diff --git a/file-io.ipynb b/file-io.ipynb index 5560737..e0b3db6 100644 --- a/file-io.ipynb +++ b/file-io.ipynb @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": 1, + "execution_count": 2, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [ { @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": 2, + "execution_count": 3, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [], "source": [ @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": null, + "execution_count": 5, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [], "source": [ @@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": null, + "execution_count": 6, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [], "source": [ @@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": 8, + "execution_count": 7, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [ { @@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": 22, + "execution_count": 9, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [], "source": [ @@ -119,20 +119,9 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": null, + "execution_count": 10, "metadata": {}, - "outputs": [ - { - "data": { - "text/plain": [ - "" - ] - }, - "execution_count": 33, - "metadata": {}, - "output_type": "execute_result" - } - ], + "outputs": [], "source": [ "from pathlib import Path\n", "\n", @@ -146,7 +135,7 @@ }, { "cell_type": "code", - "execution_count": 50, + "execution_count": 11, "metadata": {}, "outputs": [], "source": [ @@ -155,11 +144,27164 @@ " with open(iliad_file, \"r\") as f:\n", " a.write(f.read() + \"\\n\")\n" ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "from pathlib import Path\n", + "path = Path(\"pope-iliad.txt\")\n", + "contents = path.read_text()\n", + "\n", + "lines = contents.splitlines()\n", + "for line in lines: \n", + " print(line)\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 13, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "iliad_1k = \"\"\"And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems\n", + "their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who\n", + "is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely\n", + "observes:—\n", + "\n", + "“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has\n", + "ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.\n", + "Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other\n", + "nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is\n", + "a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the\n", + "period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in\n", + "Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they\n", + "paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the\n", + "mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no\n", + "less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity\n", + "and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;\n", + "on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which\n", + "outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth\n", + "from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and\n", + "therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which\n", + "cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,\n", + "from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down\n", + "on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests\n", + "of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic\n", + "wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast\n", + "assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had\n", + "been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal\n", + "spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his\n", + "happiness.”[35]\n", + "\n", + "Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of\n", + "Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing\n", + "association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to\n", + "our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old\n", + "tradition? The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the\n", + "readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the\n", + "Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire.\n", + "Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful\n", + "for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than\n", + "seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of\n", + "theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with\n", + "each other.\n", + "\n", + "As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not\n", + "included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief\n", + "account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer\n", + "who has done it full justice[37]:—\n", + "\n", + "“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.\n", + "The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and\n", + "corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile\n", + "essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees,\n", + "mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited\n", + "the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was\n", + "uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,\n", + "know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining\n", + "the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a\n", + "youthful profusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the\n", + "beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the\n", + "general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and\n", + "even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the\n", + "objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque\n", + "to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse\n", + "that order in the development of national taste, which the history of\n", + "every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost\n", + "ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society\n", + "much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that\n", + "any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is\n", + "contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three\n", + "other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as\n", + "much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of\n", + "them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word\n", + "deltos, “writing tablet,” instead of διφθέρα, “skin,” which, according\n", + "to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for\n", + "that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity;\n", + "and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a\n", + "strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.”\n", + "\n", + "Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s\n", + "design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,\n", + "and on my own purpose in the present edition.\n", + "\n", + "Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his\n", + "earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.\n", + "It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a\n", + "disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive\n", + "deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his\n", + "whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a\n", + "translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,\n", + "which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical\n", + "attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it\n", + "is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the\n", + "contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a\n", + "perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called\n", + "literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something\n", + "like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of\n", + "a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing\n", + "fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the\n", + "poet’s meaning, his _words_ were less jealously sought for, and those\n", + "who could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be\n", + "satisfied.\n", + "\n", + "It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own\n", + "advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at\n", + "it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part\n", + "of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn\n", + "from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most\n", + "cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because\n", + "Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to\n", + "ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from\n", + "us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s\n", + "fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his\n", + "translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. But we can still\n", + "dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the\n", + "consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books\n", + "before they have read its fellow.\n", + "\n", + "As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up\n", + "without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general\n", + "reader. Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer\n", + "for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of\n", + "accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the\n", + "text. But Pope’s version was no field for such a display; and my\n", + "purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions,\n", + "to notice occasionally _some_ departures from the original, and to give\n", + "a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter\n", + "task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other\n", + "annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be\n", + "found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary\n", + "limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write a\n", + "commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope’s\n", + "translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of\n", + "miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily\n", + "accomplished.\n", + "\n", + "THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "_Christ Church_.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any\n", + "writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested\n", + "with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular\n", + "excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a\n", + "wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most\n", + "excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the\n", + "invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses:\n", + "the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which\n", + "masters everything besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art\n", + "with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but\n", + "“steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on\n", + "managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works\n", + "of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the\n", + "invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can\n", + "only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure,\n", + "which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more\n", + "entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are\n", + "inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and\n", + "fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue\n", + "their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art, than to\n", + "comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.\n", + "\n", + "Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the\n", + "beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the\n", + "number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery,\n", + "which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of\n", + "which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants,\n", + "each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things\n", + "are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if\n", + "others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because\n", + "they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.\n", + "\n", + "It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute\n", + "that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no\n", + "man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him.\n", + "What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing\n", + "moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called,\n", + "or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or\n", + "done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by\n", + "the force of the poet’s imagination, and turns in one place to a\n", + "hearer, in another to a spectator. The course of his verses resembles\n", + "that of the army he describes,\n", + "\n", + " Οἵδ’ ἄῤ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πἆσα νέμοιτο.\n", + "\n", + "“They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” It\n", + "is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous,\n", + "is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its\n", + "fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and\n", + "others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity.\n", + "Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers,\n", + "may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this “vivida\n", + "vis animi,” in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect\n", + "or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even\n", + "while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with\n", + "absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing\n", + "but its own splendour. This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned\n", + "as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but\n", + "everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in\n", + "sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a\n", + "furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in\n", + "Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from\n", + "heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and\n", + "everywhere irresistibly.\n", + "\n", + "I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in\n", + "a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent\n", + "parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which\n", + "distinguishes him from all other authors.\n", + "\n", + "This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the\n", + "violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed\n", + "not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole\n", + "compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward\n", + "passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all\n", + "the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but\n", + "wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and\n", + "boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in\n", + "the invention of fable. That which Aristotle calls “the soul of\n", + "poetry,” was first breathed into it by Homer. I shall begin with\n", + "considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak\n", + "of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for\n", + "fiction.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the\n", + "marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions as,\n", + "though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature;\n", + "or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional\n", + "episodes and manner of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of\n", + "an epic poem, “The return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in\n", + "Italy,” or the like. That of the Iliad is the “anger of Achilles,” the\n", + "most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet\n", + "this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and\n", + "crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and\n", + "episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose\n", + "schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is\n", + "hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration\n", + "employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of so warm a\n", + "genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as\n", + "a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer’s\n", + "poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The\n", + "other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it\n", + "so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of\n", + "action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor\n", + "is it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his\n", + "invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of\n", + "story. If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up\n", + "their forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus,\n", + "Virgil has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them)\n", + "destroys the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses\n", + "visit the shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent\n", + "after him. If he be detained from his return by the allurements of\n", + "Calypso, so is Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be\n", + "absent from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem,\n", + "Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. If he\n", + "gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make the\n", + "same present to theirs. Virgil has not only observed this close\n", + "imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied the\n", + "want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon, and the taking\n", + "of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word from\n", + "Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of Medea\n", + "and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those\n", + "innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy\n", + "which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories,\n", + "what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us!\n", + "How fertile will that imagination appear, which was able to clothe all\n", + "the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues\n", + "and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions\n", + "agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed! This is a field in\n", + "which no succeeding poets could dispute with Homer, and whatever\n", + "commendations have been allowed them on this head, are by no means for\n", + "their invention in having enlarged his circle, but for their judgment\n", + "in having contracted it. For when the mode of learning changed in the\n", + "following ages, and science was delivered in a plainer manner, it then\n", + "became as reasonable in the more modern poets to lay it aside, as it\n", + "was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was no unhappy\n", + "circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that demand\n", + "upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing all\n", + "those allegorical parts of a poem.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially\n", + "the machines of the gods. If Homer was not the first who introduced the\n", + "deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems\n", + "the first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry, and\n", + "such a one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find\n", + "those authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods,\n", + "constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support\n", + "of it. But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a\n", + "philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic,\n", + "that mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have\n", + "been able to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set:\n", + "every attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the\n", + "various changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day\n", + "the gods of poetry.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no\n", + "author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a\n", + "variety, or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them.\n", + "Every one has something so singularly his own, that no painter could\n", + "have distinguished them more by their features, than the poet has by\n", + "their manners. Nothing can be more exact than the distinctions he has\n", + "observed in the different degrees of virtues and vices. The single\n", + "quality of courage is wonderfully diversified in the several characters\n", + "of the Iliad. That of Achilles is furious and intractable; that of\n", + "Diomede forward, yet listening to advice, and subject to command; that\n", + "of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of Hector, active and vigilant:\n", + "the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by love of empire and ambition;\n", + "that of Menelaus mixed with softness and tenderness for his people: we\n", + "find in Idomeneus a plain direct soldier; in Sarpedon a gallant and\n", + "generous one. Nor is this judicious and astonishing diversity to be\n", + "found only in the principal quality which constitutes the main of each\n", + "character, but even in the under parts of it, to which he takes care to\n", + "give a tincture of that principal one. For example: the main characters\n", + "of Ulysses and Nestor consist in wisdom; and they are distinct in this,\n", + "that the wisdom of one is artificial and various, of the other natural,\n", + "open, and regular. But they have, besides, characters of courage; and\n", + "this quality also takes a different turn in each from the difference of\n", + "his prudence; for one in the war depends still upon caution, the other\n", + "upon experience. It would be endless to produce instances of these\n", + "kinds. The characters of Virgil are far from striking us in this open\n", + "manner; they lie, in a great degree, hidden and undistinguished; and,\n", + "where they are marked most evidently affect us not in proportion to\n", + "those of Homer. His characters of valour are much alike; even that of\n", + "Turnus seems no way peculiar, but, as it is, in a superior degree; and\n", + "we see nothing that differences the courage of Mnestheus from that of\n", + "Sergestus, Cloanthus, or the rest. In like manner it may be remarked of\n", + "Statius’s heroes, that an air of impetuosity runs through them all; the\n", + "same horrid and savage courage appears in his Capaneus, Tydeus,\n", + "Hippomedon, &c. They have a parity of character, which makes them seem\n", + "brothers of one family. I believe when the reader is led into this\n", + "tract of reflection, if he will pursue it through the epic and tragic\n", + "writers, he will be convinced how infinitely superior, in this point,\n", + "the invention of Homer was to that of all others.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The speeches are to be considered as they flow from the characters;\n", + "being perfect or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners,\n", + "of those who utter them. As there is more variety of characters in the\n", + "Iliad, so there is of speeches, than in any other poem. “Everything in\n", + "it has manner” (as Aristotle expresses it), that is, everything is\n", + "acted or spoken. It is hardly credible, in a work of such length, how\n", + "small a number of lines are employed in narration. In Virgil the\n", + "dramatic part is less in proportion to the narrative, and the speeches\n", + "often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be\n", + "equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. As many of\n", + "his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape\n", + "being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. We oftener think of\n", + "the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in\n", + "Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests\n", + "us less in the action described. Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil\n", + "leaves us readers.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If, in the next place, we take a view of the sentiments, the same\n", + "presiding faculty is eminent in the sublimity and spirit of his\n", + "thoughts. Longinus has given his opinion, that it was in this part\n", + "Homer principally excelled. What were alone sufficient to prove the\n", + "grandeur and excellence of his sentiments in general, is, that they\n", + "have so remarkable a parity with those of the Scripture. Duport, in his\n", + "Gnomologia Homerica, has collected innumerable instances of this sort.\n", + "And it is with justice an excellent modern writer allows, that if\n", + "Virgil has not so many thoughts that are low and vulgar, he has not so\n", + "many that are sublime and noble; and that the Roman author seldom rises\n", + "into very astonishing sentiments where he is not fired by the Iliad.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If we observe his descriptions, images, and similes, we shall find the\n", + "invention still predominant. To what else can we ascribe that vast\n", + "comprehension of images of every sort, where we see each circumstance\n", + "of art, and individual of nature, summoned together by the extent and\n", + "fecundity of his imagination to which all things, in their various\n", + "views presented themselves in an instant, and had their impressions\n", + "taken off to perfection at a heat? Nay, he not only gives us the full\n", + "prospects of things, but several unexpected peculiarities and side\n", + "views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. Nothing is so surprising as\n", + "the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the\n", + "Iliad, and are supplied with so vast a variety of incidents, that no\n", + "one bears a likeness to another; such different kinds of deaths, that\n", + "no two heroes are wounded in the same manner, and such a profusion of\n", + "noble ideas, that every battle rises above the last in greatness,\n", + "horror, and confusion. It is certain there is not near that number of\n", + "images and descriptions in any epic poet, though every one has assisted\n", + "himself with a great quantity out of him; and it is evident of Virgil\n", + "especially, that he has scarce any comparisons which are not drawn from\n", + "his master.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If we descend from hence to the expression, we see the bright\n", + "imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. We\n", + "acknowledge him the father of poetical diction; the first who taught\n", + "that “language of the gods” to men. His expression is like the\n", + "colouring of some great masters, which discovers itself to be laid on\n", + "boldly, and executed with rapidity. It is, indeed, the strongest and\n", + "most glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit.\n", + "Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out\n", + "“living words;” there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than\n", + "in any good author whatever. An arrow is “impatient” to be on the wing,\n", + "a weapon “thirsts” to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet\n", + "his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in\n", + "proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the\n", + "diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the\n", + "same degree that a thought is warmer, an expression will be brighter,\n", + "as that is more strong, this will become more perspicuous; like glass\n", + "in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, and refines to a\n", + "greater clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the\n", + "heat more intense.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "To throw his language more out of prose, Homer seems to have affected\n", + "the compound epithets. This was a sort of composition peculiarly proper\n", + "to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it assisted\n", + "and filled the numbers with greater sound and pomp, and likewise\n", + "conduced in some measure to thicken the images. On this last\n", + "consideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of\n", + "his invention, since (as he has managed them) they are a sort of\n", + "supernumerary pictures of the persons or things to which they were\n", + "joined. We see the motion of Hector’s plumes in the epithet\n", + "Κορυθαίολος, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Εἰνοσίφυλλος,\n", + "and so of others, which particular images could not have been insisted\n", + "upon so long as to express them in a description (though but of a\n", + "single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal\n", + "action or figure. As a metaphor is a short simile, one of these\n", + "epithets is a short description.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Lastly, if we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a\n", + "share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not\n", + "satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of\n", + "Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this\n", + "particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered\n", + "these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or consonants, and\n", + "accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater\n", + "smoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has\n", + "a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its\n", + "custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make\n", + "the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency.\n", + "With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the\n", + "feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its\n", + "accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the\n", + "licence of poetry. Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his\n", + "sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his\n", + "rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in\n", + "the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. Out of all\n", + "these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not\n", + "only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. This is so\n", + "great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses,\n", + "even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we\n", + "daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more\n", + "sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of\n", + "poetry. The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be\n", + "copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to\n", + "ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some\n", + "advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and\n", + "cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language.\n", + "Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in\n", + "working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was\n", + "capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his\n", + "line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has\n", + "not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the\n", + "only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than\n", + "the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our\n", + "author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of\n", + "Words. It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow\n", + "with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than\n", + "to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time,\n", + "with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise\n", + "us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river,\n", + "always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of\n", + "verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us\n", + "is his invention. It is that which forms the character of each part of\n", + "his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more\n", + "extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and\n", + "strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his\n", + "sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full\n", + "and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers\n", + "more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with\n", + "regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his\n", + "character. Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of\n", + "comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in\n", + "them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.\n", + "We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and\n", + "distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider\n", + "him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No\n", + "author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and\n", + "as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. Not that\n", + "we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a\n", + "more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer\n", + "possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of\n", + "both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in\n", + "comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the\n", + "better artist. In one we most admire the man, in the other the work.\n", + "Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil\n", + "leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous\n", + "profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the\n", + "Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a\n", + "river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. When we behold\n", + "their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they\n", + "celebrate. Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all\n", + "before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil,\n", + "calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the\n", + "action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. And\n", + "when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in\n", + "his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the\n", + "heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling\n", + "with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his\n", + "whole creation.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they\n", + "naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to\n", + "distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As\n", + "prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment\n", + "decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or\n", + "extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we\n", + "look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections\n", + "against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this\n", + "faculty.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which\n", + "so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of\n", + "probability. Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with\n", + "gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength,\n", + "exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become\n", + "miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit\n", + "something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable\n", + "performances. Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his\n", + "“myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as\n", + "contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been\n", + "thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. The force of this\n", + "faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine\n", + "itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is\n", + "grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which,\n", + "however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. His similes\n", + "are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its\n", + "proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with\n", + "occasional ornaments and prospects. The same will account for his\n", + "manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when\n", + "his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent\n", + "images. The reader will easily extend this observation to more\n", + "objections of the same kind.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or\n", + "narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will\n", + "be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the\n", + "times he lived in. Such are his grosser representations of the gods;\n", + "and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here\n", + "speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into\n", + "extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a\n", + "strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that\n", + "those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are\n", + "more contrary to ours.” Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to\n", + "magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and\n", + "cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned\n", + "through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre;\n", + "when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and\n", + "daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be\n", + "so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile\n", + "offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of\n", + "Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity,\n", + "in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs\n", + "without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses\n", + "drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect\n", + "that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and\n", + "those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the\n", + "perusal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations\n", + "and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three\n", + "thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining\n", + "themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to\n", + "be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means\n", + "alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates\n", + "their dislike, will become a satisfaction.\n", + "\n", + "This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of\n", + "the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting\n", + "Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c.,\n", + "which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. Those\n", + "of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to\n", + "belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the\n", + "rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of\n", + "attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all\n", + "occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets\n", + "of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature\n", + "of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names\n", + "derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction\n", + "of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of\n", + "birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip,\n", + "Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer, therefore,\n", + "complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive\n", + "additions as better agreed with poetry. And, indeed, we have something\n", + "parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold\n", + "Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince,\n", + "&c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for\n", + "the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. Hesiod, dividing the\n", + "world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the\n", + "brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine\n", + "race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by\n", + "the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[39] Now among the\n", + "divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in\n", + "common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an\n", + "epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their\n", + "families, actions or qualities.\n", + "\n", + "What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly\n", + "deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the\n", + "course of the work. Many have been occasioned by an injudicious\n", + "endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should\n", + "think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one\n", + "would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these\n", + "critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a\n", + "consideration which whoever compares these two poets ought to have\n", + "always in his eye. Some accuse him for the same things which they\n", + "overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and\n", + "moral of the Æneis to those of the Iliad, for the same reasons which\n", + "might set the Odyssey above the Æneis; as that the hero is a wiser man,\n", + "and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of\n", + "the other; or else they blame him for not doing what he never designed;\n", + "as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when\n", + "the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus\n", + "that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. Others select\n", + "those particular passages of Homer which are not so laboured as some\n", + "that Virgil drew out of them: this is the whole management of Scaliger\n", + "in his Poetics. Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean\n", + "expressions, sometimes through a false delicacy and refinement, oftener\n", + "from an ignorance of the graces of the original, and then triumph in\n", + "the awkwardness of their own translations: this is the conduct of\n", + "Perrault in his Parallels. Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to\n", + "a fairer proceeding, distinguish between the personal merit of Homer,\n", + "and that of his work; but when they come to assign the causes of the\n", + "great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his\n", + "times, and the prejudice of those that followed; and in pursuance of\n", + "this principle, they make those accidents (such as the contention of\n", + "the cities, &c.) to be the causes of his fame, which were in reality\n", + "the consequences of his merit. The same might as well be said of\n", + "Virgil, or any great author whose general character will infallibly\n", + "raise many casual additions to their reputation. This is the method of\n", + "Mons. de la Mott; who yet confesses upon the whole that in whatever age\n", + "Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and\n", + "that he may be said in his sense to be the master even of those who\n", + "surpassed him.\n", + "\n", + "In all these objections we see nothing that contradicts his title to\n", + "the honour of the chief invention: and as long as this (which is indeed\n", + "the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his\n", + "followers, he still continues superior to them. A cooler judgment may\n", + "commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one sort of\n", + "critics: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and most\n", + "universal applauses which holds the heart of a reader under the\n", + "strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry,\n", + "but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has\n", + "swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done\n", + "admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation.\n", + "He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in\n", + "some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work\n", + "of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most\n", + "vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the\n", + "finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit\n", + "join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have\n", + "only said that a few branches which run luxuriant through a richness of\n", + "nature, might be lopped into form to give it a more regular appearance.\n", + "\n", + "Having now spoken of the beauties and defects of the original, it\n", + "remains to treat of the translation, with the same view to the chief\n", + "characteristic. As far as that is seen in the main parts of the poem,\n", + "such as the fable, manners, and sentiments, no translator can prejudice\n", + "it but by wilful omissions or contractions. As it also breaks out in\n", + "every particular image, description, and simile, whoever lessens or too\n", + "much softens those, takes off from this chief character. It is the\n", + "first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and\n", + "unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his\n", + "proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to\n", + "take as he finds them.\n", + "\n", + "It should then be considered what methods may afford some equivalent in\n", + "our language for the graces of these in the Greek. It is certain no\n", + "literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior\n", + "language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that\n", + "a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no\n", + "less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the\n", + "modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there\n", + "is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a\n", + "version almost literal. I know no liberties one ought to take, but\n", + "those which are necessary to transfusing the spirit of the original,\n", + "and supporting the poetical style of the translation: and I will\n", + "venture to say, there have not been more men misled in former times by\n", + "a servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours\n", + "by a chimerical, insolent hope of raising and improving their author.\n", + "It is not to be doubted, that the fire of the poem is what a translator\n", + "should principally regard, as it is most likely to expire in his\n", + "managing: however, it is his safest way to be content with preserving\n", + "this to his utmost in the whole, without endeavouring to be more than\n", + "he finds his author is, in any particular place. It is a great secret\n", + "in writing, to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative;\n", + "and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will but follow modestly in\n", + "his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours\n", + "as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we ought not to\n", + "be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of\n", + "a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been\n", + "more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of his\n", + "translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the\n", + "sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of\n", + "simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some\n", + "sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the\n", + "certain signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in\n", + "his train, while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an\n", + "unaffected and equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes\n", + "one could sooner pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be\n", + "envied for such commendations, as he may gain by that character of\n", + "style, which his friends must agree together to call simplicity, and\n", + "the rest of the world will call dulness. There is a graceful and\n", + "dignified simplicity, as well as a bold and sordid one; which differ as\n", + "much from each other as the air of a plain man from that of a sloven:\n", + "it is one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dressed at all.\n", + "Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.\n", + "\n", + "This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the\n", + "Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the\n", + "inspired writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words\n", + "but what were intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that\n", + "part of the world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his\n", + "style must of course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books\n", + "than that of any other writer. This consideration (together with what\n", + "has been observed of the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks,\n", + "induce a translator, on the one hand, to give in to several of those\n", + "general phrases and manners of expression, which have attained a\n", + "veneration even in our language from being used in the Old Testament;\n", + "as, on the other, to avoid those which have been appropriated to the\n", + "Divinity, and in a manner consigned to mystery and religion.\n", + "\n", + "For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care\n", + "should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and\n", + "proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have\n", + "something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned\n", + "gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which\n", + "would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more\n", + "ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.