So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms To take the boy; the boy shrank crying back To his fair nurse’s bosom, scared to see His father helmeted in glittering brass, And eying with affright the horse-hair plume That grimly nodded from the lofty crest. At this both parents in their fondness laughed, And hastily the mighty Hector took The helmet from his brow, and laid it down Gleaming upon the ground; and, having kissed His darling son and tossed him up in play, Prayed thus to Jove, and all the gods of heaven:— ‘O Jupiter and all ye deities, Vouchsafe that this my son may yet become Among the Trojans eminent like me, And nobly rule in Ilium. May they say, “This man is greater than his father was!” When they behold him from the battle-field Bring back the bloody spoil of the slain foe,— That so his mother may be glad at heart.’ So speaking, to the arms of his dear spouse He gave the boy; she on her fragrant breast Received him, weeping as she smiled. The chief Beheld, and, moved with tender pity, smoothed Her forehead gently with his hand and said:— ‘Sorrow not thus, beloved one, for me. No living man can send me to the shades Before my time; no man of woman born, Coward or brave, can shun his destiny. But go thou home, and tend thy labors there,— The web, the distaff,—and command thy maids To speed the work. The cares of war pertain To all men born in Troy, and most to me.’ Thus speaking, mighty Hector took again His helmet, shadowed with the horse-hair plume, While homeward his beloved consort went, Oft looking back and shedding many tears. Soon was she in the spacious palace-halls Of the man-queller Hector. There she found A troop of maidens,—with them all she shared Her grief; and all in his own house bewailed The living Hector whom they thought no more To see returning from the battle-field, Safe from the rage and weapons of the Greeks.” BRYANT. The ancients implicitly believed the story of the Iliad, but modern scepticism has doubted its truth and questioned the authenticity of the poem itself. The German critic Wolf and others have even gone so far as to deny that any such person as Homer ever existed, contending that the name means simply a _fitter together or compiler_, and that the great epic is a mosaic of romantic legends by different rhapsodists, for years kept from perishing merely by oral repetition.