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But not the sorrows of the Trojan race,
Nor those of Hecuba herself, nor those
Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait
My brothers many and brave, who all at last,
Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust, -

Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek
Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee
Thy day of freedom. Thou in Argos then
Shalt at another's bidding ply the loom,
And from the fountain of Messeis draw
Water, or from the Hypereian spring,
Constrained unwilling by thy cruel lot.

And then shall some one say who sees thee weep,
'This was the wife of Hector, most renowned
Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought
Around their city.' So shall some one say,

And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him

Who haply might have kept afar the day

Of thy captivity. O let the earth

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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 horsehair 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.

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THE

THE ODYSSEY.

"The surge and thunder of the Odyssey."

HE Odyssey relates the adventures of Ulysses on his return to Ithaca after the Trojan war.

It consists of twenty-four books, the first four of which are sometimes known as the Telemachia, because Telemachus is the principal figure.

The difference in style of the Iliad and Odyssey has caused some critics to assert that the latter is not the work of Homer; this is accounted for, however, by the difference of subject, and it is probable that the Odyssey, though of a later date, is the work of the same hand, "the work of Homer's old age, an epic bathed in a mellow light of sunset."

If the Odyssey alone had come down to us, its authorship would have passed unquestioned, for the poem is so compact, its plot so carefully planned and so skilfully carried out, that there can be no doubt that it is the work of one hand.

The Odyssey is as great a work of art as the Iliad, and is even more popular; for the Odyssey is a domestic romance, and as such appeals to a larger audience than a tale of war alone, the romance of the wandering Ulysses and the faithful Penelope. Interwoven with it are the ever-popular fairy tales of Ulysses's wanderings and descriptions of home life. It is marked by the same pagan enjoyment of life, the same freshness and charm that lend enchantment to the Iliad.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE ODYSSEY. F. B. Jevons's History of Greek Literature, 1886, pp. 17-25; A. Lang's Homer and the Epic, 1893, chaps. 8-13; J. A.

Symonds's Studies of the Greek Poets, ed. 3, 1893; J. E. Harrison's Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature, 1882; W. J. Stillman's On the Track of Ulysses, 1888; F. W. Newman's The Authorship of the Odyssey (in his Miscellanies, vol. v.); J. Spence's Essay on Pope's Translation of the Odyssey, 1837.

STANDARD ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, THE ODYSSEY. The Odyssey, Tr. into English blank verse by W. C. Bryant, 2 vols., 1871; The Odyssey, Tr. according to the Greek, with introduction and notes by George Chapman, ed. 2, 2 vols., 1874; The Odyssey, Tr. by William Cowper; The Odyssey, Tr. by G. H. Palmer, 1894 (prose); The Odyssey, Tr. by Alexander Pope, with notes by Rev. T. W. A. Buckley, n. d.; The Odyssey, Tr. by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang, 1879 (prose).

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