Cassandra

by Scott Savitz

Copyright 1998
All rights reserved

(Antyanax and Cassandra are looking out from the walls of Troy)

Antyanax: Aunt Cassandra, why do you always seem so sad?

Cassandra: Because I see this world precisely as it is. That is enough to make anyone sad.

Antyanax: Everyone sees the world as it is; but you aloone see the world as it will be. Surely you should be happy to be so special.

Cassandra: Antyanax, you speak of the curse that rends my soul.

Antyanax: A curse? But you can foretell the future.

Cassandra: And I can do nothing to alter it. I am tormented by my knowledge of future events, without the slightest ability to alter their course. Worse still, no one believes me, and I am perpetually branded a madwoman or a liar.

Antyanax: I believe you.

Cassandra: And you are an eight-year-old child, whose perceptions are dismissed as readily as are my own. But adults, with the power to transform reality, are deaf to my cries. They mock me, laugh at me, accuse me of fantastic visions. I am a prophet without honor in my own country.

Antyanax: But how did you become a prophet?

Cassandra: Apollo sought my love, and gave me the divine gift of prophecy. Based on careful analysis of signs, of the messages encrypted in nature by the gods, I can perceive the future.

Antyanax: But why will no one believe you?

Cassandra: Because I refused Apollo's overtures of love. Angered, he wished to take away my power to foretell the future; but even he could not revoke his own divine gift. Instead, he inflicted upon me a truly insidious punishment, that my prophecies would never be believed.

Antyanax: If your powers of perception are such a burden to you, then why do you interpret the signs of nature which enable you to see the future? Why not simply blind yourself to their significance?

Cassandra: Knowledge is not like that. Once you have acquired it--or have the possibility of acquiring it--human beings are compelled, by their own natures, to bring it to fruition. Since the days of Prometheus, when fire excited our collective imaginations, we have lusted for knowledge. We cannot refuse to understand; we cannot forget what we already know. When a new way of doing things is developed, we may wish that it could be "undiscovered," but this is a fantasy and a lie. Rather, we must operate in a world in which this new understanding exists, to use it for good purposes, and to corral its ability to foment evil.

Antyanax: But why?

Cassandra: Your thumbs are of great usefulness; they are, ultimately, what enables you to slay the lion, more powerful and dangerous than yourself. Try to avoid using them in concert with your fingers. You can't; you can't unlearn that. Neither can I unlearn the ability to perceive the future in every rock, in every plant, in every wisp of encrypted knowledge.

Antyanax: I think I understand. I'll come back to talk with you tomorrow, and to watch the battle again. I so enjoy learning from your wisdom and your observations.

(Antyanax runs off.)

Cassandra: Yes, you will stand with me here every day of your life, every day but one. I have promised myself to keep you from seeing your father's body dragged in circuits around the wall of Troy. But I am powerless to prevent you from one day being hurled from this wall, impelled by Greek vengeance and by fear.

(Queen Hecuba and Cassandra are talking, when Paris and Helen, holding hands, pass by.)

Hecuba: Paris, my son, how do you fare?

Paris: I am well, so long as I am with my love.

(Paris looks into Helen's eyes.)

Hecuba: Your brother Hector is showing ever greater valor in battle. Today, he slew Patroklos, and captured the armor of Achilles.

Paris: My brother is a great warrior.

Hecuba: Yes, he upholds the family's honor. You could learn much from his tutelage.

Paris: Yes, and if he were Greek, I could teach him much in the ways of love.

(Paris and Helen giggle and walk away.)

Hecuba: Damn my son for his idiocy, and his consort for her lust. Together, they have brought upon us this plague of Greeks, this foul pestilence of peoples from the West, bent on our destruction.

Cassandra: This war is not for Helen, though they proclaim it so. The Greeks speak of honor, of defending the marital bed of Menelaus, their champion, whose bride your son has stolen. But this supposed "honor" is but a simple lie to mask their collective greed.

Hecuba: Surely the Greeks do not bleed, sweat, suffer, and die for the sterile instruments of commerce.

Cassandra: That they do, and for the vast wealth of Asia. They are a poor people, from a mountainous land with rocky soil and little gold. The jewels you alone wear would enrobe an entire family of Greek nobility. They want to pillage this land, and aim their arrows at Troy so as to wound it in its very heart.

Hecuba: But wealth means nothing.

