Iliad, Book 22, lines 540 - 606

 Homer              

So she cried,
dashing out of the royal halls like a madwoman,
her heart racing hard, her women close behind her.
But once she reached the tower where soldiers massed
she stopped on the rampart, looked down and saw it all -
saw him dragged before the city, stallions galloping,
dragging Hector back to Achaea's beaked warships -
ruthless work. The world went black as night
before her eyes, she fainted, falling backward,
gasping away her life breath.
She flung to the winds her glittering headdress,
the cap and the coronet, braided band and veil,
all the regalia golden Aphrodite gave her once,
the day that Hector, helmet aflash in sunlight,
led her home to Troy from her father's house
with countless wedding gifts to win her heart.
But crowding round her now her husband's sisters
and brothers' wives supported her in their midst,
and she, terrified, stunned to the point of death,
struggling for breath now and coming back to life,
burst out in grief among the Trojan women: "O Hector -
I am destroyed! Both born to the same fate after all!
You, you at Troy in the halls of King Priam -
I, at Thebes, under the timberline of Placos,
Eetion's house.  He raised me as a child,
that man of doom, his daughter just as doomed -
would to god he'd never fathered me!
Now you go down
to the House of Death, the dark depths of the earth,
and leave me here to waste away in grief, a widow
lost in the royal halls - and the boy only a baby,
the son we bore together, you and I so doomed.
Hector, what help are you to him, now you are dead? -
what help is he to you? Think, even if he escapes
the wrenching horrors of war against the Argives,
pain and labour will plague him all his days to come.
Strangers will mark his lands off, stealing his estates.
The day that orphans a youngster cuts him off from friends.
And he hangs his head low, humiliated in every way,
his cheeks stained with tears, and pressed by hunger
the boy goes up to his father's old companions,
tugging at one man's cloak, another's tunic,
and some will pity him, true,
and one will give him a little cup to drink,
enough to wet his lips, not quench his thirst.
But then some bully with both his parents living
beats him from the banquet, fists and abuses flying:
'You, get out - you've got no father feasting with us here!'
And the boy, sobbing, trails home to his widowed mother.
Astyanax!
And years ago, propped on his father's knee,
he would only eat the marrow, the richest cuts of lamb,
and when sleep came on him and he had quit his play,
cradled warm in his nurse's arms he'd drowse off,
snug in a soft bed, his heart brimmed with joy.
Now what suffering, now he's lost his father -
Astyanax!
The Lord of the City, so the Trojans called him,
because it was you, Hector, you and you alone
who shielded the gates and the long walls of Troy.
But now by the beaked ships, far from your parents,
glistening worms will wriggle through your flesh,
once the dogs have had their fill of your naked corpse -
though we have such stores of clothing laid up in the halls,
fine things, a joy to the eye, the work of women's hands.
Now, by god, I'll burn them all, blazing to the skies!
No use to you now, they'll never shroud your body -
but they will be your glory
burned by the Trojan men and women in your honour!"
Her voice rang out in tears and the women wailed in answer.