d I fear he may not reach manhood. Ere he can do so our
city will be razed and overthrown, for you who watched over it are no
more--you who were its saviour, the guardian of our wives and children.
Our women will be carried away captives to the ships, and I among them;
while you, my child, who will be with me will be put to some unseemly
tasks, working for a cruel master. Or, may be, some Achaean will hurl
you (O miserable death) from our walls, to avenge some brother, son, or
father whom Hector slew; many of them have indeed bitten the dust at
his hands, for your father's hand in battle was no light one. Therefore
do the people mourn him. You have left, O Hector, sorrow unutterable to
your parents, and my own grief is greatest of all, for you did not
stretch forth your arms and embrace me as you lay dying, nor say to me
any words that might have lived with me in my tears night and day for
evermore."

Bitterly did she weep the while, and the women joined in her lament.
Hecuba in her turn took up the strains of woe. "Hector," she cried,
"dearest to me of all my children. So long as you were alive the gods
loved you well, and even in death they have not been utterly unmindful
of you; for when Achilles took any other of my sons, he would sell him
beyond the seas, to Samos Imbrus or rugged Lemnos; and when he had
slain you too with his sword, many a time did he drag you round the
sepulchre of his comrade--though this could not give him life--yet here
you lie all fresh as dew, and comely as one whom Apollo has slain with
his painless shafts."

Thus did she too speak through her tears with bitter moan, and then
Helen for a third time took up the strain of lamentation. "Hector,"
said she, "dearest of all my brothers-in-law--for I am wife to
Alexandrus who brought me hither to Troy--would that I had died ere he
did so--twenty years are come and gone since I left my home and came
from over the sea, but I have never heard one word of insult or
unkindness from you. When another would chide with me, as it might be
one of your brothers or sisters or of your brothers' wives, or my
mother-in-law--for Priam was as kind to me as though he were my own
father--you would rebuke and check them with words of gentleness and
goodwill. Therefore my tears flow both for you and for my unhappy self,
for there is no one else in Troy who is kind to me, but all shrink and
shudder as they go by me."

She wept as she spoke and the vast crowd that wa