The Trojans, beholding this dreadful spectacle from the walls of the city, broke out into loud lamentations, and King Priam and Queen Hecuba were almost distracted with grief. Andromache had not been a witness of the combat. She was at home with her maids, making preparations for Hector's return from the battle, and was therefore unaware of the terrible events which had taken place. But the sound of the wailing on the ramparts having reached her ears, she rushed forth from the palace, fearful that some evil had happened to her husband. Hastening through the streets to the Scæan Gate, she ascended the tower, and looking out on the plain, saw the body of her beloved Hector dragged behind the wheels of the chariot of Achilles. Overpowered with grief at the sight, the unhappy woman sank fainting into the arms of her attendants. A sudden darkness shades her swimming eyes: She faints, she falls; her breath, her color flies. Her hair's fair ornaments, the braids that bound, The net that held them, and the wreath that crown'd, The veil and diadem flew far away (The gift of Venus on her bridal day). Around a train of weeping sisters stands To raise her sinking with assistant hands. POPE, _Iliad_, Book XXII. While the Trojans thus mourned the loss of their chief, his body was dragged into the Grecian camp and flung on the beach beside the ships. Preparations were then made for funeral services in honor of Patroclus. The ceremonies occupied three days. A vast quantity of wood was cut down on Mount Ida, and carried to the plain, where the logs were heaped together in an immense pile, a hundred feet square. Upon this they placed the corpse. They next put upon the pile the fat of several oxen, that it might the more easily burn, and they slew and laid upon it the dead man's horses. Achilles cut off a lock of his own hair and put it in the dead hero's hand, and each of the other warriors placed a lock of his hair on the body. Torches were now applied, and they prayed to the wind gods, Boʹre-as and Zephʹy-rus, to send strong breezes to fan the flames. All through the night the pile blazed with a mighty roar, and in the morning, when it was consumed, the embers were quenched with wine, and the bones of Patroclus were gathered up and inclosed in a golden urn. On the spot where the pyre had stood they raised a mound of earth as a monument to the hero.