all in Troy, and both men and
women alike hailed you as a god. So long as you lived you were their
pride, but now death and destruction have fallen upon you."

Hector's wife had as yet heard nothing, for no one had come to tell her
that her husband had remained without the gates. She was at her loom in
an inner part of the house, weaving a double purple web, and
embroidering it with many flowers. She told her maids to set a large
tripod on the fire, so as to have a warm bath ready for Hector when he
came out of battle; poor woman, she knew not that he was now beyond the
reach of baths, and that Minerva had laid him low by the hands of
Achilles. She heard the cry coming as from the wall, and trembled in
every limb; the shuttle fell from her hands, and again she spoke to her
waiting-women. "Two of you," she said, "come with me that I may learn
what it is that has befallen; I heard the voice of my husband's
honoured mother; my own heart beats as though it would come into my
mouth and my limbs refuse to carry me; some great misfortune for
Priam's children must be at hand. May I never live to hear it, but I
greatly fear that Achilles has cut off the retreat of brave Hector and
has chased him on to the plain where he was singlehanded; I fear he may
have put an end to the reckless daring which possessed my husband, who
would never remain with the body of his men, but would dash on far in
front, foremost of them all in valour."

Her heart beat fast, and as she spoke she flew from the house like a
maniac, with her waiting-women following after. When she reached the
battlements and the crowd of people, she stood looking out upon the
wall, and saw Hector being borne away in front of the city--the horses
dragging him without heed or care over the ground towards the ships of
the Achaeans. Her eyes were then shrouded as with the darkness of night
and she fell fainting backwards. She tore the attiring from her head
and flung it from her, the frontlet and net with its plaited band, and
the veil which golden Venus had given her on the day when Hector took
her with him from the house of Eetion, after having given countless
gifts of wooing for her sake. Her husband's sisters and the wives of
his brothers crowded round her and supported her, for she was fain to
die in her distraction; when she again presently breathed and came to
herself, she sobbed and made lament among the Trojans saying, "Woe is
me, O Hector; woe, indeed, that to shar