\n", + "\n", + "Perhaps the mixture of some Græcisms and old words after the manner of\n", + "Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill\n", + "effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other\n", + "seems to require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of\n", + "modern terms of war and government, such as “platoon, campaign, junto,”\n", + "or the like, (into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be\n", + "allowable; those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat\n", + "the subjects in any living language.\n", + "\n", + "There are two peculiarities in Homer’s diction, which are a sort of\n", + "marks or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first\n", + "sight; those who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as\n", + "defects, and those who are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. I\n", + "speak of his compound epithets, and of his repetitions. Many of the\n", + "former cannot be done literally into English without destroying the\n", + "purity of our language. I believe such should be retained as slide\n", + "easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the\n", + "ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which\n", + "have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are\n", + "become familiar through their use of them; such as “the\n", + "cloud-compelling Jove,” &c. As for the rest, whenever any can be as\n", + "fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded\n", + "one, the course to be taken is obvious.\n", + "\n", + "Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one\n", + "or two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the\n", + "epithet einosiphyllos to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous\n", + "translated literally “leaf-shaking,” but affords a majestic idea in the\n", + "periphrasis: “the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods.” Others that\n", + "admit of different significations, may receive an advantage from a\n", + "judicious variation, according to the occasions on which they are\n", + "introduced. For example, the epithet of Apollo, ἑκηβόλος or\n", + "“far-shooting,” is capable of two explications; one literal, in respect\n", + "of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god; the other allegorical,\n", + "with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore, in such places where\n", + "Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former\n", + "interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are described, I would\n", + "make choice of the latter. Upon the whole, it will be necessary to\n", + "avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in\n", + "Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated (as has been already\n", + "shown) to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one\n", + "may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an\n", + "additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in\n", + "doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his\n", + "judgment.\n", + "\n", + "As for Homer’s repetitions, we may divide them into three sorts: of\n", + "whole narrations and speeches, of single sentences, and of one verse or\n", + "hemistitch. I hope it is not impossible to have such a regard to these,\n", + "as neither to lose so known a mark of the author on the one hand, nor\n", + "to offend the reader too much on the other. The repetition is not\n", + "ungraceful in those speeches, where the dignity of the speaker renders\n", + "it a sort of insolence to alter his words; as in the messages from gods\n", + "to men, or from higher powers to inferiors in concerns of state, or\n", + "where the ceremonial of religion seems to require it, in the solemn\n", + "forms of prayers, oaths, or the like. In other cases, I believe the\n", + "best rule is, to be guided by the nearness, or distance, at which the\n", + "repetitions are placed in the original: when they follow too close, one\n", + "may vary the expression; but it is a question, whether a professed\n", + "translator be authorized to omit any: if they be tedious, the author is\n", + "to answer for it.\n", + "\n", + "It only remains to speak of the versification. Homer (as has been said)\n", + "is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every\n", + "new subject. This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of\n", + "poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it\n", + "in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. I am sensible it is what may\n", + "sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed\n", + "of his image: however, it may reasonably be believed they designed\n", + "this, in whose verse it so manifestly appears in a superior degree to\n", + "all others. Few readers have the ear to be judges of it: but those who\n", + "have, will see I have endeavoured at this beauty.\n", + "\n", + "Upon the whole, I must confess myself utterly incapable of doing\n", + "justice to Homer. I attempt him in no other hope but that which one may\n", + "entertain without much vanity, of giving a more tolerable copy of him\n", + "than any entire translation in verse has yet done. We have only those\n", + "of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. Chapman has taken the advantage of an\n", + "immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce\n", + "any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. He has frequent\n", + "interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the\n", + "thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty\n", + "verses out of two. He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one\n", + "might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of\n", + "his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a\n", + "strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author;\n", + "insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries\n", + "he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the\n", + "obvious sense to this end. His expression is involved in fustian; a\n", + "fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the\n", + "tragedy of Bussy d’Amboise, &c. In a word, the nature of the man may\n", + "account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface and\n", + "remarks, to have been of an arrogant turn, and an enthusiast in poetry.\n", + "His own boast, of having finished half the Iliad in less than fifteen\n", + "weeks, shows with what negligence his version was performed. But that\n", + "which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover\n", + "his defects, is a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation,\n", + "which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have\n", + "writ before he arrived at years of discretion.\n", + "\n", + "Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but\n", + "for particulars and circumstances he continually lops them, and often\n", + "omits the most beautiful. As for its being esteemed a close\n", + "translation, I doubt not many have been led into that error by the\n", + "shortness of it, which proceeds not from his following the original\n", + "line by line, but from the contractions above mentioned. He sometimes\n", + "omits whole similes and sentences; and is now and then guilty of\n", + "mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen, but\n", + "through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby’s, is too mean for\n", + "criticism.\n", + "\n", + "It is a great loss to the poetical world that Mr. Dryden did not live\n", + "to translate the Iliad. He has left us only the first book, and a small\n", + "part of the sixth; in which if he has in some places not truly\n", + "interpreted the sense, or preserved the antiquities, it ought to be\n", + "excused on account of the haste he was obliged to write in. He seems to\n", + "have had too much regard to Chapman, whose words he sometimes copies,\n", + "and has unhappily followed him in passages where he wanders from the\n", + "original. However, had he translated the whole work, I would no more\n", + "have attempted Homer after him than Virgil: his version of whom\n", + "(notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited\n", + "translation I know in any language. But the fate of great geniuses is\n", + "like that of great ministers: though they are confessedly the first in\n", + "the commonwealth of letters, they must be envied and calumniated only\n", + "for being at the head of it.\n", + "\n", + "That which, in my opinion, ought to be the endeavour of any one who\n", + "translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that spirit and\n", + "fire which makes his chief character: in particular places, where the\n", + "sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as\n", + "most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of\n", + "his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve,\n", + "in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the\n", + "more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a\n", + "fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not\n", + "to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor\n", + "sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound\n", + "any rites or customs of antiquity: perhaps too he ought to include the\n", + "whole in a shorter compass than has hitherto been done by any\n", + "translator who has tolerably preserved either the sense or poetry. What\n", + "I would further recommend to him is, to study his author rather from\n", + "his own text, than from any commentaries, how learned soever, or\n", + "whatever figure they may make in the estimation of the world; to\n", + "consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the\n", + "ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns. Next these, the\n", + "Archbishop of Cambray’s Telemachus may give him the truest idea of the\n", + "spirit and turn of our author; and Bossu’s admirable Treatise of the\n", + "Epic Poem the justest notion of his design and conduct. But after all,\n", + "with whatever judgment and study a man may proceed, or with whatever\n", + "happiness he may perform such a work, he must hope to please but a few;\n", + "those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning.\n", + "For to satisfy such a want either, is not in the nature of this\n", + "undertaking; since a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not\n", + "modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek.\n", + "\n", + "What I have done is submitted to the public; from whose opinions I am\n", + "prepared to learn; though I fear no judges so little as our best poets,\n", + "who are most sensible of the weight of this task. As for the worst,\n", + "whatever they shall please to say, they may give me some concern as\n", + "they are unhappy men, but none as they are malignant writers. I was\n", + "guided in this translation by judgments very different from theirs, and\n", + "by persons for whom they can have no kindness, if an old observation be\n", + "true, that the strongest antipathy in the world is that of fools to men\n", + "of wit. Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to\n", + "undertake this task; who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion\n", + "in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity. I was obliged to Sir\n", + "Richard Steele for a very early recommendation of my undertaking to the\n", + "public. Dr. Swift promoted my interest with that warmth with which he\n", + "always serves his friend. The humanity and frankness of Sir Samuel\n", + "Garth are what I never knew wanting on any occasion. I must also\n", + "acknowledge, with infinite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well\n", + "as sincere criticisms, of Mr. Congreve, who had led me the way in\n", + "translating some parts of Homer. I must add the names of Mr. Rowe, and\n", + "Dr. Parnell, though I shall take a further opportunity of doing justice\n", + "to the last, whose good nature (to give it a great panegyric), is no\n", + "less extensive than his learning. The favour of these gentlemen is not\n", + "entirely undeserved by one who bears them so true an affection. But\n", + "what can I say of the honour so many of the great have done me; while\n", + "the first names of the age appear as my subscribers, and the most\n", + "distinguished patrons and ornaments of learning as my chief\n", + "encouragers? Among these it is a particular pleasure to me to find,\n", + "that my highest obligations are to such who have done most honour to\n", + "the name of poet: that his grace the Duke of Buckingham was not\n", + "displeased I should undertake the author to whom he has given (in his\n", + "excellent Essay), so complete a praise:\n", + "\n", + "“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;\n", + "For all books else appear so mean, so poor,\n", + "Verse will seem prose: but still persist to read,\n", + "And Homer will be all the books you need.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "That the Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me; of whom it\n", + "is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing\n", + "to his generosity or his example: that such a genius as my Lord\n", + "Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great scenes of business,\n", + "than in all the useful and entertaining parts of learning, has not\n", + "refused to be the critic of these sheets, and the patron of their\n", + "writer: and that the noble author of the tragedy of “Heroic Love” has\n", + "continued his partiality to me, from my writing pastorals to my\n", + "attempting the Iliad. I cannot deny myself the pride of confessing,\n", + "that I have had the advantage not only of their advice for the conduct\n", + "in general, but their correction of several particulars of this\n", + "translation.\n", + "\n", + "I could say a great deal of the pleasure of being distinguished by the\n", + "Earl of Carnarvon; but it is almost absurd to particularize any one\n", + "generous action in a person whose whole life is a continued series of\n", + "them. Mr. Stanhope, the present secretary of state, will pardon my\n", + "desire of having it known that he was pleased to promote this affair.\n", + "The particular zeal of Mr. Harcourt (the son of the late Lord\n", + "Chancellor) gave me a proof how much I am honoured in a share of his\n", + "friendship. I must attribute to the same motive that of several others\n", + "of my friends: to whom all acknowledgments are rendered unnecessary by\n", + "the privileges of a familiar correspondence; and I am satisfied I can\n", + "no way better oblige men of their turn than by my silence.\n", + "\n", + "In short, I have found more patrons than ever Homer wanted. He would\n", + "have thought himself happy to have met the same favour at Athens that\n", + "has been shown me by its learned rival, the University of Oxford. And I\n", + "can hardly envy him those pompous honours he received after death, when\n", + "I reflect on the enjoyment of so many agreeable obligations, and easy\n", + "friendships, which make the satisfaction of life. This distinction is\n", + "the more to be acknowledged, as it is shown to one whose pen has never\n", + "gratified the prejudices of particular parties, or the vanities of\n", + "particular men. Whatever the success may prove, I shall never repent of\n", + "an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship\n", + "of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of those\n", + "years of youth that are generally lost in a circle of follies, after a\n", + "manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor disagreeable to myself.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE ILIAD.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK I.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.[40]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.\"\"\"" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 22, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "iliad_line = iliad_1k.splitlines()" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 23, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "for index in range(len(iliad_line)):\n", + " with open(f\"./iliad_{index}.txt\", \"w\") as f:\n", + " f.write(iliad_line[index])" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 24, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "from pathlib import Path\n", + "\n", + "out_dir = Path(\"my_files\")\n", + "\n", + "outfile = out_dir / Path(\"iliad_1k.txt\")\n", + "\n", + "if not out_dir.exists():\n", + " out_dir.mkdir()" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 25, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [ + "with open(outfile, \"a\") as a:\n", + " for iliad_1kfile in Path(\".\").glob(\"iliad_1k*.txt\"):\n", + " with open(iliad_1kfile, \"r\") as f:\n", + " a.write(f.read() + \"\\n\")\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 26, + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Iliad\n", + " \n", + "This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and\n", + "most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions\n", + "whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms\n", + "of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online\n", + "at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,\n", + "you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located\n", + "before using this eBook.\n", + "\n", + "Title: The Iliad\n", + "\n", + "Author: Homer\n", + "\n", + "Annotator: Theodore Alois Buckley\n", + "\n", + "Translator: Alexander Pope\n", + "\n", + "Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6130]\n", + " Most recently updated: April 23, 2022\n", + "\n", + "Language: English\n", + "\n", + "Credits: Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ILIAD ***\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The\n", + "Iliad of Homer\n", + "\n", + "Translated by\n", + "Alexander Pope,\n", + "\n", + "With Notes and Introduction\n", + "by the\n", + "Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, M.A., F.S.A.\n", + "\n", + "and\n", + "Flaxman’s Designs.\n", + "\n", + "1899\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Contents\n", + "\n", + " INTRODUCTION.\n", + " POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER\n", + "\n", + " THE ILIAD\n", + " BOOK I.\n", + " BOOK II.\n", + " BOOK III.\n", + " BOOK IV.\n", + " BOOK V.\n", + " BOOK VI.\n", + " BOOK VII.\n", + " BOOK VIII.\n", + " BOOK IX.\n", + " BOOK X.\n", + " BOOK XI.\n", + " BOOK XII.\n", + " BOOK XIII.\n", + " BOOK XIV.\n", + " BOOK XV.\n", + " BOOK XVI.\n", + " BOOK XVII.\n", + " BOOK XVIII.\n", + " BOOK XIX.\n", + " BOOK XX.\n", + " BOOK XXI.\n", + " BOOK XXII.\n", + " BOOK XXIII.\n", + " BOOK XXIV.\n", + "\n", + " CONCLUDING NOTE.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Illustrations\n", + "\n", + " HOMER INVOKING THE MUSE\n", + " MARS\n", + " MINERVA REPRESSING THE FURY OF ACHILLES\n", + " THE DEPARTURE OF BRISEIS FROM THE TENT OF ACHILLES\n", + " THETIS CALLING BRIAREUS TO THE ASSISTANCE OF JUPITER\n", + " THETIS ENTREATING JUPITER TO HONOUR ACHILLES\n", + " VULCAN\n", + " JUPITER\n", + " THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER\n", + " JUPITER SENDING THE EVIL DREAM TO AGAMEMNON\n", + " NEPTUNE\n", + " VENUS, DISGUISED, INVITING HELEN TO THE CHAMBER OF PARIS\n", + " VENUS PRESENTING HELEN TO PARIS\n", + " VENUS\n", + " Map, titled “GRÆCIÆ ANTIQUÆ”\n", + " THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS\n", + " Map of the Plain of Troy\n", + " VENUS, WOUNDED IN THE HAND, CONDUCTED BY IRIS TO MARS\n", + " OTUS AND EPHIALTES HOLDING MARS CAPTIVE\n", + " DIOMED CASTING HIS SPEAR AT MARS\n", + " JUNO\n", + " HECTOR CHIDING PARIS\n", + " THE MEETING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE\n", + " BOWS AND BOW CASE\n", + " IRIS\n", + " HECTOR AND AJAX SEPARATED BY THE HERALDS\n", + " GREEK AMPHORA—WINE VESSELS\n", + " JUNO AND MINERVA GOING TO ASSIST THE GREEKS\n", + " THE HOURS TAKING THE HORSES FROM JUNO’S CAR\n", + " THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES\n", + " PLUTO\n", + " THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES\n", + " GREEK GALLEY\n", + " PROSERPINE\n", + " ACHILLES\n", + " DIOMED AND ULYSSES RETURNING WITH THE SPOILS OF RHESUS\n", + " THE DESCENT OF DISCORD\n", + " HERCULES\n", + " POLYDAMAS ADVISING HECTOR\n", + " GREEK ALTAR\n", + " NEPTUNE RISING FROM THE SEA\n", + " GREEK EARRINGS\n", + " SLEEP ESCAPING FROM THE WRATH OF JUPITER\n", + " GREEK SHIELD\n", + " BACCHUS\n", + " AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS\n", + " CASTOR AND POLLUX\n", + " Buckles\n", + " DIANA\n", + " SLEEP AND DEATH CONVEYING THE BODY OF SARPEDON TO LYCIA\n", + " ÆSCULAPIUS\n", + " FIGHT FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS\n", + " VULCAN FROM AN ANTIQUE GEM\n", + " THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND INTO THE SEA\n", + " JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET\n", + " TRIPOD\n", + " THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT VULCAN\n", + " VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS\n", + " THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES\n", + " HERCULES\n", + " THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE\n", + " CENTAUR\n", + " ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS\n", + " THE BATH\n", + " ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL\n", + " THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS\n", + " CERES\n", + " HECTOR’S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES\n", + " THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS\n", + " IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF HECTOR\n", + " FUNERAL OF HECTOR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "INTRODUCTION.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of\n", + "scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the\n", + "most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very\n", + "gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and\n", + "emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set\n", + "aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be\n", + "daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and\n", + "anxiety to acquire.\n", + "\n", + "And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which\n", + "progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which\n", + "persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu\n", + "of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away\n", + "traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues\n", + "of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive\n", + "superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The\n", + "credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as\n", + "powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy\n", + "scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of\n", + "conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church.\n", + "History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent\n", + "times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the\n", + "indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are\n", + "jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an\n", + "ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records.\n", + "Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this\n", + "troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is\n", + "sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its\n", + "demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere\n", + "facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience,\n", + "is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical\n", + "characters can only be estimated by the standard which human\n", + "experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form\n", + "correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a\n", + "great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the mass of\n", + "beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents\n", + "in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we\n", + "must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than\n", + "the respective probability of its details.\n", + "\n", + "It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know\n", + "least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere[1] have, perhaps,\n", + "contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any\n", + "other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of all\n", + "three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which has left\n", + "us little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will\n", + "follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in\n", + "which critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon\n", + "everything else, even down to the authorship of plays, there is more or\n", + "less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we know as little as the\n", + "contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one\n", + "of the _dramatis personæ_ in two dramas as unlike in principles as in\n", + "style. He appears as the enunciator of opinions as different in their\n", + "tone as those of the writers who have handed them down. When we have\n", + "read Plato _or_ Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when\n", + "we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are\n", + "something worse than ignorant.\n", + "\n", + "It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny\n", + "the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and\n", + "condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often\n", + "comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of\n", + "Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value\n", + "to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To\n", + "question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more\n", + "excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact\n", + "related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory\n", + "developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in\n", + "the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured\n", + "old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized—_Numa\n", + "Pompilius._\n", + "\n", + "Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,\n", + "and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free\n", + "permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all\n", + "written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and\n", + "Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily\n", + "dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. “This\n", + "cannot be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, because\n", + "it cannot be true.” Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon\n", + "testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and\n", + "oblivion.\n", + "\n", + "It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are\n", + "partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which\n", + "truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief review of\n", + "the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice must be taken\n", + "of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to\n", + "Herodotus.\n", + "\n", + "According to this document, the city of Cumæ in Æolia, was, at an\n", + "early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of\n", + "Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.\n", + "Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl named\n", + "Critheïs. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under the\n", + "guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of this\n", + "maiden that we “are indebted for so much happiness.” Homer was the\n", + "first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of\n", + "Melesigenes, from having been born near the river Meles, in Bœotia,\n", + "whither Critheïs had been transported in order to save her reputation.\n", + "\n", + "“At this time,” continues our narrative, “there lived at Smyrna a man\n", + "named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being\n", + "married, engaged Critheïs to manage his household, and spin the flax he\n", + "received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory was\n", + "her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made\n", + "proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further inducement,\n", + "willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become a clever man,\n", + "if he were carefully brought up.”\n", + "\n", + "They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which nature\n", + "had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows in every\n", + "attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in wisdom. Phemius\n", + "died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his mother soon\n", + "followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father’s school with great\n", + "success, exciting the admiration not only of the inhabitants of Smyrna,\n", + "but also of the strangers whom the trade carried on there, especially\n", + "in the exportation of corn, attracted to that city. Among these\n", + "visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the modern Santa Maura, who\n", + "evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely found in those times,\n", + "persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and accompany him on his\n", + "travels. He promised not only to pay his expenses, but to furnish him\n", + "with a further stipend, urging, that, “While he was yet young, it was\n", + "fitting that he should see with his own eyes the countries and cities\n", + "which might hereafter be the subjects of his discourses.” Melesigenes\n", + "consented, and set out with his patron, “examining all the curiosities\n", + "of the countries they visited, and informing himself of everything by\n", + "interrogating those whom he met.” We may also suppose, that he wrote\n", + "memoirs of all that he deemed worthy of preservation.[2] Having set\n", + "sail from Tyrrhenia and Iberia, they reached Ithaca. Here Melesigenes,\n", + "who had already suffered in his eyes, became much worse, and Mentes,\n", + "who was about to leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical\n", + "superintendence of a friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor.\n", + "Under his hospitable and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became\n", + "acquainted with the legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed\n", + "the subject of the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it\n", + "was here that Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophomans make their\n", + "city the seat of that misfortune. He then returned to Smyrna, where he\n", + "applied himself to the study of poetry.[3]\n", + "\n", + "But poverty soon drove him to Cumæ. Having passed over the Hermæan\n", + "plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumæ.\n", + "Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of\n", + "one Tychias, an armourer. “And up to my time,” continued the author,\n", + "“the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a\n", + "recitation of his verses, and they greatly honoured the spot. Here also\n", + "a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since Melesigenes\n", + "arrived”.[4]\n", + "\n", + "But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as being\n", + "the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph\n", + "on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater\n", + "probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.[5]\n", + "\n", + "Arrived at Cumæ, he frequented the _converzationes_[6] of the old men,\n", + "and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this\n", + "favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a\n", + "public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously\n", + "renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure\n", + "he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. Having made\n", + "the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to\n", + "acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the answer\n", + "to be given to his proposal.\n", + "\n", + "The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet’s\n", + "demand, but one man observed that “if they were to feed _Homers_, they\n", + "would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people.” “From this\n", + "circumstance,” says the writer, “Melesigenes acquired the name of\n", + "Homer, for the Cumans call blind men _Homers_.”[7] With a love of\n", + "economy, which shows how similar the world has always been in its\n", + "treatment of literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented\n", + "his disappointment in a wish that Cumæa might never produce a poet\n", + "capable of giving it renown and glory.\n", + "\n", + "At Phocœa, Homer was destined to experience another literary distress.\n", + "One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept\n", + "Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the\n", + "verses of the poet passing in his name. Having collected sufficient\n", + "poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be-literary\n", + "publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him.\n", + "At his departure, Homer is said to have observed: “O Thestorides, of\n", + "the many things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more\n", + "unintelligible than the human heart.”[8]\n", + "\n", + "Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian\n", + "merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him\n", + "recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a\n", + "profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same poems. This at\n", + "once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel happened then to be\n", + "setting sail thither, but he found one ready to start for Erythræ, a\n", + "town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the\n", + "seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having embarked, he invoked a\n", + "favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the\n", + "imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn\n", + "down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.\n", + "\n", + "At Erythræ, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in\n", + "Phocœa, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,\n", + "reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,\n", + "which we will continue in the words of our author. “Having set out from\n", + "Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that were\n", + "pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out. Glaucus\n", + "(for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran up\n", + "quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For some\n", + "time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such a\n", + "place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went up to\n", + "him, and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate places\n", + "and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by recounting\n", + "to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him with compassion;\n", + "and he took him, and led him to his cot, and having lit a fire, bade\n", + "him sup.[9]\n", + "\n", + "“The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according\n", + "to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O\n", + "Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs\n", + "their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,\n", + "whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.\n", + "\n", + "Glaucus was pleased with the advice, and marvelled at its author.\n", + "Having finished supper, they banqueted[10] afresh on conversation,\n", + "Homer narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had\n", + "visited.\n", + "\n", + "At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning, Glaucus\n", + "resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his meeting with\n", + "Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a fellow-servant, he left\n", + "Homer at home, promising to return quickly. Having arrived at Bolissus,\n", + "a place near the farm, and finding his mate, he told him the whole\n", + "story respecting Homer and his journey. He paid little attention to\n", + "what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his stupidity in taking in and\n", + "feeding maimed and enfeebled persons. However, he bade him bring the\n", + "stranger to him.\n", + "\n", + "Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,\n", + "assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon\n", + "showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general\n", + "knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake the\n", + "charge of his children.[11]\n", + "\n", + "Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the\n", + "island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town of\n", + "Chios he established a school where he taught the precepts of poetry.\n", + "“To this day,” says Chandler,[12] “the most curious remaining is that\n", + "which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is on the\n", + "coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears to have\n", + "been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. The shape\n", + "is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the head and an\n", + "arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The chair has a\n", + "lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is bounded by a low\n", + "rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole is hewn out of the\n", + "mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the most remote\n", + "antiquity.”\n", + "\n", + "So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable\n", + "fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,\n", + "the other married a Chian.\n", + "\n", + "The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the\n", + "personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has already\n", + "been mentioned:—\n", + "\n", + "“In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards\n", + "Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his\n", + "poem as the companion of Ulysses,[13] in return for the care taken of\n", + "him when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to\n", + "Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction.”\n", + "\n", + "His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to\n", + "visit Greece, whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is\n", + "said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the vanity\n", + "of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no mention,[14] he\n", + "sent out for Samos. Here being recognized by a Samian, who had met with\n", + "him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and invited to join in\n", + "celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited some verses, which gave\n", + "great satisfaction, and by singing the Eiresione at the New Moon\n", + "festivals, he earned a subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich,\n", + "with whose children he was very popular.\n", + "\n", + "In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,\n", + "now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his\n", + "death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma\n", + "proposed by some fishermen’s children.[15]\n", + "\n", + "Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we\n", + "possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical\n", + "worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in\n", + "detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a\n", + "persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series of\n", + "investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward\n", + "statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.\n", + "\n", + "“Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in\n", + "doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who\n", + "have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The\n", + "majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the\n", + "Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the\n", + "Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed.”\n", + "\n", + "Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics\n", + "has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the\n", + "Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he\n", + "proceeds:—\n", + "\n", + "“It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature of\n", + "things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is the\n", + "region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The\n", + "creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for\n", + "the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we were\n", + "in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could wholly\n", + "explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their origin, in\n", + "all essential points, must have remained the secret of the poet.”[16]\n", + "\n", + "From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of\n", + "human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic\n", + "investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was Homer\n", + "an individual?[17] or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an\n", + "ingenious arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?\n", + "\n", + "Well has Landor remarked: “Some tell us there were twenty Homers; some\n", + "deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake the\n", + "contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are\n", + "perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our\n", + "devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know\n", + "what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our\n", + "admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do.”[18]\n", + "\n", + "But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented\n", + "with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and\n", + "fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions\n", + "by minute analysis—our editorial office compels us to give some\n", + "attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric\n", + "question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to\n", + "prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend to dry\n", + "details.\n", + "\n", + "Before, however, entering into particulars respecting the question of\n", + "this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the Iliad,) I must\n", + "express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in the following\n", + "remarks:—\n", + "\n", + "“We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the\n", + "better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its\n", + "original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that\n", + "its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice to\n", + "assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is not\n", + "the best qualification for the profound feeling, the comprehensive\n", + "conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite anatomist may be\n", + "no judge of the symmetry of the human frame: and we would take the\n", + "opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions and general beauty\n", + "of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir Astley Cooper.\n", + "\n", + "“There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines\n", + "of Pope.—\n", + "\n", + "“‘The critic eye—that microscope of wit\n", + "Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit,\n", + "How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,\n", + "The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,\n", + "Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,\n", + "When man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea.’”[19]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning\n", + "the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and\n", + "cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo,[20]\n", + "the authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern\n", + "critics. Longinus, in an oft quoted passage, merely expressed an\n", + "opinion touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the\n", + "Iliad,[21] and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names[22]\n", + "it would be tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal\n", + "non-existence of Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems\n", + "to be in favour of our early ideas on the subject; let us now see what\n", + "are the discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim.\n", + "\n", + "At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on\n", + "the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that “Homer wrote a sequel\n", + "of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and\n", + "good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose songs\n", + "were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till about\n", + "Peisistratus’ time, about five hundred years after.”[23]\n", + "\n", + "Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar scepticism on\n", + "the subject; but it is in the “Scienza Nuova” of Battista Vico, that we\n", + "first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended by Wolf\n", + "with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the Wolfian\n", + "theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following bold\n", + "hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:—[24]\n", + "\n", + "“Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf,\n", + "turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been recently\n", + "published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the history of\n", + "the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation (though by\n", + "no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the position, previously\n", + "announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the separate constituent\n", + "portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been cemented together into\n", + "any compact body and unchangeable order, until the days of\n", + "Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a step towards\n", + "that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem\n", + "could be shown to have existed during the earlier times, to which their\n", + "composition is referred; and that without writing, neither the perfect\n", + "symmetry of so complicated a work could have been originally conceived\n", + "by any poet, nor, if realized by him, transmitted with assurance to\n", + "posterity. The absence of easy and convenient writing, such as must be\n", + "indispensably supposed for long manuscripts, among the early Greeks,\n", + "was thus one of the points in Wolf’s case against the primitive\n", + "integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Nitzsch, and other leading\n", + "opponents of Wolf, the connection of the one with the other seems to\n", + "have been accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered\n", + "incumbent on those who defended the ancient aggregate character of the\n", + "Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the\n", + "beginning.\n", + "\n", + "“To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to\n", + "Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are\n", + "nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that\n", + "view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to\n", + "controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long\n", + "written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian æra. Few\n", + "things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight,\n", + "opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than\n", + "Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh\n", + "century before the Christian æra, are exceedingly trifling. We have no\n", + "remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad, and the early\n", + "inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can we even assure\n", + "ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus,\n", + "Tyrtæus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets,\n", + "committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice\n", + "of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which authorizes\n", + "us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous\n", + "ordinance of Solôn, with regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenæa:\n", + "but for what length of time previously manuscripts had existed, we are\n", + "unable to say.