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Hecuba
Place the shield upon the ground, Hector’s shield so deftly rounded, a piteous sight, a bitter grief for me to see. O you Achaeans, more reason have you to boast of your prowess than your wisdom. Why have you in terror of this child
been guilty of a murder never matched before? Did you fear that some day he would rear again the fallen walls of
Troy
? It seems then you were nothing after all, when, though Hector’s fortunes in the war were prosperous and he had ten thousand other arms to back him, we still were daily overmatched; and yet, now that our city is taken and every Phrygian slain,
1160
you fear a tender child like this! I do not commend the fear of one who fears but never yet has reasoned out the cause.
1165
Place the shield upon the ground, Hector’s shield so deftly rounded, a piteous sight, a bitter grief for me to see. O you Achaeans, more reason have you to boast of your prowess than your wisdom. Why have you in terror of this child
been guilty of a murder never matched before? Did you fear that some day he would rear again the fallen walls of
Troy
? It seems then you were nothing after all, when, though Hector’s fortunes in the war were prosperous and he had ten thousand other arms to back him, we still were daily overmatched; and yet, now that our city is taken and every Phrygian slain,
1160
you fear a tender child like this! I do not commend the fear of one who fears but never yet has reasoned out the cause.
1165
The Trojan Women. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1906.
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