Hecuba gathered the old women, took the largest and loveliest Sidonian robe from the fragrant store-room, and went to Athena’s temple. Theano, priestess of Athena, opened the doors, laid the robe on the goddess’s knees, and prayed for Diomedes’s spear to be broken. Athena denied the prayer.
Hector went to Paris’s house and found him handling his armor while Helen directed the women’s work. Hector rebuked him: men were dying around the city because of him; he should rise before Troy burned.
Paris answered that Hector’s rebuke was just. He had not stayed from anger so much as from grief, and Helen had urged him back to war with soft words; it seemed better to him too. Victory shifts from man to man. Helen then spoke bitterly: brother of me who am a dog, cause of evil — would that a blast of wind had carried her away the day she was born, to a mountain or a wave of the sea, before these deeds. Since the gods ordained these evils, she wished she had been wife to a better man who felt the reproaches of men. This one’s mind was not firm. Let Hector sit, since trouble wrapped him most because of her, bitch that she was, and Paris’s blind folly; Zeus had laid an evil fate on them so they would be a subject of song for men yet to be.
Hector refused to sit. His heart was already eager to defend the Trojans, who missed him when he was away. He told Helen to rouse Paris and said he was going home to see his wife and child, not knowing whether he would return or be broken by Achaean hands.