Cassandra: That is an attitude you can maintain because you have it. Ask the peasant farmer, who breaks his back in spring and fall, what value he accords to money. Ask the artisan, who spends weeks sculpting a figurine that you buy and smash at a moment's whim. Ask the dung-gatherer, who carries human wastes beyond the city walls, what magic he would conjure for the right to live as you do.

Hecuba: But these are ignoble concerns, an issue for lesser mortals and not for men of worth.

Cassandra: You say that men would not fight for the sake of shiny objects lodged in the earth's bosom. I say they would fight for nothing else. Any belief in noble principles is washed away by the blood of the first corpse to fall; only the lust for wealth sustains the ardor of the fight. The Greeks care nothing for the rights of Menelaus, for the honor of his whorish bride. They proclaim themselves loyal to his cause solely for the wealth of Troy and to wrest control of our strategic position.

Hecuba: Strategic position? What nonsense is this?

Cassandra: We command the bluffs above the Hellespont, the straits which link the Aegean and Black Seas. Each year, more Greeks ships pass through these waters to trade with the Scythians and Slavs. We can--and do--strangle this trade at will, and the Greeks will never rest until our power to do so is broken.

Hecuba: Your ideas grow curious. Surely, daughter, you read too much and pay too little attention to the world which envelops you. Though I have watched over you since birth, and you have scarcely set foot outside these walls, you are like a foreigner in your own land.

Cassandra: That I am, if knowledge is a foreign commodity.

(King Priam and Cassandra are looking out from the walls of Troy.)

Priam: I fear the rage of Achilles. Look how sharp his sword has become since the death of Patroklos. He cuts through our forces like a diamond through soft stones.

Cassandra: It is well that you should fear him.

Priam: Fortunately, our city is surrounded by insurmountable walls.

Cassandra: Walls don't keep out enemies forever. Eventually, some weak spot will be found, and the barbarians will pour through and sack Troy.

Priam: The Greeks will never penetrate these walls. Their power stops at the water's edge; it wanes with the receding of the tides. Though their seamanship is unmatched, and they can raid islands and coasts with impunity, the vast power of Asia is beyond their grasp. As they come ashore, their strength evaporates with the water on their shins.

Cassandra: It is true that a land war here in Asia drains them of their power. But these Westerners are wise in the arts of strategy.

Priam: Our civilization is far older than theirs.

Cassandra: And they have developed technologies which are so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.

Priam: We have been joined by forces from as far afield as Canaan.

Cassandra: A ragtag bunch of refugees, who fled like children before a group of escaped slaves from Egypt. The Greeks, conversely, are supported by Philistine forces, who have trounced the Israelites time and time again.

Priam: The Philistines' strength fails them in their diversionary assault.

Cassandra: True, they have sallied to the north in search of a weak point, and have become mired in the sands of Gallipoli. But their failure in this regard only encourages them to stay in the war. Though this conflict is not theirs, and they are being sacrificed like rams by their ostensible allies, they have now committed too much blood to leave before they have attained at least a nominal victory.

Priam: They are moored on a tiny corner of this peninsula, and will soon be driven back into the sea. The Greeks cannot overcome our formidable defenses.

Cassandra: That is why they will go around them.

Priam: Are you spreading defeatism, daughter?

Cassandra: Far from it. I am trying to save some remnant of my city by warning it of impending danger.

Priam: You are making a fool of ourself and of our royal household with your talk of defeat.

Cassandra: When the floodwaters rise, it is too late to begin building a ship and gathering provisions. I would not let my city drown and be extinguished forever.

Priam: Snap out of your melancholy state, my child. You must be a pillar of strength on which the people can depend.

Cassandra: This is not some madness of my soul! This is the product of deep and careful analysis of what is to come!

Priam: Thank the gods that no one will ever believe you.

(Exit Priam.)

Cassandra: I know one man who will.

(Cassandra and Aeneas huddle over a table in a corner of the palace.)

Aeneas: Are you mad, or simply an idiot?

Cassandra: Neither. I know it sounds absurd...

Aeneas: It is absurd. The Greeks will take Troy by subterfuge? Using some giant animal to enter the city?

Cassandra: It will happen.

Aeneas: You've tried to convince me of the reality of your visions for over an hour. All we've done by disappearing into this cove alone is to impugn your honor.

Cassandra: To Hades with my honor. I cannot save Troy, but I want to ensure that some remnant of my city will survive the catastrophe.

Aeneas: I've heard enough of your madness.

(Aeneas gets up to leave. Cassandra grabs hold of him.)

