But sleep did not hold Hermes. He stood over Priam and warned him he slept without care among enemies; if Agamemnon learned of him, his sons would pay three times the ransom for him alive. The old man feared and woke Idaios. Hermes yoked the teams and drove them through the camp unseen. At the ford of Xanthos he left them for Olympus, and Dawn spread over the earth.
They drove to the city with moaning and lament, the mules drawing the dead. No one was left indoors; such sorrow had taken them. Cassandra saw from Pergamos her father in the car and Hector on the bier, and cried through the town for all to come and see Hector, if ever they had rejoiced when he came living from battle.
The people gathered. Andromache and Hecuba tore their hair to touch his head first. The crowd would have wept till sundown at the gates if Priam had not told them make way for the mules; afterward they might weep their fill when he had brought Hector home. They stood aside.
In the house they laid him on a corded bed and set singers to lead the dirge. White-armed Andromache held his head and lamented the young husband who left her a widow and the boy still a baby — without its guardian the city would fall, and she and the child would know slavery or worse. The women answered her cry.
Hecuba led next: dearest of her children — while he lived the gods loved him, and they cared for him even in death. Achilles had dragged him around Patroclus's tomb but could not bring that companion back, and now Hector lay fresh as dew, like one Apollo kills with gentle arrows.
Helen was third: dearest of her brothers-in-law. This was the twentieth year since she left her country, yet she never heard a harsh word from Hector. If others reproached her in the halls, he turned them with gentleness. Therefore she wept for him and herself; no longer was anyone in wide Troy kind to her.
Priam spoke to the people: bring wood to the city, and fear no Argive ambush. Achilles promised when he sent me back that they would not harm us until the twelfth dawn. At once they yoked oxen and mules. For nine days they brought in great heaps of wood. On the morning of the tenth, with many tears, they carried out brave Hector, laid him on the pyre, and set fire to it.
When Dawn of the rosy fingers shone, the people gathered at the pyre. They quenched with wine all the fire had reached. Brothers and comrades gathered the white bones, wrapped them in soft purple cloths, and laid them in a golden urn. They set the urn in a hollow grave, covered it with close-set stones, and heaped the mound in haste while watchers sat around. Then they went back and held a fair feast in the house of Priam, the Zeus-nourished king.
So they held the funeral for horse-taming Hector.