But Hector answered her, “Bring me no luscious wine, dear mother! lest thou rob me of my strength and courage. Nor dare I make a libation to Zeus, with hands unwashen and soiled with blood. But go thou to the Temple of Athene, driver of the spoil; and lay the finest robe, the most precious to thyself, upon her knees; and vow to sacrifice twelve fat kine to her; and beg her to have mercy on the Trojans, and on their wives and little children! So, perhaps, she will hold back the terrible warrior, Tydides, from sacred Ilium. And I will go and seek out Paris; would that the earth would swallow him up! for Zeus hath cherished him to be the bane of his country, and of his father Priam.”
Then Hecuba went to her ambrosial chamber, and took the finest of her embroidered robes, the work of Sidonian women, which shone like a star; and went, with other aged women, to the temple of Athene. And the fair-cheeked Theano, daughter of Kisseus, the priestess, wife of Antenor, opened the temple gates, and took the shining robe, and laid it upon Athene’s knees, and prayed to the great daughter of Zeus. But the goddess did not grant her prayer.
But Hector went his way to the fair palace of Paris, and found him in his chamber, polishing his beautiful armor, and proving his curved bow. Then, when Hector saw him, he reproached him with bitter words. “O thou strange man! thou dost not well to nurse thy spite against the Trojans, who are now perishing before the city, and all for thy sake! Rise, then, now, lest the city be burned with fire!”
And the goodly Paris answered, “It is not so much by reason of my wrath against the Trojans, but I would fain indulge my sorrow. My wife, too, hath urged me to the battle. Tarry then awhile, and I will don my armor; or go thou before, and I will follow.”
Then the divine Helen, daughter of great Zeus, came and spoke gently to Hector, and said, “O brother! brother of vile me, who am a dog—would that, when my mother bare me, the storm-wind had snatched me away to a mountain, or a billow of the loud-roaring sea had swept me away, before all these evil things had befallen me! Would that I had been mated with a better man than Paris, whose heart is not sound, and never will be. But come, my brother, and sit by me; for thou verily hast suffered most for me, who am a dog, and for the grievous sin of Paris, upon whom, surely, Zeus is bringing evil days; he will be, hereafter, a song of scorn in the mouths of future men, through all time to come.”
But noble Hector answered her, “If thou lovest me, dear Helen, bid me not stay; for I go to succor my friends, who long for me in my absence. But do thou try and rouse this husband of thine, and bid him overtake me. As for me, I shall first go to my home, and to my wife and my little son; for who knoweth whether I shall ever return to them again?”
So spake the glorious Hector, and went his way to his own well-furnished house; but he found not Andromache there; for she had gone to the tower, with her fair-robed nurse and with her boy, all bathed in tears. Hector asked the servants whither the white-armed Andromache was gone; and the busy matron of the house replied, “She is gone to the tower of holy Troy; for she heard that the Trojans were defeated, and the Achaians victorious.” Then Hector returned, by the same way, down the wide streets, and came to the Scæan Gate.
And his peerless wife, even Andromache, daughter of the high-minded Eëtion, king of Cilicia—she whom he had won by countless gifts—came running to meet him. And with her came the handmaid, the nurse, bearing in her arms Hector’s tender boy, Astyanax, beautiful as the morning star. And Hector smiled, and looked on his darling boy, while Andromache stood beside him weeping. And she clasped his hand, and called him by his name. “O my dear lord, thy dauntless courage will destroy thee! Hast thou no pity for thy infant child, and for thy hapless wife, who soon will be a widow? It were far better for me to die, if I lose thee; for nevermore can I know comfort, but only pain and sorrow. For I shall be utterly alone. I have neither father nor mother; for Eëtion, 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:—