Hector! Dearest to me of all my husband’s brothers –
my husband, Paris, magnificent as a god…
he was the one who brought me here to Troy –
Oh how I wish I’d died before that day!
But this, now, is the twentieth year for me
since I sailed here and forsook my own native land,
yet never once did I hear from you a taunt, an insult.
But if someone else in the royal halls would curse me,
one of your brothers or sisters or brothers’ wives
trailing their long robes, even your own mother –
not your father, always kind as my own father –
why, you’d restrain them with words, Hector,
you’d win them to my side…
you with your gentle temper, all your gentle words.
And so in the same breath I mourn for you and me,
my doom-struck, harrowed heart. Now there is no one left
in the wide realm of Troy, no friend to treat me kindly –
all the countrymen cringe from me in loathing!
– Homer