Epeisodion 2
HECTOR.
Hast flung to the Greeks my city! Yet, long since,
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’Twas I that found thee but a little prince
And made thee mighty, I and this right hand;
When round Pangaion and the Paiôn’s land,
Front against front, I burst upon the brood
Of Thrace and broke their targes, and subdued
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Their power to thine. The grace whereof, not small,
Thou hast spurned, and when thy kinsmen, drowning, call,
Comest too late. Thou! Others there have been
These long years, not by nature of our kin . .
Some under yon rough barrows thou canst see
Lie buried; they were true to Troy and me;
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And others, yet here in the shielded line
Or mid the chariots, parching in the shine
Of noonday, starving in the winds that bite
Through Ilion’s winter, still endure and fight
On at my side. ’Twas not their way, to lie
On a soft couch and, while the cups go by,
Pledge my good health, like thee, in Thracian wine.
I speak as a free man. With thee and thine
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Hector is wroth, and tells thee to thy face.
RHESUS.
Thy way is mine, friend. Straight I run my race
In word and deed, and bear no double tongue.
I tell thee, more than thine my heart was wrung,
Yea, angered past all durance, thus to stay
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Back from thy battles. ’Twas a folk that lay
Hard on my borders, Scythians of the north;
Just when my host for Troy had started forth,
They fell upon our homes. I had reached the coast
Of the Friendless Sea and purposed to have crossed
