ordered the young men to quit the virgin; [but they, soon as they heard the last words of him who had the seat of chief authority among them, let go their hold,] and she, on hearing this speech of her lords, took her robe, and rent it, beginning from the top of her shoulder down to her waist:  and showed her breasts and bosom beauteous, as a statue’s, and bending her knee on the ground, spoke words the most piteous ever heard, “Lo! strike, if this bosom thou desirest, O youth; or wouldest thou rather under the neck, here is this throat prepared.”  But he at once resolved and unresolved through pity of the virgin, cuts with the sword the passage of her breath; and fountains of blood burst forth.  But she, e’en in death, showed much care to fall decently, and to veil from the eyes of men what ought to be concealed.  But after that she breathed forth her spirit under the fatal blow, not one of the Greeks exercised the same offices; but some scattered leaves from their hands on the dead; some heap the funeral pile, bringing whole trunks of pines:  but he that would not bring, heard rebukes of this sort from him that was thus employed:  “Standest thou idle, thou man of most mean spirit?  Hast in thy hand no robe, no ornament for the maiden?  Hast thou naught to give to her so exceeding brave in heart and most noble in soul?” These things I tell thee of the death of thy daughter, but I behold thee at once the most happy, at once the most unhappy of all women in thine offspring.

Chor.  Dreadful calamities have risen fierce against the house of Priam; such the hard fate of the Gods.

Hec.  O daughter! which of my ills I shall first attend to, amidst such a multitude, I know not:  for if I touch on any, another does not suffer me; and thence again some fresh grief draws me aside, succeeding miseries upon miseries.  And now I can not obliterate from my mind thy sufferings, so as not to bewail them:  but excess of grief hast thou taken away, having been reported to me as noble.  Is it then no paradox, if land indeed naturally bad, when blest with a favorable season from heaven, bears well the ear; but good land, robbed of the advantages it ought to have, brings forth bad fruit:  but ever among men, the bad by nature is nothing else but bad; the good always good, nor under misfortune does he degenerate from his nature, but is the same good man?  Is it, that the parents cause this difference, or the education?  The being brought up nobly hath indeed in it the knowledge and principles of goodness; but if one is acquainted well with this, he knows what is vicious, having already learned it by the rule of virtue.  And this indeed has my mind been ejaculating in vain.  But do thou go, and signify these things to the Greeks, that no one be suffered to touch my daughter, but bid them keep off the multitude.  In so vast an army the rabble are riotous, and the sailors’ uncontrolled insolence is fiercer than fire; and he is evil, who