Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/53

Rh and the Thebans, in gratitude, erected the statue of a lion to their honour in the Temple of Diana. , the Phrygian, represents Andromache as having brilliant eyes, fair, and tall. He adds, that she was beautiful, modest, wise, affable, and virtuous; tenderly attached to her husband and children; and it appears, that, notwithstanding the prevalent infidelity of the eastern nations, he confined his affection solely to this princess.

Euripides, on the contrary, has affirmed, that the tenderness of Andromache for her husband was so great, that it extended even to his mistresses; and, that she had nursed the children he had by them: but, this appears to have been said without sufficient foundation, and only proves the general opinion of the mildness and benevolence of her character.

The resignation, which an early acquaintance with misfortune inspires in minds even of the most sensibility, appears to have supported Andromache under the death of her husband, and the multiplied miseries which followed. Dictys of Crete, in his third book affirms, that she accompanied Priam to the tent of Achilles, to demand the dead body of Hector; and brought before him her two sons, Astyanax, (afterwards thrown by the Greeks from a high tower) and Laodamas, to excite his compassion.

On the partition of the captives, after the destruction of Troy, she fell to the share of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.