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He spake, and opened the goodly lids of chests, wherefrom he took twelve beauteous robes [230] and twelve cloaks of single fold, and as many coverlets, and as many white mantles, and therewithal as many tunics. And of gold he weighed out and bare forth talents, ten in all, and two gleaming tripods, and four cauldrons, and a cup exceeding fair, that the men of Thrace had given him [235] when he went thither on an embassage, a great treasure; not even this did the old man spare in his halls, for he was exceeding fain to ransom his dear son. Then drave he all the Trojans from out the portico, and chid them with words of reviling:“Get ye hence, wretches, ye that work me shame! [240] Have ye not also lamentation at home, that ye come hither to vex me? Count ye it not enough that Zeus, son of Cronos, hath brought this sorrow upon me, that I should lose my son the best of all? Nay, but yourselves too shall know it, for easier shall ye be, now he is dead, for the Achaeans to slay. [245] But for me, or ever mine eyes behold the city sacked and laid waste, may I go down into the house of Hades.” He spake, and plying his staff went among the men, and they went forth from before the old man in his haste. Then called he aloud to his sons, chiding Helenus and Paris and goodly Agathon [250] and Pammon and Antiphonus and Polites, good at the war-cry, and Deiphobus and Hippothous and lordly Dius. To these nine the old man called aloud, and gave command:“Haste ye, base children that are my shame; would that ye all together in Hector's stead had been slain at the swift ships! [255] Woe is me, that am all unblest, seeing that I begat sons the best in the broad land of Troy, yet of them I avow that not one is left, not godlike Nestor, not Troilus the warrior charioteer, not Hector that was a god among men, neither seemed he as the son of a mortal man, but of a god: [260] all them hath Ares slain, yet these things of shame are all left me, false of tongue, nimble of foot, peerless at beating the floor in the dance, robbers of lambs and kids from your own folk. Will ye not make me ready a waggon, and that with speed, and lay all these things therein, that we may get forward on our way?”

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  • Commentary references to this page (2):
    • W. Walter Merry, James Riddell, D. B. Monro, Commentary on the Odyssey (1886), 1.217
    • Walter Leaf, Commentary on the Iliad (1900), 16.498
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
    • William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Chapter IV
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (4):
  • Cross-references in text-specific dictionaries to this page (1):
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