Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE GREEK WOMAN

or haply their own spirit urgeth and biddeth them thereto.’

‘Then spake to her great Hector of the flashing helm: ‘Woman, I too take thought of all this, but wondrously have I shame of the Trojans, and the Trojans’ wives, with trailing robes, if like a coward I skulk apart from the battle. Nor doth mine own heart suffer it, seeing I have learnt to be valiant always and to fight amid the foremost Trojans, striving to win my father’s great glory and mine own. For of a surety know I this in heart and soul: the day shall come when sacred Ilios shall be laid low, and Priam and the people of Priam with goodly spear of ash. Yet not so much doth the grief of the Trojans that shall be in the aftertime move me, neither Hecabe’s own, nor King Priam’s, nor my brethren’s, many and brave, who then shall fall in the dust beneath the hands of their foemen, as doth thy grief, when some brazen-coated Achzan shall lead thee away weeping and rob thee of thy day of freedom. ‘Then haply in Argos shalt thou ply the loom at another’s bidding, or bear water trom Messeis or Hypereia, sorely against thy will, and strong necessity shall be laid upon thee. And some man shall say as he beholdeth thee weeping : Lo, the wife of Hector, that was pre-eminent in war above all the horse-training ‘l'rojans, in the day when men fought about Ilios. So shall one say : and to thee shall come fresh grief in thy lack of a man like me to ward off the day of bondage. But let me be dead, and let the heaped-up earth cover me, ere I hear thy cries as they hale thee into captivity.’

‘So saying, glorious Hector stretched out his arms to his boy, but back into the bosom of his fairgirdled nurse shrank the child crying, affrighted at the aspect of his dear father, and seized with dread of the bronze and the crest of horsehair, as he marked it waving dreadfully from the topmost helm. Aloud then laughed his dear father and queenly mother ;