I must go home to see my household, my wife and my little son, for I know not whether I shall ever again return to them, or whether the gods will cause me to fill by the hands of the Achaeans." Then Hector left her, and forthwith was at his own house.

He did not find Andromache, for she was on the wall with her child and one of her maids, weeping bitterly.

Seeing, then, that she was not within, he stood on the threshold of the women's rooms and said, "Women, tell me, and tell me true, where did Andromache go when she left the house?
Was it to my sisters, or to my brothers' wives?
or is she at the temple of Minerva where the other women are propitiating the awful goddess ?" His good housekeeper answered, "Hector, since you bid me tell you truly, she did not go to your sisters nor to your brothers' wives, nor yet to the temple of Minerva, where the other women are propitiating the awful goddess, but she is on the high wall of Ilius, for she had heard the Trojans were being hard pressed, and that the Achaeans were in great force: she went to the wall in frenzied haste, and the nurse went with her carrying the child." Hector hurried from the house when she had done speaking, and went down the streets by the same way that he had come.

When he had gone through the city and had reached the Scaean gates through which he would go out on to the plain, his wife came running towards him, Andromache, daughter of great Eetion who ruled in Thebe under the wooded slopes of Mt.

Placus, and was king of the Cilicians.