much that he offered to grant her any request if she would accept him as
her husband. Cassandra consented and asked for the power of foretelling
events, but when she received it, she slighted the god and refused to
perform her promise. Apollo was enraged at her conduct, yet he could not
take back the gift he had bestowed. He decreed, however, that no one
should believe or pay any attention to her predictions, true though they
should be. And so when Cassandra foretold the evils that were to come
upon Troy, even her own people would not credit her words. They spoke of
her as the "mad prophetess."

Cassandra cried, and cursed the unhappy hour;
Foretold our fate; but by the god's decree,
All heard, and none believed the prophecy.

VERGIL.

The first sorrow in the lives of King Priam and his good queen came a
short time before the birth of Paris, when Hecuba dreamed that her next
child would bring ruin upon his family and native city. This caused the
deepest distress to Priam and Hecuba, especially when the soothsayer
Æsʹa-cus declared that the dream would certainly be fulfilled. Then,
though they were tender and loving parents, they made up their minds to
sacrifice their own feelings rather than that such a calamity should
befall their country. When the child was born, the king, therefore,
ordered it to be given to Ar-che-laʹus, one of the shepherds of Mount
Ida, with instructions to expose it in a place where it might be
destroyed by wild beasts. The shepherd, though very unwilling to do so
cruel a thing, was obliged to obey, but on returning to the spot a few
days afterwards he found the infant boy alive and unhurt. Some say that
the child had been nursed and carefully tended by a she-bear. Archelaus