Note (return) — BOOK THE TWENTY-SECOND.

“Desist, my friends, and permit me alone, grieved as I am, going out of the city, to approach the ships of the Greeks. I will supplicate this reckless, violent man, if perchance he may respect my time of life, and have compassion on my old age; for such is his father Peleus to him, he who begat and nurtured him a destruction to the Trojans; but particularly to me above all has he caused sorrows. For so many blooming youths has he slain to me, for all of whom I do not lament so much, although grieved, as for this one, Hector, keen grief for whom will bear me down even into Hades. 715 Would that he had died in my hands; for thus we should have been satisfied, weeping and lamenting, both his unhappy mother who bore him, and I myself.” Thus he spoke, weeping, but the citizens also groaned. But among the Trojan dames, Hecuba began her continued lamentation: