Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/49

19 THE MOURNING FOR HECTOR 19

THE MOURNING FOR HECTOR

From the Twenty-fourth Book of the niaO, from verse 718 to the end ; in Bryant's translation, τβΓΒββ 911-1022.

Old Priam, attended by Hermes (Mercury), the herald of the gods, has gone to the tent of Achilles, who is moved with com- passion and gives up to him the body of Hector. On Priam's return, he is met at the city gate by the Trojan people.

The throng gave way and let the chariot pass ;

And having brought it to the royal halls,

On a fair couch they laid the corse, and placed

Singers beside it, leaders of the dirge.

Who sang a sorrowful, lamenting strain, ais

And all the women answered it with sobs.

White-armed Andromache in both her hands

Took warlike Hector's head, and over it

Began the lamentation midst them all :

" Thou hast died young, my husband, leaving me 920 In this thy home a widow, and one son, An infant yet. To an unhappy pair He owes his birth, and never will, I fear. Bloom into youth ; for ere that day will Troy Be overthrown, since thou, its chief defence, 925

Art dead, the guardian of its walls and all Its noble matrons and its speechless babes, Yet to be carried captive far away, And I among them, in the hollow barks ; And thou, my son, wilt either go with me, 930

Where thou shalt toil at menial tasks for some Pitiless master ; or perhaps some Greek Will seize thy little arm, and in his rage Will hurl thee from a tower and dash thee dead, Remembering how thy father, Hector, slew 935

His brother, son, or father ; for the hand Of Hector forced full many a Greek to bite