Page:Homer The Iliad.djvu/98

84 domestic character which forms the attraction of the Trojan princess.

Hector does not find her, as he expects, in the palace. She had heard how the fortunes of the day seemed turning against the Trojans; and she had hurried, "like one distraught," to the tower of the citadel, to see with her own eyes how the fight was going. He meets her at the Scæan gates, with the nurse and the child, "whom Hector called Scamandrius, from the river, but the citizens Astyanax"—"defender of the city." The father looks silently on his boy, and smiles; Andromache in tears clings to her husband, and makes a pathetic appeal to him not to be too prodigal of a life which is so dear to his wife and child. Her fate has been already that of many women of her day. Her father and seven tall brethren have been slain by the fierce Achilles, when ravaging the country round Troy he destroyed their native city of Cilician Thebes: her mother too is dead, and she is left alone. She adds the touching loving confession, which Pope's version has made popular enough even to unclassical ears—

Hector soothes her, but it is with a mournful foreboding of evil to come. He values too much his own honour and fair fame to shrink from the battle:—

"I should blush To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy, If like a coward I could shun the fight; Nor could my soul the lessons of my youth So far forget, whose boast it still has been In the fore-front of battle to be found, Charged with my father's glory and mine own. Yet in my inmost soul too well I know The day must come when this our sacred Troy,