Book VI

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But it was not the dark prospect of his country's ruin that grieved the loving husband so much as the thought that his wife might some day be carried off as a slave by the conquering Greeks.

"But not the sorrows of the Trojan race, Nor those of Hecuba herself, nor those Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait My brothers many and brave,--who all at last, Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust,-- Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee Thy day of freedom. . . . . O let the earth Be heaped above my head in death before I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!"

BRYANT, _Iliad_,