" She cast down her countenance, and spoke with lowered voice:
'"O single in happy eminence that maiden daughter of Priam, sentenced to
die under high Troy town at an enemy's grave, who never bore the shame
of the lot, nor came a captive to her victorious master's bed!
'"O single in happy eminence that maiden daughter of Priam, sentenced to
die under high Troy town at an enemy's grave, who never bore the shame
of the lot, nor came a captive to her victorious master's bed!
Virgil - Aeneid
[294-328]'Here the rumour of a story beyond belief comes on our ears;
Helenus son of Priam is reigning over Greek towns, master of the bride
and sceptre of Pyrrhus the Aeacid; and Andromache hath again fallen to a
husband of her people. I stood amazed; and my heart kindled with
marvellous desire to accost him and learn of so strange a fortune. I
advance from the harbour, leaving the fleet ashore; just when haply
Andromache, in a grove before the town, by the waters of a feigned
Simois, was pouring libation to the dust, and calling Hector's ghost to
a tomb with his name, on an empty turfed green with two altars that she
had consecrated, a wellspring of tears. When she caught sight of me
coming, and saw distractedly the encircling arms of Troy,
terror-stricken at the vision marvellously shewn, her gaze fixed, and
the heat left her frame. She swoons away, and hardly at last speaks
after long interval: "Comest thou then a real face, a real messenger to
me, goddess-born? livest thou? or if sweet light is fled, ah, where is
Hector? " She spoke, and bursting into tears filled all the place with
her crying. Just a few words I force up, and deeply moved gasp out in
broken accents: "I live indeed, I live on through all extremities; doubt
not, for real are the forms thou seest . . . Alas! after such an
husband, what fate receives thy fall? or what worthier fortune revisits
thee? Dost thou, Hector's Andromache, keep bonds of marriage with
Pyrrhus?
" She cast down her countenance, and spoke with lowered voice:
'"O single in happy eminence that maiden daughter of Priam, sentenced to
die under high Troy town at an enemy's grave, who never bore the shame
of the lot, nor came a captive to her victorious master's bed! We,
sailing over alien seas from our burning land, have endured the
haughty youthful pride of Achilles' seed, and borne children in
slavery: he thereafter, wooing Leda's Hermione and a Lacedaemonian
[329-363]marriage, passed me over to Helenus' keeping, a bondwoman to a
bondman. But him Orestes, aflame with passionate desire for his stolen
bride, and driven by the furies of crime, catches unguarded and murders
at his ancestral altars. At Neoptolemus' death a share of his realm fell
to Helenus' hands, who named the plains Chaonian, and called all the
land Chaonia after Chaon of Troy, and built withal a Pergama and this
Ilian citadel on the hills. But to thee how did winds, how fates give
passage? or whose divinity landed thee all unwitting on our coasts? what
of the boy Ascanius? lives he yet, and draws breath, thy darling, whom
Troy's . . . Yet hath the child affection for his lost mother? is he
roused to the valour of old and the spirit of manhood by his father
Aeneas, by his uncle Hector? "
'Such words she poured forth weeping, and prolonged the vain wail; when
the hero Helenus son of Priam approaches from the town with a great
company, knows us for his kin, and leads us joyfully to his gates,
shedding a many tears at every word. I advance and recognise a little
Troy, and a copy of the great Pergama, and a dry brook with the name of
Xanthus, and clasp a Scaean gateway. Therewithal my Teucrians make
holiday in the friendly town. The king entertained them in his spacious
colonnades; in the central hall they poured goblets of wine in libation,
and held the cups while the feast was served on gold.
