o
have mercy on them and turn the tide of combat. The goddess, however, is
inflexible: she denies their prayer.

Hector, meanwhile, stops at the palace of Paris. He finds Helen seated
among her handmaidens, distributing to them their tasks, and Paris
polishing his beautiful armor. Hector severely rebukes his brother; but
words of scorn make but little impression on the smooth and courteous
Paris. Helen now addresses Hector, for whom she has a sisterly love and
admiration that contrasts painfully with her contempt for her cowardly
lord; and her words reveal the bitterness of her heart, because of her
evil destiny and because "even in days to come we may be a song in the
ears of men that shall be hereafter." Hector responds with sympathetic
regard to the sisterly confidence of Helen, and bids her rouse her
husband once more to enter the combat, while in the meantime he will go
to his own house to behold his dear wife and infant boy; for he knows
not if he shall return home to them again, or if the gods will now
overthrow him at the hands of the Achaeans.

When Hector comes to his palace, he finds not his beautiful wife,
white-armed Andromache, within; upon inquiry he learns that, through
anxiety because of the battle, like one frenzied, she had gone in haste
to the wall, and the nurse bearing the child was with her. Hector
hastens to the Scaean gates, and as he approaches them there came his
dear-won wife, running to meet him, and with her the handmaid bearing in
her bosom the tender boy, Hector's loved son Astyanax. Hector smiles and
gazes at the boy; while Andromache stands by his side weeping and clasps
his hand in hers, and urges him to take thought for himself and to have
pity on her, forlorn, and on their infant boy. Hector tells her that he
takes thought of all this, that his greatest grief is the thought of her
anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaean shall lead her away and
rob her of the light of freedom, but it is his part to fight in the
forefront of the Trojans. He lays his son in his dear wife's bosom, and,
as she smiles tearfully upon the lad, her husband has pity to see her,
and gently caresses her with his hand and seeks to console her. He bids
her return to her own tasks, the loom and distaff, while he provides for
war. So part these heroic souls. Hector sets out for the battlefield;
and his dear wife departs to her home, oft looking back and letting fall
big tears. When she reaches her house, she