should place tenfold and twenty times such ransoms, bringing them hither, and even promise others; not even if Dardanian Priam should wish to compensate for thee with gold:[1] not even thus shall thy venerable mother lament [thee] whom she has borne, having laid thee upon a bier; but dogs and fowl shall entirely tear thee in pieces."
But him crest-tossing Hector, dying, addressed:
"Surely well knowing thee, I foresaw this, nor was I destined to persuade thee; for truly within thee there is an iron soul. Reflect now, lest to thee I be some cause of the wrath of the gods, on that day when Paris and Phœbus Apollo[2] shall kill thee, though being brave, at the Scæan gates."
As he spoke thus, the end of death overshadowed him; and his soul flying from his limbs, descended to Hades, bewailing its destiny, relinquishing vigor and youth. But him, although dead, noble Achilles addressed:
"Die: but I will then receive my fate whensoever Jove may please to accomplish it,[3] and the other immortal gods."
He spoke, and plucked the spear from the corpse; and then laid it aside, but he spoiled the bloody armor from his shoulders. But the other sons of the Greeks ran round, who also admired the stature and wondrous form of Hector;[4] nor did any stand by without inflicting a wound. And thus would some one say, looking to his neighbor: "Oh, strange! surely Hector is now much more gentle to be touched, than when he burned the ships with glowing fire."
Thus would some one say, and, standing by, would wound
- ↑ i. e., to give thy weight in gold. Theognis, 77: Πιστὸς ἀνὴρ χρυσοῦ τε καὶ ἀργύρου ἀντερύσασθαι Ἄξιος.
- ↑ Grote, vol. i. p. 406, observes: "After routing the Trojans, and chasing them into the town, Achilles was slain near the Scæan gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo," referring to Soph. Phil. 334; Virg. Æn. vi. 56.
- ↑ "I have conversed with some men who rejoiced in the death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judgment upon them for being on the other side, and against them in the contention; but within the revolution of a few months, the same men met with a more uneasy and unhandsome death; which when I saw, I wept, and was afraid; for I knew that it must be so with all men; for we also die, and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence."—Taylor, Holy Dying, i. p. 305.
- ↑ Herodot. ix. 25: Ὁ δὲ νεκρὸς ἔην θέης ἄξιος εἴνεκα καὶ κάλλεος.
