Agamemnon: (the Oresteia are three plays by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. Agamemnon is the first of the trilogy. More about the Trojan war,...great.)

Time and Scene: A night in the tenth and final autumn of the Trojan war. The house of Atreus in Argos. Before it, an altar stands unlit; a watchman on the high roofs fights to stay awake.

Watchman:
Dear gods, set me free from all the pain,
the long watch I keep, one whole year awake..
propped on my arms, crouched on the roofs of Atreus
like a dog.

I know the stars by heart,
the armies of the night, and there in the lead
the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer,
bring us all we have-
our great blazing kings of the sky,
I know them, when they rise and when they fall...
and now I watch for the light, the signal-fire
breaking out of Troy, shouting Troy is taken.
So she commands, full of her high hopes.
That woman-she maneuvers like a man.

And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,
and the thoughts go groping around through the night
and the good dreams that used to guard my sleep...
not here, it's the old comrade, terror, at my neck.
I mustn't sleep, no-

(shaking himself awake)