Andromache's Rage

Andromache's Rage

You think you can win me with a piece of jewelry?
Bribe with a trinket the silence of all scruple?
Vile man! Too much between us? Spare me that!
Your father destroyed my life and left my mother
dying of a broken heart and then ravished Thebes;
the home of my birth, taking my dear friend Briseis,
but newly married, to be passed around like a whore,
her honor trampled, and then thrown to Agamemnon.
This same father, ignoring convention, killed my Hector,
Dragging his body, for three damned days around the city.
And pray tell me, why I should think you any better?
Didn’t I see, with my own eyes, how you killed Priam,
a pitiful old man, stricken with dread for his family?
Did I not hear your blasphemy and watch your pillage?
Did you not look away as I begged you to spare my son?
Were you not deaf to my pleas as you took him screaming,
and go with great ceremony to throw him off the wall?
Take me as you will but I will never consent marriage
Into a family, that's spawn to a brood of vipers!