r of their parent.[56]

To others, therefore, it seemed a sad thing, that the daughter of Dymas
was {now} barking; {but} Aurora was intent on her own sorrows; and even
now she sheds the tears of affection, and sprinkles them in dew over all
the world.

[Footnote 52: _Forsooth._--460. Clarke translates 'scilicet,'
'I warrant ye.']

[Footnote 53: _And children._--Ver. 509. Hyginus names fifty-four
children of Priam, of whom seventeen were by Hecuba.]

[Footnote 54: _She beheld._--Ver. 536. Euripides represents, in
his tragedy of Hecuba, that a female servant, sent by Hecuba to
bring water from the sea shore for the purpose of washing the body
of Polyxena, was the first to see the corpse of Polydorus.]

[Footnote 55: _Derives its name._--Ver. 569. Strabo places it near
Sestos, in the Thracian Chersonesus, and calls it +kunos sema+,
'The bitches' tomb.']

[Footnote 56: _Of their parent._--Ver. 619. He perhaps alludes to
the fights of the Gladiators, on the occasion of the funerals of
the Roman patricians. 'Parentali periturae Marte,' is rendered by
Clarke, 'to fall in the fight of parentation.']

EXPLANATION.

The particulars which Ovid here gives of the misfortunes that befell
the family of Priam, with the exception of a few circumstances,
agree perfectly with the narratives of the ancient historians.

According to Dictys, Philostratus, and Hyginus, after Achilles was
slain by the treachery of Paris, on the eve of his marriage with
Polyxena, she became inconsolable at his death, and returning to the
Grecian camp, she was kindly received by Agamemnon; but being unable
to get the better of her despair, she stole out of the camp at
night, and stabbed herself at the tomb of Achilles. Philostratus
adds, that the ghost of Achilles appeared to Apollonius Tyanaeus, the
hero of his story, and gave him permission to ask him any questions
he pleased, assuring him, that he would give him full information on
the subject of them. Among other things, Apollonius desired to know
if it was the truth that the Greeks had sacrificed Polyxena on his
tomb; to which the ghost replied, that her grief made her take the
resolution not to survive her intended husband, and that she had
killed herself.

Other writers, agreeing with Ovid as to the manner of her death,
tell us that it was Pyrrhus who sacrificed Polyxena to his father's
shade