Page 116 - the-iliad

which I left at home when I set out for Troy. I do not re-
member Tydeus, for he was taken from us while I was yet
a child, when the army of the Achaeans was cut to pieces
before Thebes. Henceforth, however, I must be your host
in middle Argos, and you mine in Lycia, if I should ever
go there; let us avoid one another’s spears even during a
general engagement; there are many noble Trojans and al-
lies whom I can kill, if I overtake them and heaven delivers
them into my hand; so again with yourself, there are many
Achaeans whose lives you may take if you can; we two, then,
will exchange armour, that all present may know of the old
ties that subsist between us.’
With these words they sprang from their chariots,
grasped one another’s hands, and plighted friendship. But
the son of Saturn made Glaucus take leave of his wits, for he
exchanged golden armour for bronze, the worth of a hun-
dred head of cattle for the worth of nine.
Now when Hector reached the Scaean gates and the oak
tree, the wives and daughters of the Trojans came running
towards him to ask after their sons, brothers, kinsmen, and
husbands: he told them to set about praying to the gods,
and many were made sorrowful as they heard him.
Presently he reached the splendid palace of King Priam,
adorned with colonnades of hewn stone. In it there were fif-
ty bedchambers—all of hewn stone—built near one another,
where the sons of Priam slept, each with his wedded wife.
Opposite these, on the other side the courtyard, there were
twelve upper rooms also of hewn stone for Priam’s daugh-
ters, built near one another, where his sons-in-law slept with

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