Andromache’s foreboding was only too completely fulfilled, for although Homer does not tell us of it, we know that when the truce for Hector’s funeral was over, Troy fell into the hands of the Greeks. The horrors of that day are related over and over again by the poets—the ruthless massacre of Priam and his sons, the capture of the women and children and the burning of the city. Euripides tells us in his _Troades_ what befell Andromache. This drama, written centuries after the _Iliad_, has been called by Professor Gilbert Murray, “the first great expression of pity for mankind in European literature.” The subject was, indeed, one to evoke profoundest pity, and the poet, reflective and humane, seems to select it purposely to reveal the dreadful underside of war. He brings the figure of Hecuba upon the stage, weighed down under innumerable woes: Cassandra, too, in a dark prophetic frenzy, foretelling her own doom and that of Agamemnon: Helen, confronted at last by Menelaus; and Andromache, borne in the chariot of her captor, with the baby Astyanax in her arms. LEADER OF CHORUS. _O most forlorn Of women, whither go’st thou, borne Mid Hector’s bronzen arms, and piled Spoils of the dead, and pageantry Of them that hunted Ilion down?_ ANDROMACHE. _Forth to the Greek I go, Driven as a beast is driven._ HECUBA. _Woe! Woe!..._ ANDROMACHE. _Mother of him of old, whose mighty spear Smote Greeks like chaff, see’st thou what things are here?_ HECUBA. _I see God’s hand, that buildeth a great crown For littleness, and hath cast the mighty down...._ ANDROMACHE. _O my Hector! best beloved, That, being mine, wast all in all to me, My prince, my wise one, O my majesty Of valiance!..._ _Thou art dead, And I war-flung to slavery and the bread Of shame in Hellas, over bitter seas._[5] But the crowning horror remains. As Andromache and the queen are taking mournful leave of each other, a hurried messenger arrives from the Greek leaders. His message is almost too dreadful to utter; but he stammers it at last—the victors have resolved that Andromache’s son must die. They will spare no slip of Priam’s stock to be a future menace; and Astyanax is to be cast down therefore from the city towers. To Andromache it is an appalling blow, worse than all that she has yet suffered. She cannot realize it at first, and answers the herald in broken, incredulous phrases. But when the man, ruefully trying to soothe her meanwhile, at last makes it clear to her that her child must die, all her gentleness is suddenly swept away in fierce wrath against her enemies.