\n", + "\n", + "“Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the\n", + "beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the\n", + "existing habits of society with regard to poetry—for they admit\n", + "generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and\n", + "heard,—but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been\n", + "manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems—the unassisted\n", + "memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here\n", + "we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the\n", + "existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory,[25] is\n", + "far less astonishing than that of long manuscripts, in an age\n", + "essentially non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable\n", + "instruments and materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover,\n", + "there is a strong positive reason for believing that the bard was under\n", + "no necessity of refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript; for\n", + "if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification\n", + "for the profession, which we know that it was not, as well from the\n", + "example of Demodokus, in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of\n", + "Chios, in the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as\n", + "the general tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. The\n", + "author of that hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a\n", + "blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been\n", + "conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant\n", + "reference to the manuscript in his chest.”\n", + "\n", + "The loss of the digamma, that _crux_ of critics, that quicksand upon\n", + "which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove beyond\n", + "a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had undergone a\n", + "considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to suppose that the\n", + "Homeric poems could have suffered by this change, had written copies\n", + "been preserved. If Chaucer’s poetry, for instance, had not been\n", + "written, it could only have come down to us in a softened form, more\n", + "like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, noble\n", + "original.\n", + "\n", + "“At what period,” continues Grote, “these poems, or indeed any other\n", + "Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture,\n", + "though there is ground for assurance that it was before the time of\n", + "Solôn. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture upon naming any\n", + "more determinate period, the question at once suggests itself, What\n", + "were the purposes which, in that state of society, a manuscript at its\n", + "first commencement must have been intended to answer? For whom was a\n", + "written Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was\n", + "not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings,\n", + "and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of\n", + "voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were required for\n", + "emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never\n", + "reproduce. Not for the general public—they were accustomed to receive\n", + "it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn\n", + "and crowded festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would\n", + "be suitable would be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of\n", + "readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had\n", + "experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the\n", + "written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of the\n", + "impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as the statement may\n", + "seem in an age like the present, there is in all early societies, and\n", + "there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading class existed.\n", + "If we could discover at what time such a class first began to be\n", + "formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time when the old epic\n", + "poems were first committed to writing. Now the period which may with\n", + "the greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the\n", + "formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the middle\n", + "of the seventh century before the Christian æra (B.C. 660 to B.C.\n", + "630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, Simonidês of\n", + "Amorgus, &c. I ground this supposition on the change then operated in\n", + "the character and tendencies of Grecian poetry and music—the elegiac\n", + "and the iambic measures having been introduced as rivals to the\n", + "primitive hexameter, and poetical compositions having been transferred\n", + "from the epical past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a\n", + "change was important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of\n", + "publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the\n", + "nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at\n", + "the old epical treasures of the people as well as a thirst for new\n", + "poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it, may well be\n", + "considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from their\n", + "own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric\n", + "rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and\n", + "eulogized the Thebaïs as the production of Homer. There seems,\n", + "therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this\n", + "newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts of the\n", + "Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebaïs and the Cypria, as well\n", + "as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle\n", + "of the seventh century (B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to Grecian\n", + "commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish\n", + "increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon.\n", + "A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and\n", + "the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of\n", + "Solôn, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though\n", + "still comparatively few, might have attained a certain recognized\n", + "authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against the carelessness\n", + "of individual rhapsodes.”[26]\n", + "\n", + "But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession of\n", + "the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following\n", + "observations—\n", + "\n", + "“There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion,\n", + "throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid\n", + "compilation, at least over the theory, that the Iliad was cast into its\n", + "present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the Athenian\n", + "ruler. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright period of\n", + "Grecian song, of which, alas! we have inherited little more than the\n", + "fame, and the faint echo, if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonidês were\n", + "employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and Odyssey, so much\n", + "must have been done to arrange, to connect, to harmonize, that it is\n", + "almost incredible, that stronger marks of Athenian manufacture should\n", + "not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies\n", + "which no doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the\n", + "Homeric age, however the irregular use of the digamma may have\n", + "perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is said to have\n", + "caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one herself among the\n", + "heroes of her age, however Mr. Knight may have failed in reducing the\n", + "Homeric language to its primitive form; however, finally, the Attic\n", + "dialect may not have assumed all its more marked and distinguishing\n", + "characteristics—still it is difficult to suppose that the language,\n", + "particularly in the joinings and transitions, and connecting parts,\n", + "should not more clearly betray the incongruity between the more ancient\n", + "and modern forms of expression. It is not quite in character with such\n", + "a period to imitate an antique style, in order to piece out an\n", + "imperfect poem in the character of the original, as Sir Walter Scott\n", + "has done in his continuation of Sir Tristram.\n", + "\n", + "“If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian\n", + "compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total\n", + "absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of\n", + "observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier times,\n", + "the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their\n", + "ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece\n", + "embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate and\n", + "insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their\n", + "ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible,\n", + "indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to historic\n", + "fact, that in the great maritime expedition of western Greece against\n", + "the rival and half-kindred empire of the Laomedontiadæ, the chieftain\n", + "of Thessaly, from his valour and the number of his forces, may have\n", + "been the most important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign; the\n", + "preeminent value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have\n", + "forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their taste.\n", + "The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor were, no doubt, of\n", + "far inferior sublimity and popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid\n", + "would have been much more likely to have emanated from an Athenian\n", + "synod of compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid.\n", + "Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the\n", + "hero of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are\n", + "sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its\n", + "direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic\n", + "cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout\n", + "the whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the workmanship\n", + "of an Athenian hand, and that the national spirit of a race, who have\n", + "at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self admiring\n", + "neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self denial to the\n", + "almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at least, to the\n", + "questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably skilled\n", + "in the military tactics of his age.”[27]\n", + "\n", + "To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed, that\n", + "Wolf’s objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey\n", + "have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they\n", + "have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the\n", + "difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather\n", + "augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. Nor is\n", + "Lachmann’s[28] modification of his theory any better. He divides the\n", + "first twenty-two books of the Iliad into sixteen different songs, and\n", + "treats as ridiculous the belief that their amalgamation into one\n", + "regular poem belongs to a period earlier than the age of Peisistratus.\n", + "This, as Grote observes, “explains the gaps and contradictions in the\n", + "narrative, but it explains nothing else.” Moreover, we find no\n", + "contradictions warranting this belief, and the so-called sixteen poets\n", + "concur in getting rid of the following leading men in the first battle\n", + "after the secession of Achilles: Elphenor, chief of the Eubœans;\n", + "Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odius, of the\n", + "Halizonians; Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians. None of these heroes\n", + "again make their appearance, and we can but agree with Colonel Mure,\n", + "that “it seems strange that any number of independent poets should have\n", + "so harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel.”\n", + "The discrepancy, by which Pylæmenes, who is represented as dead in the\n", + "fifth book, weeps at his son’s funeral in the thirteenth, can only be\n", + "regarded as the result of an interpolation.\n", + "\n", + "Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the\n", + "subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian\n", + "theory, and of Lachmann’s modifications with the character of\n", + "Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success,\n", + "that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these poems,\n", + "or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by\n", + "Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. In\n", + "short, “a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of\n", + "pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as the\n", + "period of its first compilation.” The friends or literary _employês_ of\n", + "Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was already ancient, and the\n", + "silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting the Peisistratic\n", + "“recension,” goes far to prove, that, among the numerous manuscripts\n", + "they examined, this was either wanting, or thought unworthy of\n", + "attention.\n", + "\n", + "“Moreover,” he continues, “the whole tenor of the poems themselves\n", + "confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad\n", + "or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age\n", + "of Peisistratus—nothing which brings to our view the alterations\n", + "brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined\n", + "money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican\n", + "governments, the close military array, the improved construction of\n", + "ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of\n", + "religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, &c.,\n", + "familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus, and the\n", + "other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to\n", + "notice, even without design, had they then, for the first time,\n", + "undertaken the task of piecing together many self existent epics into\n", + "one large aggregate. Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in\n", + "substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries\n", + "earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those\n", + "passages which, on the best grounds, are pronounced to be such) betray\n", + "no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been\n", + "heard by Archilochus and Kallinus—in some cases even by Arktinus and\n", + "Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter.[29] As far as the evidences on the\n", + "case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem\n", + "warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited\n", + "substantially as they now stand (always allowing for partial\n", + "divergences of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our first\n", + "trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient date, let it be\n", + "added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most\n", + "important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to\n", + "Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into the\n", + "anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the\n", + "subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive\n", + "contrasts between their former and their later condition.”[30]\n", + "\n", + "On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of\n", + "Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although, I must\n", + "confess, that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his\n", + "labours. At the same time, so far from believing that the composition\n", + "or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the\n", + "work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and\n", + "elegant mind of that Athenian[31] would lead him to preserve an ancient\n", + "and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and\n", + "re-construct them according to a fanciful hypothesis. I will not repeat\n", + "the many discussions respecting whether the poems were written or not,\n", + "or whether the art of writing was known in the time of their reputed\n", + "author. Suffice it to say, that the more we read, the less satisfied we\n", + "are upon either subject.\n", + "\n", + "I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the\n", + "preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a version\n", + "of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its historical\n", + "probability must be measured by that of many others relating to the\n", + "Spartan Confucius.\n", + "\n", + "I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with an attempt,\n", + "made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like\n", + "consistency. It is as follows:—\n", + "\n", + "“No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common sailors\n", + "of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to ‘discourse in excellent\n", + "music’ among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes in the\n", + "United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing\n", + "around them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a\n", + "spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the\n", + "mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides\n", + "which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and\n", + "was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first,\n", + "and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely\n", + "recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative,\n", + "probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the\n", + "memory considerably.\n", + "\n", + "“It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a\n", + "poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Mœonides, but most\n", + "probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great\n", + "utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of\n", + "Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays, connecting them\n", + "by a tale of his own. This poem now exists, under the title of the\n", + "‘Odyssea.’ The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem,\n", + "which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the archaic\n", + "dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. He\n", + "therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector; but this is\n", + "rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging\n", + "arrangement of other people’s ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed,\n", + "arguing for the unity of authorship, ‘a great poet might have re-cast\n", + "pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere\n", + "arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so.’\n", + "\n", + "“While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad,\n", + "recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind seized\n", + "the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleïs[32] grew under\n", + "his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem\n", + "under the same pseudonyme as his former work: and the disjointed lays\n", + "of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the\n", + "Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes knew that\n", + "the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has proved; but,\n", + "first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and\n", + "corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets,\n", + "assemblies, and agoras. However, Solôn first, and then Peisistratus,\n", + "and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored\n", + "the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great\n", + "measure.”[33]\n", + "\n", + "Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which\n", + "have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I\n", + "must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of\n", + "the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations\n", + "disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here\n", + "and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of\n", + "the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a\n", + "higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or\n", + "enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of\n", + "their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, _quocunque nomine vocari\n", + "eum jus fasque sit_, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of\n", + "historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign these\n", + "great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful internal\n", + "evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and most immediate\n", + "impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.\n", + "\n", + "The minutiæ of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.\n", + "Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an\n", + "attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its\n", + "importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on\n", + "its æsthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the\n", + "emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had\n", + "they been suggested to the author by his Mæcenas or Africanus, he\n", + "would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in\n", + "laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often\n", + "least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not\n", + "poets by profession, but may be so _per accidens_. I do not at this\n", + "moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially\n", + "improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from\n", + "Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute\n", + "points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and jejune.\n", + "\n", + "But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will\n", + "exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down an\n", + "heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have previously\n", + "dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the\n", + "pruning knife by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their\n", + "wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book\n", + "after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a\n", + "collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the\n", + "works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile\n", + "counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of\n", + "Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of\n", + "the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of\n", + "Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his\n", + "theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another would\n", + "explain by omitting something else.\n", + "\n", + "Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon\n", + "as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary skill,\n", + "seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies\n", + "attributed to Seneca are by _four_ different authors.[34] Now, I will\n", + "venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in\n", + "their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with which writers like\n", + "Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves—in their\n", + "freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an ultra-refined\n", + "and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few writers of the\n", + "present day would question the capabilities of the same gentleman, be\n", + "he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a great many more\n", + "equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished the world\n", + "with the startling announcement that the Æneid of Virgil, and the\n", + "satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without wishing to\n", + "say one word of disrespect against the industry and learning—nay, the\n", + "refined acuteness—which scholars, like Wolf, have bestowed upon this\n", + "subject, I must express my fears, that many of our modern Homeric\n", + "theories will become matter for the surprise and entertainment, rather\n", + "than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can I help thinking, that the\n", + "literary history of more recent times will account for many points of\n", + "difficulty in the transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period so\n", + "remote from that of their first creation.\n", + "\n", + "I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus\n", + "were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason\n", + "why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in\n", + "his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should\n", + "have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after\n", + "all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they demand\n", + "too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully\n", + "appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has\n", + "sought to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much\n", + "violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with\n", + "love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author\n", + "of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human\n", + "invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most\n", + "ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the\n", + "contemplation of a polypus. There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the\n", + "very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of the Iliad may be a\n", + "mistaken one, but as yet nobody has taught us a better.\n", + "\n", + "While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has nature\n", + "herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius in\n", + "believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint, hovers\n", + "round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from that wealth\n", + "of imagination which a host of imitators could not exhaust,—still I am\n", + "far from wishing to deny that the author of these great poems found a\n", + "rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence\n", + "he might derive both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to\n", + "_use_ existing romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to\n", + "patch up the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style\n", + "and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather, what\n", + "bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result?\n", + "\n", + "A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other\n", + "bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality. In\n", + "fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward\n", + "impressions—nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary agents\n", + "which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless there be\n", + "some grand pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly\n", + "stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never\n", + "come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the most\n", + "pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of gods and\n", + "great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal themselves in more\n", + "substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but, except the power to\n", + "create a grand whole, to which these shall be but as details and\n", + "embellishments, be present, we shall have nought but a scrap-book, a\n", + "parterre filled with flowers and weeds strangling each other in their\n", + "wild redundancy: we shall have a cento of rags and tatters, which will\n", + "require little acuteness to detect.\n", + "\n", + "Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware\n", + "as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief,\n", + "it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved\n", + "for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are not by nature\n", + "intended to know all things; still less, to compass the powers by which\n", + "the greatest blessings of life have been placed at our disposal. Were\n", + "faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why God willed our\n", + "ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught the contrary\n", + "lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried\n", + "touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon\n", + "the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached\n", + "to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse\n", + "the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing\n", + "apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by an homeopathic\n", + "dynameter.\n", + "\n", + "Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our thoughts\n", + "even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right spirit and\n", + "with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled, too deeply\n", + "wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the minute spots\n", + "which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic poem we must\n", + "transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we in imagination\n", + "must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves, burn with the\n", + "same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but\n", + "attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely\n", + "suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of\n", + "Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer\n", + "that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.\n", + "\n", + "And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems\n", + "their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren, who\n", + "is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely\n", + "observes:—\n", + "\n", + "“It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet has\n", + "ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his countrymen.\n", + "Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character of other\n", + "nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the Greeks. This is\n", + "a feature in their character which was not wholly erased even in the\n", + "period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and sages appeared in\n", + "Greece, the work of the poet had already been accomplished; and they\n", + "paid homage to his superior genius. He held up before his nation the\n", + "mirror, in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no\n", + "less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with purity\n", + "and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling of human nature;\n", + "on the love of children, wife, and country; on that passion which\n", + "outweighs all others, the love of glory. His songs were poured forth\n", + "from a breast which sympathized with all the feelings of man; and\n", + "therefore they enter, and will continue to enter, every breast which\n", + "cherishes the same sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit,\n", + "from another heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down\n", + "on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the forests\n", + "of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic\n", + "wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast\n", + "assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious productions, which had\n", + "been called into being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal\n", + "spirit may reside, this alone would suffice to complete his\n", + "happiness.”[35]\n", + "\n", + "Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the “Apotheosis of\n", + "Homer”[36] is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing\n", + "association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to\n", + "our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old\n", + "tradition? The more we read, and the more we think—think as becomes the\n", + "readers of Homer,—the more rooted becomes the conviction that the\n", + "Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire.\n", + "Whatever were the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful\n", + "for the treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than\n", + "seek to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of\n", + "theories, whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with\n", + "each other.\n", + "\n", + "As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not\n", + "included in Pope’s translation, I will content myself with a brief\n", + "account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer\n", + "who has done it full justice[37]:—\n", + "\n", + "“This poem,” says Coleridge, “is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.\n", + "The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and\n", + "corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a juvenile\n", + "essay of Homer’s genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees,\n", + "mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to have invited\n", + "the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was\n", + "uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies,\n", + "know or care about that department of criticism employed in determining\n", + "the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being a\n", + "youthful profusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the\n", + "beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the\n", + "general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself; and\n", + "even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in it, the\n", + "objection would still remain, that to suppose a work of mere burlesque\n", + "to be the primary effort of poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse\n", + "that order in the development of national taste, which the history of\n", + "every other people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost\n", + "ascertained to be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society\n", + "much more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that\n", + "any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is\n", + "contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three\n", + "other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as\n", + "much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of\n", + "them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word\n", + "deltos, “writing tablet,” instead of διφθέρα, “skin,” which, according\n", + "to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for\n", + "that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity;\n", + "and generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a\n", + "strong argument against so ancient a date for its composition.”\n", + "\n", + "Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s\n", + "design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,\n", + "and on my own purpose in the present edition.\n", + "\n", + "Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his\n", + "earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby.\n", + "It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a\n", + "disposition to be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive\n", + "deeply into the minute and delicate features of language. Hence his\n", + "whole work is to be looked upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a\n", + "translation. There are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes,\n", + "which prove that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical\n", + "attainments were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it\n", + "is probable that these examinations were the result rather of the\n", + "contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a\n", + "perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called\n", + "literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If something\n", + "like the general sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of\n", + "a practised poet; if the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing\n", + "fluency could be made consistent with a fair interpretation of the\n", + "poet’s meaning, his _words_ were less jealously sought for, and those\n", + "who could read so good a poem as Pope’s Iliad had fair reason to be\n", + "satisfied.\n", + "\n", + "It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope’s translation by our own\n", + "advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look at\n", + "it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part\n", + "of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not be torn\n", + "from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once was our most\n", + "cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize, merely because\n", + "Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to\n", + "ἀμφικύπελλον being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from\n", + "us to defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman’s\n", + "fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from us to hold up his\n", + "translation as what a translation of Homer _might_ be. But we can still\n", + "dismiss Pope’s Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the\n", + "consciousness that they must have read a very great number of books\n", + "before they have read its fellow.\n", + "\n", + "As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are drawn up\n", + "without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping the general\n", + "reader. Having some little time since translated all the works of Homer\n", + "for another publisher, I might have brought a large amount of\n", + "accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical character, to bear upon the\n", + "text. But Pope’s version was no field for such a display; and my\n", + "purpose was to touch briefly on antiquarian or mythological allusions,\n", + "to notice occasionally _some_ departures from the original, and to give\n", + "a few parallel passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter\n", + "task I cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other\n", + "annotations, while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be\n", + "found to convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary\n", + "limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write a\n", + "commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have made Pope’s\n", + "translation a little more entertaining and instructive to a mass of\n", + "miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes satisfactorily\n", + "accomplished.\n", + "\n", + "THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "_Christ Church_.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "POPE’S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any\n", + "writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested\n", + "with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular\n", + "excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a\n", + "wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most\n", + "excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the\n", + "invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses:\n", + "the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which\n", + "masters everything besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art\n", + "with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but\n", + "“steal wisely:” for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on\n", + "managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works\n", + "of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the\n", + "invention must not contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can\n", + "only reduce beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure,\n", + "which the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more\n", + "entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics are\n", + "inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and\n", + "fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue\n", + "their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art, than to\n", + "comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.\n", + "\n", + "Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the\n", + "beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the\n", + "number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery,\n", + "which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of\n", + "which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants,\n", + "each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things\n", + "are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if\n", + "others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because\n", + "they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.\n", + "\n", + "It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute\n", + "that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no\n", + "man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him.\n", + "What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing\n", + "moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called,\n", + "or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or\n", + "done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by\n", + "the force of the poet’s imagination, and turns in one place to a\n", + "hearer, in another to a spectator. The course of his verses resembles\n", + "that of the army he describes,\n", + "\n", + " Οἵδ’ ἄῤ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πἆσα νέμοιτο.\n", + "\n", + "“They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” It\n", + "is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous,\n", + "is not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its\n", + "fullest splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and\n", + "others, and becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity.\n", + "Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers,\n", + "may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this “vivida\n", + "vis animi,” in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect\n", + "or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even\n", + "while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with\n", + "absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing\n", + "but its own splendour. This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned\n", + "as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but\n", + "everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in\n", + "sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a\n", + "furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in\n", + "Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from\n", + "heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and\n", + "everywhere irresistibly.\n", + "\n", + "I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in\n", + "a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent\n", + "parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which\n", + "distinguishes him from all other authors.\n", + "\n", + "This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the\n", + "violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed\n", + "not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole\n", + "compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward\n", + "passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all\n", + "the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but\n", + "wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and\n", + "boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in\n", + "the invention of fable. That which Aristotle calls “the soul of\n", + "poetry,” was first breathed into it by Homer. I shall begin with\n", + "considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak\n", + "of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for\n", + "fiction.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the\n", + "marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions as,\n", + "though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature;\n", + "or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional\n", + "episodes and manner of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of\n", + "an epic poem, “The return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in\n", + "Italy,” or the like. That of the Iliad is the “anger of Achilles,” the\n", + "most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet\n", + "this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and\n", + "crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and\n", + "episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose\n", + "schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is\n", + "hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration\n", + "employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of so warm a\n", + "genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as\n", + "a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer’s\n", + "poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The\n", + "other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it\n", + "so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of\n", + "action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor\n", + "is it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his\n", + "invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of\n", + "story. If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up\n", + "their forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus,\n", + "Virgil has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them)\n", + "destroys the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses\n", + "visit the shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent\n", + "after him. If he be detained from his return by the allurements of\n", + "Calypso, so is Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be\n", + "absent from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem,\n", + "Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. If he\n", + "gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make the\n", + "same present to theirs. Virgil has not only observed this close\n", + "imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied the\n", + "want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon, and the taking\n", + "of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word from\n", + "Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of Medea\n", + "and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those\n", + "innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy\n", + "which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories,\n", + "what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us!\n", + "How fertile will that imagination appear, which was able to clothe all\n", + "the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues\n", + "and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions\n", + "agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed! This is a field in\n", + "which no succeeding poets could dispute with Homer, and whatever\n", + "commendations have been allowed them on this head, are by no means for\n", + "their invention in having enlarged his circle, but for their judgment\n", + "in having contracted it. For when the mode of learning changed in the\n", + "following ages, and science was delivered in a plainer manner, it then\n", + "became as reasonable in the more modern poets to lay it aside, as it\n", + "was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was no unhappy\n", + "circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that demand\n", + "upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing all\n", + "those allegorical parts of a poem.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially\n", + "the machines of the gods. If Homer was not the first who introduced the\n", + "deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems\n", + "the first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry, and\n", + "such a one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find\n", + "those authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods,\n", + "constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support\n", + "of it. But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a\n", + "philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic,\n", + "that mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have\n", + "been able to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set:\n", + "every attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the\n", + "various changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day\n", + "the gods of poetry.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no\n", + "author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a\n", + "variety, or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them.