,they fell madly in love -- what else could have happened?Sadly, she couldn't obtain her releasefrom a marriage arranged by those heartless Fates;now Helen's the woman all Greece hates!King Menelaus, her powerful husband,was ruler of Sparta, was a vengeful manwho called on his neighbors to help him recoverhis chattel -- his wife. The bloodshed began.Helen, who'd slipped through his fingertips -- Helen, whose face launched a thousand shipsacross the Aegean to high-walled Troy -- was the innocent pawn in theHovey, Kate is the author of 'Voices of the Trojan War', published 2004 under ISBN 9780689857683 and ISBN 0689857683.
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