Page 124 - the-iliad

hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no es-
cape for him when he has once been born. Go, then, within
the house, and busy yourself with your daily duties, your
loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for
war is man’s matter, and mine above all others of them that
have been born in Ilius.’
He took his plumed helmet from the ground, and his
wife went back again to her house, weeping bitterly and of-
ten looking back towards him. When she reached her home
she found her maidens within, and bade them all join in her
lament; so they mourned Hector in his own house though
he was yet alive, for they deemed that they should never see
him return safe from battle, and from the furious hands of
the Achaeans.
Paris did not remain long in his house. He donned his
goodly armour overlaid with bronze, and hasted through
the city as fast as his feet could take him. As a horse, stabled
and fed, breaks loose and gallops gloriously over the plain
to the place where he is wont to bathe in the fair-flowing
river—he holds his head high, and his mane streams upon
his shoulders as he exults in his strength and flies like the
wind to the haunts and feeding ground of the mares—even
so went forth Paris from high Pergamus, gleaming like sun-
light in his armour, and he laughed aloud as he sped swiftly
on his way. Forthwith he came upon his brother Hector,
who was then turning away from the place where he had
held converse with his wife, and he was himself the first to
speak. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I fear that I have kept you waiting when
you are in haste, and have not come as quickly as you bade

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