\n", + "Every one has something so singularly his own, that no painter could\n", + "have distinguished them more by their features, than the poet has by\n", + "their manners. Nothing can be more exact than the distinctions he has\n", + "observed in the different degrees of virtues and vices. The single\n", + "quality of courage is wonderfully diversified in the several characters\n", + "of the Iliad. That of Achilles is furious and intractable; that of\n", + "Diomede forward, yet listening to advice, and subject to command; that\n", + "of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of Hector, active and vigilant:\n", + "the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by love of empire and ambition;\n", + "that of Menelaus mixed with softness and tenderness for his people: we\n", + "find in Idomeneus a plain direct soldier; in Sarpedon a gallant and\n", + "generous one. Nor is this judicious and astonishing diversity to be\n", + "found only in the principal quality which constitutes the main of each\n", + "character, but even in the under parts of it, to which he takes care to\n", + "give a tincture of that principal one. For example: the main characters\n", + "of Ulysses and Nestor consist in wisdom; and they are distinct in this,\n", + "that the wisdom of one is artificial and various, of the other natural,\n", + "open, and regular. But they have, besides, characters of courage; and\n", + "this quality also takes a different turn in each from the difference of\n", + "his prudence; for one in the war depends still upon caution, the other\n", + "upon experience. It would be endless to produce instances of these\n", + "kinds. The characters of Virgil are far from striking us in this open\n", + "manner; they lie, in a great degree, hidden and undistinguished; and,\n", + "where they are marked most evidently affect us not in proportion to\n", + "those of Homer. His characters of valour are much alike; even that of\n", + "Turnus seems no way peculiar, but, as it is, in a superior degree; and\n", + "we see nothing that differences the courage of Mnestheus from that of\n", + "Sergestus, Cloanthus, or the rest. In like manner it may be remarked of\n", + "Statius’s heroes, that an air of impetuosity runs through them all; the\n", + "same horrid and savage courage appears in his Capaneus, Tydeus,\n", + "Hippomedon, &c. They have a parity of character, which makes them seem\n", + "brothers of one family. I believe when the reader is led into this\n", + "tract of reflection, if he will pursue it through the epic and tragic\n", + "writers, he will be convinced how infinitely superior, in this point,\n", + "the invention of Homer was to that of all others.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The speeches are to be considered as they flow from the characters;\n", + "being perfect or defective as they agree or disagree with the manners,\n", + "of those who utter them. As there is more variety of characters in the\n", + "Iliad, so there is of speeches, than in any other poem. “Everything in\n", + "it has manner” (as Aristotle expresses it), that is, everything is\n", + "acted or spoken. It is hardly credible, in a work of such length, how\n", + "small a number of lines are employed in narration. In Virgil the\n", + "dramatic part is less in proportion to the narrative, and the speeches\n", + "often consist of general reflections or thoughts, which might be\n", + "equally just in any person’s mouth upon the same occasion. As many of\n", + "his persons have no apparent characters, so many of his speeches escape\n", + "being applied and judged by the rule of propriety. We oftener think of\n", + "the author himself when we read Virgil, than when we are engaged in\n", + "Homer, all which are the effects of a colder invention, that interests\n", + "us less in the action described. Homer makes us hearers, and Virgil\n", + "leaves us readers.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If, in the next place, we take a view of the sentiments, the same\n", + "presiding faculty is eminent in the sublimity and spirit of his\n", + "thoughts. Longinus has given his opinion, that it was in this part\n", + "Homer principally excelled. What were alone sufficient to prove the\n", + "grandeur and excellence of his sentiments in general, is, that they\n", + "have so remarkable a parity with those of the Scripture. Duport, in his\n", + "Gnomologia Homerica, has collected innumerable instances of this sort.\n", + "And it is with justice an excellent modern writer allows, that if\n", + "Virgil has not so many thoughts that are low and vulgar, he has not so\n", + "many that are sublime and noble; and that the Roman author seldom rises\n", + "into very astonishing sentiments where he is not fired by the Iliad.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If we observe his descriptions, images, and similes, we shall find the\n", + "invention still predominant. To what else can we ascribe that vast\n", + "comprehension of images of every sort, where we see each circumstance\n", + "of art, and individual of nature, summoned together by the extent and\n", + "fecundity of his imagination to which all things, in their various\n", + "views presented themselves in an instant, and had their impressions\n", + "taken off to perfection at a heat? Nay, he not only gives us the full\n", + "prospects of things, but several unexpected peculiarities and side\n", + "views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. Nothing is so surprising as\n", + "the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the\n", + "Iliad, and are supplied with so vast a variety of incidents, that no\n", + "one bears a likeness to another; such different kinds of deaths, that\n", + "no two heroes are wounded in the same manner, and such a profusion of\n", + "noble ideas, that every battle rises above the last in greatness,\n", + "horror, and confusion. It is certain there is not near that number of\n", + "images and descriptions in any epic poet, though every one has assisted\n", + "himself with a great quantity out of him; and it is evident of Virgil\n", + "especially, that he has scarce any comparisons which are not drawn from\n", + "his master.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If we descend from hence to the expression, we see the bright\n", + "imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. We\n", + "acknowledge him the father of poetical diction; the first who taught\n", + "that “language of the gods” to men. His expression is like the\n", + "colouring of some great masters, which discovers itself to be laid on\n", + "boldly, and executed with rapidity. It is, indeed, the strongest and\n", + "most glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit.\n", + "Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out\n", + "“living words;” there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than\n", + "in any good author whatever. An arrow is “impatient” to be on the wing,\n", + "a weapon “thirsts” to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet\n", + "his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in\n", + "proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the\n", + "diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the\n", + "same degree that a thought is warmer, an expression will be brighter,\n", + "as that is more strong, this will become more perspicuous; like glass\n", + "in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, and refines to a\n", + "greater clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the\n", + "heat more intense.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "To throw his language more out of prose, Homer seems to have affected\n", + "the compound epithets. This was a sort of composition peculiarly proper\n", + "to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it assisted\n", + "and filled the numbers with greater sound and pomp, and likewise\n", + "conduced in some measure to thicken the images. On this last\n", + "consideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of\n", + "his invention, since (as he has managed them) they are a sort of\n", + "supernumerary pictures of the persons or things to which they were\n", + "joined. We see the motion of Hector’s plumes in the epithet\n", + "Κορυθαίολος, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Εἰνοσίφυλλος,\n", + "and so of others, which particular images could not have been insisted\n", + "upon so long as to express them in a description (though but of a\n", + "single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal\n", + "action or figure. As a metaphor is a short simile, one of these\n", + "epithets is a short description.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Lastly, if we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a\n", + "share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not\n", + "satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of\n", + "Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this\n", + "particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered\n", + "these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or consonants, and\n", + "accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater\n", + "smoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has\n", + "a peculiar sweetness, from its never using contractions, and from its\n", + "custom of resolving the diphthongs into two syllables, so as to make\n", + "the words open themselves with a more spreading and sonorous fluency.\n", + "With this he mingled the Attic contractions, the broader Doric, and the\n", + "feebler Æolic, which often rejects its aspirate, or takes off its\n", + "accent, and completed this variety by altering some letters with the\n", + "licence of poetry. Thus his measures, instead of being fetters to his\n", + "sense, were always in readiness to run along with the warmth of his\n", + "rapture, and even to give a further representation of his notions, in\n", + "the correspondence of their sounds to what they signified. Out of all\n", + "these he has derived that harmony which makes us confess he had not\n", + "only the richest head, but the finest ear in the world. This is so\n", + "great a truth, that whoever will but consult the tune of his verses,\n", + "even without understanding them (with the same sort of diligence as we\n", + "daily see practised in the case of Italian operas), will find more\n", + "sweetness, variety, and majesty of sound, than in any other language of\n", + "poetry. The beauty of his numbers is allowed by the critics to be\n", + "copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to\n", + "ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue: indeed the Greek has some\n", + "advantages both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and\n", + "cadence of its verse, which agree with the genius of no other language.\n", + "Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in\n", + "working up a more intractable language to whatsoever graces it was\n", + "capable of, and, in particular, never failed to bring the sound of his\n", + "line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has\n", + "not been so frequently celebrated on this account as the Roman, the\n", + "only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than\n", + "the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our\n", + "author’s beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of\n", + "Words. It suffices at present to observe of his numbers, that they flow\n", + "with so much ease, as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than\n", + "to transcribe as fast as the Muses dictated, and, at the same time,\n", + "with so much force and inspiriting vigour, that they awaken and raise\n", + "us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river,\n", + "always in motion, and always full; while we are borne away by a tide of\n", + "verse, the most rapid, and yet the most smooth imaginable.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us\n", + "is his invention. It is that which forms the character of each part of\n", + "his work; and accordingly we find it to have made his fable more\n", + "extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and\n", + "strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his\n", + "sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full\n", + "and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers\n", + "more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with\n", + "regard to any of these heads, I have no way derogated from his\n", + "character. Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of\n", + "comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in\n", + "them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.\n", + "We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and\n", + "distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider\n", + "him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No\n", + "author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty; and\n", + "as Homer has done this in invention, Virgil has in judgment. Not that\n", + "we are to think that Homer wanted judgment, because Virgil had it in a\n", + "more eminent degree; or that Virgil wanted invention, because Homer\n", + "possessed a larger share of it; each of these great authors had more of\n", + "both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in\n", + "comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the\n", + "better artist. In one we most admire the man, in the other the work.\n", + "Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil\n", + "leads us with an attractive majesty; Homer scatters with a generous\n", + "profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence; Homer, like the\n", + "Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow; Virgil, like a\n", + "river in its banks, with a gentle and constant stream. When we behold\n", + "their battles, methinks the two poets resemble the heroes they\n", + "celebrate. Homer, boundless and resistless as Achilles, bears all\n", + "before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil,\n", + "calmly daring, like Æneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the\n", + "action; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. And\n", + "when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in\n", + "his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the\n", + "heavens: Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling\n", + "with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly ordering his\n", + "whole creation.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "But after all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they\n", + "naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to\n", + "distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As\n", + "prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment\n", + "decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or\n", + "extravagance, so may a great invention to redundancy or wildness. If we\n", + "look upon Homer in this view, we shall perceive the chief objections\n", + "against him to proceed from so noble a cause as the excess of this\n", + "faculty.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Among these we may reckon some of his marvellous fictions, upon which\n", + "so much criticism has been spent, as surpassing all the bounds of\n", + "probability. Perhaps it may be with great and superior souls, as with\n", + "gigantic bodies, which, exerting themselves with unusual strength,\n", + "exceed what is commonly thought the due proportion of parts, to become\n", + "miracles in the whole; and, like the old heroes of that make, commit\n", + "something near extravagance, amidst a series of glorious and inimitable\n", + "performances. Thus Homer has his “speaking horses;” and Virgil his\n", + "“myrtles distilling blood;” where the latter has not so much as\n", + "contrived the easy intervention of a deity to save the probability.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "It is owing to the same vast invention, that his similes have been\n", + "thought too exuberant and full of circumstances. The force of this\n", + "faculty is seen in nothing more, than in its inability to confine\n", + "itself to that single circumstance upon which the comparison is\n", + "grounded: it runs out into embellishments of additional images, which,\n", + "however, are so managed as not to overpower the main one. His similes\n", + "are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its\n", + "proportion given agreeable to the original, but is also set off with\n", + "occasional ornaments and prospects. The same will account for his\n", + "manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when\n", + "his fancy suggested to him at once so many various and correspondent\n", + "images. The reader will easily extend this observation to more\n", + "objections of the same kind.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "If there are others which seem rather to charge him with a defect or\n", + "narrowness of genius, than an excess of it, those seeming defects will\n", + "be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the\n", + "times he lived in. Such are his grosser representations of the gods;\n", + "and the vicious and imperfect manners of his heroes; but I must here\n", + "speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into\n", + "extremes, both by the censurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a\n", + "strange partiality to antiquity, to think with Madame Dacier,[38] “that\n", + "those times and manners are so much the more excellent, as they are\n", + "more contrary to ours.” Who can be so prejudiced in their favour as to\n", + "magnify the felicity of those ages, when a spirit of revenge and\n", + "cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reigned\n", + "through the world: when no mercy was shown but for the sake of lucre;\n", + "when the greatest princes were put to the sword, and their wives and\n", + "daughters made slaves and concubines? On the other side, I would not be\n", + "so delicate as those modern critics, who are shocked at the servile\n", + "offices and mean employments in which we sometimes see the heroes of\n", + "Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that simplicity,\n", + "in opposition to the luxury of succeeding ages: in beholding monarchs\n", + "without their guards; princes tending their flocks, and princesses\n", + "drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect\n", + "that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and\n", + "those who consider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the\n", + "perusal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations\n", + "and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almost three\n", + "thousand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining\n", + "themselves with a clear and surprising vision of things nowhere else to\n", + "be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means\n", + "alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates\n", + "their dislike, will become a satisfaction.\n", + "\n", + "This consideration may further serve to answer for the constant use of\n", + "the same epithets to his gods and heroes; such as the “far-darting\n", + "Phœbus,” the “blue-eyed Pallas,” the “swift-footed Achilles,” &c.,\n", + "which some have censured as impertinent, and tediously repeated. Those\n", + "of the gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to\n", + "belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the\n", + "rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of\n", + "attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all\n", + "occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets\n", + "of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature\n", + "of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names\n", + "derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction\n", + "of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his place of\n", + "birth, profession, or the like: as Alexander the son of Philip,\n", + "Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer, therefore,\n", + "complying with the custom of his country, used such distinctive\n", + "additions as better agreed with poetry. And, indeed, we have something\n", + "parallel to these in modern times, such as the names of Harold\n", + "Harefoot, Edmund Ironside, Edward Longshanks, Edward the Black Prince,\n", + "&c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for\n", + "the repetition, I shall add a further conjecture. Hesiod, dividing the\n", + "world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age, between the\n", + "brazen and the iron one, of “heroes distinct from other men; a divine\n", + "race who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called demi-gods, and live by\n", + "the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.”[39] Now among the\n", + "divine honours which were paid them, they might have this also in\n", + "common with the gods, not to be mentioned without the solemnity of an\n", + "epithet, and such as might be acceptable to them by celebrating their\n", + "families, actions or qualities.\n", + "\n", + "What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are such as hardly\n", + "deserve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the\n", + "course of the work. Many have been occasioned by an injudicious\n", + "endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the same, as if one should\n", + "think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one\n", + "would imagine, by the whole course of their parallels, that these\n", + "critics never so much as heard of Homer’s having written first; a\n", + "consideration which whoever compares these two poets ought to have\n", + "always in his eye. Some accuse him for the same things which they\n", + "overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and\n", + "moral of the Æneis to those of the Iliad, for the same reasons which\n", + "might set the Odyssey above the Æneis; as that the hero is a wiser man,\n", + "and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of\n", + "the other; or else they blame him for not doing what he never designed;\n", + "as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when\n", + "the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus\n", + "that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. Others select\n", + "those particular passages of Homer which are not so laboured as some\n", + "that Virgil drew out of them: this is the whole management of Scaliger\n", + "in his Poetics. Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean\n", + "expressions, sometimes through a false delicacy and refinement, oftener\n", + "from an ignorance of the graces of the original, and then triumph in\n", + "the awkwardness of their own translations: this is the conduct of\n", + "Perrault in his Parallels. Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to\n", + "a fairer proceeding, distinguish between the personal merit of Homer,\n", + "and that of his work; but when they come to assign the causes of the\n", + "great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his\n", + "times, and the prejudice of those that followed; and in pursuance of\n", + "this principle, they make those accidents (such as the contention of\n", + "the cities, &c.) to be the causes of his fame, which were in reality\n", + "the consequences of his merit. The same might as well be said of\n", + "Virgil, or any great author whose general character will infallibly\n", + "raise many casual additions to their reputation. This is the method of\n", + "Mons. de la Mott; who yet confesses upon the whole that in whatever age\n", + "Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and\n", + "that he may be said in his sense to be the master even of those who\n", + "surpassed him.\n", + "\n", + "In all these objections we see nothing that contradicts his title to\n", + "the honour of the chief invention: and as long as this (which is indeed\n", + "the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his\n", + "followers, he still continues superior to them. A cooler judgment may\n", + "commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one sort of\n", + "critics: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and most\n", + "universal applauses which holds the heart of a reader under the\n", + "strongest enchantment. Homer not only appears the inventor of poetry,\n", + "but excels all the inventors of other arts, in this, that he has\n", + "swallowed up the honour of those who succeeded him. What he has done\n", + "admitted no increase, it only left room for contraction or regulation.\n", + "He showed all the stretch of fancy at once; and if he has failed in\n", + "some of his flights, it was but because he attempted everything. A work\n", + "of this kind seems like a mighty tree, which rises from the most\n", + "vigorous seed, is improved with industry, flourishes, and produces the\n", + "finest fruit: nature and art conspire to raise it; pleasure and profit\n", + "join to make it valuable: and they who find the justest faults, have\n", + "only said that a few branches which run luxuriant through a richness of\n", + "nature, might be lopped into form to give it a more regular appearance.\n", + "\n", + "Having now spoken of the beauties and defects of the original, it\n", + "remains to treat of the translation, with the same view to the chief\n", + "characteristic. As far as that is seen in the main parts of the poem,\n", + "such as the fable, manners, and sentiments, no translator can prejudice\n", + "it but by wilful omissions or contractions. As it also breaks out in\n", + "every particular image, description, and simile, whoever lessens or too\n", + "much softens those, takes off from this chief character. It is the\n", + "first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and\n", + "unmaimed; and for the rest, the diction and versification only are his\n", + "proper province, since these must be his own, but the others he is to\n", + "take as he finds them.\n", + "\n", + "It should then be considered what methods may afford some equivalent in\n", + "our language for the graces of these in the Greek. It is certain no\n", + "literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior\n", + "language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that\n", + "a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no\n", + "less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the\n", + "modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there\n", + "is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a\n", + "version almost literal. I know no liberties one ought to take, but\n", + "those which are necessary to transfusing the spirit of the original,\n", + "and supporting the poetical style of the translation: and I will\n", + "venture to say, there have not been more men misled in former times by\n", + "a servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours\n", + "by a chimerical, insolent hope of raising and improving their author.\n", + "It is not to be doubted, that the fire of the poem is what a translator\n", + "should principally regard, as it is most likely to expire in his\n", + "managing: however, it is his safest way to be content with preserving\n", + "this to his utmost in the whole, without endeavouring to be more than\n", + "he finds his author is, in any particular place. It is a great secret\n", + "in writing, to know when to be plain, and when poetical and figurative;\n", + "and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will but follow modestly in\n", + "his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty, let us raise ours\n", + "as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we ought not to\n", + "be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the censure of\n", + "a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to have been\n", + "more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of his\n", + "translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the\n", + "sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of\n", + "simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some\n", + "sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the\n", + "certain signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in\n", + "his train, while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an\n", + "unaffected and equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes\n", + "one could sooner pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be\n", + "envied for such commendations, as he may gain by that character of\n", + "style, which his friends must agree together to call simplicity, and\n", + "the rest of the world will call dulness. There is a graceful and\n", + "dignified simplicity, as well as a bold and sordid one; which differ as\n", + "much from each other as the air of a plain man from that of a sloven:\n", + "it is one thing to be tricked up, and another not to be dressed at all.\n", + "Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.\n", + "\n", + "This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the\n", + "Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the\n", + "inspired writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words\n", + "but what were intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that\n", + "part of the world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his\n", + "style must of course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books\n", + "than that of any other writer. This consideration (together with what\n", + "has been observed of the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks,\n", + "induce a translator, on the one hand, to give in to several of those\n", + "general phrases and manners of expression, which have attained a\n", + "veneration even in our language from being used in the Old Testament;\n", + "as, on the other, to avoid those which have been appropriated to the\n", + "Divinity, and in a manner consigned to mystery and religion.\n", + "\n", + "For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care\n", + "should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and\n", + "proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have\n", + "something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned\n", + "gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which\n", + "would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more\n", + "ingenious (that is, a more modern) turn in the paraphrase.\n", + "\n", + "Perhaps the mixture of some Græcisms and old words after the manner of\n", + "Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill\n", + "effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other\n", + "seems to require a venerable, antique cast. But certainly the use of\n", + "modern terms of war and government, such as “platoon, campaign, junto,”\n", + "or the like, (into which some of his translators have fallen) cannot be\n", + "allowable; those only excepted without which it is impossible to treat\n", + "the subjects in any living language.\n", + "\n", + "There are two peculiarities in Homer’s diction, which are a sort of\n", + "marks or moles by which every common eye distinguishes him at first\n", + "sight; those who are not his greatest admirers look upon them as\n", + "defects, and those who are, seemed pleased with them as beauties. I\n", + "speak of his compound epithets, and of his repetitions. Many of the\n", + "former cannot be done literally into English without destroying the\n", + "purity of our language. I believe such should be retained as slide\n", + "easily of themselves into an English compound, without violence to the\n", + "ear or to the received rules of composition, as well as those which\n", + "have received a sanction from the authority of our best poets, and are\n", + "become familiar through their use of them; such as “the\n", + "cloud-compelling Jove,” &c. As for the rest, whenever any can be as\n", + "fully and significantly expressed in a single word as in a compounded\n", + "one, the course to be taken is obvious.\n", + "\n", + "Some that cannot be so turned, as to preserve their full image by one\n", + "or two words, may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the\n", + "epithet einosiphyllos to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous\n", + "translated literally “leaf-shaking,” but affords a majestic idea in the\n", + "periphrasis: “the lofty mountain shakes his waving woods.” Others that\n", + "admit of different significations, may receive an advantage from a\n", + "judicious variation, according to the occasions on which they are\n", + "introduced. For example, the epithet of Apollo, ἑκηβόλος or\n", + "“far-shooting,” is capable of two explications; one literal, in respect\n", + "of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god; the other allegorical,\n", + "with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore, in such places where\n", + "Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former\n", + "interpretation; and where the effects of the sun are described, I would\n", + "make choice of the latter. Upon the whole, it will be necessary to\n", + "avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we find in\n", + "Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated (as has been already\n", + "shown) to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one\n", + "may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an\n", + "additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in\n", + "doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his\n", + "judgment.\n", + "\n", + "As for Homer’s repetitions, we may divide them into three sorts: of\n", + "whole narrations and speeches, of single sentences, and of one verse or\n", + "hemistitch. I hope it is not impossible to have such a regard to these,\n", + "as neither to lose so known a mark of the author on the one hand, nor\n", + "to offend the reader too much on the other. The repetition is not\n", + "ungraceful in those speeches, where the dignity of the speaker renders\n", + "it a sort of insolence to alter his words; as in the messages from gods\n", + "to men, or from higher powers to inferiors in concerns of state, or\n", + "where the ceremonial of religion seems to require it, in the solemn\n", + "forms of prayers, oaths, or the like. In other cases, I believe the\n", + "best rule is, to be guided by the nearness, or distance, at which the\n", + "repetitions are placed in the original: when they follow too close, one\n", + "may vary the expression; but it is a question, whether a professed\n", + "translator be authorized to omit any: if they be tedious, the author is\n", + "to answer for it.\n", + "\n", + "It only remains to speak of the versification. Homer (as has been said)\n", + "is perpetually applying the sound to the sense, and varying it on every\n", + "new subject. This is indeed one of the most exquisite beauties of\n", + "poetry, and attainable by very few: I only know of Homer eminent for it\n", + "in the Greek, and Virgil in the Latin. I am sensible it is what may\n", + "sometimes happen by chance, when a writer is warm, and fully possessed\n", + "of his image: however, it may reasonably be believed they designed\n", + "this, in whose verse it so manifestly appears in a superior degree to\n", + "all others. Few readers have the ear to be judges of it: but those who\n", + "have, will see I have endeavoured at this beauty.\n", + "\n", + "Upon the whole, I must confess myself utterly incapable of doing\n", + "justice to Homer. I attempt him in no other hope but that which one may\n", + "entertain without much vanity, of giving a more tolerable copy of him\n", + "than any entire translation in verse has yet done. We have only those\n", + "of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogilby. Chapman has taken the advantage of an\n", + "immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce\n", + "any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. He has frequent\n", + "interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the\n", + "thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty\n", + "verses out of two. He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one\n", + "might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of\n", + "his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a\n", + "strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author;\n", + "insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries\n", + "he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the\n", + "obvious sense to this end. His expression is involved in fustian; a\n", + "fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the\n", + "tragedy of Bussy d’Amboise, &c. In a word, the nature of the man may\n", + "account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface and\n", + "remarks, to have been of an arrogant turn, and an enthusiast in poetry.\n", + "His own boast, of having finished half the Iliad in less than fifteen\n", + "weeks, shows with what negligence his version was performed. But that\n", + "which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover\n", + "his defects, is a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation,\n", + "which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have\n", + "writ before he arrived at years of discretion.\n", + "\n", + "Hobbes has given us a correct explanation of the sense in general; but\n", + "for particulars and circumstances he continually lops them, and often\n", + "omits the most beautiful. As for its being esteemed a close\n", + "translation, I doubt not many have been led into that error by the\n", + "shortness of it, which proceeds not from his following the original\n", + "line by line, but from the contractions above mentioned. He sometimes\n", + "omits whole similes and sentences; and is now and then guilty of\n", + "mistakes, into which no writer of his learning could have fallen, but\n", + "through carelessness. His poetry, as well as Ogilby’s, is too mean for\n", + "criticism.\n", + "\n", + "It is a great loss to the poetical world that Mr. Dryden did not live\n", + "to translate the Iliad. He has left us only the first book, and a small\n", + "part of the sixth; in which if he has in some places not truly\n", + "interpreted the sense, or preserved the antiquities, it ought to be\n", + "excused on account of the haste he was obliged to write in. He seems to\n", + "have had too much regard to Chapman, whose words he sometimes copies,\n", + "and has unhappily followed him in passages where he wanders from the\n", + "original. However, had he translated the whole work, I would no more\n", + "have attempted Homer after him than Virgil: his version of whom\n", + "(notwithstanding some human errors) is the most noble and spirited\n", + "translation I know in any language. But the fate of great geniuses is\n", + "like that of great ministers: though they are confessedly the first in\n", + "the commonwealth of letters, they must be envied and calumniated only\n", + "for being at the head of it.\n", + "\n", + "That which, in my opinion, ought to be the endeavour of any one who\n", + "translates Homer, is above all things to keep alive that spirit and\n", + "fire which makes his chief character: in particular places, where the\n", + "sense can bear any doubt, to follow the strongest and most poetical, as\n", + "most agreeing with that character; to copy him in all the variations of\n", + "his style, and the different modulations of his numbers; to preserve,\n", + "in the more active or descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the\n", + "more sedate or narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches, a\n", + "fulness and perspicuity; in the sentences, a shortness and gravity; not\n", + "to neglect even the little figures and turns on the words, nor\n", + "sometimes the very cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound\n", + "any rites or customs of antiquity: perhaps too he ought to include the\n", + "whole in a shorter compass than has hitherto been done by any\n", + "translator who has tolerably preserved either the sense or poetry. What\n", + "I would further recommend to him is, to study his author rather from\n", + "his own text, than from any commentaries, how learned soever, or\n", + "whatever figure they may make in the estimation of the world; to\n", + "consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the\n", + "ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns. Next these, the\n", + "Archbishop of Cambray’s Telemachus may give him the truest idea of the\n", + "spirit and turn of our author; and Bossu’s admirable Treatise of the\n", + "Epic Poem the justest notion of his design and conduct. But after all,\n", + "with whatever judgment and study a man may proceed, or with whatever\n", + "happiness he may perform such a work, he must hope to please but a few;\n", + "those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning.\n", + "For to satisfy such a want either, is not in the nature of this\n", + "undertaking; since a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not\n", + "modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek.\n", + "\n", + "What I have done is submitted to the public; from whose opinions I am\n", + "prepared to learn; though I fear no judges so little as our best poets,\n", + "who are most sensible of the weight of this task. As for the worst,\n", + "whatever they shall please to say, they may give me some concern as\n", + "they are unhappy men, but none as they are malignant writers. I was\n", + "guided in this translation by judgments very different from theirs, and\n", + "by persons for whom they can have no kindness, if an old observation be\n", + "true, that the strongest antipathy in the world is that of fools to men\n", + "of wit. Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to\n", + "undertake this task; who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion\n", + "in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity. I was obliged to Sir\n", + "Richard Steele for a very early recommendation of my undertaking to the\n", + "public. Dr. Swift promoted my interest with that warmth with which he\n", + "always serves his friend. The humanity and frankness of Sir Samuel\n", + "Garth are what I never knew wanting on any occasion. I must also\n", + "acknowledge, with infinite pleasure, the many friendly offices, as well\n", + "as sincere criticisms, of Mr. Congreve, who had led me the way in\n", + "translating some parts of Homer. I must add the names of Mr. Rowe, and\n", + "Dr. Parnell, though I shall take a further opportunity of doing justice\n", + "to the last, whose good nature (to give it a great panegyric), is no\n", + "less extensive than his learning. The favour of these gentlemen is not\n", + "entirely undeserved by one who bears them so true an affection. But\n", + "what can I say of the honour so many of the great have done me; while\n", + "the first names of the age appear as my subscribers, and the most\n", + "distinguished patrons and ornaments of learning as my chief\n", + "encouragers? Among these it is a particular pleasure to me to find,\n", + "that my highest obligations are to such who have done most honour to\n", + "the name of poet: that his grace the Duke of Buckingham was not\n", + "displeased I should undertake the author to whom he has given (in his\n", + "excellent Essay), so complete a praise:\n", + "\n", + "“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;\n", + "For all books else appear so mean, so poor,\n", + "Verse will seem prose: but still persist to read,\n", + "And Homer will be all the books you need.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "That the Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me; of whom it\n", + "is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing\n", + "to his generosity or his example: that such a genius as my Lord\n", + "Bolingbroke, not more distinguished in the great scenes of business,\n", + "than in all the useful and entertaining parts of learning, has not\n", + "refused to be the critic of these sheets, and the patron of their\n", + "writer: and that the noble author of the tragedy of “Heroic Love” has\n", + "continued his partiality to me, from my writing pastorals to my\n", + "attempting the Iliad. I cannot deny myself the pride of confessing,\n", + "that I have had the advantage not only of their advice for the conduct\n", + "in general, but their correction of several particulars of this\n", + "translation.\n", + "\n", + "I could say a great deal of the pleasure of being distinguished by the\n", + "Earl of Carnarvon; but it is almost absurd to particularize any one\n", + "generous action in a person whose whole life is a continued series of\n", + "them. Mr. Stanhope, the present secretary of state, will pardon my\n", + "desire of having it known that he was pleased to promote this affair.\n", + "The particular zeal of Mr. Harcourt (the son of the late Lord\n", + "Chancellor) gave me a proof how much I am honoured in a share of his\n", + "friendship. I must attribute to the same motive that of several others\n", + "of my friends: to whom all acknowledgments are rendered unnecessary by\n", + "the privileges of a familiar correspondence; and I am satisfied I can\n", + "no way better oblige men of their turn than by my silence.\n", + "\n", + "In short, I have found more patrons than ever Homer wanted. He would\n", + "have thought himself happy to have met the same favour at Athens that\n", + "has been shown me by its learned rival, the University of Oxford. And I\n", + "can hardly envy him those pompous honours he received after death, when\n", + "I reflect on the enjoyment of so many agreeable obligations, and easy\n", + "friendships, which make the satisfaction of life. This distinction is\n", + "the more to be acknowledged, as it is shown to one whose pen has never\n", + "gratified the prejudices of particular parties, or the vanities of\n", + "particular men. Whatever the success may prove, I shall never repent of\n", + "an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship\n", + "of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of those\n", + "years of youth that are generally lost in a circle of follies, after a\n", + "manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor disagreeable to myself.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE ILIAD.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK I.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.[40]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE CONTENTION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of the neighbouring\n", + "towns, and taken from thence two beautiful captives, Chryseïs and\n", + "Briseïs, allotted the first to Agamemnon, and the last to Achilles.\n", + "Chryses, the father of Chryseïs, and priest of Apollo, comes to the\n", + "Grecian camp to ransom her; with which the action of the poem opens, in\n", + "the tenth year of the siege. The priest being refused, and insolently\n", + "dismissed by Agamemnon, entreats for vengeance from his god; who\n", + "inflicts a pestilence on the Greeks. Achilles calls a council, and\n", + "encourages Chalcas to declare the cause of it; who attributes it to the\n", + "refusal of Chryseïs. The king, being obliged to send back his captive,\n", + "enters into a furious contest with Achilles, which Nestor pacifies;\n", + "however, as he had the absolute command of the army, he seizes on\n", + "Briseïs in revenge. Achilles in discontent withdraws himself and his\n", + "forces from the rest of the Greeks; and complaining to Thetis, she\n", + "supplicates Jupiter to render them sensible of the wrong done to her\n", + "son, by giving victory to the Trojans. Jupiter, granting her suit,\n", + "incenses Juno: between whom the debate runs high, till they are\n", + "reconciled by the address of Vulcan.\n", + " The time of two-and-twenty days is taken up in this book: nine\n", + " during the plague, one in the council and quarrel of the princes,\n", + " and twelve for Jupiter’s stay with the Æthiopians, at whose return\n", + " Thetis prefers her petition. The scene lies in the Grecian camp,\n", + " then changes to Chrysa, and lastly to Olympus.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring\n", + "Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!\n", + "That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign\n", + "The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;\n", + "Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,\n", + "Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.[41]\n", + "Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,\n", + "Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove![42]\n", + "\n", + "Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour[43]\n", + "Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power\n", + "Latona’s son a dire contagion spread,[44]\n", + "And heap’d the camp with mountains of the dead;\n", + "The king of men his reverent priest defied,[45]\n", + "And for the king’s offence the people died.\n", + "\n", + "For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain\n", + "His captive daughter from the victor’s chain.\n", + "Suppliant the venerable father stands;\n", + "Apollo’s awful ensigns grace his hands:\n", + "By these he begs; and lowly bending down,\n", + "Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown.\n", + "He sued to all, but chief implored for grace\n", + "The brother-kings, of Atreus’ royal race[46]\n", + "\n", + "“Ye kings and warriors! may your vows be crown’d,\n", + "And Troy’s proud walls lie level with the ground.\n", + "May Jove restore you when your toils are o’er\n", + "Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.\n", + "But, oh! relieve a wretched parent’s pain,\n", + "And give Chryseïs to these arms again;\n", + "If mercy fail, yet let my presents move,\n", + "And dread avenging Phœbus, son of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The Greeks in shouts their joint assent declare,\n", + "The priest to reverence, and release the fair.