women?

AG. Here, by the fair-pooped ships of the Greeks.

CLY. Well, and poorly,[58] forsooth! but may it nevertheless turn out well.

AG. Do then thou knowest what, O lady, and obey me.

CLY. In what? for I am accustomed to obey thee.

AG. We indeed in this place, where the bridegroom is--

CLY. Will do what without the mother, [of those things] which it behooves
me to do?

AG. --will bestow your daughter among the Greeks.

CLY. But where must I be in the mean time?

AG. Go to Argos, and take care of your virgins.

CLY. Leaving my child? And who will bear the [nuptial] torch?

AG. I will furnish the light that becomes the nuptials.

CLY. The custom is not thus, but you think these matters trifles.

AG. It is not proper that thou shouldst mingle in the crowd of the army.

CLY. It is proper that I, the mother, should bestow at least my own
daughter.

AG. And it [is proper] that the damsels at home should not be alone.

CLY. They are well guarded in their close chambers.

AG. Obey me.

CLY. [No,] by the Argive Goddess queen. But go you, and attend to matters
abroad, but I [will mind] the affairs at home, as to the things which
should be present to virgins at their wedding.[59]

AG. Alas! In vain have I toiled,[60] and have been frustrated in my hope,
wishing to send my wife out of my sight. But I am using stratagems, and
finding contrivances against those I best love, overcome at all points. But
nevertheless with the prophet Calchas I will go and ask the pleasure of the
Goddess, not fortunate for me, the trouble of Greece.[61] But it behooves a
wise man either to support a useful and good wife in his house or not to
marry at all.[62]

CHORUS. The assembly of the Grecian army will come to Simois, and to the
silver eddies, both with ships and with arms, to Ilium, and to the
Phoebeian plain of Troy, where I hear that Cassandra, adorned with a
green-blossoming crown of laurel, lets loose her yellow locks, when the
prophetic influence of the Gods breathes upon her. And the Trojans will
stand upon the towers of Troy and around its walls, when brazen-shielded
Mars, borne over the sea in fair-prowed ships, approaches the beds of
Simois by rowing, seeking to bear away Helen, [the sister] of the twain
sons of Jove in heaven, into the land of Greece, by the war-toiling shields
and spears of the Greeks. But having surrounded Pergamus,[63] the city of
the Phrygians, around its towers of stone, with bloody Mars,