sometimes she raised her
haggard features towards the skies; {and} now she viewed the features,
now the wounds of her son, as he lay; the wounds especially; and she
armed and prepared herself for vengeance by rage. Soon as she was
inflamed by it, as though she {still} remained a queen, she determined
to be revenged, and was wholly {employed} in {devising} a {fitting} form
of punishment. And as the lioness rages when bereft of her sucking
whelp, and having found the tracks of his feet, follows the enemy that
she sees not; so Hecuba, after she had mingled rage with mourning, not
forgetful of her spirit, {but} forgetful of her years, went to
Polymnestor, the contriver of this dreadful murder, and demanded an
interview; for that it was her wish to show him a concealed treasure
left for him to give to her son.

The Odrysian {king} believes her, and, inured to the love of gain, comes
to a secret spot. Then with soothing lips, he craftily says, "Away with
delays, Hecuba, {and} give the present to thy son; all that thou givest,
and what thou hast already given, I swear by the Gods above, shall be
his." Sternly she eyes him as he speaks, and falsely swears; and she
boils with heaving rage; and so flies on him, seized by a throng of the
captive matrons, and thrusts her fingers into his perfidious eyes; and
of their sight she despoils his cheeks, and plunges her hands {into the
sockets}, ('tis rage that makes her strong); and, defiled with his
guilty blood, she tears not his eyes, for they are not left, {but} the
places for his eyes.

Provoked by the death of their king, the Thracian people begin to attack
the Trojan {matron} with the hurling of darts and of stones. But she
attacks the stones thrown at her with a hoarse noise, and with bites;
and attempting to speak, her mouth just ready for the words, she barks
aloud. The place {still} exists, and derives its name[55] from the
circumstance; and long remembering her ancient misfortunes, even then
did she howl dismally through the Sithonian plains. Her {sad} fortune
moved both her own Trojans, and her Pelasgian foes, and all the Gods as
well; so much so, that even the wife and sister of Jove herself denied
that Hecuba had deserved that fate.

Although she has favoured those same arms, there is not leisure for
Aurora to be moved by the calamities and the fall of Troy. A nearer care
and grief at home for her lost Memnon is afflicting her. Him his
rosy-coloured mother saw perish by