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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: destruction; think on your infant son, and on my hapless self who
ere long shall be your widow--for the Achaeans will set upon you
in a body and kill you. It would be better for me, should I lose
you, to lie dead and buried, for I shall have nothing left to
comfort me when you are gone, save only sorrow. I have neither
father nor mother now. Achilles slew my father when he sacked
Thebe the goodly city of the Cilicians. He slew him, but did not
for very shame despoil him; when he had burned him in his
wondrous armour, he raised a barrow over his ashes and the
mountain nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Jove, planted a grove
of elms about his tomb. I had seven brothers in my father's
 The Iliad |