straightaway the vision, slipping through his arms, is gone, winging its flight along the paths of sleep. Such are the sorrows at hearth and home, but here are sorrows surpassing these; and at large, in every house of all who went forth together from the land of Hellas,unbearable grief is seen. Many things pierce the heart. Each knows whom he sent forth. But to the home of each comeurns and ashesThis passage, in which war is compared to a gold-merchant, is charged with double meanings: ταλαντοῦχος, balance and scales of battle, πυρωθέν of purified gold-dust and of the burnt bodies of the slain, βαρύ, heavy and grievous, ἀντήνορος, the price of a man, and instead of men, λέβητας, jars and funeral urns., not living men.