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(From The Iliad, Book XXIV)
Translated by W. C. Bryant
CASSANDRA, beautiful as Venus, stood | |
| On Pergamus, and from its height discerned | |
| Her father, standing on the chariot-seat, | |
| And knew the herald, him whose voice so oft | |
| Summoned the citizens, and knew the dead | 5 |
| Stretched on a litter drawn by mules. She raised | |
| Her voice, and called to all the city thus:— | |
| “O Trojan men and women, hasten forth | |
| To look on Hector, if ye e’er rejoiced | |
| To see him coming from the field alive, | 10 |
| The pride of Troy, and all who dwell in her.” | |
| She spake, and suddenly was neither man | |
| Nor woman left within the city bounds. | |
| Deep grief was on them all; they went to meet, | |
| Near to the gates, the monarch bringing home | 15 |
| The dead. And first the wife whom Hector loved | |
| Rushed with his reverend mother to the car | |
| As it rolled on, and, plucking out their hair, | |
| Touched with their hands the forehead of the dead, | |
| While round it pressed the multitude, and wept, | 20 |
| And would have wept before the gates all day, | |
| Even to the set of sun, in bitter grief | |
| For Hector’s loss, had not the aged man | |
| Addressed the people from his chariot-seat: | |
| “Give place to me, and let the mules pass on, | 25 |
| And ye may weep your fill when once the dead | |
| Is laid within the palace.” As he spake, | |
| The throng gave way and let the chariot pass; | |
| And having brought it to the royal halls, | |
| On a fair couch they laid the corse, and placed | 30 |
| Singers beside it, leaders of the dirge, | |
| Who sang a sorrowful, lamenting strain, | |
| And all the women answered it with sobs. | |
| White-armed Andromache in both her hands | |
| Took warlike Hector’s head, and over it | 35 |
| Began the lamentation midst them all:— | |
| “Thou hast died young, my husband, leaving me | |
| In this thy home a widow, and one son, | |
| An infant yet. To an unhappy pair | |
| He owes his birth, and never will, I fear, | 40 |
| Bloom into youth; for ere that day will Troy | |
| Be overthrown, since thou, its chief defence, | |
| Art dead, the guardian of its walls and all | |
| Its noble matrons and its speechless babes, | |
| Yet to be carried captive far away, | 45 |
| And I among them, in the hollow barks; | |
| And thou, my son, wilt either go with me, | |
| Where thou shalt toil at menial tasks for some | |
| Pitiless master; or perhaps some Greek | |
| Will seize thy little arm, and in his rage | 50 |
| Will hurl thee from a tower and dash thee dead, | |
| Remembering how thy father, Hector, slew | |
| His brother, son, or father; for the hand | |
| Of Hector forced full many a Greek to bite | |
| The dust of earth. Not slow to smite was he | 55 |
| In the fierce conflict; therefore all who dwell | |
| Within the city sorrow for his fall. | |
| Thou bringest an unutterable grief, | |
| O Hector, on thy parents, and on me | |
| The sharpest sorrows. Thou didst not stretch forth | 60 |
| Thy hands to me, in dying, from thy couch, | |
| Nor speak a word to comfort me, which I | |
| Might ever think of night and day with tears.” | |
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