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68 bent upon a marriage with Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus, had handed over his Trojan wife—"Hector's Andromache," as she still pathetically calls herself—to her fellow-captive Helenus, Hector's brother. She tells her own sad story, not without some sense of its wretchedness—

Ay—I am living; living still

Through all extremity of ill."

And she envies the fate of Polyxena, her sister-in-law, slain on the tomb of Achilles. Still, she has accepted her lot—the lot of so many women in her day. And Helenus, her present lord, is (if that be any consolation) a sort of king; for Orestes has killed Neoptolemus, and Helenus has in some way succeeded him, and built a new "Pergamus" in Greece. So that here, too, the poet would tell us, Troy has conquered her conquerors—a son of Priam reigns in the territory of Achilles. But the impression made upon an English mind as to Andromache's fate is, after all, that of degradation, and we gladly turn from the page which relates it.

Helenus, like his sister Cassandra, has the gift of prophecy; he had been the great authority on all such matters to his countrymen during the siege. He now read the omens for Æneas, at his request; all were favourable. The wanderers should reach the promised Hesperia; but that western land was further off than they thought, and their voyage would prove long and weary. When they reached it, they should find under