sorrow.  For I shall be utterly alone.  I have neither father nor mother; for Eetion, my royal sire, was slain by great Achilles.  And all my seven brothers went down to Hades on the selfsame day! they too were slain by swift-footed Pelides.  But my mother was smitten in her father’s halls, by the gentle arrows of the archer Artemis.  Lo! now, thou art all in all to me, father, mother, brother, and dearly loved husband!  Come, then, take pity on us, and abide in the tower, and make not thy boy an orphan, and thy wife a widow!”

And the glorious Hector of the glancing helm answered her, and said, “Dear Wife!  I too think of all these things.  But how can I shun the battle, like a coward, to be the mock of the Trojans, and of the Trojan dames with trailing robes?  I, who have always fought in the van of battle, and won glory for my father and myself?  I know that the day will come, when sacred Ilium shall be leveled with the ground, and Priam and the people of Priam shall perish.  But it is not so much the fate of Priam, and of my mother, Hecuba, and of my brethren, which fills my soul with anguish; but it is thy misery, dear one, in the day when some Achaian warrior shall bear thee away, weeping, and rob thee of thy freedom.  Thou, alas! wilt abide in Argos, and ply the loom, the slave of another woman; or bear water from the Hypereian fount, being harshly treated!  And one will say, as he looketh upon thee, ’This was the wife of Hector, the foremost of the horse-taming Trojans in the war round Ilium.’  But may the deep earth cover me, ere I hear thee crying in the day of thy captivity.”

So spake he, and held out his arms to take his darling boy.  But the child shrank crying, and nestled in the bosom of his well-girdled nurse; for he feared the horsehair crest, nodding terribly from the brazen helmet.  Then the fond parents laughed; and Hector doffed his helmet, and laid it on the ground.  And he kissed his dear child, and fondled him, and prayed thus to Zeus:—­

“O Zeus! and all ye Gods! grant that this, my son, may like me be foremost to fight among the Trojans, and rule as a king in Ilium; so that men may say, ’He is far better than his father’!”

Thus speaking, he laid the child in the fragrant bosom of his dear wife Andromache; and he pitied her, and caressed her with his hand, and called her by her name.  “Dear one! be not thus utterly cast down.  No man can slay me till my hour of destiny is come.  But no man, when once he hath been born, can escape his fate, be he a brave man or a coward.  Go thou to thy house, to the distaff and the loom, and make thy maidens ply their labors.  But men shall engage in war, and I the first of all in Troy.”

So spake Hector of the glancing helmet, and went his way.  And his dear wife went to her home, looking back at him as she went, shedding bitter tears.  And she found her maidens there, and with them she bewailed her lord, while yet he lived; for they feared that he would never again return from battle.