Cassandra: Wait, I will prove it to you. (Cassandra gets on her knees.) Today, my noble brother Hector will be slaughtered by the arms of Achilles, and his body will be dragged around the city by the victorious Greeks. I see this as clearly as I see you now.

Aeneas: If Hector dies today--and it's not by your treacherous hand, you foul incubator of madness and hysteria--I will listen to what you have to say. But no mere mortal can bring down your brother in battle.

Cassandra: And Achilles has more than a touch of the immortal about him. His mother dipped him in the River Styx to shield his body from harm. Only the heel by which she held him is vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Aeneas: Enough!

(Aeneas exits, followed by Cassandra.)

(Cassandra and Aeneas sit in an alcove.)

Aeneas: All right, I believe you, you demon-inspired sorceress. I saw Hector's body being dragged behind a chariot. They undid him from the nave to the chops.

Cassandra: It is your destiny to survive the fall of Troy. Though you may try to run from it--by seeking out the fiercest parts of the fight--you will emerge unharmed. With your father on your back and a handful of followers, you will flee the city, but not before seeing that which will make you wish to be blinded and deafened. You will witness countless rapes of virgins and old women; you will hear the screams of children impaled on spikes and left to die. Though you will try to blot out the sight, you will hear the shrieks and smell the agony of old men set aflame for the Greeks' amusement. Yours is an unenviable fate.

Aeneas: Surely they will not be so cruel.

Cassandra: These people from the West will have no pity for us, we who have thwarted them for so long. Though we once brought them the gift of writing, they will return to their country steeped in our blood.

Aeneas: What, then, must I do?

Cassandra: Nothing. I thought that I had to tell you what was coming, to prepare you for it; but I have since realized that your fate is ordained by the gods. Only make me this promise: that your descendants will wreak brutal vengeance on these violators of our city.

Aeneas: I swear it.

Cassandra: Farewell, for we shall not speak again. Your last sight of me--from behind a rock--will be when I am encumbered by chains, being led onto Agamemnon's ship.

(Aeneas begins to open his mouth, and Cassandra puts a finger over it to indicate silence.)

(The inhabitants of Troy rush out from the city to see a giant wooden horse.)

Citizen 1: What is it?

Citizen 2: The Greeks are gone! Their ships are nowhere in sight.

Citizen 3: Then why did they leave this?

Citizen 2: Perhaps it was an offering to the gods.

Laocoon: Surely this monstrosity is some fount of evil, left behind by the Greeks to ensure our destruction.

(Laocoon hurls his spear into the belly of the horse, where it holds fast without penetrating.)

Capys: Burn this damned horror.

Thymoetes: No, bring this Greek offering within the city walls. We shall make of it a Trojan shrine, begging the gods to plague the Greeks on their homecoming.

Citizen 4: What moves behind that rock?

Citizen 5: Is it an animal, some sign to tell us of the horse's meaning?

Citizen 6: No, it's a man, in Greek clothing! After him!

(The crowd races after the Greek, catches him, and binds his hands behind him as he screams.)

Citizen 3: Tell us who you are, and the meaning of this horse.

Sinon: I would sooner die.

Citizen 5: Too gentle a punishment for you. Torments of fire shall be your fate.

Sinon: Then I must speak, to spare myself that cruelty.

Citizen 1: Yes, you must.

Sinon: Call me Sinon. The Greeks sought to appease the gods on their departure, that their homecoming might be safe. To this end, one of their number was to be sacrificed. Odysseus, who long bore hatreds against me, arranged my selection as the victim. Escaping their bonds, I hid along the shore until the Greek ships had departed. Now, without a country, with my wife and children liable to be murdered as punishment for my escape, I call upon you for mercy.

Citizen 6: Why did the Greeks leave?

Sinon: They went back in search of reinforcements--men, supplies, and divine favor. They hoped that they would pray more effectively at their native shrines; and they thought that this strange apparition would guarantee their future victory. Their seers told them that if they built a wooden horse to appease the gods, the fate of their return would hinge on the Trojans' actions with respect to that statue. Were the Trojans to destroy the horse, Troy would soon fall; but if they brought it within the city walls, the Greeks would be shipwrecked. So my people built a horse so large that, they thought, the Trojans would never be able to move it, much less bring it into the city.

Citizen 4: They think we lack the strength to move this horse.

Citizen 3: We will show them who is most capable in strength, cunning, and valor.

Priam: Let us make preparations to bring it into the city.

Citizen 6: See how Sinon has undone them; or, rather, how they have undone themselves.

Cassandra (to Antyanax): Sinon is lying. This horse will wreak foul destruction on Troy.

