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414 man, indignant with grief, anxious to rush out from the Dardanian gates: for rolling in the mud, he was supplicating all, addressing each man by name:

"Desist, my friends, and permit me alone, grieved as I am, going out of the city, to approach the ships of the Greeks. I will supplicate this reckless, violent man, if perchance he may respect my time of life, and have compassion on my old age; for such is his father Peleus to him, he who begat and nurtured him a destruction to the Trojans; but particularly to me above all has he caused sorrows. For so many blooming youths has he slain to me, for all of whom I do not lament so much, although grieved, as for this one, Hector, keen grief for whom will bear me down even into Hades. Would that he had died in my hands; for thus we should have been satisfied, weeping and lamenting, both his unhappy mother who bore him, and I myself." Thus he spoke, weeping, but the citizens also groaned. But among the Trojan dames, Hecuba began her continued lamentation:

"O my son, why do wretched I live, having suffered grievous things, thou being dead? Thou who by night and day wast my boast throughout the town, and an advantage to the Trojan men and women throughout the city, who received thee as a god. For assuredly thou wast a very great glory to them when alive; now, on the contrary, death and fate possess thee."

Thus she spoke, weeping; but the wife of Hector had not yet learned any thing: no certain messenger going, informed her that her husband had remained without the gates; but she was weaving a web in a retired part of her lofty house, double, splendid, and was spreading on it various painted works. And she had ordered her fair-haired attendants through the palace, to place a large tripod on the fire, that there might be a warm bath for Hector, returning from the battle. Foolish! nor knew she that, far away from baths, azure-eyed Minerva had subdued him by the hands of Achilles. But she heard the shriek and wailing from the tower, and her limbs were shaken, and the shuttle fell from