away, And only for large ransom gave her back. But her Diana, archer-queen, struck down Within her father’s palace. Hector, thou Art father and dear mother now to me, And brother and my youthful spouse besides. In pity keep within the fortress here, Nor make thy child an orphan nor thy wife A widow. Post thine army near the place Of the wild fig-tree, where the city-walls Are low and may be scaled. Thrice in the war The boldest of the foe have tried the spot— The Ajaces and the famed Idomeneus, The two chiefs born to Atreus, and the brave Tydides, whether counselled by some seer Or prompted to the attempt by their own minds.”
Then answered Hector, great in war: “All this I bear in mind, dear wife; but I should stand Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames Of Troy, were I to keep aloof and shun The conflict, coward-like. Not thus my heart Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare And strike among the foremost sons of Troy, Upholding my great father’s fame and mine; Yet well in my undoubting mind I know The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, And Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all. But not the sorrows of the Trojan race, Nor those of Hecuba herself, nor those Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait My brothers many and brave—who all at last, Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust— Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee Thy day of freedom. Thou in Argos then Shalt, at another’s bidding, ply the loom, And from the fountain of Messeis draw Water, or from the Hypereian spring, Constrained unwilling by thy cruel lot. And then shall someone say who sees thee weep, ‘This was the wife of Hector, most renowned Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought Around their city.’ So shall someone say, And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him Who haply might have kept afar the day Of thy captivity. O, let the earth Be heaped above my head in death before I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!”