Homer, Iliad

So saying, glorious Hector stretched out his arms to his boy, but back into the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse shrank the child crying, affrighted at the aspect of his dear father, and seized with dread of the bronze and the crest of horse-hair, [470] as he marked it waving dreadfully from the topmost helm. Aloud then laughed his dear father and queenly mother; and forthwith glorious Hector took the helm from his head and laid it all-gleaming upon the ground. But he kissed his dear son, and fondled him in his arms, [475] and spake in prayer to Zeus and the other gods:“Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war,‘He is better far than his father’; [480] and may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he hath slain, and may his mother's heart wax glad.” So saying, he laid his child in his dear wife's arms, and she took him to her fragrant bosom, smiling through her tears; and her husband was touched with pity at sight of her, [485] and he stroked her with his hand, and spake to her, saying: “Dear wife, in no wise, I pray thee, grieve overmuch at heart; no man beyond my fate shall send me forth to Hades; only his doom, methinks, no man hath ever escaped, be he coward or valiant, when once he hath been born. [490] Nay, go thou to the house and busy thyself with thine own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and bid thy handmaids ply their work: but war shall be for men, for all, but most of all for me, of them that dwell in Ilios.” So spake glorious Hector and took up his helm [495] with horse-hair crest; and his dear wife went forthwith to her house, oft turning back, and shedding big tears. Presently she came to the well-built palace of man-slaying Hector and found therein her many handmaidens; and among them all she roused lamentation. [500] So in his own house they made lament for Hector while yet he lived; for they deemed that he should never more come back from battle, escaped from the might and the hands of the Achaeans.