“Hector hastened from his house back by the same way down the well-builded streets. When he had passed through the great city and was come to the Skaian gates, whereby he was minded to issue upon the plain, there came his dear-won wife running to meet him.... So she met him now, and with her went the handmaid bearing in her bosom the tender boy, the little child, Hector’s loved son, like unto a beautiful star.... So now he smiled and gazed at his boy silently, and Andromache stood by his side weeping, and clasped her hand in his, and spake and called upon his name. ‘Dear my lord, this thy hardihood will undo thee, neither hast thou any pity for thine infant boy, nor for me forlorn that soon shall be thy widow; for soon will the Achaeans all set upon thee and slay thee. But it were better for me to go down to the grave if I lose thee; for never more will any comfort be mine, when once thou, even thou, hast met thy fate, but only sorrow’.”[4] So she weeps to him, forgetting the heroic, as heroes often do in overwhelming human sorrow. Hector is human too; and as she pours out all the pleas that touch him most nearly—her love for him, his love for her, and their mutual love for their child—he cannot utter the reply of the soldier and defender of his people. Andromache thinks she sees an instant of wavering in his eyes; she catches at it wildly, and rushes on to tell of a place where he and his men may screen themselves from the enemy. But that word has lost her cause. Hector’s great refusal is brave and gentle: “Surely ... I have very sore shame ... if like a coward I shrink away from battle. Moreover mine own soul forbiddeth me.... Yea of a surety I know ... the day shall come for holy Ilios to be laid low.... Yet doth the anguish of the Trojans hereafter not so much trouble me, neither Hekabe’s own, neither king Priam’s, neither my brethren’s ... as doth thine anguish in the day when some mail-clad Achaian shall ... rob thee of the light of freedom.... But me in death may the heaped-up earth be covering, ere I hear thy crying and thy carrying into captivity.”[4] Andromache can find no answer, and there is silence between them as Hector turns to caress his boy. But the child shrinks to his nurse in fear of the shining helmet and nodding crest; and the parents laugh through their tears. “Then his dear father laughed aloud, and his lady mother; forthwith glorious Hector took the helmet from his head, and laid it, all gleaming, upon the earth; then kissed he his dear son and dandled him in his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and all the gods, ... ‘Vouchsafe ye that this my son may likewise prove even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and be a great king of Ilios. May men say of him, “Far greater is he than his father,” as he returneth from battle; ... and may his mother’s heart be glad’.”[4]