\n", + "Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride,\n", + "Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied:\n", + "“Hence on thy life, and fly these hostile plains,\n", + "Nor ask, presumptuous, what the king detains:\n", + "\n", + "Hence, with thy laurel crown, and golden rod,\n", + "Nor trust too far those ensigns of thy god.\n", + "Mine is thy daughter, priest, and shall remain;\n", + "And prayers, and tears, and bribes, shall plead in vain;\n", + "Till time shall rifle every youthful grace,\n", + "And age dismiss her from my cold embrace,\n", + "In daily labours of the loom employ’d,\n", + "Or doom’d to deck the bed she once enjoy’d.\n", + "Hence then; to Argos shall the maid retire,\n", + "Far from her native soil and weeping sire.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HOMER INVOKING THE MUSE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The trembling priest along the shore return’d,\n", + "And in the anguish of a father mourn’d.\n", + "Disconsolate, not daring to complain,\n", + "Silent he wander’d by the sounding main;\n", + "Till, safe at distance, to his god he prays,\n", + "The god who darts around the world his rays.\n", + "\n", + "“O Smintheus! sprung from fair Latona’s line,[47]\n", + "Thou guardian power of Cilla the divine,[48]\n", + "Thou source of light! whom Tenedos adores,\n", + "And whose bright presence gilds thy Chrysa’s shores.\n", + "If e’er with wreaths I hung thy sacred fane,[49]\n", + "Or fed the flames with fat of oxen slain;\n", + "God of the silver bow! thy shafts employ,\n", + "Avenge thy servant, and the Greeks destroy.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus Chryses pray’d:—the favouring power attends,\n", + "And from Olympus’ lofty tops descends.\n", + "Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;[50]\n", + "Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound.\n", + "Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,\n", + "And gloomy darkness roll’d about his head.\n", + "The fleet in view, he twang’d his deadly bow,\n", + "And hissing fly the feather’d fates below.\n", + "On mules and dogs the infection first began;[51]\n", + "And last, the vengeful arrows fix’d in man.\n", + "For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,\n", + "The pyres, thick-flaming, shot a dismal glare.\n", + "But ere the tenth revolving day was run,\n", + "Inspired by Juno, Thetis’ godlike son\n", + "Convened to council all the Grecian train;\n", + "For much the goddess mourn’d her heroes slain.[52]\n", + "The assembly seated, rising o’er the rest,\n", + "Achilles thus the king of men address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,\n", + "And measure back the seas we cross’d before?\n", + "The plague destroying whom the sword would spare,\n", + "’Tis time to save the few remains of war.\n", + "But let some prophet, or some sacred sage,\n", + "Explore the cause of great Apollo’s rage;\n", + "Or learn the wasteful vengeance to remove\n", + "By mystic dreams, for dreams descend from Jove.[53]\n", + "If broken vows this heavy curse have laid,\n", + "Let altars smoke, and hecatombs be paid.\n", + "So Heaven, atoned, shall dying Greece restore,\n", + "And Phœbus dart his burning shafts no more.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and sat: when Chalcas thus replied;\n", + "Chalcas the wise, the Grecian priest and guide,\n", + "That sacred seer, whose comprehensive view,\n", + "The past, the present, and the future knew:\n", + "Uprising slow, the venerable sage\n", + "Thus spoke the prudence and the fears of age:\n", + "\n", + "“Beloved of Jove, Achilles! would’st thou know\n", + "Why angry Phœbus bends his fatal bow?\n", + "First give thy faith, and plight a prince’s word\n", + "Of sure protection, by thy power and sword:\n", + "For I must speak what wisdom would conceal,\n", + "And truths, invidious to the great, reveal,\n", + "Bold is the task, when subjects, grown too wise,\n", + "Instruct a monarch where his error lies;\n", + "For though we deem the short-lived fury past,\n", + "’Tis sure the mighty will revenge at last.”\n", + "To whom Pelides:—“From thy inmost soul\n", + "Speak what thou know’st, and speak without control.\n", + "E’en by that god I swear who rules the day,\n", + "To whom thy hands the vows of Greece convey.\n", + "And whose bless’d oracles thy lips declare;\n", + "Long as Achilles breathes this vital air,\n", + "No daring Greek, of all the numerous band,\n", + "Against his priest shall lift an impious hand;\n", + "Not e’en the chief by whom our hosts are led,\n", + "The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head.”\n", + "\n", + "Encouraged thus, the blameless man replies:\n", + "“Nor vows unpaid, nor slighted sacrifice,\n", + "But he, our chief, provoked the raging pest,\n", + "Apollo’s vengeance for his injured priest.\n", + "Nor will the god’s awaken’d fury cease,\n", + "But plagues shall spread, and funeral fires increase,\n", + "Till the great king, without a ransom paid,\n", + "To her own Chrysa send the black-eyed maid.[54]\n", + "Perhaps, with added sacrifice and prayer,\n", + "The priest may pardon, and the god may spare.”\n", + "\n", + "The prophet spoke: when with a gloomy frown\n", + "The monarch started from his shining throne;\n", + "Black choler fill’d his breast that boil’d with ire,\n", + "And from his eye-balls flash’d the living fire:\n", + "“Augur accursed! denouncing mischief still,\n", + "Prophet of plagues, for ever boding ill!\n", + "Still must that tongue some wounding message bring,\n", + "And still thy priestly pride provoke thy king?\n", + "For this are Phœbus’ oracles explored,\n", + "To teach the Greeks to murmur at their lord?\n", + "For this with falsehood is my honour stain’d,\n", + "Is heaven offended, and a priest profaned;\n", + "Because my prize, my beauteous maid, I hold,\n", + "And heavenly charms prefer to proffer’d gold?\n", + "A maid, unmatch’d in manners as in face,\n", + "Skill’d in each art, and crown’d with every grace;\n", + "Not half so dear were Clytæmnestra’s charms,\n", + "When first her blooming beauties bless’d my arms.\n", + "Yet, if the gods demand her, let her sail;\n", + "Our cares are only for the public weal:\n", + "Let me be deem’d the hateful cause of all,\n", + "And suffer, rather than my people fall.\n", + "The prize, the beauteous prize, I will resign,\n", + "So dearly valued, and so justly mine.\n", + "But since for common good I yield the fair,\n", + "My private loss let grateful Greece repair;\n", + "Nor unrewarded let your prince complain,\n", + "That he alone has fought and bled in vain.”\n", + "“Insatiate king (Achilles thus replies),\n", + "Fond of the power, but fonder of the prize!\n", + "Would’st thou the Greeks their lawful prey should yield,\n", + "The due reward of many a well-fought field?\n", + "\n", + "The spoils of cities razed and warriors slain,\n", + "We share with justice, as with toil we gain;\n", + "But to resume whate’er thy avarice craves\n", + "(That trick of tyrants) may be borne by slaves.\n", + "Yet if our chief for plunder only fight,\n", + "The spoils of Ilion shall thy loss requite,\n", + "Whene’er, by Jove’s decree, our conquering powers\n", + "Shall humble to the dust her lofty towers.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the king: “Shall I my prize resign\n", + "With tame content, and thou possess’d of thine?\n", + "Great as thou art, and like a god in fight,\n", + "Think not to rob me of a soldier’s right.\n", + "At thy demand shall I restore the maid?\n", + "First let the just equivalent be paid;\n", + "Such as a king might ask; and let it be\n", + "A treasure worthy her, and worthy me.\n", + "Or grant me this, or with a monarch’s claim\n", + "This hand shall seize some other captive dame.\n", + "The mighty Ajax shall his prize resign;[55]\n", + "Ulysses’ spoils, or even thy own, be mine.\n", + "The man who suffers, loudly may complain;\n", + "And rage he may, but he shall rage in vain.\n", + "But this when time requires.—It now remains\n", + "We launch a bark to plough the watery plains,\n", + "And waft the sacrifice to Chrysa’s shores,\n", + "With chosen pilots, and with labouring oars.\n", + "Soon shall the fair the sable ship ascend,\n", + "And some deputed prince the charge attend:\n", + "This Creta’s king, or Ajax shall fulfil,\n", + "Or wise Ulysses see perform’d our will;\n", + "Or, if our royal pleasure shall ordain,\n", + "Achilles’ self conduct her o’er the main;\n", + "Let fierce Achilles, dreadful in his rage,\n", + "The god propitiate, and the pest assuage.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] MARS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "At this, Pelides, frowning stern, replied:\n", + "“O tyrant, arm’d with insolence and pride!\n", + "Inglorious slave to interest, ever join’d\n", + "With fraud, unworthy of a royal mind!\n", + "What generous Greek, obedient to thy word,\n", + "Shall form an ambush, or shall lift the sword?\n", + "What cause have I to war at thy decree?\n", + "The distant Trojans never injured me;\n", + "To Phthia’s realms no hostile troops they led:\n", + "Safe in her vales my warlike coursers fed;\n", + "Far hence removed, the hoarse-resounding main,\n", + "And walls of rocks, secure my native reign,\n", + "Whose fruitful soil luxuriant harvests grace,\n", + "Rich in her fruits, and in her martial race.\n", + "Hither we sail’d, a voluntary throng,\n", + "To avenge a private, not a public wrong:\n", + "What else to Troy the assembled nations draws,\n", + "But thine, ungrateful, and thy brother’s cause?\n", + "Is this the pay our blood and toils deserve;\n", + "Disgraced and injured by the man we serve?\n", + "And darest thou threat to snatch my prize away,\n", + "Due to the deeds of many a dreadful day?\n", + "A prize as small, O tyrant! match’d with thine,\n", + "As thy own actions if compared to mine.\n", + "Thine in each conquest is the wealthy prey,\n", + "Though mine the sweat and danger of the day.\n", + "Some trivial present to my ships I bear:\n", + "Or barren praises pay the wounds of war.\n", + "But know, proud monarch, I’m thy slave no more;\n", + "My fleet shall waft me to Thessalia’s shore:\n", + "Left by Achilles on the Trojan plain,\n", + "What spoils, what conquests, shall Atrides gain?”\n", + "\n", + "To this the king: “Fly, mighty warrior! fly;\n", + "Thy aid we need not, and thy threats defy.\n", + "There want not chiefs in such a cause to fight,\n", + "And Jove himself shall guard a monarch’s right.\n", + "Of all the kings (the god’s distinguish’d care)\n", + "To power superior none such hatred bear:\n", + "Strife and debate thy restless soul employ,\n", + "And wars and horrors are thy savage joy,\n", + "If thou hast strength, ’twas Heaven that strength bestow’d;\n", + "For know, vain man! thy valour is from God.\n", + "Haste, launch thy vessels, fly with speed away;\n", + "Rule thy own realms with arbitrary sway;\n", + "I heed thee not, but prize at equal rate\n", + "Thy short-lived friendship, and thy groundless hate.\n", + "Go, threat thy earth-born Myrmidons:—but here[56]\n", + "’Tis mine to threaten, prince, and thine to fear.\n", + "Know, if the god the beauteous dame demand,\n", + "My bark shall waft her to her native land;\n", + "But then prepare, imperious prince! prepare,\n", + "Fierce as thou art, to yield thy captive fair:\n", + "Even in thy tent I’ll seize the blooming prize,\n", + "Thy loved Briseïs with the radiant eyes.\n", + "Hence shalt thou prove my might, and curse the hour\n", + "Thou stood’st a rival of imperial power;\n", + "And hence, to all our hosts it shall be known,\n", + "That kings are subject to the gods alone.”\n", + "\n", + "Achilles heard, with grief and rage oppress’d,\n", + "His heart swell’d high, and labour’d in his breast;\n", + "Distracting thoughts by turns his bosom ruled;\n", + "Now fired by wrath, and now by reason cool’d:\n", + "That prompts his hand to draw the deadly sword,\n", + "Force through the Greeks, and pierce their haughty lord;\n", + "This whispers soft his vengeance to control,\n", + "And calm the rising tempest of his soul.\n", + "Just as in anguish of suspense he stay’d,\n", + "While half unsheathed appear’d the glittering blade,[57]\n", + "Minerva swift descended from above,\n", + "Sent by the sister and the wife of Jove\n", + "(For both the princes claim’d her equal care);\n", + "Behind she stood, and by the golden hair\n", + "Achilles seized; to him alone confess’d;\n", + "A sable cloud conceal’d her from the rest.\n", + "He sees, and sudden to the goddess cries,\n", + "Known by the flames that sparkle from her eyes:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] MINERVA REPRESSING THE FURY OF ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Descends Minerva, in her guardian care,\n", + "A heavenly witness of the wrongs I bear\n", + "From Atreus’ son?—Then let those eyes that view\n", + "The daring crime, behold the vengeance too.”\n", + "\n", + "“Forbear (the progeny of Jove replies)\n", + "To calm thy fury I forsake the skies:\n", + "Let great Achilles, to the gods resign’d,\n", + "To reason yield the empire o’er his mind.\n", + "By awful Juno this command is given;\n", + "The king and you are both the care of heaven.\n", + "The force of keen reproaches let him feel;\n", + "But sheathe, obedient, thy revenging steel.\n", + "For I pronounce (and trust a heavenly power)\n", + "Thy injured honour has its fated hour,\n", + "When the proud monarch shall thy arms implore,\n", + "And bribe thy friendship with a boundless store.\n", + "Then let revenge no longer bear the sway;\n", + "Command thy passions, and the gods obey.”\n", + "\n", + "To her Pelides:—“With regardful ear,\n", + "’Tis just, O goddess! I thy dictates hear.\n", + "Hard as it is, my vengeance I suppress:\n", + "Those who revere the gods the gods will bless.”\n", + "He said, observant of the blue-eyed maid;\n", + "Then in the sheath return’d the shining blade.\n", + "The goddess swift to high Olympus flies,\n", + "And joins the sacred senate of the skies.\n", + "\n", + "Nor yet the rage his boiling breast forsook,\n", + "Which thus redoubling on Atrides broke:\n", + "“O monster! mix’d of insolence and fear,\n", + "Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer!\n", + "When wert thou known in ambush’d fights to dare,\n", + "Or nobly face the horrid front of war?\n", + "’Tis ours, the chance of fighting fields to try;\n", + "Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die:\n", + "So much ’tis safer through the camp to go,\n", + "And rob a subject, than despoil a foe.\n", + "Scourge of thy people, violent and base!\n", + "Sent in Jove’s anger on a slavish race;\n", + "Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past,\n", + "Are tamed to wrongs;—or this had been thy last.\n", + "Now by this sacred sceptre hear me swear,\n", + "Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear,\n", + "Which sever’d from the trunk (as I from thee)\n", + "On the bare mountains left its parent tree;\n", + "This sceptre, form’d by temper’d steel to prove\n", + "An ensign of the delegates of Jove,\n", + "From whom the power of laws and justice springs\n", + "(Tremendous oath! inviolate to kings);\n", + "By this I swear:—when bleeding Greece again\n", + "Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain.\n", + "When, flush’d with slaughter, Hector comes to spread\n", + "The purpled shore with mountains of the dead,\n", + "Then shalt thou mourn the affront thy madness gave,\n", + "Forced to deplore when impotent to save:\n", + "Then rage in bitterness of soul to know\n", + "This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke; and furious hurl’d against the ground\n", + "His sceptre starr’d with golden studs around:\n", + "Then sternly silent sat. With like disdain\n", + "The raging king return’d his frowns again.\n", + "\n", + "To calm their passion with the words of age,\n", + "Slow from his seat arose the Pylian sage,\n", + "Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skill’d;\n", + "Words, sweet as honey, from his lips distill’d:[58]\n", + "Two generations now had pass’d away,\n", + "Wise by his rules, and happy by his sway;\n", + "Two ages o’er his native realm he reign’d,\n", + "And now the example of the third remain’d.\n", + "All view’d with awe the venerable man;\n", + "Who thus with mild benevolence began:—\n", + "\n", + "“What shame, what woe is this to Greece! what joy\n", + "To Troy’s proud monarch, and the friends of Troy!\n", + "That adverse gods commit to stern debate\n", + "The best, the bravest, of the Grecian state.\n", + "Young as ye are, this youthful heat restrain,\n", + "Nor think your Nestor’s years and wisdom vain.\n", + "A godlike race of heroes once I knew,\n", + "Such as no more these aged eyes shall view!\n", + "Lives there a chief to match Pirithous’ fame,\n", + "Dryas the bold, or Ceneus’ deathless name;\n", + "Theseus, endued with more than mortal might,\n", + "Or Polyphemus, like the gods in fight?\n", + "With these of old, to toils of battle bred,\n", + "In early youth my hardy days I led;\n", + "Fired with the thirst which virtuous envy breeds,\n", + "And smit with love of honourable deeds,\n", + "Strongest of men, they pierced the mountain boar,\n", + "Ranged the wild deserts red with monsters’ gore,\n", + "And from their hills the shaggy Centaurs tore:\n", + "Yet these with soft persuasive arts I sway’d;\n", + "When Nestor spoke, they listen’d and obey’d.\n", + "If in my youth, even these esteem’d me wise;\n", + "Do you, young warriors, hear my age advise.\n", + "Atrides, seize not on the beauteous slave;\n", + "That prize the Greeks by common suffrage gave:\n", + "Nor thou, Achilles, treat our prince with pride;\n", + "Let kings be just, and sovereign power preside.\n", + "Thee, the first honours of the war adorn,\n", + "Like gods in strength, and of a goddess born;\n", + "Him, awful majesty exalts above\n", + "The powers of earth, and sceptred sons of Jove.\n", + "Let both unite with well-consenting mind,\n", + "So shall authority with strength be join’d.\n", + "Leave me, O king! to calm Achilles’ rage;\n", + "Rule thou thyself, as more advanced in age.\n", + "Forbid it, gods! Achilles should be lost,\n", + "The pride of Greece, and bulwark of our host.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, he ceased. The king of men replies:\n", + "“Thy years are awful, and thy words are wise.\n", + "But that imperious, that unconquer’d soul,\n", + "No laws can limit, no respect control.\n", + "Before his pride must his superiors fall;\n", + "His word the law, and he the lord of all?\n", + "Him must our hosts, our chiefs, ourself obey?\n", + "What king can bear a rival in his sway?\n", + "Grant that the gods his matchless force have given;\n", + "Has foul reproach a privilege from heaven?”\n", + "\n", + "Here on the monarch’s speech Achilles broke,\n", + "And furious, thus, and interrupting spoke:\n", + "“Tyrant, I well deserved thy galling chain,\n", + "To live thy slave, and still to serve in vain,\n", + "Should I submit to each unjust decree:—\n", + "Command thy vassals, but command not me.\n", + "Seize on Briseïs, whom the Grecians doom’d\n", + "My prize of war, yet tamely see resumed;\n", + "And seize secure; no more Achilles draws\n", + "His conquering sword in any woman’s cause.\n", + "The gods command me to forgive the past:\n", + "But let this first invasion be the last:\n", + "For know, thy blood, when next thou darest invade,\n", + "Shall stream in vengeance on my reeking blade.”\n", + "\n", + "At this they ceased: the stern debate expired:\n", + "The chiefs in sullen majesty retired.\n", + "\n", + "Achilles with Patroclus took his way\n", + "Where near his tents his hollow vessels lay.\n", + "Meantime Atrides launch’d with numerous oars\n", + "A well-rigg’d ship for Chrysa’s sacred shores:\n", + "High on the deck was fair Chryseïs placed,\n", + "And sage Ulysses with the conduct graced:\n", + "Safe in her sides the hecatomb they stow’d,\n", + "Then swiftly sailing, cut the liquid road.\n", + "\n", + "The host to expiate next the king prepares,\n", + "With pure lustrations, and with solemn prayers.\n", + "Wash’d by the briny wave, the pious train[59]\n", + "Are cleansed; and cast the ablutions in the main.\n", + "Along the shore whole hecatombs were laid,\n", + "And bulls and goats to Phœbus’ altars paid;\n", + "The sable fumes in curling spires arise,\n", + "And waft their grateful odours to the skies.\n", + "\n", + "The army thus in sacred rites engaged,\n", + "Atrides still with deep resentment raged.\n", + "To wait his will two sacred heralds stood,\n", + "Talthybius and Eurybates the good.\n", + "“Haste to the fierce Achilles’ tent (he cries),\n", + "Thence bear Briseïs as our royal prize:\n", + "Submit he must; or if they will not part,\n", + "Ourself in arms shall tear her from his heart.”\n", + "\n", + "The unwilling heralds act their lord’s commands;\n", + "Pensive they walk along the barren sands:\n", + "Arrived, the hero in his tent they find,\n", + "With gloomy aspect on his arm reclined.\n", + "At awful distance long they silent stand,\n", + "Loth to advance, and speak their hard command;\n", + "Decent confusion! This the godlike man\n", + "Perceived, and thus with accent mild began:\n", + "\n", + "“With leave and honour enter our abodes,\n", + "Ye sacred ministers of men and gods![60]\n", + "I know your message; by constraint you came;\n", + "Not you, but your imperious lord I blame.\n", + "Patroclus, haste, the fair Briseïs bring;\n", + "Conduct my captive to the haughty king.\n", + "But witness, heralds, and proclaim my vow,\n", + "Witness to gods above, and men below!\n", + "But first, and loudest, to your prince declare\n", + "(That lawless tyrant whose commands you bear),\n", + "Unmoved as death Achilles shall remain,\n", + "Though prostrate Greece shall bleed at every vein:\n", + "The raging chief in frantic passion lost,\n", + "Blind to himself, and useless to his host,\n", + "Unskill’d to judge the future by the past,\n", + "In blood and slaughter shall repent at last.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE DEPARTURE OF BRISEIS FROM THE TENT OF ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Patroclus now the unwilling beauty brought;\n", + "She, in soft sorrows, and in pensive thought,\n", + "Pass’d silent, as the heralds held her hand,\n", + "And oft look’d back, slow-moving o’er the strand.\n", + "Not so his loss the fierce Achilles bore;\n", + "But sad, retiring to the sounding shore,\n", + "O’er the wild margin of the deep he hung,\n", + "That kindred deep from whence his mother sprung:[61]\n", + "There bathed in tears of anger and disdain,\n", + "Thus loud lamented to the stormy main:\n", + "\n", + "“O parent goddess! since in early bloom\n", + "Thy son must fall, by too severe a doom;\n", + "Sure to so short a race of glory born,\n", + "Great Jove in justice should this span adorn:\n", + "Honour and fame at least the thunderer owed;\n", + "And ill he pays the promise of a god,\n", + "If yon proud monarch thus thy son defies,\n", + "Obscures my glories, and resumes my prize.”\n", + "\n", + "Far from the deep recesses of the main,\n", + "Where aged Ocean holds his watery reign,\n", + "The goddess-mother heard. The waves divide;\n", + "And like a mist she rose above the tide;\n", + "Beheld him mourning on the naked shores,\n", + "And thus the sorrows of his soul explores.\n", + "“Why grieves my son? Thy anguish let me share;\n", + "Reveal the cause, and trust a parent’s care.”\n", + "\n", + "He deeply sighing said: “To tell my woe\n", + "Is but to mention what too well you know.\n", + "From Thebé, sacred to Apollo’s name[62]\n", + "(Aëtion’s realm), our conquering army came,\n", + "With treasure loaded and triumphant spoils,\n", + "Whose just division crown’d the soldier’s toils;\n", + "But bright Chryseïs, heavenly prize! was led,\n", + "By vote selected, to the general’s bed.\n", + "The priest of Phœbus sought by gifts to gain\n", + "His beauteous daughter from the victor’s chain;\n", + "The fleet he reach’d, and, lowly bending down,\n", + "Held forth the sceptre and the laurel crown,\n", + "Intreating all; but chief implored for grace\n", + "The brother-kings of Atreus’ royal race:\n", + "The generous Greeks their joint consent declare,\n", + "The priest to reverence, and release the fair;\n", + "Not so Atrides: he, with wonted pride,\n", + "The sire insulted, and his gifts denied:\n", + "The insulted sire (his god’s peculiar care)\n", + "To Phœbus pray’d, and Phœbus heard the prayer:\n", + "A dreadful plague ensues: the avenging darts\n", + "Incessant fly, and pierce the Grecian hearts.\n", + "A prophet then, inspired by heaven, arose,\n", + "And points the crime, and thence derives the woes:\n", + "Myself the first the assembled chiefs incline\n", + "To avert the vengeance of the power divine;\n", + "Then rising in his wrath, the monarch storm’d;\n", + "Incensed he threaten’d, and his threats perform’d:\n", + "The fair Chryseïs to her sire was sent,\n", + "With offer’d gifts to make the god relent;\n", + "But now he seized Briseïs’ heavenly charms,\n", + "And of my valour’s prize defrauds my arms,\n", + "Defrauds the votes of all the Grecian train;[63]\n", + "And service, faith, and justice, plead in vain.\n", + "But, goddess! thou thy suppliant son attend.\n", + "To high Olympus’ shining court ascend,\n", + "Urge all the ties to former service owed,\n", + "And sue for vengeance to the thundering god.\n", + "Oft hast thou triumph’d in the glorious boast,\n", + "That thou stood’st forth of all the ethereal host,\n", + "When bold rebellion shook the realms above,\n", + "The undaunted guard of cloud-compelling Jove:\n", + "When the bright partner of his awful reign,\n", + "The warlike maid, and monarch of the main,\n", + "The traitor-gods, by mad ambition driven,\n", + "Durst threat with chains the omnipotence of Heaven.\n", + "Then, call’d by thee, the monster Titan came\n", + "(Whom gods Briareus, men Ægeon name),\n", + "Through wondering skies enormous stalk’d along;\n", + "Not he that shakes the solid earth so strong:\n", + "With giant-pride at Jove’s high throne he stands,\n", + "And brandish’d round him all his hundred hands:\n", + "The affrighted gods confess’d their awful lord,\n", + "They dropp’d the fetters, trembled, and adored.[64]\n", + "This, goddess, this to his remembrance call,\n", + "Embrace his knees, at his tribunal fall;\n", + "Conjure him far to drive the Grecian train,\n", + "To hurl them headlong to their fleet and main,\n", + "To heap the shores with copious death, and bring\n", + "The Greeks to know the curse of such a king.\n", + "Let Agamemnon lift his haughty head\n", + "O’er all his wide dominion of the dead,\n", + "And mourn in blood that e’er he durst disgrace\n", + "The boldest warrior of the Grecian race.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THETIS CALLING BRIAREUS TO THE ASSISTANCE OF JUPITER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Unhappy son! (fair Thetis thus replies,\n", + "While tears celestial trickle from her eyes)\n", + "Why have I borne thee with a mother’s throes,\n", + "To Fates averse, and nursed for future woes?[65]\n", + "So short a space the light of heaven to view!\n", + "So short a space! and fill’d with sorrow too!\n", + "O might a parent’s careful wish prevail,\n", + "Far, far from Ilion should thy vessels sail,\n", + "And thou, from camps remote, the danger shun\n", + "Which now, alas! too nearly threats my son.\n", + "Yet (what I can) to move thy suit I’ll go\n", + "To great Olympus crown’d with fleecy snow.\n", + "Meantime, secure within thy ships, from far\n", + "Behold the field, not mingle in the war.\n", + "The sire of gods and all the ethereal train,\n", + "On the warm limits of the farthest main,\n", + "Now mix with mortals, nor disdain to grace\n", + "The feasts of Æthiopia’s blameless race,[66]\n", + "Twelve days the powers indulge the genial rite,\n", + "Returning with the twelfth revolving light.\n", + "Then will I mount the brazen dome, and move\n", + "The high tribunal of immortal Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The goddess spoke: the rolling waves unclose;\n", + "Then down the steep she plunged from whence she rose,\n", + "And left him sorrowing on the lonely coast,\n", + "In wild resentment for the fair he lost.\n", + "\n", + "In Chrysa’s port now sage Ulysses rode;\n", + "Beneath the deck the destined victims stow’d:\n", + "The sails they furl’d, they lash the mast aside,\n", + "And dropp’d their anchors, and the pinnace tied.\n", + "Next on the shore their hecatomb they land;\n", + "Chryseïs last descending on the strand.\n", + "Her, thus returning from the furrow’d main,\n", + "Ulysses led to Phœbus’ sacred fane;\n", + "Where at his solemn altar, as the maid\n", + "He gave to Chryses, thus the hero said:\n", + "\n", + "“Hail, reverend priest! to Phœbus’ awful dome\n", + "A suppliant I from great Atrides come:\n", + "Unransom’d, here receive the spotless fair;\n", + "Accept the hecatomb the Greeks prepare;\n", + "And may thy god who scatters darts around,\n", + "Atoned by sacrifice, desist to wound.”[67]\n", + "\n", + "At this, the sire embraced the maid again,\n", + "So sadly lost, so lately sought in vain.\n", + "Then near the altar of the darting king,\n", + "Disposed in rank their hecatomb they bring;\n", + "With water purify their hands, and take\n", + "The sacred offering of the salted cake;\n", + "While thus with arms devoutly raised in air,\n", + "And solemn voice, the priest directs his prayer:\n", + "\n", + "“God of the silver bow, thy ear incline,\n", + "Whose power incircles Cilla the divine;\n", + "Whose sacred eye thy Tenedos surveys,\n", + "And gilds fair Chrysa with distinguish’d rays!\n", + "If, fired to vengeance at thy priest’s request,\n", + "Thy direful darts inflict the raging pest:\n", + "Once more attend! avert the wasteful woe,\n", + "And smile propitious, and unbend thy bow.”\n", + "\n", + "So Chryses pray’d. Apollo heard his prayer:\n", + "And now the Greeks their hecatomb prepare;\n", + "Between their horns the salted barley threw,\n", + "And, with their heads to heaven, the victims slew:[68]\n", + "The limbs they sever from the inclosing hide;\n", + "The thighs, selected to the gods, divide:\n", + "On these, in double cauls involved with art,\n", + "The choicest morsels lay from every part.\n", + "The priest himself before his altar stands,\n", + "And burns the offering with his holy hands.\n", + "Pours the black wine, and sees the flames aspire;\n", + "The youth with instruments surround the fire:\n", + "The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress’d,\n", + "The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest:\n", + "Then spread the tables, the repast prepare;\n", + "Each takes his seat, and each receives his share.\n", + "When now the rage of hunger was repress’d,\n", + "With pure libations they conclude the feast;\n", + "The youths with wine the copious goblets crown’d,[69]\n", + "And, pleased, dispense the flowing bowls around\n", + "With hymns divine the joyous banquet ends,\n", + "The pæans lengthen’d till the sun descends:\n", + "The Greeks, restored, the grateful notes prolong;\n", + "Apollo listens, and approves the song.\n", + "\n", + "’Twas night; the chiefs beside their vessel lie,\n", + "Till rosy morn had purpled o’er the sky:\n", + "Then launch, and hoist the mast: indulgent gales,\n", + "Supplied by Phœbus, fill the swelling sails;\n", + "The milk-white canvas bellying as they blow,\n", + "The parted ocean foams and roars below:\n", + "Above the bounding billows swift they flew,\n", + "Till now the Grecian camp appear’d in view.\n", + "Far on the beach they haul their bark to land,\n", + "(The crooked keel divides the yellow sand,)\n", + "Then part, where stretch’d along the winding bay,\n", + "The ships and tents in mingled prospect lay.\n", + "\n", + "But raging still, amidst his navy sat\n", + "The stern Achilles, stedfast in his hate;\n", + "Nor mix’d in combat, nor in council join’d;\n", + "But wasting cares lay heavy on his mind:\n", + "In his black thoughts revenge and slaughter roll,\n", + "And scenes of blood rise dreadful in his soul.\n", + "\n", + "Twelve days were past, and now the dawning light\n", + "The gods had summon’d to the Olympian height:\n", + "Jove, first ascending from the watery bowers,\n", + "Leads the long order of ethereal powers.\n", + "When, like the morning-mist in early day,\n", + "Rose from the flood the daughter of the sea:\n", + "And to the seats divine her flight address’d.\n", + "There, far apart, and high above the rest,\n", + "The thunderer sat; where old Olympus shrouds\n", + "His hundred heads in heaven, and props the clouds.\n", + "Suppliant the goddess stood: one hand she placed\n", + "Beneath his beard, and one his knees embraced.\n", + "“If e’er, O father of the gods! (she said)\n", + "My words could please thee, or my actions aid,\n", + "Some marks of honour on my son bestow,\n", + "And pay in glory what in life you owe.\n", + "Fame is at least by heavenly promise due\n", + "To life so short, and now dishonour’d too.\n", + "Avenge this wrong, O ever just and wise!\n", + "Let Greece be humbled, and the Trojans rise;\n", + "Till the proud king and all the Achaian race\n", + "Shall heap with honours him they now disgrace.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THETIS ENTREATING JUPITER TO HONOUR ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus Thetis spoke; but Jove in silence held\n", + "The sacred counsels of his breast conceal’d.\n", + "Not so repulsed, the goddess closer press’d,\n", + "Still grasp’d his knees, and urged the dear request.\n", + "“O sire of gods and men! thy suppliant hear;\n", + "Refuse, or grant; for what has Jove to fear?\n", + "Or oh! declare, of all the powers above,\n", + "Is wretched Thetis least the care of Jove?”\n", + "\n", + "She said; and, sighing, thus the god replies,\n", + "Who rolls the thunder o’er the vaulted skies:\n", + "\n", + "“What hast thou ask’d? ah, why should Jove engage\n", + "In foreign contests and domestic rage,\n", + "The gods’ complaints, and Juno’s fierce alarms,\n", + "While I, too partial, aid the Trojan arms?\n", + "Go, lest the haughty partner of my sway\n", + "With jealous eyes thy close access survey;\n", + "But part in peace, secure thy prayer is sped:\n", + "Witness the sacred honours of our head,\n", + "The nod that ratifies the will divine,\n", + "The faithful, fix’d, irrevocable sign;\n", + "This seals thy suit, and this fulfils thy vows—”\n", + "He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows,[70]\n", + "Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,\n", + "The stamp of fate and sanction of the god:\n", + "High heaven with trembling the dread signal took,\n", + "And all Olympus to the centre shook.[71]\n", + "\n", + "Swift to the seas profound the goddess flies,\n", + "Jove to his starry mansions in the skies.\n", + "The shining synod of the immortals wait\n", + "The coming god, and from their thrones of state\n", + "Arising silent, wrapp’d in holy fear,\n", + "Before the majesty of heaven appear.\n", + "Trembling they stand, while Jove assumes the throne,\n", + "All, but the god’s imperious queen alone:\n", + "Late had she view’d the silver-footed dame,\n", + "And all her passions kindled into flame.\n", + "“Say, artful manager of heaven (she cries),\n", + "Who now partakes the secrets of the skies?\n", + "Thy Juno knows not the decrees of fate,\n", + "In vain the partner of imperial state.\n", + "What favourite goddess then those cares divides,\n", + "Which Jove in prudence from his consort hides?”\n", + "\n", + "To this the thunderer: “Seek not thou to find\n", + "The sacred counsels of almighty mind:\n", + "Involved in darkness lies the great decree,\n", + "Nor can the depths of fate be pierced by thee.\n", + "What fits thy knowledge, thou the first shalt know;\n", + "The first of gods above, and men below;\n", + "But thou, nor they, shall search the thoughts that roll\n", + "Deep in the close recesses of my soul.”\n", + "\n", + "Full on the sire the goddess of the skies\n", + "Roll’d the large orbs of her majestic eyes,\n", + "And thus return’d:—“Austere Saturnius, say,\n", + "From whence this wrath, or who controls thy sway?\n", + "Thy boundless will, for me, remains in force,\n", + "And all thy counsels take the destined course.\n", + "But ’tis for Greece I fear: for late was seen,\n", + "In close consult, the silver-footed queen.\n", + "Jove to his Thetis nothing could deny,\n", + "Nor was the signal vain that shook the sky.\n", + "What fatal favour has the goddess won,\n", + "To grace her fierce, inexorable son?\n", + "Perhaps in Grecian blood to drench the plain,\n", + "And glut his vengeance with my people slain.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the god: “O restless fate of pride,\n", + "That strives to learn what heaven resolves to hide;\n", + "Vain is the search, presumptuous and abhorr’d,\n", + "Anxious to thee, and odious to thy lord.\n", + "Let this suffice: the immutable decree\n", + "No force can shake: what is, that ought to be.\n", + "Goddess, submit; nor dare our will withstand,\n", + "But dread the power of this avenging hand:\n", + "The united strength of all the gods above\n", + "In vain resists the omnipotence of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VULCAN\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The thunderer spoke, nor durst the queen reply;\n", + "A reverent horror silenced all the sky.\n", + "The feast disturb’d, with sorrow Vulcan saw\n", + "His mother menaced, and the gods in awe;\n", + "Peace at his heart, and pleasure his design,\n", + "Thus interposed the architect divine:\n", + "“The wretched quarrels of the mortal state\n", + "Are far unworthy, gods! of your debate:\n", + "Let men their days in senseless strife employ,\n", + "We, in eternal peace and constant joy.\n", + "Thou, goddess-mother, with our sire comply,\n", + "Nor break the sacred union of the sky:\n", + "Lest, roused to rage, he shake the bless’d abodes,\n", + "Launch the red lightning, and dethrone the gods.\n", + "If you submit, the thunderer stands appeased;\n", + "The gracious power is willing to be pleased.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus Vulcan spoke: and rising with a bound,\n", + "The double bowl with sparkling nectar crown’d,[72]\n", + "Which held to Juno in a cheerful way,\n", + "“Goddess (he cried), be patient and obey.\n", + "Dear as you are, if Jove his arm extend,\n", + "I can but grieve, unable to defend.\n", + "What god so daring in your aid to move,\n", + "Or lift his hand against the force of Jove?\n", + "Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,\n", + "Hurl’d headlong down from the ethereal height;[73]\n", + "Toss’d all the day in rapid circles round,\n", + "Nor till the sun descended touch’d the ground.\n", + "Breathless I fell, in giddy motion lost;\n", + "The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast;[74]\n", + "\n", + "He said, and to her hands the goblet heaved,\n", + "Which, with a smile, the white-arm’d queen received\n", + "Then, to the rest he fill’d; and in his turn,\n", + "Each to his lips applied the nectar’d urn,\n", + "Vulcan with awkward grace his office plies,\n", + "And unextinguish’d laughter shakes the skies.\n", + "\n", + "Thus the blest gods the genial day prolong,\n", + "In feasts ambrosial, and celestial song.[75]\n", + "Apollo tuned the lyre; the Muses round\n", + "With voice alternate aid the silver sound.\n", + "Meantime the radiant sun to mortal sight\n", + "Descending swift, roll’d down the rapid light:\n", + "Then to their starry domes the gods depart,\n", + "The shining monuments of Vulcan’s art:\n", + "Jove on his couch reclined his awful head,\n", + "And Juno slumber’d on the golden bed.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] JUPITER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK II.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE TRIAL OF THE ARMY, AND CATALOGUE OF THE FORCES.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Jupiter, in pursuance of the request of Thetis, sends a deceitful\n", + "vision to Agamemnon, persuading him to lead the army to battle, in\n", + "order to make the Greeks sensible of their want of Achilles. The\n", + "general, who is deluded with the hopes of taking Troy without his\n", + "assistance, but fears the army was discouraged by his absence, and the\n", + "late plague, as well as by the length of time, contrives to make trial\n", + "of their disposition by a stratagem. He first communicates his design\n", + "to the princes in council, that he would propose a return to the\n", + "soldiers, and that they should put a stop to them if the proposal was\n", + "embraced. Then he assembles the whole host, and upon moving for a\n", + "return to Greece, they unanimously agree to it, and run to prepare the\n", + "ships. They are detained by the management of Ulysses, who chastises\n", + "the insolence of Thersites. The assembly is recalled, several speeches\n", + "made on the occasion, and at length the advice of Nestor followed,\n", + "which was to make a general muster of the troops, and to divide them\n", + "into their several nations, before they proceeded to battle. This gives\n", + "occasion to the poet to enumerate all the forces of the Greeks and\n", + "Trojans, and in a large catalogue.\n", + " The time employed in this book consists not entirely of one day.\n", + " The scene lies in the Grecian camp, and upon the sea-shore; towards\n", + " the end it removes to Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Now pleasing sleep had seal’d each mortal eye,\n", + "Stretch’d in the tents the Grecian leaders lie:\n", + "The immortals slumber’d on their thrones above;\n", + "All, but the ever-wakeful eyes of Jove.[76]\n", + "To honour Thetis’ son he bends his care,\n", + "And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war:\n", + "Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight,\n", + "And thus commands the vision of the night.\n", + "\n", + "“Fly hence, deluding Dream! and light as air,[77]\n", + "To Agamemnon’s ample tent repair.\n", + "Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,\n", + "Lead all his Grecians to the dusty plain.\n", + "Declare, e’en now ’tis given him to destroy\n", + "The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.\n", + "For now no more the gods with fate contend,\n", + "At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.\n", + "Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,\n", + "And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift as the word the vain illusion fled,\n", + "Descends, and hovers o’er Atrides’ head;\n", + "Clothed in the figure of the Pylian sage,\n", + "Renown’d for wisdom, and revered for age:\n", + "Around his temples spreads his golden wing,\n", + "And thus the flattering dream deceives the king.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] JUPITER SENDING THE EVIL DREAM TO AGAMEMNON\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Canst thou, with all a monarch’s cares oppress’d,\n", + "O Atreus’ son! canst thou indulge thy rest?[78]\n", + "Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides,\n", + "Directs in council, and in war presides,\n", + "To whom its safety a whole people owes,\n", + "To waste long nights in indolent repose.[79]\n", + "Monarch, awake! ’tis Jove’s command I bear;\n", + "Thou, and thy glory, claim his heavenly care.\n", + "In just array draw forth the embattled train,\n", + "Lead all thy Grecians to the dusty plain;\n", + "E’en now, O king! ’tis given thee to destroy\n", + "The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.\n", + "For now no more the gods with fate contend,\n", + "At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.\n", + "Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,\n", + "And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.\n", + "Awake, but waking this advice approve,\n", + "And trust the vision that descends from Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The phantom said; then vanish’d from his sight,\n", + "Resolves to air, and mixes with the night.\n", + "A thousand schemes the monarch’s mind employ;\n", + "Elate in thought he sacks untaken Troy:\n", + "Vain as he was, and to the future blind,\n", + "Nor saw what Jove and secret fate design’d,\n", + "What mighty toils to either host remain,\n", + "What scenes of grief, and numbers of the slain!\n", + "Eager he rises, and in fancy hears\n", + "The voice celestial murmuring in his ears.\n", + "First on his limbs a slender vest he drew,\n", + "Around him next the regal mantle threw,\n", + "The embroider’d sandals on his feet were tied;\n", + "The starry falchion glitter’d at his side;\n", + "And last, his arm the massy sceptre loads,\n", + "Unstain’d, immortal, and the gift of gods.\n", + "\n", + "Now rosy Morn ascends the court of Jove,\n", + "Lifts up her light, and opens day above.\n", + "The king despatch’d his heralds with commands\n", + "To range the camp and summon all the bands:\n", + "The gathering hosts the monarch’s word obey;\n", + "While to the fleet Atrides bends his way.\n", + "In his black ship the Pylian prince he found;\n", + "There calls a senate of the peers around:\n", + "The assembly placed, the king of men express’d\n", + "The counsels labouring in his artful breast.\n", + "\n", + "“Friends and confederates! with attentive ear\n", + "Receive my words, and credit what you hear.\n", + "Late as I slumber’d in the shades of night,\n", + "A dream divine appear’d before my sight;\n", + "Whose visionary form like Nestor came,\n", + "The same in habit, and in mien the same.[80]\n", + "The heavenly phantom hover’d o’er my head,\n", + "‘And, dost thou sleep, O Atreus’ son? (he said)\n", + "Ill fits a chief who mighty nations guides,\n", + "Directs in council, and in war presides;\n", + "To whom its safety a whole people owes,\n", + "To waste long nights in indolent repose.\n", + "Monarch, awake! ’tis Jove’s command I bear,\n", + "Thou and thy glory claim his heavenly care.\n", + "In just array draw forth the embattled train,\n", + "And lead the Grecians to the dusty plain;\n", + "E’en now, O king! ’tis given thee to destroy\n", + "The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.\n", + "For now no more the gods with fate contend,\n", + "At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.\n", + "Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,\n", + "And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.\n", + "\n", + "This hear observant, and the gods obey!’\n", + "The vision spoke, and pass’d in air away.\n", + "Now, valiant chiefs! since heaven itself alarms,\n", + "Unite, and rouse the sons of Greece to arms.\n", + "But first, with caution, try what yet they dare,\n", + "Worn with nine years of unsuccessful war.\n", + "To move the troops to measure back the main,\n", + "Be mine; and yours the province to detain.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and sat: when Nestor, rising said,\n", + "(Nestor, whom Pylos’ sandy realms obey’d,)\n", + "“Princes of Greece, your faithful ears incline,\n", + "Nor doubt the vision of the powers divine;\n", + "Sent by great Jove to him who rules the host,\n", + "Forbid it, heaven! this warning should be lost!\n", + "Then let us haste, obey the god’s alarms,\n", + "And join to rouse the sons of Greece to arms.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus spoke the sage: the kings without delay\n", + "Dissolve the council, and their chief obey:\n", + "The sceptred rulers lead; the following host,\n", + "Pour’d forth by thousands, darkens all the coast.\n", + "As from some rocky cleft the shepherd sees\n", + "Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees,\n", + "Rolling and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms,\n", + "With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms;\n", + "Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd,\n", + "And o’er the vale descends the living cloud.[81]\n", + "So, from the tents and ships, a lengthen’d train\n", + "Spreads all the beach, and wide o’ershades the plain:\n", + "Along the region runs a deafening sound;\n", + "Beneath their footsteps groans the trembling ground.\n", + "Fame flies before the messenger of Jove,\n", + "And shining soars, and claps her wings above.\n", + "Nine sacred heralds now, proclaiming loud[82]\n", + "The monarch’s will, suspend the listening crowd.\n", + "Soon as the throngs in order ranged appear,\n", + "And fainter murmurs died upon the ear,\n", + "The king of kings his awful figure raised:\n", + "High in his hand the golden sceptre blazed;\n", + "The golden sceptre, of celestial flame,\n", + "By Vulcan form’d, from Jove to Hermes came.\n", + "To Pelops he the immortal gift resign’d;\n", + "The immortal gift great Pelops left behind,\n", + "In Atreus’ hand, which not with Atreus ends,\n", + "To rich Thyestes next the prize descends;\n", + "And now the mark of Agamemnon’s reign,\n", + "Subjects all Argos, and controls the main.[83]\n", + "\n", + "On this bright sceptre now the king reclined,\n", + "And artful thus pronounced the speech design’d:\n", + "“Ye sons of Mars, partake your leader’s care,\n", + "Heroes of Greece, and brothers of the war!\n", + "Of partial Jove with justice I complain,\n", + "And heavenly oracles believed in vain\n", + "A safe return was promised to our toils,\n", + "Renown’d, triumphant, and enrich’d with spoils.\n", + "Now shameful flight alone can save the host,\n", + "Our blood, our treasure, and our glory lost.\n", + "So Jove decrees, resistless lord of all!\n", + "At whose command whole empires rise or fall:\n", + "He shakes the feeble props of human trust,\n", + "And towns and armies humbles to the dust.\n", + "What shame to Greece a fruitful war to wage,\n", + "Oh, lasting shame in every future age!\n", + "Once great in arms, the common scorn we grow,\n", + "Repulsed and baffled by a feeble foe.\n", + "So small their number, that if wars were ceased,\n", + "And Greece triumphant held a general feast,\n", + "All rank’d by tens, whole decades when they dine\n", + "Must want a Trojan slave to pour the wine.