Antyanax: Tell them! Tell them to destroy it!

Cassandra: There is no point. My voice will be unheard and my advice unheeded. I do better to marshal my strength for the coming ordeal.

Antyanax (loudly): Cassandra, tell them!

Cassandra: What is it, Cassandra?

Cassandra: The Greek warriors are concealed within the belly of this beast. Throw it into the sea, that they may know what agony it is to drown. Or set it aflame, to incinerate their bodies before they are whisked off to Hades. Only do not let it enter Troy.

Laocoon: She is right. Beware of Greeks bearing gif...

(A sea monster's arm reaches out from the ocean, encircling Laocoon's face and halting his speech. He is dragged into the ocean, his attempts to scream utterly stifled.)

Citizen 1: Look at accursed Laocoon, punished for opposing the will of the gods.

Citizen 5: Come, let us gather ropes and wheeled vehicles. We must swiftly bring the beast within the city, that our prayers may commence and with them Greek shipwrecks.

(The crowd begins to harness the horse.)

(Hecuba and Cassandra are strolling outside the palace.)

Hecuba: Where do you go, my child? It is nearly nightfall.

Cassandra: I go to pray at the shrine of Athena.

Hecuba: Come, you can pray tomorrow.

Cassandra: I fear that I will be preoccupied then. Earlier today, we brought the horse inside the city, ostensibly to pray against the Greeks' homecoming. That I shall do--tonight.

Hecuba: Very well, then. Good night, my daughter.

(Hecuba walks away.)

Cassandra: Farewell, my mother. I will see you next in Hades.

(Cassandra is kneeling at the shrine of Athena.)

Cassandra: Athena, daughter of Zeus, you know my thoughts. I stay here not to appeal to your mercies--you have favored our adversaries throughout this long and miserable war--but to demonstrate the unworthiness of those whom you aid. As the city is reduced to ashes, Ajax will drag me from this haven and insult you in all your glory. The Greeks shall pay for their excesses with a bitter homecoming, one which will make them wish they had never sailed for Troy.

(Sounds of screaming, fire, and battle.)

Cassandra: My father will soon die, but my mother will be consecrated to the worse fate of slavery. An old woman, she will be forced to do heavy tasks for those she most hates, and live in wretched agony besides. Clothed in rags, sleeping on stone floors, eating of the pigs' trough, she will wish a thousand times that she had died today. Oh, the wrath of Menelaus! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that she should deserve such treatment?

(The sounds of the slaughter grow louder.)

Cassandra: It is a poor consolation, but at last, I have learned to accept Apollo's accursed gift, this poisoned chalice that has consumed my soul. Unlike anyone else in Troy tonight, I have had the opportunity to prepare myself for this descent into horror. I await my destiny, knowing that I am powerless to prevent it. The Fates and the Furies may wreak their worst--I am ready.

(The sounds grow still more intense. Ajax, blood-covered, bursts into the shrine.)

Cassandra: I have been expecting you, blood-steeped Ajax.

Ajax: I knew you always wanted me. But your virginity is reserved for Agamemnon.

Cassandra: You misshapen toad, I anticipate your suffering with undiminished joy.

Ajax: And I yours.

(Ajax, seizing Cassandra by the hair, drags her from the shrine.)

(Cassandra and Agamemnon walk towards Agamemnon's palace.)

Cassandra (looking at the sky): Apollo, I know you hear me, though you do not want to. As I journey to my inevitable death, I will torment you with my words. I still appreciate your gift, the privilege of foretelling the future. Though I have been mocked and abused for my foresight, knowledge is its own reward. And I know that as soon as Agamemnon and I enter the palace gates, we will be murdered by the queen and her lover.

(Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's queen, steps out of the palace.)

Clytemnestra: Come, my lord, enter the palace. It has been ten years since you have seen your own home and hearth.

Cassandra: I stare at the sun, Apollo! I do not fear your blinding rays. I have seen sights worse than any Hades can have to offer.

Clytemnestra: Who are you talking to, you Asiatic sorceress? No one is listening.

(Agamemnon, Cassandra, and Clytemnestra enter the palace. The doors close behind them. Shouts and screams ensue. The curtain closes.)

In addition to the works named below, this play draws inspiration from the words and deeds of Winston Churchill, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward Gibbon, General Douglas MacArthur, and Alfred Thayer Mahan.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon

Euripides' The Trojan Women

Edith Hamilton's Mythology

The Hebrew Bible

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, and Richard III

Virgil's Aeneid