The war was entirely unmentionable. The two former priestesses wandered the country for a time, till settling upon Cythera, protected as they were by Aphrodite. One, her name was Megera, became a famed potter, and the other, named Circe, would paint her lovers pots. For many years they lived and loved upon the island, deflecting questions of their origins from the locals. It is said that one of their pieces (a drinking cup depicting Aphrodite driving the Lemnian women to murder their husbands) crossed the threshold of their old temple, where it shattered as if hit by a great shield of hardy bronze. Those who could enter the adyton said the statue of Athene within frowned considerably for the next year.

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Hector's Departure from Andromache, 1812

So saying, glorious Hector stretched out his arms to his boy, but back into the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse shrank the child crying, affrighted at the aspect of his dear father, and seized with dread of the bronze and the crest of horse-hair, as he marked it waving dreadfully from the topmost helm. Aloud then laughed his dear father and queenly mother; and forthwith glorious Hector took the helm from his head and laid it all-gleaming upon the ground. But he kissed his dear son, and fondled him in his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and the other gods: "Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war, ‘He is better far than his father’; and may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he hath slain, and may his mother's heart wax glad."