[84]\n", + "But other forces have our hopes o’erthrown,\n", + "And Troy prevails by armies not her own.\n", + "Now nine long years of mighty Jove are run,\n", + "Since first the labours of this war begun:\n", + "Our cordage torn, decay’d our vessels lie,\n", + "And scarce insure the wretched power to fly.\n", + "Haste, then, for ever leave the Trojan wall!\n", + "Our weeping wives, our tender children call:\n", + "Love, duty, safety, summon us away,\n", + "’Tis nature’s voice, and nature we obey.\n", + "Our shatter’d barks may yet transport us o’er,\n", + "Safe and inglorious, to our native shore.\n", + "Fly, Grecians, fly, your sails and oars employ,\n", + "And dream no more of heaven-defended Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "His deep design unknown, the hosts approve\n", + "Atrides’ speech. The mighty numbers move.\n", + "So roll the billows to the Icarian shore,\n", + "From east and south when winds begin to roar,\n", + "Burst their dark mansions in the clouds, and sweep\n", + "The whitening surface of the ruffled deep.\n", + "And as on corn when western gusts descend,[85]\n", + "Before the blast the lofty harvests bend:\n", + "Thus o’er the field the moving host appears,\n", + "With nodding plumes and groves of waving spears.\n", + "The gathering murmur spreads, their trampling feet\n", + "Beat the loose sands, and thicken to the fleet;\n", + "With long-resounding cries they urge the train\n", + "To fit the ships, and launch into the main.\n", + "They toil, they sweat, thick clouds of dust arise,\n", + "The doubling clamours echo to the skies.\n", + "E’en then the Greeks had left the hostile plain,\n", + "And fate decreed the fall of Troy in vain;\n", + "But Jove’s imperial queen their flight survey’d,\n", + "And sighing thus bespoke the blue-eyed maid:\n", + "\n", + "“Shall then the Grecians fly! O dire disgrace!\n", + "And leave unpunish’d this perfidious race?\n", + "Shall Troy, shall Priam, and the adulterous spouse,\n", + "In peace enjoy the fruits of broken vows?\n", + "And bravest chiefs, in Helen’s quarrel slain,\n", + "Lie unrevenged on yon detested plain?\n", + "No: let my Greeks, unmoved by vain alarms,\n", + "Once more refulgent shine in brazen arms.\n", + "Haste, goddess, haste! the flying host detain,\n", + "Nor let one sail be hoisted on the main.”\n", + "\n", + "Pallas obeys, and from Olympus’ height\n", + "Swift to the ships precipitates her flight.\n", + "Ulysses, first in public cares, she found,\n", + "For prudent counsel like the gods renown’d:\n", + "Oppress’d with generous grief the hero stood,\n", + "Nor drew his sable vessels to the flood.\n", + "“And is it thus, divine Laertes’ son,\n", + "Thus fly the Greeks (the martial maid begun),\n", + "Thus to their country bear their own disgrace,\n", + "And fame eternal leave to Priam’s race?\n", + "Shall beauteous Helen still remain unfreed,\n", + "Still unrevenged, a thousand heroes bleed!\n", + "Haste, generous Ithacus! prevent the shame,\n", + "Recall your armies, and your chiefs reclaim.\n", + "Your own resistless eloquence employ,\n", + "And to the immortals trust the fall of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "The voice divine confess’d the warlike maid,\n", + "Ulysses heard, nor uninspired obey’d:\n", + "Then meeting first Atrides, from his hand\n", + "Received the imperial sceptre of command.\n", + "Thus graced, attention and respect to gain,\n", + "He runs, he flies through all the Grecian train;\n", + "Each prince of name, or chief in arms approved,\n", + "He fired with praise, or with persuasion moved.\n", + "\n", + "“Warriors like you, with strength and wisdom bless’d,\n", + "By brave examples should confirm the rest.\n", + "The monarch’s will not yet reveal’d appears;\n", + "He tries our courage, but resents our fears.\n", + "The unwary Greeks his fury may provoke;\n", + "Not thus the king in secret council spoke.\n", + "Jove loves our chief, from Jove his honour springs,\n", + "Beware! for dreadful is the wrath of kings.”\n", + "\n", + "But if a clamorous vile plebeian rose,\n", + "Him with reproof he check’d or tamed with blows.\n", + "“Be still, thou slave, and to thy betters yield;\n", + "Unknown alike in council and in field!\n", + "Ye gods, what dastards would our host command!\n", + "Swept to the war, the lumber of a land.\n", + "Be silent, wretch, and think not here allow’d\n", + "That worst of tyrants, an usurping crowd.\n", + "To one sole monarch Jove commits the sway;\n", + "His are the laws, and him let all obey.”[86]\n", + "\n", + "With words like these the troops Ulysses ruled,\n", + "The loudest silenced, and the fiercest cool’d.\n", + "Back to the assembly roll the thronging train,\n", + "Desert the ships, and pour upon the plain.\n", + "Murmuring they move, as when old ocean roars,\n", + "And heaves huge surges to the trembling shores;\n", + "The groaning banks are burst with bellowing sound,\n", + "The rocks remurmur and the deeps rebound.\n", + "At length the tumult sinks, the noises cease,\n", + "And a still silence lulls the camp to peace.\n", + "Thersites only clamour’d in the throng,\n", + "Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue:\n", + "Awed by no shame, by no respect controll’d,\n", + "In scandal busy, in reproaches bold:\n", + "With witty malice studious to defame,\n", + "Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim:—\n", + "But chief he gloried with licentious style\n", + "To lash the great, and monarchs to revile.\n", + "His figure such as might his soul proclaim;\n", + "One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame:\n", + "His mountain shoulders half his breast o’erspread,\n", + "Thin hairs bestrew’d his long misshapen head.\n", + "Spleen to mankind his envious heart possess’d,\n", + "And much he hated all, but most the best:\n", + "Ulysses or Achilles still his theme;\n", + "But royal scandal his delight supreme,\n", + "Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek,\n", + "Vex’d when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak.\n", + "Sharp was his voice; which in the shrillest tone,\n", + "Thus with injurious taunts attack’d the throne.\n", + "\n", + "“Amidst the glories of so bright a reign,\n", + "What moves the great Atrides to complain?\n", + "’Tis thine whate’er the warrior’s breast inflames,\n", + "The golden spoil, and thine the lovely dames.\n", + "With all the wealth our wars and blood bestow,\n", + "Thy tents are crowded and thy chests o’erflow.\n", + "Thus at full ease in heaps of riches roll’d,\n", + "What grieves the monarch? Is it thirst of gold?\n", + "Say, shall we march with our unconquer’d powers\n", + "(The Greeks and I) to Ilion’s hostile towers,\n", + "And bring the race of royal bastards here,\n", + "For Troy to ransom at a price too dear?\n", + "But safer plunder thy own host supplies;\n", + "Say, wouldst thou seize some valiant leader’s prize?\n", + "Or, if thy heart to generous love be led,\n", + "Some captive fair, to bless thy kingly bed?\n", + "Whate’er our master craves submit we must,\n", + "Plagued with his pride, or punish’d for his lust.\n", + "Oh women of Achaia; men no more!\n", + "Hence let us fly, and let him waste his store\n", + "In loves and pleasures on the Phrygian shore.\n", + "We may be wanted on some busy day,\n", + "When Hector comes: so great Achilles may:\n", + "From him he forced the prize we jointly gave,\n", + "From him, the fierce, the fearless, and the brave:\n", + "And durst he, as he ought, resent that wrong,\n", + "This mighty tyrant were no tyrant long.”\n", + "\n", + "Fierce from his seat at this Ulysses springs,[87]\n", + "In generous vengeance of the king of kings.\n", + "With indignation sparkling in his eyes,\n", + "He views the wretch, and sternly thus replies:\n", + "\n", + "“Peace, factious monster, born to vex the state,\n", + "With wrangling talents form’d for foul debate:\n", + "Curb that impetuous tongue, nor rashly vain,\n", + "And singly mad, asperse the sovereign reign.\n", + "Have we not known thee, slave! of all our host,\n", + "The man who acts the least, upbraids the most?\n", + "Think not the Greeks to shameful flight to bring,\n", + "Nor let those lips profane the name of king.\n", + "For our return we trust the heavenly powers;\n", + "Be that their care; to fight like men be ours.\n", + "But grant the host with wealth the general load,\n", + "Except detraction, what hast thou bestow’d?\n", + "Suppose some hero should his spoils resign,\n", + "Art thou that hero, could those spoils be thine?\n", + "Gods! let me perish on this hateful shore,\n", + "And let these eyes behold my son no more;\n", + "If, on thy next offence, this hand forbear\n", + "To strip those arms thou ill deserv’st to wear,\n", + "Expel the council where our princes meet,\n", + "And send thee scourged and howling through the fleet.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and cowering as the dastard bends,\n", + "The weighty sceptre on his back descends.[88]\n", + "On the round bunch the bloody tumours rise:\n", + "The tears spring starting from his haggard eyes;\n", + "Trembling he sat, and shrunk in abject fears,\n", + "From his vile visage wiped the scalding tears;\n", + "While to his neighbour each express’d his thought:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye gods! what wonders has Ulysses wrought!\n", + "What fruits his conduct and his courage yield!\n", + "Great in the council, glorious in the field.\n", + "Generous he rises in the crown’s defence,\n", + "To curb the factious tongue of insolence,\n", + "Such just examples on offenders shown,\n", + "Sedition silence, and assert the throne.”\n", + "\n", + "’Twas thus the general voice the hero praised,\n", + "Who, rising, high the imperial sceptre raised:\n", + "The blue-eyed Pallas, his celestial friend,\n", + "(In form a herald,) bade the crowds attend.\n", + "The expecting crowds in still attention hung,\n", + "To hear the wisdom of his heavenly tongue.\n", + "Then deeply thoughtful, pausing ere he spoke,\n", + "His silence thus the prudent hero broke:\n", + "\n", + "“Unhappy monarch! whom the Grecian race\n", + "With shame deserting, heap with vile disgrace.\n", + "Not such at Argos was their generous vow:\n", + "Once all their voice, but ah! forgotten now:\n", + "Ne’er to return, was then the common cry,\n", + "Till Troy’s proud structures should in ashes lie.\n", + "Behold them weeping for their native shore;\n", + "What could their wives or helpless children more?\n", + "What heart but melts to leave the tender train,\n", + "And, one short month, endure the wintry main?\n", + "Few leagues removed, we wish our peaceful seat,\n", + "When the ship tosses, and the tempests beat:\n", + "Then well may this long stay provoke their tears,\n", + "The tedious length of nine revolving years.\n", + "Not for their grief the Grecian host I blame;\n", + "But vanquish’d! baffled! oh, eternal shame!\n", + "Expect the time to Troy’s destruction given.\n", + "And try the faith of Chalcas and of heaven.\n", + "What pass’d at Aulis, Greece can witness bear,[89]\n", + "And all who live to breathe this Phrygian air.\n", + "Beside a fountain’s sacred brink we raised\n", + "Our verdant altars, and the victims blazed:\n", + "’Twas where the plane-tree spread its shades around,\n", + "The altars heaved; and from the crumbling ground\n", + "A mighty dragon shot, of dire portent;\n", + "From Jove himself the dreadful sign was sent.\n", + "Straight to the tree his sanguine spires he roll’d,\n", + "And curl’d around in many a winding fold;\n", + "The topmost branch a mother-bird possess’d;\n", + "Eight callow infants fill’d the mossy nest;\n", + "Herself the ninth; the serpent, as he hung,\n", + "Stretch’d his black jaws and crush’d the crying young;\n", + "While hovering near, with miserable moan,\n", + "The drooping mother wail’d her children gone.\n", + "The mother last, as round the nest she flew,\n", + "Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew;\n", + "Nor long survived: to marble turn’d, he stands\n", + "A lasting prodigy on Aulis’ sands.\n", + "Such was the will of Jove; and hence we dare\n", + "Trust in his omen, and support the war.\n", + "For while around we gazed with wondering eyes,\n", + "And trembling sought the powers with sacrifice,\n", + "Full of his god, the reverend Chalcas cried,[90]\n", + "‘Ye Grecian warriors! lay your fears aside.\n", + "This wondrous signal Jove himself displays,\n", + "Of long, long labours, but eternal praise.\n", + "As many birds as by the snake were slain,\n", + "So many years the toils of Greece remain;\n", + "But wait the tenth, for Ilion’s fall decreed:’\n", + "Thus spoke the prophet, thus the Fates succeed.\n", + "Obey, ye Grecians! with submission wait,\n", + "Nor let your flight avert the Trojan fate.”\n", + "He said: the shores with loud applauses sound,\n", + "The hollow ships each deafening shout rebound.\n", + "Then Nestor thus—“These vain debates forbear,\n", + "Ye talk like children, not like heroes dare.\n", + "Where now are all your high resolves at last?\n", + "Your leagues concluded, your engagements past?\n", + "Vow’d with libations and with victims then,\n", + "Now vanish’d like their smoke: the faith of men!\n", + "While useless words consume the unactive hours,\n", + "No wonder Troy so long resists our powers.\n", + "Rise, great Atrides! and with courage sway;\n", + "We march to war, if thou direct the way.\n", + "But leave the few that dare resist thy laws,\n", + "The mean deserters of the Grecian cause,\n", + "To grudge the conquests mighty Jove prepares,\n", + "And view with envy our successful wars.\n", + "On that great day, when first the martial train,\n", + "Big with the fate of Ilion, plough’d the main,\n", + "Jove, on the right, a prosperous signal sent,\n", + "And thunder rolling shook the firmament.\n", + "Encouraged hence, maintain the glorious strife,\n", + "Till every soldier grasp a Phrygian wife,\n", + "Till Helen’s woes at full revenged appear,\n", + "And Troy’s proud matrons render tear for tear.\n", + "Before that day, if any Greek invite\n", + "His country’s troops to base, inglorious flight,\n", + "Stand forth that Greek! and hoist his sail to fly,\n", + "And die the dastard first, who dreads to die.\n", + "But now, O monarch! all thy chiefs advise:[91]\n", + "Nor what they offer, thou thyself despise.\n", + "Among those counsels, let not mine be vain;\n", + "In tribes and nations to divide thy train:\n", + "His separate troops let every leader call,\n", + "Each strengthen each, and all encourage all.\n", + "What chief, or soldier, of the numerous band,\n", + "Or bravely fights, or ill obeys command,\n", + "When thus distinct they war, shall soon be known\n", + "And what the cause of Ilion not o’erthrown;\n", + "If fate resists, or if our arms are slow,\n", + "If gods above prevent, or men below.”\n", + "\n", + "To him the king: “How much thy years excel\n", + "In arts of counsel, and in speaking well!\n", + "O would the gods, in love to Greece, decree\n", + "But ten such sages as they grant in thee;\n", + "Such wisdom soon should Priam’s force destroy,\n", + "And soon should fall the haughty towers of Troy!\n", + "But Jove forbids, who plunges those he hates\n", + "In fierce contention and in vain debates:\n", + "Now great Achilles from our aid withdraws,\n", + "By me provoked; a captive maid the cause:\n", + "If e’er as friends we join, the Trojan wall\n", + "Must shake, and heavy will the vengeance fall!\n", + "But now, ye warriors, take a short repast;\n", + "And, well refresh’d, to bloody conflict haste.\n", + "His sharpen’d spear let every Grecian wield,\n", + "And every Grecian fix his brazen shield,\n", + "Let all excite the fiery steeds of war,\n", + "And all for combat fit the rattling car.\n", + "This day, this dreadful day, let each contend;\n", + "No rest, no respite, till the shades descend;\n", + "Till darkness, or till death, shall cover all:\n", + "Let the war bleed, and let the mighty fall;\n", + "Till bathed in sweat be every manly breast,\n", + "With the huge shield each brawny arm depress’d,\n", + "Each aching nerve refuse the lance to throw,\n", + "And each spent courser at the chariot blow.\n", + "Who dares, inglorious, in his ships to stay,\n", + "Who dares to tremble on this signal day;\n", + "That wretch, too mean to fall by martial power,\n", + "The birds shall mangle, and the dogs devour.”\n", + "\n", + "The monarch spoke; and straight a murmur rose,\n", + "Loud as the surges when the tempest blows,\n", + "That dash’d on broken rocks tumultuous roar,\n", + "And foam and thunder on the stony shore.\n", + "Straight to the tents the troops dispersing bend,\n", + "The fires are kindled, and the smokes ascend;\n", + "With hasty feasts they sacrifice, and pray,\n", + "To avert the dangers of the doubtful day.\n", + "A steer of five years’ age, large limb’d, and fed,[92]\n", + "To Jove’s high altars Agamemnon led:\n", + "There bade the noblest of the Grecian peers;\n", + "And Nestor first, as most advanced in years.\n", + "Next came Idomeneus,[93] and Tydeus’ son,[94]\n", + "Ajax the less, and Ajax Telamon;[95]\n", + "Then wise Ulysses in his rank was placed;\n", + "And Menelaus came, unbid, the last.[96]\n", + "The chiefs surround the destined beast, and take\n", + "The sacred offering of the salted cake:\n", + "When thus the king prefers his solemn prayer;\n", + "“O thou! whose thunder rends the clouded air,\n", + "Who in the heaven of heavens hast fixed thy throne,\n", + "Supreme of gods! unbounded, and alone!\n", + "Hear! and before the burning sun descends,\n", + "Before the night her gloomy veil extends,\n", + "Low in the dust be laid yon hostile spires,\n", + "Be Priam’s palace sunk in Grecian fires.\n", + "In Hector’s breast be plunged this shining sword,\n", + "And slaughter’d heroes groan around their lord!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus prayed the chief: his unavailing prayer\n", + "Great Jove refused, and toss’d in empty air:\n", + "The God averse, while yet the fumes arose,\n", + "Prepared new toils, and doubled woes on woes.\n", + "Their prayers perform’d the chiefs the rite pursue,\n", + "The barley sprinkled, and the victim slew.\n", + "The limbs they sever from the inclosing hide,\n", + "The thighs, selected to the gods, divide.\n", + "On these, in double cauls involved with art,\n", + "The choicest morsels lie from every part,\n", + "From the cleft wood the crackling flames aspire\n", + "While the fat victims feed the sacred fire.\n", + "The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress’d\n", + "The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest;\n", + "Then spread the tables, the repast prepare,\n", + "Each takes his seat, and each receives his share.\n", + "Soon as the rage of hunger was suppress’d,\n", + "The generous Nestor thus the prince address’d.\n", + "\n", + "“Now bid thy heralds sound the loud alarms,\n", + "And call the squadrons sheathed in brazen arms;\n", + "Now seize the occasion, now the troops survey,\n", + "And lead to war when heaven directs the way.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; the monarch issued his commands;\n", + "Straight the loud heralds call the gathering bands;\n", + "The chiefs inclose their king; the hosts divide,\n", + "In tribes and nations rank’d on either side.\n", + "High in the midst the blue-eyed virgin flies;\n", + "From rank to rank she darts her ardent eyes;\n", + "The dreadful ægis, Jove’s immortal shield,\n", + "Blazed on her arm, and lighten’d all the field:\n", + "Round the vast orb a hundred serpents roll’d,\n", + "Form’d the bright fringe, and seem’d to burn in gold,\n", + "With this each Grecian’s manly breast she warms,\n", + "Swells their bold hearts, and strings their nervous arms,\n", + "No more they sigh, inglorious, to return,\n", + "But breathe revenge, and for the combat burn.\n", + "\n", + "As on some mountain, through the lofty grove,\n", + "The crackling flames ascend, and blaze above;\n", + "The fires expanding, as the winds arise,\n", + "Shoot their long beams, and kindle half the skies:\n", + "So from the polish’d arms, and brazen shields,\n", + "A gleamy splendour flash’d along the fields.\n", + "Not less their number than the embodied cranes,\n", + "Or milk-white swans in Asius’ watery plains.\n", + "That, o’er the windings of Cayster’s springs,[97]\n", + "Stretch their long necks, and clap their rustling wings,\n", + "Now tower aloft, and course in airy rounds,\n", + "Now light with noise; with noise the field resounds.\n", + "Thus numerous and confused, extending wide,\n", + "The legions crowd Scamander’s flowery side;[98]\n", + "With rushing troops the plains are cover’d o’er,\n", + "And thundering footsteps shake the sounding shore.\n", + "Along the river’s level meads they stand,\n", + "Thick as in spring the flowers adorn the land,\n", + "Or leaves the trees; or thick as insects play,\n", + "The wandering nation of a summer’s day:\n", + "That, drawn by milky steams, at evening hours,\n", + "In gather’d swarms surround the rural bowers;\n", + "From pail to pail with busy murmur run\n", + "The gilded legions, glittering in the sun.\n", + "So throng’d, so close, the Grecian squadrons stood\n", + "In radiant arms, and thirst for Trojan blood.\n", + "Each leader now his scatter’d force conjoins\n", + "In close array, and forms the deepening lines.\n", + "Not with more ease the skilful shepherd-swain\n", + "Collects his flocks from thousands on the plain.\n", + "The king of kings, majestically tall,\n", + "Towers o’er his armies, and outshines them all;\n", + "Like some proud bull, that round the pastures leads\n", + "His subject herds, the monarch of the meads,\n", + "Great as the gods, the exalted chief was seen,\n", + "His strength like Neptune, and like Mars his mien;[99]\n", + "Jove o’er his eyes celestial glories spread,\n", + "And dawning conquest played around his head.\n", + "\n", + "Say, virgins, seated round the throne divine,\n", + "All-knowing goddesses! immortal nine![100]\n", + "Since earth’s wide regions, heaven’s umneasur’d height,\n", + "And hell’s abyss, hide nothing from your sight,\n", + "(We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below,\n", + "But guess by rumour, and but boast we know,)\n", + "O say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame,\n", + "Or urged by wrongs, to Troy’s destruction came.\n", + "To count them all, demands a thousand tongues,\n", + "A throat of brass, and adamantine lungs.\n", + "Daughters of Jove, assist! inspired by you\n", + "The mighty labour dauntless I pursue;\n", + "What crowded armies, from what climes they bring,\n", + "Their names, their numbers, and their chiefs I sing.\n", + "\n", + "THE CATALOGUE OF THE SHIPS.[101]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] NEPTUNE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The hardy warriors whom Bœotia bred,\n", + "Penelius, Leitus, Prothoënor, led:\n", + "With these Arcesilaus and Clonius stand,\n", + "Equal in arms, and equal in command.\n", + "These head the troops that rocky Aulis yields,\n", + "And Eteon’s hills, and Hyrie’s watery fields,\n", + "And Schoenos, Scholos, Græa near the main,\n", + "And Mycalessia’s ample piny plain;\n", + "Those who in Peteon or Ilesion dwell,\n", + "Or Harma where Apollo’s prophet fell;\n", + "Heleon and Hylè, which the springs o’erflow;\n", + "And Medeon lofty, and Ocalea low;\n", + "Or in the meads of Haliartus stray,\n", + "Or Thespia sacred to the god of day:\n", + "Onchestus, Neptune’s celebrated groves;\n", + "Copæ, and Thisbè, famed for silver doves;\n", + "For flocks Erythræ, Glissa for the vine;\n", + "Platea green, and Nysa the divine;\n", + "And they whom Thebé’s well-built walls inclose,\n", + "Where Mydè, Eutresis, Coronè, rose;\n", + "And Arnè rich, with purple harvests crown’d;\n", + "And Anthedon, Bœotia’s utmost bound.\n", + "Full fifty ships they send, and each conveys\n", + "Twice sixty warriors through the foaming seas.[102]\n", + "\n", + "To these succeed Aspledon’s martial train,\n", + "Who plough the spacious Orchomenian plain.\n", + "Two valiant brothers rule the undaunted throng,\n", + "Iälmen and Ascalaphus the strong:\n", + "Sons of Astyochè, the heavenly fair,\n", + "Whose virgin charms subdued the god of war:\n", + "(In Actor’s court as she retired to rest,\n", + "The strength of Mars the blushing maid compress’d)\n", + "Their troops in thirty sable vessels sweep,\n", + "With equal oars, the hoarse-resounding deep.\n", + "\n", + "The Phocians next in forty barks repair;\n", + "Epistrophus and Schedius head the war:\n", + "From those rich regions where Cephisus leads\n", + "His silver current through the flowery meads;\n", + "From Panopëa, Chrysa the divine,\n", + "Where Anemoria’s stately turrets shine,\n", + "Where Pytho, Daulis, Cyparissus stood,\n", + "And fair Lilæ views the rising flood.\n", + "These, ranged in order on the floating tide,\n", + "Close, on the left, the bold Bœotians’ side.\n", + "\n", + "Fierce Ajax led the Locrian squadrons on,\n", + "Ajax the less, Oïleus’ valiant son;\n", + "Skill’d to direct the flying dart aright;\n", + "Swift in pursuit, and active in the fight.\n", + "Him, as their chief, the chosen troops attend,\n", + "Which Bessa, Thronus, and rich Cynos send;\n", + "Opus, Calliarus, and Scarphe’s bands;\n", + "And those who dwell where pleasing Augia stands,\n", + "And where Boägrius floats the lowly lands,\n", + "Or in fair Tarphe’s sylvan seats reside:\n", + "In forty vessels cut the yielding tide.\n", + "\n", + "Eubœa next her martial sons prepares,\n", + "And sends the brave Abantes to the wars:\n", + "Breathing revenge, in arms they take their way\n", + "From Chalcis’ walls, and strong Eretria;\n", + "The Isteian fields for generous vines renown’d,\n", + "The fair Caristos, and the Styrian ground;\n", + "Where Dios from her towers o’erlooks the plain,\n", + "And high Cerinthus views the neighbouring main.\n", + "Down their broad shoulders falls a length of hair;\n", + "Their hands dismiss not the long lance in air;\n", + "But with protended spears in fighting fields\n", + "Pierce the tough corslets and the brazen shields.\n", + "Twice twenty ships transport the warlike bands,\n", + "Which bold Elphenor, fierce in arms, commands.\n", + "\n", + "Full fifty more from Athens stem the main,\n", + "Led by Menestheus through the liquid plain.\n", + "(Athens the fair, where great Erectheus sway’d,\n", + "That owed his nurture to the blue-eyed maid,\n", + "But from the teeming furrow took his birth,\n", + "The mighty offspring of the foodful earth.\n", + "Him Pallas placed amidst her wealthy fane,\n", + "Adored with sacrifice and oxen slain;\n", + "Where, as the years revolve, her altars blaze,\n", + "And all the tribes resound the goddess’ praise.)\n", + "No chief like thee, Menestheus! Greece could yield,\n", + "To marshal armies in the dusty field,\n", + "The extended wings of battle to display,\n", + "Or close the embodied host in firm array.\n", + "Nestor alone, improved by length of days,\n", + "For martial conduct bore an equal praise.\n", + "\n", + "With these appear the Salaminian bands,\n", + "Whom the gigantic Telamon commands;\n", + "In twelve black ships to Troy they steer their course,\n", + "And with the great Athenians join their force.\n", + "\n", + "Next move to war the generous Argive train,\n", + "From high Trœzenè, and Maseta’s plain,\n", + "And fair Ægina circled by the main:\n", + "Whom strong Tyrinthe’s lofty walls surround,\n", + "And Epidaure with viny harvests crown’d:\n", + "And where fair Asinen and Hermoin show\n", + "Their cliffs above, and ample bay below.\n", + "These by the brave Euryalus were led,\n", + "Great Sthenelus, and greater Diomed;\n", + "But chief Tydides bore the sovereign sway:\n", + "In fourscore barks they plough the watery way.\n", + "\n", + "The proud Mycenè arms her martial powers,\n", + "Cleonè, Corinth, with imperial towers,[103]\n", + "Fair Aræthyrea, Ornia’s fruitful plain,\n", + "And Ægion, and Adrastus’ ancient reign;\n", + "And those who dwell along the sandy shore,\n", + "And where Pellenè yields her fleecy store,\n", + "Where Helicè and Hyperesia lie,\n", + "And Gonoëssa’s spires salute the sky.\n", + "Great Agamemnon rules the numerous band,\n", + "A hundred vessels in long order stand,\n", + "And crowded nations wait his dread command.\n", + "High on the deck the king of men appears,\n", + "And his refulgent arms in triumph wears;\n", + "Proud of his host, unrivall’d in his reign,\n", + "In silent pomp he moves along the main.\n", + "\n", + "His brother follows, and to vengeance warms\n", + "The hardy Spartans, exercised in arms:\n", + "Phares and Brysia’s valiant troops, and those\n", + "Whom Lacedæmon’s lofty hills inclose;\n", + "Or Messé’s towers for silver doves renown’d,\n", + "Amyclæ, Laäs, Augia’s happy ground,\n", + "And those whom Œtylos’ low walls contain,\n", + "And Helos, on the margin of the main.\n", + "These, o’er the bending ocean, Helen’s cause,\n", + "In sixty ships with Menelaus draws:\n", + "Eager and loud from man to man he flies,\n", + "Revenge and fury flaming in his eyes;\n", + "While vainly fond, in fancy oft he hears\n", + "The fair one’s grief, and sees her falling tears.\n", + "\n", + "In ninety sail, from Pylos’ sandy coast,\n", + "Nestor the sage conducts his chosen host:\n", + "From Amphigenia’s ever-fruitful land,\n", + "Where Æpy high, and little Pteleon stand;\n", + "Where beauteous Arene her structures shows,\n", + "And Thryon’s walls Alpheus’ streams inclose:\n", + "And Dorion, famed for Thamyris’ disgrace,\n", + "Superior once of all the tuneful race,\n", + "Till, vain of mortals’ empty praise, he strove\n", + "To match the seed of cloud-compelling Jove!\n", + "Too daring bard! whose unsuccessful pride\n", + "The immortal Muses in their art defied.\n", + "The avenging Muses of the light of day\n", + "Deprived his eyes, and snatch’d his voice away;\n", + "No more his heavenly voice was heard to sing,\n", + "His hand no more awaked the silver string.\n", + "\n", + "Where under high Cyllenè, crown’d with wood,\n", + "The shaded tomb of old Æpytus stood;\n", + "From Ripè, Stratie, Tegea’s bordering towns,\n", + "The Phenean fields, and Orchomenian downs,\n", + "Where the fat herds in plenteous pasture rove;\n", + "And Stymphelus with her surrounding grove;\n", + "Parrhasia, on her snowy cliffs reclined,\n", + "And high Enispè shook by wintry wind,\n", + "And fair Mantinea’s ever-pleasing site;\n", + "In sixty sail the Arcadian bands unite.\n", + "Bold Agapenor, glorious at their head,\n", + "(Ancæus’ son) the mighty squadron led.\n", + "Their ships, supplied by Agamemnon’s care,\n", + "Through roaring seas the wondering warriors bear;\n", + "The first to battle on the appointed plain,\n", + "But new to all the dangers of the main.\n", + "\n", + "Those, where fair Elis and Buprasium join;\n", + "Whom Hyrmin, here, and Myrsinus confine,\n", + "And bounded there, where o’er the valleys rose\n", + "The Olenian rock; and where Alisium flows;\n", + "Beneath four chiefs (a numerous army) came:\n", + "The strength and glory of the Epean name.\n", + "In separate squadrons these their train divide,\n", + "Each leads ten vessels through the yielding tide.\n", + "One was Amphimachus, and Thalpius one;\n", + "(Eurytus’ this, and that Teätus’ son;)\n", + "Diores sprung from Amarynceus’ line;\n", + "And great Polyxenus, of force divine.\n", + "\n", + "But those who view fair Elis o’er the seas\n", + "From the blest islands of the Echinades,\n", + "In forty vessels under Meges move,\n", + "Begot by Phyleus, the beloved of Jove:\n", + "To strong Dulichium from his sire he fled,\n", + "And thence to Troy his hardy warriors led.\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses follow’d through the watery road,\n", + "A chief, in wisdom equal to a god.\n", + "With those whom Cephalenia’s line inclosed,\n", + "Or till their fields along the coast opposed;\n", + "Or where fair Ithaca o’erlooks the floods,\n", + "Where high Neritos shakes his waving woods,\n", + "Where Ægilipa’s rugged sides are seen,\n", + "Crocylia rocky, and Zacynthus green.\n", + "These in twelve galleys with vermilion prores,\n", + "Beneath his conduct sought the Phrygian shores.\n", + "\n", + "Thoas came next, Andræmon’s valiant son,\n", + "From Pleuron’s walls, and chalky Calydon,\n", + "And rough Pylene, and the Olenian steep,\n", + "And Chalcis, beaten by the rolling deep.\n", + "He led the warriors from the Ætolian shore,\n", + "For now the sons of Œneus were no more!\n", + "The glories of the mighty race were fled!\n", + "Œneus himself, and Meleager dead!\n", + "To Thoas’ care now trust the martial train,\n", + "His forty vessels follow through the main.\n", + "\n", + "Next, eighty barks the Cretan king commands,\n", + "Of Gnossus, Lyctus, and Gortyna’s bands;\n", + "And those who dwell where Rhytion’s domes arise,\n", + "Or white Lycastus glitters to the skies,\n", + "Or where by Phæstus silver Jardan runs;\n", + "Crete’s hundred cities pour forth all her sons.\n", + "These march’d, Idomeneus, beneath thy care,\n", + "And Merion, dreadful as the god of war.\n", + "\n", + "Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules,\n", + "Led nine swift vessels through the foamy seas,\n", + "From Rhodes, with everlasting sunshine bright,\n", + "Jalyssus, Lindus, and Camirus white.\n", + "His captive mother fierce Alcides bore\n", + "From Ephyr’s walls and Sellè’s winding shore,\n", + "Where mighty towns in ruins spread the plain,\n", + "And saw their blooming warriors early slain.\n", + "The hero, when to manly years he grew,\n", + "Alcides’ uncle, old Licymnius, slew;\n", + "For this, constrain’d to quit his native place,\n", + "And shun the vengeance of the Herculean race,\n", + "A fleet he built, and with a numerous train\n", + "Of willing exiles wander’d o’er the main;\n", + "Where, many seas and many sufferings past,\n", + "On happy Rhodes the chief arrived at last:\n", + "There in three tribes divides his native band,\n", + "And rules them peaceful in a foreign land;\n", + "Increased and prosper’d in their new abodes\n", + "By mighty Jove, the sire of men and gods;\n", + "With joy they saw the growing empire rise,\n", + "And showers of wealth descending from the skies.\n", + "\n", + "Three ships with Nireus sought the Trojan shore,\n", + "Nireus, whom Agäle to Charopus bore,\n", + "Nireus, in faultless shape and blooming grace,\n", + "The loveliest youth of all the Grecian race;[104]\n", + "Pelides only match’d his early charms;\n", + "But few his troops, and small his strength in arms.\n", + "\n", + "Next thirty galleys cleave the liquid plain,\n", + "Of those Calydnæ’s sea-girt isles contain;\n", + "With them the youth of Nisyrus repair,\n", + "Casus the strong, and Crapathus the fair;\n", + "Cos, where Eurypylus possess’d the sway,\n", + "Till great Alcides made the realms obey:\n", + "These Antiphus and bold Phidippus bring,\n", + "Sprung from the god by Thessalus the king.\n", + "\n", + "Now, Muse, recount Pelasgic Argos’ powers,\n", + "From Alos, Alopé, and Trechin’s towers:\n", + "From Phthia’s spacious vales; and Hella, bless’d\n", + "With female beauty far beyond the rest.\n", + "Full fifty ships beneath Achilles’ care,\n", + "The Achaians, Myrmidons, Hellenians bear;\n", + "Thessalians all, though various in their name;\n", + "The same their nation, and their chief the same.\n", + "But now inglorious, stretch’d along the shore,\n", + "They hear the brazen voice of war no more;\n", + "No more the foe they face in dire array:\n", + "Close in his fleet the angry leader lay;\n", + "Since fair Briseïs from his arms was torn,\n", + "The noblest spoil from sack’d Lyrnessus borne,\n", + "Then, when the chief the Theban walls o’erthrew,\n", + "And the bold sons of great Evenus slew.\n", + "There mourn’d Achilles, plunged in depth of care,\n", + "But soon to rise in slaughter, blood, and war.\n", + "\n", + "To these the youth of Phylacè succeed,\n", + "Itona, famous for her fleecy breed,\n", + "And grassy Pteleon deck’d with cheerful greens,\n", + "The bowers of Ceres, and the sylvan scenes.\n", + "Sweet Pyrrhasus, with blooming flowerets crown’d,\n", + "And Antron’s watery dens, and cavern’d ground.\n", + "These own’d, as chief, Protesilas the brave,\n", + "Who now lay silent in the gloomy grave:\n", + "The first who boldly touch’d the Trojan shore,\n", + "And dyed a Phrygian lance with Grecian gore;\n", + "There lies, far distant from his native plain;\n", + "Unfinish’d his proud palaces remain,\n", + "And his sad consort beats her breast in vain.\n", + "His troops in forty ships Podarces led,\n", + "Iphiclus’ son, and brother to the dead;\n", + "Nor he unworthy to command the host;\n", + "Yet still they mourn’d their ancient leader lost.\n", + "\n", + "The men who Glaphyra’s fair soil partake,\n", + "Where hills incircle Bœbe’s lowly lake,\n", + "Where Phære hears the neighbouring waters fall,\n", + "Or proud Iölcus lifts her airy wall,\n", + "In ten black ships embark’d for Ilion’s shore,\n", + "With bold Eumelus, whom Alcestè bore:\n", + "All Pelias’ race Alcestè far outshined,\n", + "The grace and glory of the beauteous kind,\n", + "\n", + "The troops Methonè or Thaumacia yields,\n", + "Olizon’s rocks, or Melibœa’s fields,\n", + "With Philoctetes sail’d whose matchless art\n", + "From the tough bow directs the feather’d dart.\n", + "Seven were his ships; each vessel fifty row,\n", + "Skill’d in his science of the dart and bow.\n", + "But he lay raging on the Lemnian ground,\n", + "A poisonous hydra gave the burning wound;\n", + "There groan’d the chief in agonizing pain,\n", + "Whom Greece at length shall wish, nor wish in vain.\n", + "His forces Medon led from Lemnos’ shore,\n", + "Oïleus’ son, whom beauteous Rhena bore.\n", + "\n", + "The Œchalian race, in those high towers contain’d\n", + "Where once Eurytus in proud triumph reign’d,\n", + "Or where her humbler turrets Tricca rears,\n", + "Or where Ithome, rough with rocks, appears,\n", + "In thirty sail the sparkling waves divide,\n", + "Which Podalirius and Machaon guide.\n", + "To these his skill their parent-god imparts,\n", + "Divine professors of the healing arts.\n", + "\n", + "The bold Ormenian and Asterian bands\n", + "In forty barks Eurypylus commands.\n", + "Where Titan hides his hoary head in snow,\n", + "And where Hyperia’s silver fountains flow.\n", + "Thy troops, Argissa, Polypœtes leads,\n", + "And Eleon, shelter’d by Olympus’ shades,\n", + "Gyrtonè’s warriors; and where Orthè lies,\n", + "And Oloösson’s chalky cliffs arise.\n", + "Sprung from Pirithous of immortal race,\n", + "The fruit of fair Hippodame’s embrace,\n", + "(That day, when hurl’d from Pelion’s cloudy head,\n", + "To distant dens the shaggy Centaurs fled)\n", + "With Polypœtes join’d in equal sway\n", + "Leonteus leads, and forty ships obey.\n", + "\n", + "In twenty sail the bold Perrhæbians came\n", + "From Cyphus, Guneus was their leader’s name.\n", + "With these the Enians join’d, and those who freeze\n", + "Where cold Dodona lifts her holy trees;\n", + "Or where the pleasing Titaresius glides,\n", + "And into Peneus rolls his easy tides;\n", + "Yet o’er the silvery surface pure they flow,\n", + "The sacred stream unmix’d with streams below,\n", + "Sacred and awful! from the dark abodes\n", + "Styx pours them forth, the dreadful oath of gods!\n", + "\n", + "Last, under Prothous the Magnesians stood,\n", + "(Prothous the swift, of old Tenthredon’s blood;)\n", + "Who dwell where Pelion, crown’d with piny boughs,\n", + "Obscures the glade, and nods his shaggy brows;\n", + "Or where through flowery Tempe Peneus stray’d:\n", + "(The region stretch’d beneath his mighty shade:)\n", + "In forty sable barks they stemm’d the main;\n", + "Such were the chiefs, and such the Grecian train.\n", + "\n", + "Say next, O Muse! of all Achaia breeds,\n", + "Who bravest fought, or rein’d the noblest steeds?\n", + "Eumelus’ mares were foremost in the chase,\n", + "As eagles fleet, and of Pheretian race;\n", + "Bred where Pieria’s fruitful fountains flow,\n", + "And train’d by him who bears the silver bow.\n", + "Fierce in the fight their nostrils breathed a flame,\n", + "Their height, their colour, and their age the same;\n", + "O’er fields of death they whirl the rapid car,\n", + "And break the ranks, and thunder through the war.\n", + "Ajax in arms the first renown acquired,\n", + "While stern Achilles in his wrath retired:\n", + "(His was the strength that mortal might exceeds,\n", + "And his the unrivall’d race of heavenly steeds:)\n", + "But Thetis’ son now shines in arms no more;\n", + "His troops, neglected on the sandy shore.\n", + "In empty air their sportive javelins throw,\n", + "Or whirl the disk, or bend an idle bow:\n", + "Unstain’d with blood his cover’d chariots stand;\n", + "The immortal coursers graze along the strand;\n", + "But the brave chiefs the inglorious life deplored,\n", + "And, wandering o’er the camp, required their lord.\n", + "\n", + "Now, like a deluge, covering all around,\n", + "The shining armies sweep along the ground;\n", + "Swift as a flood of fire, when storms arise,\n", + "Floats the wild field, and blazes to the skies.\n", + "Earth groan’d beneath them; as when angry Jove\n", + "Hurls down the forky lightning from above,\n", + "On Arimé when he the thunder throws,\n", + "And fires Typhœus with redoubled blows,\n", + "Where Typhon, press’d beneath the burning load,\n", + "Still feels the fury of the avenging god.\n", + "\n", + "But various Iris, Jove’s commands to bear,\n", + "Speeds on the wings of winds through liquid air;\n", + "In Priam’s porch the Trojan chiefs she found,\n", + "The old consulting, and the youths around.\n", + "Polites’ shape, the monarch’s son, she chose,\n", + "Who from Æsetes’ tomb observed the foes,[105]\n", + "High on the mound; from whence in prospect lay\n", + "The fields, the tents, the navy, and the bay.\n", + "In this dissembled form, she hastes to bring\n", + "The unwelcome message to the Phrygian king.\n", + "\n", + "“Cease to consult, the time for action calls;\n", + "War, horrid war, approaches to your walls!\n", + "Assembled armies oft have I beheld;\n", + "But ne’er till now such numbers charged a field:\n", + "Thick as autumnal leaves or driving sand,\n", + "The moving squadrons blacken all the strand.\n", + "Thou, godlike Hector! all thy force employ,\n", + "Assemble all the united bands of Troy;\n", + "In just array let every leader call\n", + "The foreign troops: this day demands them all!”\n", + "\n", + "The voice divine the mighty chief alarms;\n", + "The council breaks, the warriors rush to arms.\n", + "The gates unfolding pour forth all their train,\n", + "Nations on nations fill the dusky plain,\n", + "Men, steeds, and chariots, shake the trembling ground:\n", + "The tumult thickens, and the skies resound.\n", + "\n", + "Amidst the plain, in sight of Ilion, stands\n", + "A rising mount, the work of human hands;\n", + "(This for Myrinne’s tomb the immortals know,\n", + "Though call’d Bateïa in the world below;)\n", + "Beneath their chiefs in martial order here,\n", + "The auxiliar troops and Trojan hosts appear.\n", + "\n", + "The godlike Hector, high above the rest,\n", + "Shakes his huge spear, and nods his plumy crest:\n", + "In throngs around his native bands repair,\n", + "And groves of lances glitter in the air.\n", + "\n", + "Divine Æneas brings the Dardan race,\n", + "Anchises’ son, by Venus’ stolen embrace,\n", + "Born in the shades of Ida’s secret grove;\n", + "(A mortal mixing with the queen of love;)\n", + "Archilochus and Acamas divide\n", + "The warrior’s toils, and combat by his side.\n", + "\n", + "Who fair Zeleia’s wealthy valleys till,[106]\n", + "Fast by the foot of Ida’s sacred hill,\n", + "Or drink, Æsepus, of thy sable flood,\n", + "Were led by Pandarus, of royal blood;\n", + "To whom his art Apollo deign’d to show,\n", + "Graced with the presents of his shafts and bow.\n", + "\n", + "From rich Apæsus and Adrestia’s towers,\n", + "High Teree’s summits, and Pityea’s bowers;\n", + "From these the congregated troops obey\n", + "Young Amphius and Adrastus’ equal sway;\n", + "Old Merops’ sons; whom, skill’d in fates to come,\n", + "The sire forewarn’d, and prophesied their doom:\n", + "Fate urged them on! the sire forewarn’d in vain,\n", + "They rush’d to war, and perish’d on the plain.\n", + "\n", + "From Practius’ stream, Percotè’s pasture lands,\n", + "And Sestos and Abydos’ neighbouring strands,\n", + "From great Arisba’s walls and Sellè’s coast,\n", + "Asius Hyrtacides conducts his host:\n", + "High on his car he shakes the flowing reins,\n", + "His fiery coursers thunder o’er the plains.\n", + "\n", + "The fierce Pelasgi next, in war renown’d,\n", + "March from Larissa’s ever-fertile ground:\n", + "In equal arms their brother leaders shine,\n", + "Hippothous bold, and Pyleus the divine.\n", + "\n", + "Next Acamas and Pyrous lead their hosts,\n", + "In dread array, from Thracia’s wintry coasts;\n", + "Round the bleak realms where Hellespontus roars,\n", + "And Boreas beats the hoarse-resounding shores.\n", + "\n", + "With great Euphemus the Ciconians move,\n", + "Sprung from Trœzenian Ceüs, loved by Jove.\n", + "\n", + "Pyræchmes the Pæonian troops attend,\n", + "Skill’d in the fight their crooked bows to bend;\n", + "From Axius’ ample bed he leads them on,\n", + "Axius, that laves the distant Amydon,\n", + "Axius, that swells with all his neighbouring rills,\n", + "And wide around the floating region fills.\n", + "\n", + "The Paphlagonians Pylæmenes rules,\n", + "Where rich Henetia breeds her savage mules,\n", + "Where Erythinus’ rising cliffs are seen,\n", + "Thy groves of box, Cytorus! ever green,\n", + "And where Ægialus and Cromna lie,\n", + "And lofty Sesamus invades the sky,\n", + "And where Parthenius, roll’d through banks of flowers,\n", + "Reflects her bordering palaces and bowers.\n", + "\n", + "Here march’d in arms the Halizonian band,\n", + "Whom Odius and Epistrophus command,\n", + "From those far regions where the sun refines\n", + "The ripening silver in Alybean mines.\n", + "\n", + "There mighty Chromis led the Mysian train,\n", + "And augur Ennomus, inspired in vain;\n", + "For stern Achilles lopp’d his sacred head,\n", + "Roll’d down Scamander with the vulgar dead.\n", + "\n", + "Phorcys and brave Ascanius here unite\n", + "The Ascanian Phrygians, eager for the fight.\n", + "\n", + "Of those who round Mæonia’s realms reside,\n", + "Or whom the vales in shades of Tmolus hide,\n", + "Mestles and Antiphus the charge partake,\n", + "Born on the banks of Gyges’ silent lake.\n", + "There, from the fields where wild Mæander flows,\n", + "High Mycale, and Latmos’ shady brows,\n", + "And proud Miletus, came the Carian throngs,\n", + "With mingled clamours and with barbarous tongues.[107]\n", + "Amphimachus and Naustes guide the train,\n", + "Naustes the bold, Amphimachus the vain,\n", + "Who, trick’d with gold, and glittering on his car,\n", + "Rode like a woman to the field of war.\n", + "Fool that he was! by fierce Achilles slain,\n", + "The river swept him to the briny main:\n", + "There whelm’d with waves the gaudy warrior lies\n", + "The valiant victor seized the golden prize.\n", + "\n", + "The forces last in fair array succeed,\n", + "Which blameless Glaucus and Sarpedon lead\n", + "The warlike bands that distant Lycia yields,\n", + "Where gulfy Xanthus foams along the fields.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK III.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE DUEL OF MENELAUS AND PARIS.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The armies being ready to engage, a single combat is agreed upon\n", + "between Menelaus and Paris (by the intervention of Hector) for the\n", + "determination of the war. Iris is sent to call Helen to behold the\n", + "fight. She leads her to the walls of Troy, where Priam sat with his\n", + "counsellers observing the Grecian leaders on the plain below, to whom\n", + "Helen gives an account of the chief of them. The kings on either part\n", + "take the solemn oath for the conditions of the combat. The duel ensues;\n", + "wherein Paris being overcome, he is snatched away in a cloud by Venus,\n", + "and transported to his apartment. She then calls Helen from the walls,\n", + "and brings the lovers together. Agamemnon, on the part of the Grecians,\n", + "demands the restoration of Helen, and the performance of the articles.\n", + " The three-and-twentieth day still continues throughout this book.\n", + " The scene is sometimes in the fields before Troy, and sometimes in\n", + " Troy itself.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus by their leaders’ care each martial band\n", + "Moves into ranks, and stretches o’er the land.\n", + "With shouts the Trojans, rushing from afar,\n", + "Proclaim their motions, and provoke the war.\n", + "So when inclement winters vex the plain\n", + "With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,\n", + "To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,[108]\n", + "With noise, and order, through the midway sky;\n", + "To pigmy nations wounds and death they bring,\n", + "And all the war descends upon the wing,\n", + "But silent, breathing rage, resolved and skill’d[109]\n", + "By mutual aids to fix a doubtful field,\n", + "Swift march the Greeks: the rapid dust around\n", + "Darkening arises from the labour’d ground.\n", + "Thus from his flaggy wings when Notus sheds\n", + "A night of vapours round the mountain heads,\n", + "Swift-gliding mists the dusky fields invade,\n", + "To thieves more grateful than the midnight shade;\n", + "While scarce the swains their feeding flocks survey,\n", + "Lost and confused amidst the thicken’d day:\n", + "So wrapp’d in gathering dust, the Grecian train,\n", + "A moving cloud, swept on, and hid the plain.\n", + "\n", + "Now front to front the hostile armies stand,\n", + "Eager of fight, and only wait command;\n", + "When, to the van, before the sons of fame\n", + "Whom Troy sent forth, the beauteous Paris came:\n", + "In form a god! the panther’s speckled hide\n", + "Flow’d o’er his armour with an easy pride:\n", + "His bended bow across his shoulders flung,\n", + "His sword beside him negligently hung;\n", + "Two pointed spears he shook with gallant grace,\n", + "And dared the bravest of the Grecian race.\n", + "\n", + "As thus, with glorious air and proud disdain,\n", + "He boldly stalk’d, the foremost on the plain,\n", + "Him Menelaus, loved of Mars, espies,\n", + "With heart elated, and with joyful eyes:\n", + "So joys a lion, if the branching deer,\n", + "Or mountain goat, his bulky prize, appear;\n", + "Eager he seizes and devours the slain,\n", + "Press’d by bold youths and baying dogs in vain.\n", + "Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound,\n", + "In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground\n", + "From his high chariot: him, approaching near,\n", + "The beauteous champion views with marks of fear,\n", + "Smit with a conscious sense, retires behind,\n", + "And shuns the fate he well deserved to find.\n", + "As when some shepherd, from the rustling trees[110]\n", + "Shot forth to view, a scaly serpent sees,\n", + "Trembling and pale, he starts with wild affright\n", + "And all confused precipitates his flight:\n", + "So from the king the shining warrior flies,\n", + "And plunged amid the thickest Trojans lies.\n", + "\n", + "As godlike Hector sees the prince retreat,\n", + "He thus upbraids him with a generous heat:\n", + "“Unhappy Paris![111] but to women brave!\n", + "So fairly form’d, and only to deceive!\n", + "Oh, hadst thou died when first thou saw’st the light,\n", + "Or died at least before thy nuptial rite!\n", + "A better fate than vainly thus to boast,\n", + "And fly, the scandal of thy Trojan host.\n", + "Gods! how the scornful Greeks exult to see\n", + "Their fears of danger undeceived in thee!\n", + "Thy figure promised with a martial air,\n", + "But ill thy soul supplies a form so fair.\n", + "In former days, in all thy gallant pride,\n", + "When thy tall ships triumphant stemm’d the tide,\n", + "When Greece beheld thy painted canvas flow,\n", + "And crowds stood wondering at the passing show,\n", + "Say, was it thus, with such a baffled mien,\n", + "You met the approaches of the Spartan queen,\n", + "Thus from her realm convey’d the beauteous prize,\n", + "And both her warlike lords outshined in Helen’s eyes?\n", + "This deed, thy foes’ delight, thy own disgrace,\n", + "Thy father’s grief, and ruin of thy race;\n", + "This deed recalls thee to the proffer’d fight;\n", + "Or hast thou injured whom thou dar’st not right?\n", + "Soon to thy cost the field would make thee know\n", + "Thou keep’st the consort of a braver foe.\n", + "Thy graceful form instilling soft desire,\n", + "Thy curling tresses, and thy silver lyre,\n", + "Beauty and youth; in vain to these you trust,\n", + "When youth and beauty shall be laid in dust:\n", + "Troy yet may wake, and one avenging blow\n", + "Crush the dire author of his country’s woe.”\n", + "\n", + "His silence here, with blushes, Paris breaks:\n", + "“’Tis just, my brother, what your anger speaks:\n", + "But who like thee can boast a soul sedate,\n", + "So firmly proof to all the shocks of fate?\n", + "Thy force, like steel, a temper’d hardness shows,\n", + "Still edged to wound, and still untired with blows,\n", + "Like steel, uplifted by some strenuous swain,\n", + "With falling woods to strew the wasted plain.\n", + "Thy gifts I praise; nor thou despise the charms\n", + "With which a lover golden Venus arms;\n", + "Soft moving speech, and pleasing outward show,\n", + "No wish can gain them, but the gods bestow.\n", + "Yet, would’st thou have the proffer’d combat stand,\n", + "The Greeks and Trojans seat on either hand;\n", + "Then let a midway space our hosts divide,\n", + "And, on that stage of war, the cause be tried:\n", + "By Paris there the Spartan king be fought,\n", + "For beauteous Helen and the wealth she brought;\n", + "And who his rival can in arms subdue,\n", + "His be the fair, and his the treasure too.\n", + "Thus with a lasting league your toils may cease,\n", + "And Troy possess her fertile fields in peace;\n", + "Thus may the Greeks review their native shore,\n", + "Much famed for generous steeds, for beauty more.”\n", + "\n", + "He said. The challenge Hector heard with joy,\n", + "Then with his spear restrain’d the youth of Troy,\n", + "Held by the midst, athwart; and near the foe\n", + "Advanced with steps majestically slow:\n", + "While round his dauntless head the Grecians pour\n", + "Their stones and arrows in a mingled shower.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the monarch, great Atrides, cried:\n", + "“Forbear, ye warriors! lay the darts aside:\n", + "A parley Hector asks, a message bears;\n", + "We know him by the various plume he wears.”\n", + "Awed by his high command the Greeks attend,\n", + "The tumult silence, and the fight suspend.\n", + "\n", + "While from the centre Hector rolls his eyes\n", + "On either host, and thus to both applies:\n", + "“Hear, all ye Trojan, all ye Grecian bands,\n", + "What Paris, author of the war, demands.\n", + "Your shining swords within the sheath restrain,\n", + "And pitch your lances in the yielding plain.\n", + "Here in the midst, in either army’s sight,\n", + "He dares the Spartan king to single fight;\n", + "And wills that Helen and the ravish’d spoil,\n", + "That caused the contest, shall reward the toil.\n", + "Let these the brave triumphant victor grace,\n", + "And different nations part in leagues of peace.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke: in still suspense on either side\n", + "Each army stood: the Spartan chief replied:\n", + "\n", + "“Me too, ye warriors, hear, whose fatal right\n", + "A world engages in the toils of fight.\n", + "To me the labour of the field resign;\n", + "Me Paris injured; all the war be mine.\n", + "Fall he that must, beneath his rival’s arms;\n", + "And live the rest, secure of future harms.\n", + "Two lambs, devoted by your country’s rite,\n", + "To earth a sable, to the sun a white,\n", + "Prepare, ye Trojans! while a third we bring\n", + "Select to Jove, the inviolable king.\n", + "Let reverend Priam in the truce engage,\n", + "And add the sanction of considerate age;\n", + "His sons are faithless, headlong in debate,\n", + "And youth itself an empty wavering state;\n", + "Cool age advances, venerably wise,\n", + "Turns on all hands its deep-discerning eyes;\n", + "Sees what befell, and what may yet befall,\n", + "Concludes from both, and best provides for all.\n", + "\n", + "The nations hear with rising hopes possess’d,\n", + "And peaceful prospects dawn in every breast.\n", + "Within the lines they drew their steeds around,\n", + "And from their chariots issued on the ground;\n", + "Next, all unbuckling the rich mail they wore,\n", + "Laid their bright arms along the sable shore.\n", + "On either side the meeting hosts are seen\n", + "With lances fix’d, and close the space between.\n", + "Two heralds now, despatch’d to Troy, invite\n", + "The Phrygian monarch to the peaceful rite.\n", + "\n", + "Talthybius hastens to the fleet, to bring\n", + "The lamb for Jove, the inviolable king.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime to beauteous Helen, from the skies\n", + "The various goddess of the rainbow flies:\n", + "(Like fair Laodice in form and face,\n", + "The loveliest nymph of Priam’s royal race:)\n", + "Her in the palace, at her loom she found;\n", + "The golden web her own sad story crown’d,\n", + "The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize)\n", + "And the dire triumphs of her fatal eyes.\n", + "To whom the goddess of the painted bow:\n", + "“Approach, and view the wondrous scene below![112]\n", + "Each hardy Greek, and valiant Trojan knight,\n", + "So dreadful late, and furious for the fight,\n", + "Now rest their spears, or lean upon their shields;\n", + "Ceased is the war, and silent all the fields.\n", + "Paris alone and Sparta’s king advance,\n", + "In single fight to toss the beamy lance;\n", + "Each met in arms, the fate of combat tries,\n", + "Thy love the motive, and thy charms the prize.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, the many-coloured maid inspires\n", + "Her husband’s love, and wakes her former fires;\n", + "Her country, parents, all that once were dear,\n", + "Rush to her thought, and force a tender tear,\n", + "O’er her fair face a snowy veil she threw,\n", + "And, softly sighing, from the loom withdrew.\n", + "Her handmaids, Clymene and Æthra, wait\n", + "Her silent footsteps to the Scæan gate.\n", + "\n", + "There sat the seniors of the Trojan race:\n", + "(Old Priam’s chiefs, and most in Priam’s grace,)\n", + "The king the first; Thymœtes at his side;\n", + "Lampus and Clytius, long in council tried;\n", + "Panthus, and Hicetaon, once the strong;\n", + "And next, the wisest of the reverend throng,\n", + "Antenor grave, and sage Ucalegon,\n", + "Lean’d on the walls and bask’d before the sun:\n", + "Chiefs, who no more in bloody fights engage,\n", + "But wise through time, and narrative with age,\n", + "In summer days, like grasshoppers rejoice,\n", + "A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.\n", + "These, when the Spartan queen approach’d the tower,\n", + "In secret own’d resistless beauty’s power:\n", + "They cried, “No wonder[113] such celestial charms\n", + "For nine long years have set the world in arms;\n", + "What winning graces! what majestic mien!\n", + "She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen!\n", + "Yet hence, O Heaven, convey that fatal face,\n", + "And from destruction save the Trojan race.”\n", + "\n", + "The good old Priam welcomed her, and cried,\n", + "“Approach, my child, and grace thy father’s side.\n", + "See on the plain thy Grecian spouse appears,\n", + "The friends and kindred of thy former years.\n", + "No crime of thine our present sufferings draws,\n", + "Not thou, but Heaven’s disposing will, the cause\n", + "The gods these armies and this force employ,\n", + "The hostile gods conspire the fate of Troy.\n", + "But lift thy eyes, and say, what Greek is he\n", + "(Far as from hence these aged orbs can see)\n", + "Around whose brow such martial graces shine,\n", + "So tall, so awful, and almost divine!\n", + "Though some of larger stature tread the green,\n", + "None match his grandeur and exalted mien:\n", + "He seems a monarch, and his country’s pride.”\n", + "Thus ceased the king, and thus the fair replied:\n", + "\n", + "“Before thy presence, father, I appear,\n", + "With conscious shame and reverential fear.\n", + "Ah! had I died, ere to these walls I fled,\n", + "False to my country, and my nuptial bed;\n", + "My brothers, friends, and daughter left behind,\n", + "False to them all, to Paris only kind!\n", + "For this I mourn, till grief or dire disease\n", + "Shall waste the form whose fault it was to please!\n", + "The king of kings, Atrides, you survey,\n", + "Great in the war, and great in arts of sway:\n", + "My brother once, before my days of shame!\n", + "And oh! that still he bore a brother’s name!”\n", + "\n", + "With wonder Priam view’d the godlike man,\n", + "Extoll’d the happy prince, and thus began:\n", + "“O bless’d Atrides! born to prosperous fate,\n", + "Successful monarch of a mighty state!\n", + "How vast thy empire! Of your matchless train\n", + "What numbers lost, what numbers yet remain!\n", + "In Phrygia once were gallant armies known,\n", + "In ancient time, when Otreus fill’d the throne,\n", + "When godlike Mygdon led their troops of horse,\n", + "And I, to join them, raised the Trojan force:\n", + "Against the manlike Amazons we stood,[114]\n", + "And Sangar’s stream ran purple with their blood.\n", + "But far inferior those, in martial grace,\n", + "And strength of numbers, to this Grecian race.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, once more he view’d the warrior train;\n", + "“What’s he, whose arms lie scatter’d on the plain?\n", + "Broad is his breast, his shoulders larger spread,\n", + "Though great Atrides overtops his head.\n", + "Nor yet appear his care and conduct small;\n", + "From rank to rank he moves, and orders all.\n", + "The stately ram thus measures o’er the ground,\n", + "And, master of the flock, surveys them round.”\n", + "\n", + "Then Helen thus: “Whom your discerning eyes\n", + "Have singled out, is Ithacus the wise;\n", + "A barren island boasts his glorious birth;\n", + "His fame for wisdom fills the spacious earth.”\n", + "\n", + "Antenor took the word, and thus began:[115]\n", + "“Myself, O king! have seen that wondrous man\n", + "When, trusting Jove and hospitable laws,\n", + "To Troy he came, to plead the Grecian cause;\n", + "(Great Menelaus urged the same request;)\n", + "My house was honour’d with each royal guest:\n", + "I knew their persons, and admired their parts,\n", + "Both brave in arms, and both approved in arts.\n", + "Erect, the Spartan most engaged our view;\n", + "Ulysses seated, greater reverence drew.\n", + "When Atreus’ son harangued the listening train,\n", + "Just was his sense, and his expression plain,\n", + "His words succinct, yet full, without a fault;\n", + "He spoke no more than just the thing he ought.\n", + "But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound,[116]\n", + "His modest eyes he fix’d upon the ground;\n", + "As one unskill’d or dumb, he seem’d to stand,\n", + "Nor raised his head, nor stretch’d his sceptred hand;\n", + "But, when he speaks, what elocution flows!\n", + "Soft as the fleeces of descending snows,[117]\n", + "The copious accents fall, with easy art;\n", + "Melting they fall, and sink into the heart!\n", + "Wondering we hear, and fix’d in deep surprise,\n", + "Our ears refute the censure of our eyes.”\n", + "\n", + "The king then ask’d (as yet the camp he view’d)\n", + "“What chief is that, with giant strength endued,\n", + "Whose brawny shoulders, and whose swelling chest,\n", + "And lofty stature, far exceed the rest?\n", + "“Ajax the great, (the beauteous queen replied,)\n", + "Himself a host: the Grecian strength and pride.\n", + "See! bold Idomeneus superior towers\n", + "Amid yon circle of his Cretan powers,\n", + "Great as a god! I saw him once before,\n", + "With Menelaus on the Spartan shore.\n", + "The rest I know, and could in order name;\n", + "All valiant chiefs, and men of mighty fame.\n", + "Yet two are wanting of the numerous train,\n", + "Whom long my eyes have sought, but sought in vain:\n", + "Castor and Pollux, first in martial force,\n", + "One bold on foot, and one renown’d for horse.\n", + "My brothers these; the same our native shore,\n", + "One house contain’d us, as one mother bore.\n", + "Perhaps the chiefs, from warlike toils at ease,\n", + "For distant Troy refused to sail the seas;\n", + "Perhaps their swords some nobler quarrel draws,\n", + "Ashamed to combat in their sister’s cause.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the fair, nor knew her brothers’ doom;[118]\n", + "Wrapt in the cold embraces of the tomb;\n", + "Adorn’d with honours in their native shore,\n", + "Silent they slept, and heard of wars no more.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime the heralds, through the crowded town,\n", + "Bring the rich wine and destined victims down.\n", + "Idæus’ arms the golden goblets press’d,[119]\n", + "Who thus the venerable king address’d:\n", + "“Arise, O father of the Trojan state!\n", + "The nations call, thy joyful people wait\n", + "To seal the truce, and end the dire debate.\n", + "Paris, thy son, and Sparta’s king advance,\n", + "In measured lists to toss the weighty lance;\n", + "And who his rival shall in arms subdue,\n", + "His be the dame, and his the treasure too.\n", + "Thus with a lasting league our toils may cease,\n", + "And Troy possess her fertile fields in peace:\n", + "So shall the Greeks review their native shore,\n", + "Much famed for generous steeds, for beauty more.”\n", + "\n", + "With grief he heard, and bade the chiefs prepare\n", + "To join his milk-white coursers to the car;\n", + "He mounts the seat, Antenor at his side;\n", + "The gentle steeds through Scæa’s gates they guide:[120]\n", + "Next from the car descending on the plain,\n", + "Amid the Grecian host and Trojan train,\n", + "Slow they proceed: the sage Ulysses then\n", + "Arose, and with him rose the king of men.\n", + "On either side a sacred herald stands,\n", + "The wine they mix, and on each monarch’s hands\n", + "Pour the full urn; then draws the Grecian lord\n", + "His cutlass sheathed beside his ponderous sword;\n", + "From the sign’d victims crops the curling hair;[121]\n", + "The heralds part it, and the princes share;\n", + "Then loudly thus before the attentive bands\n", + "He calls the gods, and spreads his lifted hands:\n", + "\n", + "“O first and greatest power! whom all obey,\n", + "Who high on Ida’s holy mountain sway,\n", + "Eternal Jove! and you bright orb that roll\n", + "From east to west, and view from pole to pole!\n", + "Thou mother Earth! and all ye living floods!\n", + "Infernal furies, and Tartarean gods,\n", + "Who rule the dead, and horrid woes prepare\n", + "For perjured kings, and all who falsely swear!\n", + "Hear, and be witness. If, by Paris slain,\n", + "Great Menelaus press the fatal plain;\n", + "The dame and treasures let the Trojan keep,\n", + "And Greece returning plough the watery deep.\n", + "If by my brother’s lance the Trojan bleed,\n", + "Be his the wealth and beauteous dame decreed:\n", + "The appointed fine let Ilion justly pay,\n", + "And every age record the signal day.\n", + "This if the Phrygians shall refuse to yield,\n", + "Arms must revenge, and Mars decide the field.”\n", + "\n", + "With that the chief the tender victims slew,\n", + "And in the dust their bleeding bodies threw;\n", + "The vital spirit issued at the wound,\n", + "And left the members quivering on the ground.\n", + "From the same urn they drink the mingled wine,\n", + "And add libations to the powers divine.\n", + "While thus their prayers united mount the sky,\n", + "“Hear, mighty Jove! and hear, ye gods on high!\n", + "And may their blood, who first the league confound,\n", + "Shed like this wine, disdain the thirsty ground;\n", + "May all their consorts serve promiscuous lust,\n", + "And all their lust be scatter’d as the dust!”\n", + "Thus either host their imprecations join’d,\n", + "Which Jove refused, and mingled with the wind.\n", + "\n", + "The rites now finish’d, reverend Priam rose,\n", + "And thus express’d a heart o’ercharged with woes:\n", + "“Ye Greeks and Trojans, let the chiefs engage,\n", + "But spare the weakness of my feeble age:\n", + "In yonder walls that object let me shun,\n", + "Nor view the danger of so dear a son.\n", + "Whose arms shall conquer and what prince shall fall,\n", + "Heaven only knows; for heaven disposes all.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, the hoary king no longer stay’d,\n", + "But on his car the slaughter’d victims laid:\n", + "Then seized the reins his gentle steeds to guide,\n", + "And drove to Troy, Antenor at his side.\n", + "\n", + "Bold Hector and Ulysses now dispose\n", + "The lists of combat, and the ground inclose:\n", + "Next to decide, by sacred lots prepare,\n", + "Who first shall launch his pointed spear in air.\n", + "The people pray with elevated hands,\n", + "And words like these are heard through all the bands:\n", + "“Immortal Jove, high Heaven’s superior lord,\n", + "On lofty Ida’s holy mount adored!\n", + "Whoe’er involved us in this dire debate,\n", + "O give that author of the war to fate\n", + "And shades eternal! let division cease,\n", + "And joyful nations join in leagues of peace.”\n", + "\n", + "With eyes averted Hector hastes to turn\n", + "The lots of fight and shakes the brazen urn.\n", + "Then, Paris, thine leap’d forth; by fatal chance\n", + "Ordain’d the first to whirl the weighty lance.\n", + "Both armies sat the combat to survey.\n", + "Beside each chief his azure armour lay,\n", + "And round the lists the generous coursers neigh.\n", + "The beauteous warrior now arrays for fight,\n", + "In gilded arms magnificently bright:\n", + "The purple cuishes clasp his thighs around,\n", + "With flowers adorn’d, with silver buckles bound:\n", + "Lycaon’s corslet his fair body dress’d,\n", + "Braced in and fitted to his softer breast;\n", + "A radiant baldric, o’er his shoulder tied,\n", + "Sustain’d the sword that glitter’d at his side:\n", + "His youthful face a polish’d helm o’erspread;\n", + "The waving horse-hair nodded on his head:\n", + "His figured shield, a shining orb, he takes,\n", + "And in his hand a pointed javelin shakes.\n", + "With equal speed and fired by equal charms,\n", + "The Spartan hero sheathes his limbs in arms.\n", + "\n", + "Now round the lists the admiring armies stand,\n", + "With javelins fix’d, the Greek and Trojan band.\n", + "Amidst the dreadful vale, the chiefs advance,\n", + "All pale with rage, and shake the threatening lance.\n", + "The Trojan first his shining javelin threw;\n", + "Full on Atrides’ ringing shield it flew,\n", + "Nor pierced the brazen orb, but with a bound[122]\n", + "Leap’d from the buckler, blunted, on the ground.\n", + "Atrides then his massy lance prepares,\n", + "In act to throw, but first prefers his prayers:\n", + "\n", + "“Give me, great Jove! to punish lawless lust,\n", + "And lay the Trojan gasping in the dust:\n", + "Destroy the aggressor, aid my righteous cause,\n", + "Avenge the breach of hospitable laws!\n", + "Let this example future times reclaim,\n", + "And guard from wrong fair friendship’s holy name,”\n", + "He said, and poised in air the javelin sent,\n", + "Through Paris’ shield the forceful weapon went,\n", + "His corslet pierces, and his garment rends,\n", + "And glancing downward, near his flank descends.\n", + "The wary Trojan, bending from the blow,\n", + "Eludes the death, and disappoints his foe:\n", + "But fierce Atrides waved his sword, and strook\n", + "Full on his casque: the crested helmet shook;\n", + "The brittle steel, unfaithful to his hand,\n", + "Broke short: the fragments glitter’d on the sand.\n", + "The raging warrior to the spacious skies\n", + "Raised his upbraiding voice and angry eyes:\n", + "“Then is it vain in Jove himself to trust?\n", + "And is it thus the gods assist the just?\n", + "When crimes provoke us, Heaven success denies;\n", + "The dart falls harmless, and the falchion flies.”\n", + "Furious he said, and towards the Grecian crew\n", + "(Seized by the crest) the unhappy warrior drew;\n", + "Struggling he followed, while the embroider’d thong\n", + "That tied his helmet, dragg’d the chief along.\n", + "Then had his ruin crown’d Atrides’ joy,\n", + "But Venus trembled for the prince of Troy:\n", + "Unseen she came, and burst the golden band;\n", + "And left an empty helmet in his hand.\n", + "The casque, enraged, amidst the Greeks he threw;\n", + "The Greeks with smiles the polish’d trophy view.\n", + "Then, as once more he lifts the deadly dart,\n", + "In thirst of vengeance, at his rival’s heart;\n", + "The queen of love her favour’d champion shrouds\n", + "(For gods can all things) in a veil of clouds.\n", + "Raised from the field the panting youth she led,\n", + "And gently laid him on the bridal bed,\n", + "With pleasing sweets his fainting sense renews,\n", + "And all the dome perfumes with heavenly dews.\n", + "Meantime the brightest of the female kind,\n", + "The matchless Helen, o’er the walls reclined;\n", + "To her, beset with Trojan beauties, came,\n", + "In borrow’d form, the laughter-loving dame.\n", + "(She seem’d an ancient maid, well-skill’d to cull\n", + "The snowy fleece, and wind the twisted wool.)\n", + "The goddess softly shook her silken vest,\n", + "That shed perfumes, and whispering thus address’d:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VENUS, DISGUISED, INVITING HELEN TO THE CHAMBER OF\n", + "PARIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Haste, happy nymph! for thee thy Paris calls,\n", + "Safe from the fight, in yonder lofty walls,\n", + "Fair as a god; with odours round him spread,\n", + "He lies, and waits thee on the well-known bed;\n", + "Not like a warrior parted from the foe,\n", + "But some gay dancer in the public show.”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke, and Helen’s secret soul was moved;\n", + "She scorn’d the champion, but the man she loved.\n", + "Fair Venus’ neck, her eyes that sparkled fire,\n", + "And breast, reveal’d the queen of soft desire.[123]\n", + "Struck with her presence, straight the lively red\n", + "Forsook her cheek; and trembling, thus she said:\n", + "“Then is it still thy pleasure to deceive?\n", + "And woman’s frailty always to believe!\n", + "Say, to new nations must I cross the main,\n", + "Or carry wars to some soft Asian plain?\n", + "For whom must Helen break her second vow?\n", + "What other Paris is thy darling now?\n", + "Left to Atrides, (victor in the strife,)\n", + "An odious conquest and a captive wife,\n", + "Hence let me sail; and if thy Paris bear\n", + "My absence ill, let Venus ease his care.\n", + "A handmaid goddess at his side to wait,\n", + "Renounce the glories of thy heavenly state,\n", + "Be fix’d for ever to the Trojan shore,\n", + "His spouse, or slave; and mount the skies no more.\n", + "For me, to lawless love no longer led,\n", + "I scorn the coward, and detest his bed;\n", + "Else should I merit everlasting shame,\n", + "And keen reproach, from every Phrygian dame:\n", + "Ill suits it now the joys of love to know,\n", + "Too deep my anguish, and too wild my woe.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VENUS PRESENTING HELEN TO PARIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Then thus incensed, the Paphian queen replies:\n", + "“Obey the power from whom thy glories rise:\n", + "Should Venus leave thee, every charm must fly,\n", + "Fade from thy cheek, and languish in thy eye.\n", + "Cease to provoke me, lest I make thee more\n", + "The world’s aversion, than their love before;\n", + "Now the bright prize for which mankind engage,\n", + "Than, the sad victim, of the public rage.”\n", + "\n", + "At this, the fairest of her sex obey’d,\n", + "And veil’d her blushes in a silken shade;\n", + "Unseen, and silent, from the train she moves,\n", + "Led by the goddess of the Smiles and Loves.\n", + "Arrived, and enter’d at the palace gate,\n", + "The maids officious round their mistress wait;\n", + "Then, all dispersing, various tasks attend;\n", + "The queen and goddess to the prince ascend.\n", + "Full in her Paris’ sight, the queen of love\n", + "Had placed the beauteous progeny of Jove;\n", + "Where, as he view’d her charms, she turn’d away\n", + "Her glowing eyes, and thus began to say:\n", + "\n", + "“Is this the chief, who, lost to sense of shame,\n", + "Late fled the field, and yet survives his fame?\n", + "O hadst thou died beneath the righteous sword\n", + "Of that brave man whom once I call’d my lord!\n", + "The boaster Paris oft desired the day\n", + "With Sparta’s king to meet in single fray:\n", + "Go now, once more thy rival’s rage excite,\n", + "Provoke Atrides, and renew the fight:\n", + "Yet Helen bids thee stay, lest thou unskill’d\n", + "Shouldst fall an easy conquest on the field.”\n", + "\n", + "The prince replies: “Ah cease, divinely fair,\n", + "Nor add reproaches to the wounds I bear;\n", + "This day the foe prevail’d by Pallas’ power:\n", + "We yet may vanquish in a happier hour:\n", + "There want not gods to favour us above;\n", + "But let the business of our life be love:\n", + "These softer moments let delights employ,\n", + "And kind embraces snatch the hasty joy.\n", + "Not thus I loved thee, when from Sparta’s shore\n", + "My forced, my willing heavenly prize I bore,\n", + "When first entranced in Cranae’s isle I lay,[124]\n", + "Mix’d with thy soul, and all dissolved away!”\n", + "Thus having spoke, the enamour’d Phrygian boy\n", + "Rush’d to the bed, impatient for the joy.\n", + "Him Helen follow’d slow with bashful charms,\n", + "And clasp’d the blooming hero in her arms.\n", + "\n", + "While these to love’s delicious rapture yield,\n", + "The stern Atrides rages round the field:\n", + "So some fell lion whom the woods obey,\n", + "Roars through the desert, and demands his prey.\n", + "Paris he seeks, impatient to destroy,\n", + "But seeks in vain along the troops of Troy;\n", + "Even those had yielded to a foe so brave\n", + "The recreant warrior, hateful as the grave.\n", + "Then speaking thus, the king of kings arose,\n", + "“Ye Trojans, Dardans, all our generous foes!\n", + "Hear and attest! from Heaven with conquest crown’d,\n", + "Our brother’s arms the just success have found:\n", + "Be therefore now the Spartan wealth restor’d,\n", + "Let Argive Helen own her lawful lord;\n", + "The appointed fine let Ilion justly pay,\n", + "And age to age record this signal day.”\n", + "\n", + "He ceased; his army’s loud applauses rise,\n", + "And the long shout runs echoing through the skies.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VENUS\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] Map, titled “GRÆCIÆ ANTIQUÆ”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK IV.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE BREACH OF THE TRUCE, AND THE FIRST BATTLE.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The gods deliberate in council concerning the Trojan war: they agree\n", + "upon the continuation of it, and Jupiter sends down Minerva to break\n", + "the truce. She persuades Pandarus to aim an arrow at Menelaus, who is\n", + "wounded, but cured by Machaon. In the meantime some of the Trojan\n", + "troops attack the Greeks. Agamemnon is distinguished in all the parts\n", + "of a good general; he reviews the troops, and exhorts the leaders, some\n", + "by praises and others by reproof. Nestor is particularly celebrated for\n", + "his military discipline. The battle joins, and great numbers are slain\n", + "on both sides.\n", + " The same day continues through this as through the last book (as it\n", + " does also through the two following, and almost to the end of the\n", + " seventh book). The scene is wholly in the field before Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "And now Olympus’ shining gates unfold;\n", + "The gods, with Jove, assume their thrones of gold:\n", + "Immortal Hebe, fresh with bloom divine,\n", + "The golden goblet crowns with purple wine:\n", + "While the full bowls flow round, the powers employ\n", + "Their careful eyes on long-contended Troy.\n", + "\n", + "When Jove, disposed to tempt Saturnia’s spleen,\n", + "Thus waked the fury of his partial queen,\n", + "“Two powers divine the son of Atreus aid,\n", + "Imperial Juno, and the martial maid;[125]\n", + "But high in heaven they sit, and gaze from far,\n", + "The tame spectators of his deeds of war.\n", + "Not thus fair Venus helps her favour’d knight,\n", + "The queen of pleasures shares the toils of fight,\n", + "Each danger wards, and constant in her care,\n", + "Saves in the moment of the last despair.\n", + "Her act has rescued Paris’ forfeit life,\n", + "Though great Atrides gain’d the glorious strife.\n", + "Then say, ye powers! what signal issue waits\n", + "To crown this deed, and finish all the fates!\n", + "Shall Heaven by peace the bleeding kingdoms spare,\n", + "Or rouse the furies, and awake the war?\n", + "Yet, would the gods for human good provide,\n", + "Atrides soon might gain his beauteous bride,\n", + "Still Priam’s walls in peaceful honours grow,\n", + "And through his gates the crowding nations flow.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus while he spoke, the queen of heaven, enraged,\n", + "And queen of war, in close consult engaged:\n", + "Apart they sit, their deep designs employ,\n", + "And meditate the future woes of Troy.\n", + "Though secret anger swell’d Minerva’s breast,\n", + "The prudent goddess yet her wrath suppress’d;\n", + "But Juno, impotent of passion, broke\n", + "Her sullen silence, and with fury spoke:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Shall then, O tyrant of the ethereal reign!\n", + "My schemes, my labours, and my hopes be vain?\n", + "Have I, for this, shook Ilion with alarms,\n", + "Assembled nations, set two worlds in arms?\n", + "To spread the war, I flew from shore to shore;\n", + "The immortal coursers scarce the labour bore.\n", + "At length ripe vengeance o’er their heads impends,\n", + "But Jove himself the faithless race defends.\n", + "Loth as thou art to punish lawless lust,\n", + "Not all the gods are partial and unjust.”\n", + "\n", + "The sire whose thunder shakes the cloudy skies,\n", + "Sighs from his inmost soul, and thus replies:\n", + "“Oh lasting rancour! oh insatiate hate\n", + "To Phrygia’s monarch, and the Phrygian state!\n", + "What high offence has fired the wife of Jove?\n", + "Can wretched mortals harm the powers above,\n", + "That Troy, and Troy’s whole race thou wouldst confound,\n", + "And yon fair structures level with the ground!\n", + "Haste, leave the skies, fulfil thy stern desire,\n", + "Burst all her gates, and wrap her walls in fire!\n", + "Let Priam bleed! if yet you thirst for more,\n", + "Bleed all his sons, and Ilion float with gore:\n", + "To boundless vengeance the wide realm be given,\n", + "Till vast destruction glut the queen of heaven!\n", + "So let it be, and Jove his peace enjoy,[126]\n", + "When heaven no longer hears the name of Troy.\n", + "But should this arm prepare to wreak our hate\n", + "On thy loved realms, whose guilt demands their fate;\n", + "Presume not thou the lifted bolt to stay,\n", + "Remember Troy, and give the vengeance way.\n", + "For know, of all the numerous towns that rise\n", + "Beneath the rolling sun and starry skies,\n", + "Which gods have raised, or earth-born men enjoy,\n", + "None stands so dear to Jove as sacred Troy.\n", + "No mortals merit more distinguish’d grace\n", + "Than godlike Priam, or than Priam’s race.\n", + "Still to our name their hecatombs expire,\n", + "And altars blaze with unextinguish’d fire.”\n", + "\n", + "At this the goddess rolled her radiant eyes,\n", + "Then on the Thunderer fix’d them, and replies:\n", + "“Three towns are Juno’s on the Grecian plains,\n", + "More dear than all the extended earth contains,\n", + "Mycenæ, Argos, and the Spartan wall;[127]\n", + "\n", + "These thou mayst raze, nor I forbid their fall:\n", + "’Tis not in me the vengeance to remove;\n", + "The crime’s sufficient that they share my love.\n", + "Of power superior why should I complain?\n", + "Resent I may, but must resent in vain.\n", + "Yet some distinction Juno might require,\n", + "Sprung with thyself from one celestial sire,\n", + "A goddess born, to share the realms above,\n", + "And styled the consort of the thundering Jove;\n", + "Nor thou a wife and sister’s right deny;[128]\n", + "Let both consent, and both by terms comply;\n", + "So shall the gods our joint decrees obey,\n", + "And heaven shall act as we direct the way.\n", + "See ready Pallas waits thy high commands\n", + "To raise in arms the Greek and Phrygian bands;\n", + "Their sudden friendship by her arts may cease,\n", + "And the proud Trojans first infringe the peace.”\n", + "\n", + "The sire of men and monarch of the sky\n", + "The advice approved, and bade Minerva fly,\n", + "Dissolve the league, and all her arts employ\n", + "To make the breach the faithless act of Troy.\n", + "Fired with the charge, she headlong urged her flight,\n", + "And shot like lightning from Olympus’ height.\n", + "As the red comet, from Saturnius sent\n", + "To fright the nations with a dire portent,\n", + "(A fatal sign to armies on the plain,\n", + "Or trembling sailors on the wintry main,)\n", + "With sweeping glories glides along in air,\n", + "And shakes the sparkles from its blazing hair:[129]\n", + "Between both armies thus, in open sight\n", + "Shot the bright goddess in a trail of light,\n", + "With eyes erect the gazing hosts admire\n", + "The power descending, and the heavens on fire!\n", + "“The gods (they cried), the gods this signal sent,\n", + "And fate now labours with some vast event:\n", + "Jove seals the league, or bloodier scenes prepares;\n", + "Jove, the great arbiter of peace and wars.”\n", + "\n", + "They said, while Pallas through the Trojan throng,\n", + "(In shape a mortal,) pass’d disguised along.\n", + "Like bold Laodocus, her course she bent,\n", + "Who from Antenor traced his high descent.\n", + "Amidst the ranks Lycaon’s son she found,\n", + "The warlike Pandarus, for strength renown’d;\n", + "Whose squadrons, led from black Æsepus’ flood,[130]\n", + "With flaming shields in martial circle stood.\n", + "To him the goddess: “Phrygian! canst thou hear\n", + "A well-timed counsel with a willing ear?\n", + "What praise were thine, couldst thou direct thy dart,\n", + "Amidst his triumph, to the Spartan’s heart?\n", + "What gifts from Troy, from Paris wouldst thou gain,\n", + "Thy country’s foe, the Grecian glory slain?\n", + "Then seize the occasion, dare the mighty deed,\n", + "Aim at his breast, and may that aim succeed!\n", + "But first, to speed the shaft, address thy vow\n", + "To Lycian Phœbus with the silver bow,\n", + "And swear the firstlings of thy flock to pay,\n", + "On Zelia’s altars, to the god of day.”[131]\n", + "\n", + "He heard, and madly at the motion pleased,\n", + "His polish’d bow with hasty rashness seized.\n", + "’Twas form’d of horn, and smooth’d with artful toil:\n", + "A mountain goat resign’d the shining spoil.\n", + "Who pierced long since beneath his arrows bled;\n", + "The stately quarry on the cliffs lay dead,\n", + "And sixteen palms his brow’s large honours spread:\n", + "The workmen join’d, and shaped the bended horns,\n", + "And beaten gold each taper point adorns.\n", + "This, by the Greeks unseen, the warrior bends,\n", + "Screen’d by the shields of his surrounding friends:\n", + "There meditates the mark; and couching low,\n", + "Fits the sharp arrow to the well-strung bow.\n", + "One from a hundred feather’d deaths he chose,\n", + "Fated to wound, and cause of future woes;\n", + "Then offers vows with hecatombs to crown\n", + "Apollo’s altars in his native town.\n", + "\n", + "Now with full force the yielding horn he bends,\n", + "Drawn to an arch, and joins the doubling ends;\n", + "Close to his breast he strains the nerve below,\n", + "Till the barb’d points approach the circling bow;\n", + "The impatient weapon whizzes on the wing;\n", + "Sounds the tough horn, and twangs the quivering string.\n", + "\n", + "But thee, Atrides! in that dangerous hour\n", + "The gods forget not, nor thy guardian power,\n", + "Pallas assists, and (weakened in its force)\n", + "Diverts the weapon from its destined course:\n", + "So from her babe, when slumber seals his eye,\n", + "The watchful mother wafts the envenom’d fly.\n", + "Just where his belt with golden buckles join’d,\n", + "Where linen folds the double corslet lined,\n", + "She turn’d the shaft, which, hissing from above,\n", + "Pass’d the broad belt, and through the corslet drove;\n", + "The folds it pierced, the plaited linen tore,\n", + "And razed the skin, and drew the purple gore.\n", + "As when some stately trappings are decreed\n", + "To grace a monarch on his bounding steed,\n", + "A nymph in Caria or Mæonia bred,\n", + "Stains the pure ivory with a lively red;\n", + "With equal lustre various colours vie,\n", + "The shining whiteness, and the Tyrian dye:\n", + "So great Atrides! show’d thy sacred blood,\n", + "As down thy snowy thigh distill’d the streaming flood.\n", + "With horror seized, the king of men descried\n", + "The shaft infix’d, and saw the gushing tide:\n", + "Nor less the Spartan fear’d, before he found\n", + "The shining barb appear above the wound,\n", + "Then, with a sigh, that heaved his manly breast,\n", + "The royal brother thus his grief express’d,\n", + "And grasp’d his hand; while all the Greeks around\n", + "With answering sighs return’d the plaintive sound.\n", + "\n", + "“Oh, dear as life! did I for this agree\n", + "The solemn truce, a fatal truce to thee!\n", + "Wert thou exposed to all the hostile train,\n", + "To fight for Greece, and conquer, to be slain!\n", + "The race of Trojans in thy ruin join,\n", + "And faith is scorn’d by all the perjured line.\n", + "Not thus our vows, confirm’d with wine and gore,\n", + "Those hands we plighted, and those oaths we swore,\n", + "Shall all be vain: when Heaven’s revenge is slow,\n", + "Jove but prepares to strike the fiercer blow.\n", + "The day shall come, that great avenging day,\n", + "When Troy’s proud glories in the dust shall lay,\n", + "When Priam’s powers and Priam’s self shall fall,\n", + "And one prodigious ruin swallow all.\n", + "I see the god, already, from the pole\n", + "Bare his red arm, and bid the thunder roll;\n", + "I see the Eternal all his fury shed,\n", + "And shake his ægis o’er their guilty head.\n", + "Such mighty woes on perjured princes wait;\n", + "But thou, alas! deserv’st a happier fate.\n", + "Still must I mourn the period of thy days,\n", + "And only mourn, without my share of praise?\n", + "Deprived of thee, the heartless Greeks no more\n", + "Shall dream of conquests on the hostile shore;\n", + "Troy seized of Helen, and our glory lost,\n", + "Thy bones shall moulder on a foreign coast;\n", + "While some proud Trojan thus insulting cries,\n", + "(And spurns the dust where Menelaus lies,)\n", + "‘Such are the trophies Greece from Ilion brings,\n", + "And such the conquest of her king of kings!\n", + "Lo his proud vessels scatter’d o’er the main,\n", + "And unrevenged, his mighty brother slain.’\n", + "Oh! ere that dire disgrace shall blast my fame,\n", + "O’erwhelm me, earth! and hide a monarch’s shame.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: a leader’s and a brother’s fears\n", + "Possess his soul, which thus the Spartan cheers:\n", + "“Let not thy words the warmth of Greece abate;\n", + "The feeble dart is guiltless of my fate:\n", + "Stiff with the rich embroider’d work around,\n", + "My varied belt repell’d the flying wound.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king: “My brother and my friend,\n", + "Thus, always thus, may Heaven thy life defend!\n", + "Now seek some skilful hand, whose powerful art\n", + "May stanch the effusion, and extract the dart.\n", + "Herald, be swift, and bid Machaon bring\n", + "His speedy succour to the Spartan king;\n", + "Pierced with a winged shaft (the deed of Troy),\n", + "The Grecian’s sorrow, and the Dardan’s joy.”\n", + "\n", + "With hasty zeal the swift Talthybius flies;\n", + "Through the thick files he darts his searching eyes,\n", + "And finds Machaon, where sublime he stands[132]\n", + "In arms incircled with his native bands.\n", + "Then thus: “Machaon, to the king repair,\n", + "His wounded brother claims thy timely care;\n", + "Pierced by some Lycian or Dardanian bow,\n", + "A grief to us, a triumph to the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "The heavy tidings grieved the godlike man:\n", + "Swift to his succour through the ranks he ran.\n", + "The dauntless king yet standing firm he found,\n", + "And all the chiefs in deep concern around.\n", + "Where to the steely point the reed was join’d,\n", + "The shaft he drew, but left the head behind.\n", + "Straight the broad belt with gay embroidery graced,\n", + "He loosed; the corslet from his breast unbraced;\n", + "Then suck’d the blood, and sovereign balm infused,[133]\n", + "Which Chiron gave, and Æsculapius used.\n", + "\n", + "While round the prince the Greeks employ their care,\n", + "The Trojans rush tumultuous to the war;\n", + "Once more they glitter in refulgent arms,\n", + "Once more the fields are fill’d with dire alarms.\n", + "Nor had you seen the king of men appear\n", + "Confused, unactive, or surprised with fear;\n", + "But fond of glory, with severe delight,\n", + "His beating bosom claim’d the rising fight.\n", + "No longer with his warlike steeds he stay’d,\n", + "Or press’d the car with polish’d brass inlaid\n", + "But left Eurymedon the reins to guide;\n", + "The fiery coursers snorted at his side.\n", + "On foot through all the martial ranks he moves\n", + "And these encourages, and those reproves.\n", + "“Brave men!” he cries, (to such who boldly dare\n", + "Urge their swift steeds to face the coming war),\n", + "“Your ancient valour on the foes approve;\n", + "Jove is with Greece, and let us trust in Jove.\n", + "’Tis not for us, but guilty Troy, to dread,\n", + "Whose crimes sit heavy on her perjured head;\n", + "Her sons and matrons Greece shall lead in chains,\n", + "And her dead warriors strew the mournful plains.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus with new ardour he the brave inspires;\n", + "Or thus the fearful with reproaches fires:\n", + "“Shame to your country, scandal of your kind;\n", + "Born to the fate ye well deserve to find!\n", + "Why stand ye gazing round the dreadful plain,\n", + "Prepared for flight, but doom’d to fly in vain?\n", + "Confused and panting thus, the hunted deer\n", + "Falls as he flies, a victim to his fear.\n", + "Still must ye wait the foes, and still retire,\n", + "Till yon tall vessels blaze with Trojan fire?\n", + "Or trust ye, Jove a valiant foe shall chase,\n", + "To save a trembling, heartless, dastard race?”\n", + "\n", + "This said, he stalk’d with ample strides along,\n", + "To Crete’s brave monarch and his martial throng;\n", + "High at their head he saw the chief appear,\n", + "And bold Meriones excite the rear.\n", + "At this the king his generous joy express’d,\n", + "And clasp’d the warrior to his armed breast.\n", + "“Divine Idomeneus! what thanks we owe\n", + "To worth like thine! what praise shall we bestow?\n", + "To thee the foremost honours are decreed,\n", + "First in the fight and every graceful deed.\n", + "For this, in banquets, when the generous bowls\n", + "Restore our blood, and raise the warriors’ souls,\n", + "Though all the rest with stated rules we bound,\n", + "Unmix’d, unmeasured, are thy goblets crown’d.\n", + "Be still thyself, in arms a mighty name;\n", + "Maintain thy honours, and enlarge thy fame.”\n", + "To whom the Cretan thus his speech address’d:\n", + "“Secure of me, O king! exhort the rest.\n", + "Fix’d to thy side, in every toil I share,\n", + "Thy firm associate in the day of war.\n", + "But let the signal be this moment given;\n", + "To mix in fight is all I ask of Heaven.\n", + "The field shall prove how perjuries succeed,\n", + "And chains or death avenge the impious deed.”\n", + "\n", + "Charm’d with this heat, the king his course pursues,\n", + "And next the troops of either Ajax views:\n", + "In one firm orb the bands were ranged around,\n", + "A cloud of heroes blacken’d all the ground.\n", + "Thus from the lofty promontory’s brow\n", + "A swain surveys the gathering storm below;\n", + "Slow from the main the heavy vapours rise,\n", + "Spread in dim streams, and sail along the skies,\n", + "Till black as night the swelling tempest shows,\n", + "The cloud condensing as the west-wind blows:\n", + "He dreads the impending storm, and drives his flock\n", + "To the close covert of an arching rock.\n", + "\n", + "Such, and so thick, the embattled squadrons stood,\n", + "With spears erect, a moving iron wood:\n", + "A shady light was shot from glimmering shields,\n", + "And their brown arms obscured the dusky fields.\n", + "\n", + "“O heroes! worthy such a dauntless train,\n", + "Whose godlike virtue we but urge in vain,\n", + "(Exclaim’d the king), who raise your eager bands\n", + "With great examples, more than loud commands.\n", + "Ah! would the gods but breathe in all the rest\n", + "Such souls as burn in your exalted breast,\n", + "Soon should our arms with just success be crown’d,\n", + "And Troy’s proud walls lie smoking on the ground.”\n", + "\n", + "Then to the next the general bends his course;\n", + "(His heart exults, and glories in his force);\n", + "There reverend Nestor ranks his Pylian bands,\n", + "And with inspiring eloquence commands;\n", + "With strictest order sets his train in arms,\n", + "The chiefs advises, and the soldiers warms.\n", + "Alastor, Chromius, Haemon, round him wait,\n", + "Bias the good, and Pelagon the great.\n", + "The horse and chariots to the front assign’d,\n", + "The foot (the strength of war) he ranged behind;\n", + "The middle space suspected troops supply,\n", + "Inclosed by both, nor left the power to fly;\n", + "He gives command to “curb the fiery steed,\n", + "Nor cause confusion, nor the ranks exceed:\n", + "Before the rest let none too rashly ride;\n", + "No strength nor skill, but just in time, be tried:\n", + "The charge once made, no warrior turn the rein,\n", + "But fight, or fall; a firm embodied train.\n", + "He whom the fortune of the field shall cast\n", + "From forth his chariot, mount the next in haste;\n", + "Nor seek unpractised to direct the car,\n", + "Content with javelins to provoke the war.\n", + "Our great forefathers held this prudent course,\n", + "Thus ruled their ardour, thus preserved their force;\n", + "By laws like these immortal conquests made,\n", + "And earth’s proud tyrants low in ashes laid.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the master of the martial art,\n", + "And touch’d with transport great Atrides’ heart.\n", + "“Oh! hadst thou strength to match thy brave desires,\n", + "And nerves to second what thy soul inspires!\n", + "But wasting years, that wither human race,\n", + "Exhaust thy spirits, and thy arms unbrace.\n", + "What once thou wert, oh ever mightst thou be!\n", + "And age the lot of any chief but thee.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus to the experienced prince Atrides cried;\n", + "He shook his hoary locks, and thus replied:\n", + "“Well might I wish, could mortal wish renew[134]\n", + "That strength which once in boiling youth I knew;\n", + "Such as I was, when Ereuthalion, slain\n", + "Beneath this arm, fell prostrate on the plain.