Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/34

My mother, princess on the woody slopes
Of Placos, with his spoils he bare away,
And only for large ransom gave her back.
But her Diana,^[1] archer-queen, struck down 550
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 555
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^[2] and the famed Idomeneus, 560
The two chiefs born to Atreus,^[3] and the brave
Tydides,^[4] 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 565
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, 570
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. 575

1. Diana's arrows carried a swift and painless death to women.
2. Ajax son of Telamon and Ajax son of Oïlens.
3. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander-in-chief of the Greeks, and his brother Menelaüs, whose wife Helen was the cause of the war.
4. Diomede, the son of Tydeus.