“Here a rumour of events past belief takes hold of our ears—that Helenus, son of Priam, is reigning among Grecian cities, lord of the wife and crown of Pyrrhus, 10 Achilles’ very son, and that Andromache had again been given to a husband of her own nation. I was astounded: my heart kindled with a strange longing to have speech of my old friend, and learn all about this wondrous stroke of fortune. So I advance into the country from the haven, 15 leaving fleet and coast behind, at the very time when Andromache, before the city, in a grove, by the wave of a mock Simois, was celebrating a yearly banquet, the offering of sorrow, to the dead, and invoking her Hector’s shade at a tomb called by his name, an empty mound of 20 green turf which she had consecrated to him with two altars, that she might have the privilege of weeping. Soon as her wild eye saw me coming with the arms of Troy all about me, scared out of herself by the portentous sight, she stood chained to earth while yet gazing—life’s 25 warmth left her frame—she faints, and after long time scarce finds her speech:—‘Is it a real face that I see? are those real lips that bring me news? Goddess-born, are you among the living? or, if the blessed light has left you, where is my Hector?’ She spoke—her tears flowed 30 freely, and the whole place was filled with her shrieks. Few, and formed with labour, are the words I address to her frenzied ear, broken and confused the accents I utter:—‘Aye, I live, sure enough, and through the worst of fortunes am dragging on life still. Doubt it not, your eye 35 tells you true. Alas! on what chance have you alit, fallen from the height where your first husband throned you? What smile has Fortune bright enough to throw back on Hector’s Andromache? is it Pyrrhus’ bed you are still tending?’ She dropped her eyes, and spoke with bated breath:—‘O blest pre-eminently over all, Priam’s virgin daughter,[159] bidden to die at the grave of her foe, under Troy’s lofty walls! she that had not to brook the 5 chance of the lot, or, a slave and a captive, to touch the bed of her lord and conqueror! While we, after the burning of our city, carried over this sea and that, have stooped to the scorn, the youthful insolence of Achilles’ heir, the slave-mother of his child; he, after this, goes in quest of 10 Leda’s Hermione[160] and her Spartan alliance, and gives me over to Helenus, the bondwoman to be the bondman’s mate! Him, however, Orestes, fired by desperate passion for a ravished bride, and maddened by the frenzy-fiend of crime, surprises at unawares, and slays at his sire’s own 15 altar. At Neoptolemus’ death a portion of this kingdom passed to Helenus, who called the fields Chaonian, and the land itself Chaonia, from Chaon, their Trojan namesake,