399The victor sets sail for the homeland of Hypsipyle and famous Thoas, and the lands notorious for the slaughter of the men of old, to bring back the Tirynthian weapons, the arrows. 402After he had brought these back to the Greeks, with their owner accompanying him, and the final hand was at last laid on the fierce war, Ilium was burning, and the fire had not yet died down, and the altar of Jupiter had drunk up the scanty blood of old Priam, and the priestess of Phoebus, dragged by her hair, was stretching up to the heavens hands that would not avail. 412The Dardan mothers, clasping the images of their ancestral gods while they still may and clinging to the burning temples, the victorious Greeks drag off as enviable prizes.
415Astyanax is thrown from those towers from which, pointed out by his mother, he used often to see his father fighting for him and guarding his ancestral kingdom. 418And now the north wind urges the voyage, and the sails, stirred by a favouring breeze, flap; the sailor bids them use the winds. 420'Troy, farewell! 420we are carried off!' cry the Trojan women; they kiss the ground and leave the smoking roofs of their homeland. 422Last to board the fleet (a pitiful sight!) was Hecuba, found in the midst of her sons' tombs: as she clung to the mounds and kissed the bones, Dulichian hands dragged her away; yet she scooped up the ashes of one, Hector, and carried the scooped-up ashes away with her in her bosom; 427on Hector's tomb she left white hair from her head, a poor offering to the dead, her hair and her tears.
429There is a land opposite Phrygia, where Troy was, inhabited by Bistonian men: there was the rich palace of Polymestor, to whom your father secretly entrusted you, Polydorus, to be brought up, and removed you from the Phrygian fighting, a wise plan, had he not added great wealth, the reward of crime, a provocation to a greedy mind. 435When the fortune of the Phrygians fell, the impious king of the Thracians takes his sword and plunged it into the throat of his ward, and, as if crimes could be removed along with the body, he threw him lifeless from a crag into the waves beneath. 439On the Thracian shore the son of Atreus had moored his fleet, until the sea should be calm, until the wind should be friendlier.
441Here suddenly, as large as he used to be when he was alive, Achilles comes out of the ground, which split wide open, and, like one threatening, he wore the look of that time when he fiercely attacked unjust Agamemnon with his sword, and said, 'Are you departing, Achaeans, forgetful of me, and is gratitude for my valour buried with me? 447Do not do so! 447and so that my tomb may not be without honour, let Polyxena be sacrificed to appease the shade of Achilles!' 449He spoke, and, his comrades obeying the pitiless shade, the maiden, torn from the bosom of her mother, whom she was now almost alone in comforting, brave and unhappy and more than a woman, is led to the tomb and becomes a victim for the dread pyre.
453She, mindful of who she was, after she was brought to the cruel altar and perceived that the savage rites were being prepared for her, and when she saw Neoptolemus standing and holding the sword and fixing his eyes on her face, 'Use my noble blood at once!' 457she said; 'there is no delay: bury your weapon in my throat or in my breast!' 459(and at the same time she bared her throat and her breast) 'I only wish my death could escape my mother's notice! 463My mother stands in the way and lessens my joy in death, though it is not my death but her own life that she should lament.
465Only you, so that I may not go to the Stygian shades unfree, stand far off, if I ask what is just, and keep men's hands from touching a maiden! 467More acceptable to him, whoever he is whom you are preparing to appease with my slaughter, will be free blood. 469Yet if the last words of my lips move any of you (it is the daughter of King Priam who asks you, now a captive), give my body back to my mother without ransom, and let her not buy the sad right of a tomb with gold, but with tears! 473Before, when she could, she would buy back with gold as well.' 474She had spoken, but the people do not hold back the tears that she was holding back; 475even the priest himself, weeping and unwilling, drove in his blade and broke open the breast she offered.
477She, sinking to the earth on failing knees, kept her face unafraid to the very end. 479Even then it was her care, as she fell, to veil the parts that should be covered, and to keep the grace of chaste modesty. 481The Trojan women take her up and count over the children of Priam they have mourned, and how much blood one house has given, and they lament you, maiden, and you, lately called royal wife and royal mother, image of flourishing Asia, now a poor lot even among the plunder, whom victorious Ulysses would not want as his, except that you had given birth to Hector: Hector barely found a master for his mother!
488She, embracing the body empty of so brave a spirit, gives to it too the tears she had so often given to her country and her children and her husband; she pours tears into the wounds, covers its lips with kisses, beats her breast so used to beating, and, sweeping her white hair in the clotted blood, she said much indeed, but this too, as she tore her breast: