calamity is
completed by a dreadful catastrophe; if indeed, it is completed.
Pergamus alone remains for me: and my sorrow is still in its career. So
lately the greatest woman in the world, powerful in so many sons-in-law,
and children[53], and daughters-in-law, and in my husband, now I am
dragged into exile, destitute, {and} torn away from the tombs of my
kindred, as a present to Penelope. She, pointing me out to the matrons
of Ithaca, as I tease my allotted task, will say, 'This is that famous
mother of Hector; this is the wife of Priam.' And, now thou, who after
the loss of so many {children}, alone didst alleviate the sorrows of thy
mother, hast made the atonement at the tomb of the enemy. Atoning
sacrifices for an enemy have I brought forth. For what purpose, lasting
like iron, am I reserved? and why do I linger {here}? To what end dost
thou, pernicious age, detain me? Why, ye cruel Deities, unless to the
end that I may see fresh deaths, do ye reprieve an aged woman of years
so prolonged? Who could have supposed, that after the fall of Troy,
Priam could have been pronounced happy? Blessed in his death, he has not
beheld thee, my daughter, {thus} cut off; and at the same moment, he
lost his life and his kingdom.

"But, I suppose, thou, a maiden of royal birth, wilt be honoured with
funeral rites, and thy body will be deposited in the tombs of thy
ancestors. This is not the fortune of thy house; tears and a handful of
foreign sand will be thy lot, the {only} gifts of a mother. We have lost
all; a child most dear to his mother, now alone remains as a reason for
me to endure to live yet for a short time, once the youngest of {all} my
male issue, Polydorus, entrusted on these coasts to the Ismarian king.
Why, in the mean time, am I delaying to bathe her cruel wounds with the
stream, her features, too, besmeared with dreadful blood?"

{Thus} she spoke; and with aged step she proceeded towards the shore,
tearing her grey locks. "Give me an urn, ye Trojan women," the unhappy
{mother} had just said, in order that she might take up the flowing
waters, {when} she beheld[54] the body of Polydorus thrown up on the
shore, and the great wounds made by the Thracian weapons. The Trojan
women cried out aloud; with grief she was struck dumb; and very grief
consumed both her voice and the tears that arose within; and much
resembling a hard rock she became benumbed. And at one moment she fixed
her eyes on the ground before her; {and}