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450 chariot, and to tie a chest upon it; but he descended into an odoriferous chamber of cedar, lofty-roofed, which contained many rarities, and called in his wife Hecuba, and said:

"Unhappy one, an Olympian messenger has come to me from Jove, [that I should] ransom my dear son, going to the ships of the Greeks, and should bear gifts to Achilles, which may melt his soul. But come, tell this to me, what does it appear to thee in thy mind? For my strength and courage vehemently urge me myself to go thither to the ships, into the wide army of the Greeks."

Thus he spoke: but his spouse wept, and answered him in words:

"Ah me, where now is thy prudence gone, for which thou wast formerly distinguished among foreigners, and among those whom thou dost govern? Why dost thou wish to go alone to the ships of the Greeks, before the eyes of the man who slew thy many and brave sons? Certainly an iron heart is thine. For if this cruel and perfidious man shall take and behold thee with his eyes, he will not pity thee, nor will he at all respect thee. But let us now lament him apart, sitting in the hall; but [let it be] as formerly to him, at his birth violent fate spun his thread, when I brought him forth, that he should satiate the swift-footed dogs at a distance from his own parents, with that fierce man, the very middle of whose liver I wish that I had hold of, that, clinging to it, I might devour it; then would the deeds done against my son be repaid; for he did not slay him behaving as a coward, but standing forth in defense of the Trojan men and deep-bosomed Trojan dames, neither mindful of flight nor of receding."

But her again the aged, godlike Priam addressed:

"Do not detain me, desirous to go, nor be thou thyself an evil-omen bird in many palaces; nor shalt thou persuade me. For if indeed any other of earthly blessings had ordered me, whether they be prophets, soothsayers, or priests, we might have pronounced it a falsehood, and been the more averse. But now since I myself have heard it from a deity, and have beheld her face to face, I will go, nor shall this word be vain; and if it be my fate to die at the ships of the brazen-mailed