Note (return) — BOOK THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

“Ah me, where now is thy prudence gone, for which thou wast formerly distinguished among foreigners, and among those whom thou dost govern? Why dost thou wish to go alone to the ships of the Greeks, before the eyes of the man who slew thy many and brave sons? Certainly an iron heart is thine. For if this cruel and perfidious man shall take and behold 783 thee with his eyes, he will not pity thee, nor will he at all respect thee. But let us now lament him apart, 784 sitting in the hall; but [let it be] as formerly to him, at his birth violent fate spun his thread, when I brought him forth, that he should satiate the swift-footed dogs at a distance from his own parents, with that fierce man, the very middle of whose liver I wish that I had hold of, that, clinging to it, I might devour it; then would the deeds done against my son be repaid; for he did not slay him behaving as a coward, but standing forth in defence of the Trojan men and deep-bosomed Trojan dames, neither mindful of flight nor of receding.”