for the victory, but they are interrupted by the chilling sound of Achilles' war-cry, taken up and echoed by the Greek army. Greece's greatest warrior has returned to the field in a berserk fury. Act 3 In Hector's bedchamber, Andromache sits and waits for her husband. She remembers with terror the day Achilles killed her father and brothers. Queen Hecuba enters and tells her to save Hector by going to the walls of Troy and calling him out of battle. Andromache refuses, asking why Priam will not end the war by returning the stolen Helen to her own husband. Hecuba scoffs that no war was fought for a woman: Helen may be the pretext, but the great city of Troy is the Greek's real prize. Helen herself now enters, and Andromache relieves her feelings with a volley of insults. Helen responds with a virtuoso aria claiming that erotic passion is greater than either morality or politics, that her love "touches Heaven, because it stretches down to Hell." Finding no comfort in sisterhood, the three women make separate prayers, each to the goddess she represented in the first act. Helen and Hecuba go, and a serving-woman enters to ask if she should light the fire for Hector's evening bath. Denying her instinctive knowledge of his death, Andromache answers "Yes...yes," but her slave mockingly echoes "No...no," as the servants are first to hear all the bad news. Andromache runs out in despair, and the serving-woman is joined by a chorus of slaves who comment cynically: "We could tell the story too, the pathetic story of our masters, viewed from the corridor." Paris brings King Priam the news of Hector's death. Priam curses his surviving son, wishing him dead as well, and Paris goes, swearing not to return until he has killed Achilles in revenge. Alone, Priam weeps that the Old Man years ago spoke only of his own death, not of Hector's. The Old Man, the Young Man, and the Nurse appear and question the king: "One son to live by another's death, is that the law of life you favour?" Priam weakly tries to answer "Yes...yes," but an unseen chorus replies "No...no": his heart's answer. Hermes guides Priam to Achilles' tent. In a quiet scene, Priam kisses Achilles' hands, "the hands of him who slew my son" and begs to be given Hector's body for burial. Achilles agrees, and the two