Iliad (Rapsodies 19 to 24)   

lived you were their pride, but now death and destruction have
fallen upon you."
Hector's wife had as yet heard nothing, for no one had come to
tell her that her husband had remained without the gates. She was at
her loom in an inner part of the house, weaving a double purple web,
and embroidering it with many flowers. She told her maids to set a
large tripod on the fire, so as to have a warm bath ready for Hector
when he came out of battle; poor woman, she knew not that he was now
beyond the reach of baths, and that Minerva had laid him low by the
hands of Achilles. She heard the cry coming as from the wall, and
trembled in every limb; the shuttle fell from her hands, and again she
spoke to her waiting-women. "Two of you," she said, "come with me that
I may learn what it is that has befallen; I heard the voice of my
husband's honoured mother; my own heart beats as though it would
come into my mouth and my limbs refuse to carry me; some great
misfortune for Priam's children must be at hand. May I never live to
hear it, but I greatly fear that Achilles has cut off the retreat of
brave Hector and has chased him on to the plain where he was
singlehanded; I fear he may have put an end to the reckless daring
which possessed my husband, who would never remain with the body of
his men, but would dash on far in front, foremost of them all in
valour."
Her heart beat fast, and as she spoke she flew from the house like a
maniac, with her waiting-women following after. When she reached the
battlements and the crowd of people, she stood looking out upon the
wall, and saw Hector being borne away in front of the city- the horses
dragging him without heed or care over the ground towards the ships of
the Achaeans. Her eyes were then shrouded as with the darkness of
night and she fell fainting backwards. She tore the tiring from her
head and flung it from her, the frontlet and net with its plaited
band, and the veil which golden Venus had given her on the day when
Hector took her with him from the house of Eetion, after having
given countless gifts of wooing for her sake. Her husband's sisters
and the wives of his brothers crowded round her and supported her, for
she was fain to die in her distraction; when she again presently
breathed and came to herself, she sobbed and made lament among the
Trojans saying, 'Woe is me, O Hector; woe, indeed, that to share a
common lot we were born, you at Troy in the house of Priam, and I at
Thebes under the wooded mountain of Placus in the house of Eetion
who brought me up when I was a child- ill-starred sire of an
ill-starred daughter- would that he had never begotten me. You are now
going into the house of Hades under the secret places of the earth,
and you leave me a sorrowing widow in your house. The child, of whom
you and I are the unhappy parents, is as yet a mere infant. Now that
you are gone, O Hector, you can do nothing for him nor he for you.
Even though he escape the horrors of this woful war with the Achaeans,
yet shall his life henceforth be one of labour and sorrow, for
others will seize his lands. The day that robs a child of his
parents severs him from his own kind; his head is bowed, his cheeks
are wet with tears, and he will go about destitute among the friends
of his father, plucking one by the cloak and another by the shirt.
Some one or other of these may so far pity him as to hold the cup
for a moment towards him and let him moisten his lips, but he must not
drink enough to wet the roof of his mouth; then one whose parents
are alive will drive him from the table with blows and angry words.
'Out with you,' he will say, 'you have no father here,' and the
child will go crying back to his widowed mother- he, Astyanax, who
erewhile would sit upon his father's knees, and have none but the
daintiest and choicest morsels set before him. When he had played till
he was tired and went to sleep, he would lie in a bed, in the arms
of his nurse, on a soft couch, knowing neither want nor care,
whereas now that he has lost his father his lot will be full of
hardship- he, whom the Trojans name Astyanax, because you, O Hector,
were the only defence of their gates and battlements. The wriggling