Taking Hector by the hand, she spoke to him.

"My dear husband, your warlike spirit                                
will be your death.  You've no compassion
for your infant child, for me, your sad wife, 
who before long will be your widow.
For soon the Achaeans will attack you,                           
all together, cut you down.  As for me,  
it would be better, if I'm to lose you,
to be buried in the ground.  For then I'll have
no other comfort, once you meet your death,
except my sorrow.  I have no father,
no dear mother.  For lord Achilles killed                               
my father, when he wiped out Thebe,
city with high gates, slaying Eëtion.  
But he didn't strip his corpse—his heart
felt too much shame for that.  So he burned him                   
in his finely decorated armour,
raised a burial mound over the ashes.
Mountain nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus,  
planted elm trees all around his body.
I had seven brothers in my home.
All went down to Hades in one day,                           
for swift-footed lord Achilles killed them all,
while they were guarding their shambling oxen,   
their white shining sheep.  As for my mother,
who ruled wooded Thebe-under-Placus,                
he brought her here with his other spoils.
Then he released her for a massive ransom.
But archer goddess Artemis killed her
in her father's house.  So, Hector, you are now
my father, noble mother, brother,    
my protecting husband.  So pity me.                                     
Stay here in this tower.  Don't orphan your child
and make your wife a widow. Place men by the fig tree, 
where the city is most vulnerable, 
the wall most easily scaled.  Three times                             
their best men have come there to attack,  
led by the two Ajaxes, the sons of Atreus,
famous Idomeneus, and Diomedes,
Tydeus' courageous son, incited to it
by someone well versed in prophecy                             
or by their own hearts' inclination."

Great Hector of the shining helmet answered her:                               

                                                                  "Wife,  
all this concerns me, too.  But I'd be disgraced, 
dreadfully shamed among Trojan men,
and Trojan women in their trailing gowns,                            
if I should, like a coward, slink away from war.
My heart will never prompt me to do that, 
for I have learned always to be brave, 
to fight alongside Trojans at the front, 
striving to win fame for father and myself.  
My heart and mind know well the day is coming
when sacred Ilion will be destroyed,
along with Priam of the fine ash spear,  
Priam's people.  But what pains me most
about these future sorrows is not so much    
the Trojans, Hecuba, or king Priam, 
or even my many noble brothers,
who'll fall down in the dust slaughtered
by their enemies.  My pain concerns you,                             
when one of the bronze-clad Achaeans
leads you off in tears, ends your days of freedom.
If then you come to Argos as a slave,
working the loom for some other woman,    
fetching water from Messeis or Hypereia,
against your will, forced by powerful fate, 
then someone seeing you as you weep
may well say: 'That woman is Hector's wife.
He was the finest warrior in battle     
of all horse-taming Trojans in that war
when they fought for Troy.'  Someone will say that,
and it will bring still more grief to you,
to be without a man like that to save you
from days of servitude.  May I lie dead, 
hidden deep under a burial mound, 
before I hear about your screaming,                                      
as you are dragged away."                                                     

                                                        With these words,
glorious Hector stretched his hands out for his son.
The boy immediately shrank back against the breast
of the finely girdled nurse, crying out, terrified                                           
to see his own dear father, scared at the sight of bronze, 
the horse-hair plume nodding fearfully from his helmet top. 
The child's loving father laughed, his noble mother, too.  
Glorious Hector pulled the glittering helmet off  
and set it on the ground.  Then he kissed his dear son,
holding him in his arms.