Book 13
But you, a woman, felt the deadly steel.
494
That same Achilles, who has given to death
so many of your brothers, caused your death,
the bane of Troy and the serpent by my nest!
When Paris and when Phoebus with their shafts
had laid him low, ‘Ah, now at least,’ I said,
‘Achilles will no longer cause me dread.’
Yet even then he still was to be feared.
For him I have been fertile! Mighty Troy
now lies in ruin, and the public woe
is ended in one vast calamity.
For me alone the woe of Troy still lives.
“But lately on the pinnacle of fame,
surrounded by my powerful sons-in-law,
daughters, and daughters-in-law, and strong
in my great husband, I am exiled now,
and destitute, and forced from the sad tombs
of those I love, to wretched slavery,
serving Penelope: who showing me
to curious dames of Ithaca, will point
and say, while I am bending to my task,
‘Look at that woman who was widely known,
the mother of great Hector, once the wife
of Priam!’ After so many have been lost,
now you, last comfort of a mother's grief,
must make atonement on the foeman's tomb.
I bore a victim for my enemy.
“Why do I live—an iron witted wretch?
Why do I linger? Why does cruel age
detain me? Why, pernicious deities,
thus hold me to this earth, unless you will
that I may weep at future funerals?
After the fall of Troy, who would suppose
King Priam could be happy? Blest in death,
he has not seen my daughter's dreadful fate.
He lost at once his kingdom and his life.
“Can I imagine you, a royal maid,
will soon be honored with due funeral rites,
and will be buried in our family tomb?
Such fortune comes no more to your sad house.
