Should they behold their Hector shrink from war,
And act the coward's part! Nor doth my soul
Prompt the base thought.
Ex pede Herculem: you see just what the manner is. Mr Sotheby, on the other hand (to take a disciple of Pope instead of Pope himself), begins thus:
'What moves thee, moves my mind,' brave Hector said,
'Yet Troy's upbraiding scorn I deeply dread,
If, like a slave, where chiefs with chiefs engage,
The warrior Hector fears the war to wage.
Not thus my heart inclines.'
From that specimen, too, you can easily divine what, with such a manner, will become of the whole passage. But Homer has neither
What moves thee, moves my mind,
nor has he
All these thy anxious cares are also mine.
Ἦ καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει, γύναι· ἀλλὰ μάλ' αἰνῶς,
that is what Homer has, that is his style and movement, if one could but catch it. Andromache, as you know, has been entreating Hector to defend Troy from within the walls, instead of exposing his life, and, with his own life, the safety of all those dearest to him, by fighting in the open plain. Hector replies:
Woman, I too take thought for this; but then I bethink me
What the Trojan men and Trojan women might murmur,
