Leaving the palace, Hector hastened through the city, and, arriving at the Scæan Gate, he there met Andromache and her nurse, the latter bearing in her arms the infant Sca-man'dri-us. His father had given the child this name, from the name of the river, but the people called him As-tyʹa-nax, meaning "city-king." The lines in which Homer describes the interview which here took place between the noble Hector and his loving wife, are among the most beautiful of the whole Iliad. Andromache was a daughter of E-ëʹti-on, king of Thebe, the town from which the maiden Chryseis was carried away. Eëtion and all his family had been slain, with the exception of Andromache, who therefore had now neither parents nor brothers nor sisters. Of this she spoke in touching words, while entreating Hector to remain within the city and not again risk his life in battle.
"Too brave! thy valor yet will cause thy death:
Thou hast no pity on thy tender child,
Nor me, unhappy one, who soon must be
Thy widow. All the Greeks will rush on thee
To take thy life. A happier lot were mine,
If I must lose thee, to go down to earth,
For I shall have no hope when thou art gone,—
Nothing but sorrow. Father I have none,
And no dear mother. Great Achilles slew
My father when he sacked the populous town
Of the Cilicians,—Thebe with high gates.
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
A widow."
Bryant, Iliad, Book VI.
Hector was deeply moved by these words, but he could not think of deserting his brave companions.
"All this
I bear in mind, dear wife; but I should stand
Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames
Of Troy, were I to keep aloof and shun
The conflict, cowardlike. Not thus my heart
Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare
And strike among the foremost sons of Troy,
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."
Bryant, Iliad, Book VI.
But it was not the dark prospect of his country's ruin that grieved the loving husband so much as the thought that his wife might some day be carried off as a slave by the conquering Greeks.
"But not the sorrows of the Trojan race,
Nor those of Hecuba herself, nor those
Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait
My brothers many and brave,—who all at last,
Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust,—
Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek
Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee
Thy day of freedom. . . . .
O let the earth
Be heaped above my head in death before
I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!"
Bryant, Iliad, Book VI.
