A yell arose. “Turn the monk out!” “Throw the rustic through the window!” cried a dozen young gentlemen. Several of the most valiant began to scramble over the benches up to him; and Philammon was congratulating himself on the near approach of a glorious martyrdom, when Hypatia’s voice, calm and silvery, stifled the tumult in a moment.
“Let the youth listen, gentlemen. He is but a monk and a plebeian, and knows no better; he has been taught thus. Let him sit here quietly, and perhaps we may be able to teach him otherwise.”
And without interrupting, even by a change of tone, the thread of her discourse, she continued—
“Listen, then, to a passage from the sixth book of the Iliad, in which last night I seemed to see glimpses of some mighty mystery. You know it well: yet I will read it to you; the very sound and pomp of that great verse may tune our souls to a fit key for the reception of lofty wisdom. For well said Abamnon the Teacher, that ‘the soul consisted first of harmony and rhythm, and ere it gave itself to the body, had listened to the divine harmony. Therefore it is that when, after having come into a body, it hears such melodies as most preserve the divine footstep of harmony, it embraces such, and recollects from them that divine harmony, and is impelled to it, and finds its home in it, and shares of it as much as it can share.’ ”
And therewith fell on Philammon’s ear, for the first time, the mighty thunder-roll of Homer’s verse—
So spoke the stewardess: but Hector rushed
From the house, the same way back, down stately streets,
Through the broad city, to the Scaian gates,
Whereby he must go forth toward the plain,
There running toward him came Andromache,
His ample-dowered wife, Eetion’s child—
Eetion the greathearted, he who dwelt
In Thebe under Placos, and the woods
Of Placos, ruling over Kilic men.
His daughter wedded Hector brazen-helmed,
And met him then; and with her came a maid,
Who bore in arms a playful-hearted babe,
An infant still, akin to some fair star,
Only and well-loved child of Hector’s house,
Whom he had named Scamandrios, but the rest
Astyanax, because his sire alone
Upheld the weal of Ilion the holy.
He smiled in silence, looking on his child
But she stood close to him, with many tears;
And hung upon his hand, and spoke, and called him.
“My hero, thy great heart will wear thee out;
Thou pitiest not thine infant child, nor me
The hapless, soon to be thy widow;
The Greeks will slay thee, falling one and all
Upon thee: but to me were sweeter far,
Having lost thee, to die; no cheer to me
Will come thenceforth, if thou shouldst meet thy fate;
Woes only: mother have I none, nor sire.
For that my sire divine Achilles slew,
And wasted utterly the pleasant homes
Of Kilic folk in Thebe lofty-walled,
And slew Eetion with the sword! yet spared
To strip the dead: awe kept his soul from that.
Therefore he burnt him in his graven arms,
And heaped a mound above him; and around
The damsels of the Aegis-holding Zeus,
The nymphs who haunt the upland, planted elms.
And seven brothers bred with me in the halls,
All in one day went down to Hades there;
For all of them swift-foot Achilles slew
Beside the lazy kine and snow-white sheep.
And her, my mother, who of late was queen
Beneath the woods of Placos, he brought here
Among his other spoils; yet set her free
Again, receiving ransom rich and great.
But Artemis, whose bow is all her joy,
Smote her to death within her father’s halls.
Hector! so thou art father to me now,
Mother, and brother, and husband fair and strong!
Oh, come now, pity me, and stay thou here
Upon the tower, nor make thy child an orphan
And me thy wife a widow; range the men
Here by the fig-tree, where the city lies
Lowest, and where the wall can well be scaled;
For here three times the best have tried the assault
Round either Ajax, and Idomeneus,
And round the Atridai both, and Tydeus’ son,
Whether some cunning seer taught them craft,
Or their own spirit stirred and drove them on.”
Then spake tall Hector, with the glancing helm:
“All this I too have watched, my wife; yet much
I hold in dread the scorn of Trojan men
And Trojan women with their trailing shawls,
If, like a coward, I should skulk from war.
Beside, I have no lust to stay; I have learnt
Aye to be bold, and lead the van of fight,
To win my father, and myself, a name.
For well I know, at heart and in my thought,
The day will come when Ilios the holy
Shall lie in heaps, and Priam, and the folk
Of ashen-speared Priam, perish all.
But yet no woe to come to Trojan men,
Nor even to Hecabe, nor Priam king,
Nor to my brothers, who shall roll in dust,
Many and fair, beneath the strokes of foes,
So moves me, as doth thine, when thou shalt go
Weeping, led off by some brass-harnessed Greek,
Robbed of the daylight of thy liberty,
To weave in Argos at another’s loom,
Or bear the water of Messeis home,
Or Hypereia, with unseemly toils,
While heavy doom constrains thee, and perchance
The folk may say, who see thy tears run down, ‘This was the wife of Hector, best in fight
At Ilium, of horse-taming Trojan men.’
So will they say perchance; while unto thee
Now grief will come, for such a husband’s loss,
Who might have warded off the day of thrall.
But may the soil be heaped above my corpse
Before I hear thy shriek and see thy shame!”
He spoke, and stretched his arms to take the child,
But back the child upon his nurse’s breast
Shrank crying, frightened at his father’s looks.
Fearing the brass and crest of