\n", + "But heaven its gifts not all at once bestows,\n", + "These years with wisdom crowns, with action those:\n", + "The field of combat fits the young and bold,\n", + "The solemn council best becomes the old:\n", + "To you the glorious conflict I resign,\n", + "Let sage advice, the palm of age, be mine.”\n", + "\n", + "He said. With joy the monarch march’d before,\n", + "And found Menestheus on the dusty shore,\n", + "With whom the firm Athenian phalanx stands;\n", + "And next Ulysses, with his subject bands.\n", + "Remote their forces lay, nor knew so far\n", + "The peace infringed, nor heard the sounds of war;\n", + "The tumult late begun, they stood intent\n", + "To watch the motion, dubious of the event.\n", + "The king, who saw their squadrons yet unmoved,\n", + "With hasty ardour thus the chiefs reproved:\n", + "\n", + "“Can Peleus’ son forget a warrior’s part.\n", + "And fears Ulysses, skill’d in every art?\n", + "Why stand you distant, and the rest expect\n", + "To mix in combat which yourselves neglect?\n", + "From you ’twas hoped among the first to dare\n", + "The shock of armies, and commence the war;\n", + "For this your names are call’d before the rest,\n", + "To share the pleasures of the genial feast:\n", + "And can you, chiefs! without a blush survey\n", + "Whole troops before you labouring in the fray?\n", + "Say, is it thus those honours you requite?\n", + "The first in banquets, but the last in fight.”\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses heard: the hero’s warmth o’erspread\n", + "His cheek with blushes: and severe, he said:\n", + "“Take back the unjust reproach! Behold we stand\n", + "Sheathed in bright arms, and but expect command.\n", + "If glorious deeds afford thy soul delight,\n", + "Behold me plunging in the thickest fight.\n", + "Then give thy warrior-chief a warrior’s due,\n", + "Who dares to act whate’er thou dar’st to view.”\n", + "Struck with his generous wrath, the king replies:\n", + "\n", + "“O great in action, and in council wise!\n", + "With ours, thy care and ardour are the same,\n", + "Nor need I to commend, nor aught to blame.\n", + "Sage as thou art, and learn’d in human kind,\n", + "Forgive the transport of a martial mind.\n", + "Haste to the fight, secure of just amends;\n", + "The gods that make, shall keep the worthy, friends.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and pass’d where great Tydides lay,\n", + "His steeds and chariots wedged in firm array;\n", + "(The warlike Sthenelus attends his side;)[135]\n", + "To whom with stern reproach the monarch cried:\n", + "“O son of Tydeus! (he, whose strength could tame\n", + "The bounding steed, in arms a mighty name)\n", + "Canst thou, remote, the mingling hosts descry,\n", + "With hands unactive, and a careless eye?\n", + "Not thus thy sire the fierce encounter fear’d;\n", + "Still first in front the matchless prince appear’d:\n", + "What glorious toils, what wonders they recite,\n", + "Who view’d him labouring through the ranks of fight?\n", + "I saw him once, when gathering martial powers,\n", + "A peaceful guest, he sought Mycenæ’s towers;\n", + "Armies he ask’d, and armies had been given,\n", + "Not we denied, but Jove forbade from heaven;\n", + "While dreadful comets glaring from afar,\n", + "Forewarn’d the horrors of the Theban war.[136]\n", + "Next, sent by Greece from where Asopus flows,\n", + "A fearless envoy, he approach’d the foes;\n", + "Thebes’ hostile walls unguarded and alone,\n", + "Dauntless he enters, and demands the throne.\n", + "The tyrant feasting with his chiefs he found,\n", + "And dared to combat all those chiefs around:\n", + "Dared, and subdued before their haughty lord;\n", + "For Pallas strung his arm and edged his sword.\n", + "Stung with the shame, within the winding way,\n", + "To bar his passage fifty warriors lay;\n", + "Two heroes led the secret squadron on,\n", + "Mason the fierce, and hardy Lycophon;\n", + "Those fifty slaughter’d in the gloomy vale.\n", + "He spared but one to bear the dreadful tale,\n", + "Such Tydeus was, and such his martial fire;\n", + "Gods! how the son degenerates from the sire!”\n", + "\n", + "No words the godlike Diomed return’d,\n", + "But heard respectful, and in secret burn’d:\n", + "Not so fierce Capaneus’ undaunted son;\n", + "Stern as his sire, the boaster thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“What needs, O monarch! this invidious praise,\n", + "Ourselves to lessen, while our sire you raise?\n", + "Dare to be just, Atrides! and confess\n", + "Our value equal, though our fury less.\n", + "With fewer troops we storm’d the Theban wall,\n", + "And happier saw the sevenfold city fall,[137]\n", + "In impious acts the guilty father died;\n", + "The sons subdued, for Heaven was on their side.\n", + "Far more than heirs of all our parents’ fame,\n", + "Our glories darken their diminish’d name.”\n", + "\n", + "To him Tydides thus: “My friend, forbear;\n", + "Suppress thy passion, and the king revere:\n", + "His high concern may well excuse this rage,\n", + "Whose cause we follow, and whose war we wage:\n", + "His the first praise, were Ilion’s towers o’erthrown,\n", + "And, if we fail, the chief disgrace his own.\n", + "Let him the Greeks to hardy toils excite,\n", + "’Tis ours to labour in the glorious fight.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and ardent, on the trembling ground\n", + "Sprung from his car: his ringing arms resound.\n", + "Dire was the clang, and dreadful from afar,\n", + "Of arm’d Tydides rushing to the war.\n", + "As when the winds, ascending by degrees,[138]\n", + "First move the whitening surface of the seas,\n", + "The billows float in order to the shore,\n", + "The wave behind rolls on the wave before;\n", + "Till, with the growing storm, the deeps arise,\n", + "Foam o’er the rocks, and thunder to the skies.\n", + "So to the fight the thick battalions throng,\n", + "Shields urged on shields, and men drove men along\n", + "Sedate and silent move the numerous bands;\n", + "No sound, no whisper, but the chief’s commands,\n", + "Those only heard; with awe the rest obey,\n", + "As if some god had snatch’d their voice away.\n", + "Not so the Trojans; from their host ascends\n", + "A general shout that all the region rends.\n", + "As when the fleecy flocks unnumber’d stand\n", + "In wealthy folds, and wait the milker’s hand,\n", + "The hollow vales incessant bleating fills,\n", + "The lambs reply from all the neighbouring hills:\n", + "Such clamours rose from various nations round,\n", + "Mix’d was the murmur, and confused the sound.\n", + "Each host now joins, and each a god inspires,\n", + "These Mars incites, and those Minerva fires,\n", + "Pale flight around, and dreadful terror reign;\n", + "And discord raging bathes the purple plain;\n", + "Discord! dire sister of the slaughtering power,\n", + "Small at her birth, but rising every hour,\n", + "While scarce the skies her horrid head can bound,\n", + "She stalks on earth, and shakes the world around;[139]\n", + "The nations bleed, where’er her steps she turns,\n", + "The groan still deepens, and the combat burns.\n", + "\n", + "Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet closed,\n", + "To armour armour, lance to lance opposed,\n", + "Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,\n", + "The sounding darts in iron tempests flew,\n", + "Victors and vanquish’d join’d promiscuous cries,\n", + "And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise;\n", + "With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,\n", + "And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.\n", + "\n", + "As torrents roll, increased by numerous rills,\n", + "With rage impetuous, down their echoing hills\n", + "Rush to the vales, and pour’d along the plain,\n", + "Roar through a thousand channels to the main:\n", + "The distant shepherd trembling hears the sound;\n", + "So mix both hosts, and so their cries rebound.\n", + "\n", + "The bold Antilochus the slaughter led,\n", + "The first who struck a valiant Trojan dead:\n", + "At great Echepolus the lance arrives,\n", + "Razed his high crest, and through his helmet drives;\n", + "Warm’d in the brain the brazen weapon lies,\n", + "And shades eternal settle o’er his eyes.\n", + "So sinks a tower, that long assaults had stood\n", + "Of force and fire, its walls besmear’d with blood.\n", + "Him, the bold leader of the Abantian throng,[140]\n", + "Seized to despoil, and dragg’d the corpse along:\n", + "But while he strove to tug the inserted dart,\n", + "Agenor’s javelin reach’d the hero’s heart.\n", + "His flank, unguarded by his ample shield,\n", + "Admits the lance: he falls, and spurns the field;\n", + "The nerves, unbraced, support his limbs no more;\n", + "The soul comes floating in a tide of gore.\n", + "Trojans and Greeks now gather round the slain;\n", + "The war renews, the warriors bleed again:\n", + "As o’er their prey rapacious wolves engage,\n", + "Man dies on man, and all is blood and rage.\n", + "\n", + "In blooming youth fair Simoisius fell,\n", + "Sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell;\n", + "Fair Simoisius, whom his mother bore\n", + "Amid the flocks on silver Simois’ shore:\n", + "The nymph descending from the hills of Ide,\n", + "To seek her parents on his flowery side,\n", + "Brought forth the babe, their common care and joy,\n", + "And thence from Simois named the lovely boy.\n", + "Short was his date! by dreadful Ajax slain,\n", + "He falls, and renders all their cares in vain!\n", + "So falls a poplar, that in watery ground\n", + "Raised high the head, with stately branches crown’d,\n", + "(Fell’d by some artist with his shining steel,\n", + "To shape the circle of the bending wheel,)\n", + "Cut down it lies, tall, smooth, and largely spread,\n", + "With all its beauteous honours on its head\n", + "There, left a subject to the wind and rain,\n", + "And scorch’d by suns, it withers on the plain\n", + "Thus pierced by Ajax, Simoisius lies\n", + "Stretch’d on the shore, and thus neglected dies.\n", + "\n", + "At Ajax, Antiphus his javelin threw;\n", + "The pointed lance with erring fury flew,\n", + "And Leucus, loved by wise Ulysses, slew.\n", + "He drops the corpse of Simoisius slain,\n", + "And sinks a breathless carcase on the plain.\n", + "This saw Ulysses, and with grief enraged,\n", + "Strode where the foremost of the foes engaged;\n", + "Arm’d with his spear, he meditates the wound,\n", + "In act to throw; but cautious look’d around,\n", + "Struck at his sight the Trojans backward drew,\n", + "And trembling heard the javelin as it flew.\n", + "A chief stood nigh, who from Abydos came,\n", + "Old Priam’s son, Democoon was his name.\n", + "The weapon entered close above his ear,\n", + "Cold through his temples glides the whizzing spear;[141]\n", + "With piercing shrieks the youth resigns his breath,\n", + "His eye-balls darken with the shades of death;\n", + "Ponderous he falls; his clanging arms resound,\n", + "And his broad buckler rings against the ground.\n", + "\n", + "Seized with affright the boldest foes appear;\n", + "E’en godlike Hector seems himself to fear;\n", + "Slow he gave way, the rest tumultuous fled;\n", + "The Greeks with shouts press on, and spoil the dead:\n", + "But Phœbus now from Ilion’s towering height\n", + "Shines forth reveal’d, and animates the fight.\n", + "“Trojans, be bold, and force with force oppose;\n", + "Your foaming steeds urge headlong on the foes!\n", + "Nor are their bodies rocks, nor ribb’d with steel;\n", + "Your weapons enter, and your strokes they feel.\n", + "Have ye forgot what seem’d your dread before?\n", + "The great, the fierce Achilles fights no more.”\n", + "\n", + "Apollo thus from Ilion’s lofty towers,\n", + "Array’d in terrors, roused the Trojan powers:\n", + "While war’s fierce goddess fires the Grecian foe,\n", + "And shouts and thunders in the fields below.\n", + "Then great Diores fell, by doom divine,\n", + "In vain his valour and illustrious line.\n", + "A broken rock the force of Pyrus threw,\n", + "(Who from cold Ænus led the Thracian crew,)[142]\n", + "Full on his ankle dropp’d the ponderous stone,\n", + "Burst the strong nerves, and crash’d the solid bone.\n", + "Supine he tumbles on the crimson sands,\n", + "Before his helpless friends, and native bands,\n", + "And spreads for aid his unavailing hands.\n", + "The foe rush’d furious as he pants for breath,\n", + "And through his navel drove the pointed death:\n", + "His gushing entrails smoked upon the ground,\n", + "And the warm life came issuing from the wound.\n", + "\n", + "His lance bold Thoas at the conqueror sent,\n", + "Deep in his breast above the pap it went,\n", + "Amid the lungs was fix’d the winged wood,\n", + "And quivering in his heaving bosom stood:\n", + "Till from the dying chief, approaching near,\n", + "The Ætolian warrior tugg’d his weighty spear:\n", + "Then sudden waved his flaming falchion round,\n", + "And gash’d his belly with a ghastly wound;\n", + "The corpse now breathless on the bloody plain,\n", + "To spoil his arms the victor strove in vain;\n", + "The Thracian bands against the victor press’d,\n", + "A grove of lances glitter’d at his breast.\n", + "Stern Thoas, glaring with revengeful eyes,\n", + "In sullen fury slowly quits the prize.\n", + "\n", + "Thus fell two heroes; one the pride of Thrace,\n", + "And one the leader of the Epeian race;\n", + "Death’s sable shade at once o’ercast their eyes,\n", + "In dust the vanquish’d and the victor lies.\n", + "With copious slaughter all the fields are red,\n", + "And heap’d with growing mountains of the dead.\n", + "\n", + "Had some brave chief this martial scene beheld,\n", + "By Pallas guarded through the dreadful field;\n", + "Might darts be bid to turn their points away,\n", + "And swords around him innocently play;\n", + "The war’s whole art with wonder had he seen,\n", + "And counted heroes where he counted men.\n", + "\n", + "So fought each host, with thirst of glory fired,\n", + "And crowds on crowds triumphantly expired.\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] Map of the Plain of Troy\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK V.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE ACTS OF DIOMED.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Diomed, assisted by Pallas, performs wonders in this day’s battle.\n", + "Pandarus wounds him with an arrow, but the goddess cures him, enables\n", + "him to discern gods from mortals, and prohibits him from contending\n", + "with any of the former, excepting Venus. Æneas joins Pandarus to oppose\n", + "him; Pandarus is killed, and Æneas in great danger but for the\n", + "assistance of Venus; who, as she is removing her son from the fight, is\n", + "wounded on the hand by Diomed. Apollo seconds her in his rescue, and at\n", + "length carries off Æneas to Troy, where he is healed in the temple of\n", + "Pergamus. Mars rallies the Trojans, and assists Hector to make a stand.\n", + "In the meantime Æneas is restored to the field, and they overthrow\n", + "several of the Greeks; among the rest Tlepolemus is slain by Sarpedon.\n", + "Juno and Minerva descend to resist Mars; the latter incites Diomed to\n", + "go against that god; he wounds him, and sends him groaning to heaven.\n", + " The first battle continues through this book. The scene is the same\n", + " as in the former.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "But Pallas now Tydides’ soul inspires,[143]\n", + "Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires,\n", + "Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise,\n", + "And crown her hero with distinguish’d praise.\n", + "High on his helm celestial lightnings play,\n", + "His beamy shield emits a living ray;\n", + "The unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,\n", + "Like the red star that fires the autumnal skies,\n", + "When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight,\n", + "And, bathed in ocean, shoots a keener light.\n", + "Such glories Pallas on the chief bestow’d,\n", + "Such, from his arms, the fierce effulgence flow’d:\n", + "Onward she drives him, furious to engage,\n", + "Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage.\n", + "\n", + "The sons of Dares first the combat sought,\n", + "A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault;\n", + "In Vulcan’s fane the father’s days were led,\n", + "The sons to toils of glorious battle bred;\n", + "These singled from their troops the fight maintain,\n", + "These, from their steeds, Tydides on the plain.\n", + "Fierce for renown the brother-chiefs draw near,\n", + "And first bold Phegeus cast his sounding spear,\n", + "Which o’er the warrior’s shoulder took its course,\n", + "And spent in empty air its erring force.\n", + "Not so, Tydides, flew thy lance in vain,\n", + "But pierced his breast, and stretch’d him on the plain.\n", + "Seized with unusual fear, Idæus fled,\n", + "Left the rich chariot, and his brother dead.\n", + "And had not Vulcan lent celestial aid,\n", + "He too had sunk to death’s eternal shade;\n", + "But in a smoky cloud the god of fire\n", + "Preserved the son, in pity to the sire.\n", + "The steeds and chariot, to the navy led,\n", + "Increased the spoils of gallant Diomed.\n", + "\n", + "Struck with amaze and shame, the Trojan crew,\n", + "Or slain, or fled, the sons of Dares view;\n", + "When by the blood-stain’d hand Minerva press’d\n", + "The god of battles, and this speech address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Stern power of war! by whom the mighty fall,\n", + "Who bathe in blood, and shake the lofty wall!\n", + "Let the brave chiefs their glorious toils divide;\n", + "And whose the conquest, mighty Jove decide:\n", + "While we from interdicted fields retire,\n", + "Nor tempt the wrath of heaven’s avenging sire.”\n", + "\n", + "Her words allay the impetuous warrior’s heat,\n", + "The god of arms and martial maid retreat;\n", + "Removed from fight, on Xanthus’ flowery bounds\n", + "They sat, and listen’d to the dying sounds.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime, the Greeks the Trojan race pursue,\n", + "And some bold chieftain every leader slew:\n", + "First Odius falls, and bites the bloody sand,\n", + "His death ennobled by Atrides’ hand:\n", + "\n", + "As he to flight his wheeling car address’d,\n", + "The speedy javelin drove from back to breast.\n", + "In dust the mighty Halizonian lay,\n", + "His arms resound, the spirit wings its way.\n", + "\n", + "Thy fate was next, O Phæstus! doom’d to feel\n", + "The great Idomeneus’ protended steel;\n", + "Whom Borus sent (his son and only joy)\n", + "From fruitful Tarne to the fields of Troy.\n", + "The Cretan javelin reach’d him from afar,\n", + "And pierced his shoulder as he mounts his car;\n", + "Back from the car he tumbles to the ground,\n", + "And everlasting shades his eyes surround.\n", + "\n", + "Then died Scamandrius, expert in the chase,\n", + "In woods and wilds to wound the savage race;\n", + "Diana taught him all her sylvan arts,\n", + "To bend the bow, and aim unerring darts:\n", + "But vainly here Diana’s arts he tries,\n", + "The fatal lance arrests him as he flies;\n", + "From Menelaus’ arm the weapon sent,\n", + "Through his broad back and heaving bosom went:\n", + "Down sinks the warrior with a thundering sound,\n", + "His brazen armour rings against the ground.\n", + "\n", + "Next artful Phereclus untimely fell;\n", + "Bold Merion sent him to the realms of hell.\n", + "Thy father’s skill, O Phereclus! was thine,\n", + "The graceful fabric and the fair design;\n", + "For loved by Pallas, Pallas did impart\n", + "To him the shipwright’s and the builder’s art.\n", + "Beneath his hand the fleet of Paris rose,\n", + "The fatal cause of all his country’s woes;\n", + "But he, the mystic will of heaven unknown,\n", + "Nor saw his country’s peril, nor his own.\n", + "The hapless artist, while confused he fled,\n", + "The spear of Merion mingled with the dead.\n", + "Through his right hip, with forceful fury cast,\n", + "Between the bladder and the bone it pass’d;\n", + "Prone on his knees he falls with fruitless cries,\n", + "And death in lasting slumber seals his eyes.\n", + "\n", + "From Meges’ force the swift Pedaeus fled,\n", + "Antenor’s offspring from a foreign bed,\n", + "Whose generous spouse, Theanor, heavenly fair,\n", + "Nursed the young stranger with a mother’s care.\n", + "How vain those cares! when Meges in the rear\n", + "Full in his nape infix’d the fatal spear;\n", + "Swift through his crackling jaws the weapon glides,\n", + "And the cold tongue and grinning teeth divides.\n", + "\n", + "Then died Hypsenor, generous and divine,\n", + "Sprung from the brave Dolopion’s mighty line,\n", + "Who near adored Scamander made abode,\n", + "Priest of the stream, and honoured as a god.\n", + "On him, amidst the flying numbers found,\n", + "Eurypylus inflicts a deadly wound;\n", + "On his broad shoulders fell the forceful brand,\n", + "Thence glancing downwards, lopp’d his holy hand,\n", + "Which stain’d with sacred blood the blushing sand.\n", + "Down sunk the priest: the purple hand of death\n", + "Closed his dim eye, and fate suppress’d his breath.\n", + "\n", + "Thus toil’d the chiefs, in different parts engaged.\n", + "In every quarter fierce Tydides raged;\n", + "Amid the Greek, amid the Trojan train,\n", + "Rapt through the ranks he thunders o’er the plain;\n", + "Now here, now there, he darts from place to place,\n", + "Pours on the rear, or lightens in their face.\n", + "Thus from high hills the torrents swift and strong\n", + "Deluge whole fields, and sweep the trees along,\n", + "Through ruin’d moles the rushing wave resounds,\n", + "O’erwhelm’s the bridge, and bursts the lofty bounds;\n", + "The yellow harvests of the ripen’d year,\n", + "And flatted vineyards, one sad waste appear![144]\n", + "While Jove descends in sluicy sheets of rain,\n", + "And all the labours of mankind are vain.\n", + "\n", + "So raged Tydides, boundless in his ire,\n", + "Drove armies back, and made all Troy retire.\n", + "With grief the leader of the Lycian band\n", + "Saw the wide waste of his destructive hand:\n", + "His bended bow against the chief he drew;\n", + "Swift to the mark the thirsty arrow flew,\n", + "Whose forky point the hollow breastplate tore,\n", + "Deep in his shoulder pierced, and drank the gore:\n", + "The rushing stream his brazen armour dyed,\n", + "While the proud archer thus exulting cried:\n", + "\n", + "“Hither, ye Trojans, hither drive your steeds!\n", + "Lo! by our hand the bravest Grecian bleeds,\n", + "Not long the deathful dart he can sustain;\n", + "Or Phœbus urged me to these fields in vain.”\n", + "So spoke he, boastful: but the winged dart\n", + "Stopp’d short of life, and mock’d the shooter’s art.\n", + "The wounded chief, behind his car retired,\n", + "The helping hand of Sthenelus required;\n", + "Swift from his seat he leap’d upon the ground,\n", + "And tugg’d the weapon from the gushing wound;\n", + "When thus the king his guardian power address’d,\n", + "The purple current wandering o’er his vest:\n", + "\n", + "“O progeny of Jove! unconquer’d maid!\n", + "If e’er my godlike sire deserved thy aid,\n", + "If e’er I felt thee in the fighting field;\n", + "Now, goddess, now, thy sacred succour yield.\n", + "O give my lance to reach the Trojan knight,\n", + "Whose arrow wounds the chief thou guard’st in fight;\n", + "And lay the boaster grovelling on the shore,\n", + "That vaunts these eyes shall view the light no more.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus pray’d Tydides, and Minerva heard,\n", + "His nerves confirm’d, his languid spirits cheer’d;\n", + "He feels each limb with wonted vigour light;\n", + "His beating bosom claim’d the promised fight.\n", + "“Be bold, (she cried), in every combat shine,\n", + "War be thy province, thy protection mine;\n", + "Rush to the fight, and every foe control;\n", + "Wake each paternal virtue in thy soul:\n", + "Strength swells thy boiling breast, infused by me,\n", + "And all thy godlike father breathes in thee;\n", + "Yet more, from mortal mists I purge thy eyes,[145]\n", + "And set to view the warring deities.\n", + "These see thou shun, through all the embattled plain;\n", + "Nor rashly strive where human force is vain.\n", + "If Venus mingle in the martial band,\n", + "Her shalt thou wound: so Pallas gives command.”\n", + "\n", + "With that, the blue-eyed virgin wing’d her flight;\n", + "The hero rush’d impetuous to the fight;\n", + "With tenfold ardour now invades the plain,\n", + "Wild with delay, and more enraged by pain.\n", + "As on the fleecy flocks when hunger calls,\n", + "Amidst the field a brindled lion falls;\n", + "If chance some shepherd with a distant dart\n", + "The savage wound, he rouses at the smart,\n", + "He foams, he roars; the shepherd dares not stay,\n", + "But trembling leaves the scattering flocks a prey;\n", + "Heaps fall on heaps; he bathes with blood the ground,\n", + "Then leaps victorious o’er the lofty mound.\n", + "Not with less fury stern Tydides flew;\n", + "And two brave leaders at an instant slew;\n", + "Astynous breathless fell, and by his side,\n", + "His people’s pastor, good Hypenor, died;\n", + "Astynous’ breast the deadly lance receives,\n", + "Hypenor’s shoulder his broad falchion cleaves.\n", + "Those slain he left, and sprung with noble rage\n", + "Abas and Polyidus to engage;\n", + "Sons of Eurydamus, who, wise and old,\n", + "Could fate foresee, and mystic dreams unfold;\n", + "The youths return’d not from the doubtful plain,\n", + "And the sad father tried his arts in vain;\n", + "No mystic dream could make their fates appear,\n", + "Though now determined by Tydides’ spear.\n", + "\n", + "Young Xanthus next, and Thoon felt his rage;\n", + "The joy and hope of Phaenops’ feeble age:\n", + "Vast was his wealth, and these the only heirs\n", + "Of all his labours and a life of cares.\n", + "Cold death o’ertakes them in their blooming years,\n", + "And leaves the father unavailing tears:\n", + "To strangers now descends his heapy store,\n", + "The race forgotten, and the name no more.\n", + "\n", + "Two sons of Priam in one chariot ride,\n", + "Glittering in arms, and combat side by side.\n", + "As when the lordly lion seeks his food\n", + "Where grazing heifers range the lonely wood,\n", + "He leaps amidst them with a furious bound,\n", + "Bends their strong necks, and tears them to the ground:\n", + "So from their seats the brother chiefs are torn,\n", + "Their steeds and chariot to the navy borne.\n", + "\n", + "With deep concern divine Æneas view’d\n", + "The foe prevailing, and his friends pursued;\n", + "Through the thick storm of singing spears he flies,\n", + "Exploring Pandarus with careful eyes.\n", + "At length he found Lycaon’s mighty son;\n", + "To whom the chief of Venus’ race begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Where, Pandarus, are all thy honours now,\n", + "Thy winged arrows and unerring bow,\n", + "Thy matchless skill, thy yet unrivall’d fame,\n", + "And boasted glory of the Lycian name?\n", + "O pierce that mortal! if we mortal call\n", + "That wondrous force by which whole armies fall;\n", + "Or god incensed, who quits the distant skies\n", + "To punish Troy for slighted sacrifice;\n", + "(Which, oh avert from our unhappy state!\n", + "For what so dreadful as celestial hate)?\n", + "Whoe’er he be, propitiate Jove with prayer;\n", + "If man, destroy; if god, entreat to spare.”\n", + "\n", + "To him the Lycian: “Whom your eyes behold,\n", + "If right I judge, is Diomed the bold:\n", + "Such coursers whirl him o’er the dusty field,\n", + "So towers his helmet, and so flames his shield.\n", + "If ’tis a god, he wears that chief’s disguise:\n", + "Or if that chief, some guardian of the skies,\n", + "Involved in clouds, protects him in the fray,\n", + "And turns unseen the frustrate dart away.\n", + "I wing’d an arrow, which not idly fell,\n", + "The stroke had fix’d him to the gates of hell;\n", + "And, but some god, some angry god withstands,\n", + "His fate was due to these unerring hands.\n", + "Skill’d in the bow, on foot I sought the war,\n", + "Nor join’d swift horses to the rapid car.\n", + "Ten polish’d chariots I possess’d at home,\n", + "And still they grace Lycaon’s princely dome:\n", + "There veil’d in spacious coverlets they stand;\n", + "And twice ten coursers wait their lord’s command.\n", + "The good old warrior bade me trust to these,\n", + "When first for Troy I sail’d the sacred seas;\n", + "In fields, aloft, the whirling car to guide,\n", + "And through the ranks of death triumphant ride.\n", + "But vain with youth, and yet to thrift inclined,\n", + "I heard his counsels with unheedful mind,\n", + "And thought the steeds (your large supplies unknown)\n", + "Might fail of forage in the straiten’d town;\n", + "So took my bow and pointed darts in hand\n", + "And left the chariots in my native land.\n", + "\n", + "“Too late, O friend! my rashness I deplore;\n", + "These shafts, once fatal, carry death no more.\n", + "Tydeus’ and Atreus’ sons their points have found,\n", + "And undissembled gore pursued the wound.\n", + "In vain they bleed: this unavailing bow\n", + "Serves, not to slaughter, but provoke the foe.\n", + "In evil hour these bended horns I strung,\n", + "And seized the quiver where it idly hung.\n", + "Cursed be the fate that sent me to the field\n", + "Without a warrior’s arms, the spear and shield!\n", + "If e’er with life I quit the Trojan plain,\n", + "If e’er I see my spouse and sire again,\n", + "This bow, unfaithful to my glorious aims,\n", + "Broke by my hand, shall feed the blazing flames.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the leader of the Dardan race:\n", + "“Be calm, nor Phœbus’ honour’d gift disgrace.\n", + "The distant dart be praised, though here we need\n", + "The rushing chariot and the bounding steed.\n", + "Against yon hero let us bend our course,\n", + "And, hand to hand, encounter force with force.\n", + "Now mount my seat, and from the chariot’s height\n", + "Observe my father’s steeds, renown’d in fight;\n", + "Practised alike to turn, to stop, to chase,\n", + "To dare the shock, or urge the rapid race;\n", + "Secure with these, through fighting fields we go;\n", + "Or safe to Troy, if Jove assist the foe.\n", + "Haste, seize the whip, and snatch the guiding rein;\n", + "The warrior’s fury let this arm sustain;\n", + "Or, if to combat thy bold heart incline,\n", + "Take thou the spear, the chariot’s care be mine.”\n", + "\n", + "“O prince! (Lycaon’s valiant son replied)\n", + "As thine the steeds, be thine the task to guide.\n", + "The horses, practised to their lord’s command,\n", + "Shall bear the rein, and answer to thy hand;\n", + "But, if, unhappy, we desert the fight,\n", + "Thy voice alone can animate their flight;\n", + "Else shall our fates be number’d with the dead,\n", + "And these, the victor’s prize, in triumph led.\n", + "Thine be the guidance, then: with spear and shield\n", + "Myself will charge this terror of the field.”\n", + "\n", + "And now both heroes mount the glittering car;\n", + "The bounding coursers rush amidst the war;\n", + "Their fierce approach bold Sthenelus espied,\n", + "Who thus, alarm’d, to great Tydides cried:\n", + "\n", + "“O friend! two chiefs of force immense I see,\n", + "Dreadful they come, and bend their rage on thee:\n", + "Lo the brave heir of old Lycaon’s line,\n", + "And great Æneas, sprung from race divine!\n", + "Enough is given to fame. Ascend thy car!\n", + "And save a life, the bulwark of our war.”\n", + "\n", + "At this the hero cast a gloomy look,\n", + "Fix’d on the chief with scorn; and thus he spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Me dost thou bid to shun the coming fight?\n", + "Me wouldst thou move to base, inglorious flight?\n", + "Know, ’tis not honest in my soul to fear,\n", + "Nor was Tydides born to tremble here.\n", + "I hate the cumbrous chariot’s slow advance,\n", + "And the long distance of the flying lance;\n", + "But while my nerves are strong, my force entire,\n", + "Thus front the foe, and emulate my sire.\n", + "Nor shall yon steeds, that fierce to fight convey\n", + "Those threatening heroes, bear them both away;\n", + "One chief at least beneath this arm shall die;\n", + "So Pallas tells me, and forbids to fly.\n", + "But if she dooms, and if no god withstand,\n", + "That both shall fall by one victorious hand,\n", + "Then heed my words: my horses here detain,\n", + "Fix’d to the chariot by the straiten’d rein;\n", + "Swift to Æneas’ empty seat proceed,\n", + "And seize the coursers of ethereal breed;\n", + "The race of those, which once the thundering god[146]\n", + "For ravish’d Ganymede on Tros bestow’d,\n", + "The best that e’er on earth’s broad surface run,\n", + "Beneath the rising or the setting sun.\n", + "Hence great Anchises stole a breed unknown,\n", + "By mortal mares, from fierce Laomedon:\n", + "Four of this race his ample stalls contain,\n", + "And two transport Æneas o’er the plain.\n", + "These, were the rich immortal prize our own,\n", + "Through the wide world should make our glory known.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus while they spoke, the foe came furious on,\n", + "And stern Lycaon’s warlike race begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Prince, thou art met. Though late in vain assail’d,\n", + "The spear may enter where the arrow fail’d.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, then shook the ponderous lance, and flung;\n", + "On his broad shield the sounding weapon rung,\n", + "Pierced the tough orb, and in his cuirass hung,\n", + "“He bleeds! the pride of Greece! (the boaster cries,)\n", + "Our triumph now, the mighty warrior lies!”\n", + "“Mistaken vaunter! (Diomed replied;)\n", + "Thy dart has erred, and now my spear be tried;\n", + "Ye ’scape not both; one, headlong from his car,\n", + "With hostile blood shall glut the god of war.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and rising hurl’d his forceful dart,\n", + "Which, driven by Pallas, pierced a vital part;\n", + "Full in his face it enter’d, and betwixt\n", + "The nose and eye-ball the proud Lycian fix’d;\n", + "Crash’d all his jaws, and cleft the tongue within,\n", + "Till the bright point look’d out beneath the chin.\n", + "Headlong he falls, his helmet knocks the ground:\n", + "Earth groans beneath him, and his arms resound;\n", + "The starting coursers tremble with affright;\n", + "The soul indignant seeks the realms of night.\n", + "\n", + "To guard his slaughter’d friend, Æneas flies,\n", + "His spear extending where the carcase lies;\n", + "Watchful he wheels, protects it every way,\n", + "As the grim lion stalks around his prey.\n", + "O’er the fall’n trunk his ample shield display’d,\n", + "He hides the hero with his mighty shade,\n", + "And threats aloud! the Greeks with longing eyes\n", + "Behold at distance, but forbear the prize.\n", + "Then fierce Tydides stoops; and from the fields\n", + "Heaved with vast force, a rocky fragment wields.\n", + "Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise,\n", + "Such men as live in these degenerate days:[147]\n", + "He swung it round; and, gathering strength to throw,\n", + "Discharged the ponderous ruin at the foe.\n", + "Where to the hip the inserted thigh unites,\n", + "Full on the bone the pointed marble lights;\n", + "Through both the tendons broke the rugged stone,\n", + "And stripp’d the skin, and crack’d the solid bone.\n", + "Sunk on his knees, and staggering with his pains,\n", + "His falling bulk his bended arm sustains;\n", + "Lost in a dizzy mist the warrior lies;\n", + "A sudden cloud comes swimming o’er his eyes.\n", + "There the brave chief, who mighty numbers sway’d,\n", + "Oppress’d had sunk to death’s eternal shade,\n", + "But heavenly Venus, mindful of the love\n", + "She bore Anchises in the Idaean grove,\n", + "His danger views with anguish and despair,\n", + "And guards her offspring with a mother’s care.\n", + "About her much-loved son her arms she throws,\n", + "Her arms whose whiteness match the falling snows.\n", + "Screen’d from the foe behind her shining veil,\n", + "The swords wave harmless, and the javelins fail;\n", + "Safe through the rushing horse, and feather’d flight\n", + "Of sounding shafts, she bears him from the fight.\n", + "\n", + "Nor Sthenelus, with unassisting hands,\n", + "Remain’d unheedful of his lord’s commands:\n", + "His panting steeds, removed from out the war,\n", + "He fix’d with straiten’d traces to the car,\n", + "Next, rushing to the Dardan spoil, detains\n", + "The heavenly coursers with the flowing manes:\n", + "These in proud triumph to the fleet convey’d,\n", + "No longer now a Trojan lord obey’d.\n", + "That charge to bold Deipylus he gave,\n", + "(Whom most he loved, as brave men love the brave,)\n", + "Then mounting on his car, resumed the rein,\n", + "And follow’d where Tydides swept the plain.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile (his conquest ravished from his eyes)\n", + "The raging chief in chase of Venus flies:\n", + "No goddess she, commission’d to the field,\n", + "Like Pallas dreadful with her sable shield,\n", + "Or fierce Bellona thundering at the wall,\n", + "While flames ascend, and mighty ruins fall;\n", + "He knew soft combats suit the tender dame,\n", + "New to the field, and still a foe to fame.\n", + "Through breaking ranks his furious course he bends,\n", + "And at the goddess his broad lance extends;\n", + "Through her bright veil the daring weapon drove,\n", + "The ambrosial veil which all the Graces wove;\n", + "Her snowy hand the razing steel profaned,\n", + "And the transparent skin with crimson stain’d,\n", + "From the clear vein a stream immortal flow’d,\n", + "Such stream as issues from a wounded god;[148]\n", + "Pure emanation! uncorrupted flood!\n", + "Unlike our gross, diseased, terrestrial blood:\n", + "(For not the bread of man their life sustains,\n", + "Nor wine’s inflaming juice supplies their veins:)\n", + "With tender shrieks the goddess fill’d the place,\n", + "And dropp’d her offspring from her weak embrace.\n", + "Him Phœbus took: he casts a cloud around\n", + "The fainting chief, and wards the mortal wound.\n", + "\n", + "Then with a voice that shook the vaulted skies,\n", + "The king insults the goddess as she flies:\n", + "“Ill with Jove’s daughter bloody fights agree,\n", + "The field of combat is no scene for thee:\n", + "Go, let thy own soft sex employ thy care,\n", + "Go, lull the coward, or delude the fair.\n", + "Taught by this stroke renounce the war’s alarms,\n", + "And learn to tremble at the name of arms.”\n", + "\n", + "Tydides thus. The goddess, seized with dread,\n", + "Confused, distracted, from the conflict fled.\n", + "To aid her, swift the winged Iris flew,\n", + "Wrapt in a mist above the warring crew.\n", + "The queen of love with faded charms she found.\n", + "Pale was her cheek, and livid look’d the wound.\n", + "To Mars, who sat remote, they bent their way:\n", + "Far, on the left, with clouds involved he lay;\n", + "Beside him stood his lance, distain’d with gore,\n", + "And, rein’d with gold, his foaming steeds before.\n", + "Low at his knee, she begg’d with streaming eyes\n", + "Her brother’s car, to mount the distant skies,\n", + "And show’d the wound by fierce Tydides given,\n", + "A mortal man, who dares encounter heaven.\n", + "Stern Mars attentive hears the queen complain,\n", + "And to her hand commits the golden rein;\n", + "She mounts the seat, oppress’d with silent woe,\n", + "Driven by the goddess of the painted bow.\n", + "The lash resounds, the rapid chariot flies,\n", + "And in a moment scales the lofty skies:\n", + "They stopp’d the car, and there the coursers stood,\n", + "Fed by fair Iris with ambrosial food;\n", + "Before her mother, love’s bright queen appears,\n", + "O’erwhelmed with anguish, and dissolved in tears:\n", + "She raised her in her arms, beheld her bleed,\n", + "And ask’d what god had wrought this guilty deed?\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VENUS, WOUNDED IN THE HAND, CONDUCTED BY IRIS TO MARS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Then she: “This insult from no god I found,\n", + "An impious mortal gave the daring wound!\n", + "Behold the deed of haughty Diomed!\n", + "’Twas in the son’s defence the mother bled.\n", + "The war with Troy no more the Grecians wage;\n", + "But with the gods (the immortal gods) engage.”\n", + "\n", + "Dione then: “Thy wrongs with patience bear,\n", + "And share those griefs inferior powers must share:\n", + "Unnumber’d woes mankind from us sustain,\n", + "And men with woes afflict the gods again.\n", + "The mighty Mars in mortal fetters bound,[149]\n", + "And lodged in brazen dungeons underground,\n", + "Full thirteen moons imprison’d roar’d in vain;\n", + "Otus and Ephialtes held the chain:\n", + "Perhaps had perish’d had not Hermes’ care\n", + "Restored the groaning god to upper air.\n", + "Great Juno’s self has borne her weight of pain,\n", + "The imperial partner of the heavenly reign;\n", + "Amphitryon’s son infix’d the deadly dart,[150]\n", + "And fill’d with anguish her immortal heart.\n", + "E’en hell’s grim king Alcides’ power confess’d,\n", + "The shaft found entrance in his iron breast;\n", + "To Jove’s high palace for a cure he fled,\n", + "Pierced in his own dominions of the dead;\n", + "Where Paeon, sprinkling heavenly balm around,\n", + "Assuaged the glowing pangs, and closed the wound.\n", + "Rash, impious man! to stain the bless’d abodes,\n", + "And drench his arrows in the blood of gods!\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] OTUS AND EPHIALTES HOLDING MARS CAPTIVE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“But thou (though Pallas urged thy frantic deed),\n", + "Whose spear ill-fated makes a goddess bleed,\n", + "Know thou, whoe’er with heavenly power contends,\n", + "Short is his date, and soon his glory ends;\n", + "From fields of death when late he shall retire,\n", + "No infant on his knees shall call him sire.\n", + "Strong as thou art, some god may yet be found,\n", + "To stretch thee pale and gasping on the ground;\n", + "Thy distant wife, Ægialé the fair,[151]\n", + "Starting from sleep with a distracted air,\n", + "Shall rouse thy slaves, and her lost lord deplore,\n", + "The brave, the great, the glorious now no more!”\n", + "\n", + "This said, she wiped from Venus’ wounded palm\n", + "The sacred ichor, and infused the balm.\n", + "Juno and Pallas with a smile survey’d,\n", + "And thus to Jove began the blue-eyed maid:\n", + "\n", + "“Permit thy daughter, gracious Jove! to tell\n", + "How this mischance the Cyprian queen befell,\n", + "As late she tried with passion to inflame\n", + "The tender bosom of a Grecian dame;\n", + "Allured the fair, with moving thoughts of joy,\n", + "To quit her country for some youth of Troy;\n", + "The clasping zone, with golden buckles bound,\n", + "Razed her soft hand with this lamented wound.”\n", + "\n", + "The sire of gods and men superior smiled,\n", + "And, calling Venus, thus address’d his child:\n", + "“Not these, O daughter are thy proper cares,\n", + "Thee milder arts befit, and softer wars;\n", + "Sweet smiles are thine, and kind endearing charms;\n", + "To Mars and Pallas leave the deeds of arms.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus they in heaven: while on the plain below\n", + "The fierce Tydides charged his Dardan foe,\n", + "Flush’d with celestial blood pursued his way,\n", + "And fearless dared the threatening god of day;\n", + "Already in his hopes he saw him kill’d,\n", + "Though screen’d behind Apollo’s mighty shield.\n", + "Thrice rushing furious, at the chief he strook;\n", + "His blazing buckler thrice Apollo shook:\n", + "He tried the fourth: when, breaking from the cloud,\n", + "A more than mortal voice was heard aloud.\n", + "\n", + "“O son of Tydeus, cease! be wise and see\n", + "How vast the difference of the gods and thee;\n", + "Distance immense! between the powers that shine\n", + "Above, eternal, deathless, and divine,\n", + "And mortal man! a wretch of humble birth,\n", + "A short-lived reptile in the dust of earth.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the god who darts celestial fires:\n", + "He dreads his fury, and some steps retires.\n", + "Then Phœbus bore the chief of Venus’ race\n", + "To Troy’s high fane, and to his holy place;\n", + "Latona there and Phoebe heal’d the wound,\n", + "With vigour arm’d him, and with glory crown’d.\n", + "This done, the patron of the silver bow\n", + "A phantom raised, the same in shape and show\n", + "With great Æneas; such the form he bore,\n", + "And such in fight the radiant arms he wore.\n", + "Around the spectre bloody wars are waged,\n", + "And Greece and Troy with clashing shields engaged.\n", + "Meantime on Ilion’s tower Apollo stood,\n", + "And calling Mars, thus urged the raging god:\n", + "\n", + "“Stern power of arms, by whom the mighty fall;\n", + "Who bathest in blood, and shakest the embattled wall,\n", + "Rise in thy wrath! to hell’s abhorr’d abodes\n", + "Despatch yon Greek, and vindicate the gods.\n", + "First rosy Venus felt his brutal rage;\n", + "Me next he charged, and dares all heaven engage:\n", + "The wretch would brave high heaven’s immortal sire,\n", + "His triple thunder, and his bolts of fire.”\n", + "\n", + "The god of battle issues on the plain,\n", + "Stirs all the ranks, and fires the Trojan train;\n", + "In form like Acamas, the Thracian guide,\n", + "Enraged to Troy’s retiring chiefs he cried:\n", + "\n", + "“How long, ye sons of Priam! will ye fly,\n", + "And unrevenged see Priam’s people die?\n", + "Still unresisted shall the foe destroy,\n", + "And stretch the slaughter to the gates of Troy?\n", + "Lo, brave Æneas sinks beneath his wound,\n", + "Not godlike Hector more in arms renown’d:\n", + "Haste all, and take the generous warrior’s part.\n", + "He said;—new courage swell’d each hero’s heart.\n", + "Sarpedon first his ardent soul express’d,\n", + "And, turn’d to Hector, these bold words address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Say, chief, is all thy ancient valour lost?\n", + "Where are thy threats, and where thy glorious boast,\n", + "That propp’d alone by Priam’s race should stand\n", + "Troy’s sacred walls, nor need a foreign hand?\n", + "Now, now thy country calls her wonted friends,\n", + "And the proud vaunt in just derision ends.\n", + "Remote they stand while alien troops engage,\n", + "Like trembling hounds before the lion’s rage.\n", + "Far distant hence I held my wide command,\n", + "Where foaming Xanthus laves the Lycian land;\n", + "With ample wealth (the wish of mortals) bless’d,\n", + "A beauteous wife, and infant at her breast;\n", + "With those I left whatever dear could be:\n", + "Greece, if she conquers, nothing wins from me;\n", + "Yet first in fight my Lycian bands I cheer,\n", + "And long to meet this mighty man ye fear;\n", + "While Hector idle stands, nor bids the brave\n", + "Their wives, their infants, and their altars save.\n", + "Haste, warrior, haste! preserve thy threaten’d state,\n", + "Or one vast burst of all-involving fate\n", + "Full o’er your towers shall fall, and sweep away\n", + "Sons, sires, and wives, an undistinguish’d prey.\n", + "Rouse all thy Trojans, urge thy aids to fight;\n", + "These claim thy thoughts by day, thy watch by night;\n", + "With force incessant the brave Greeks oppose;\n", + "Such cares thy friends deserve, and such thy foes.”\n", + "\n", + "Stung to the heart the generous Hector hears,\n", + "But just reproof with decent silence bears.\n", + "From his proud car the prince impetuous springs,\n", + "On earth he leaps, his brazen armour rings.\n", + "Two shining spears are brandish’d in his hands;\n", + "Thus arm’d, he animates his drooping bands,\n", + "Revives their ardour, turns their steps from flight,\n", + "And wakes anew the dying flames of fight.\n", + "They turn, they stand; the Greeks their fury dare,\n", + "Condense their powers, and wait the growing war.\n", + "\n", + "As when, on Ceres’ sacred floor, the swain\n", + "Spreads the wide fan to clear the golden grain,\n", + "And the light chaff, before the breezes borne,\n", + "Ascends in clouds from off the heapy corn;\n", + "The grey dust, rising with collected winds,\n", + "Drives o’er the barn, and whitens all the hinds:\n", + "So white with dust the Grecian host appears,\n", + "From trampling steeds, and thundering charioteers.\n", + "The dusky clouds from labour’d earth arise,\n", + "And roll in smoking volumes to the skies.\n", + "Mars hovers o’er them with his sable shield,\n", + "And adds new horrors to the darken’d field:\n", + "Pleased with his charge, and ardent to fulfil,\n", + "In Troy’s defence, Apollo’s heavenly will:\n", + "Soon as from fight the blue-eyed maid retires,\n", + "Each Trojan bosom with new warmth he fires.\n", + "And now the god, from forth his sacred fane,\n", + "Produced Æneas to the shouting train;\n", + "Alive, unharm’d, with all his peers around,\n", + "Erect he stood, and vigorous from his wound:\n", + "Inquiries none they made; the dreadful day\n", + "No pause of words admits, no dull delay;\n", + "Fierce Discord storms, Apollo loud exclaims,\n", + "Fame calls, Mars thunders, and the field’s in flames.\n", + "\n", + "Stern Diomed with either Ajax stood,\n", + "And great Ulysses, bathed in hostile blood.\n", + "Embodied close, the labouring Grecian train\n", + "The fiercest shock of charging hosts sustain.\n", + "Unmoved and silent, the whole war they wait\n", + "Serenely dreadful, and as fix’d as fate.\n", + "So when the embattled clouds in dark array,\n", + "Along the skies their gloomy lines display;\n", + "When now the North his boisterous rage has spent,\n", + "And peaceful sleeps the liquid element:\n", + "The low-hung vapours, motionless and still,\n", + "Rest on the summits of the shaded hill;\n", + "Till the mass scatters as the winds arise,\n", + "Dispersed and broken through the ruffled skies.\n", + "\n", + "Nor was the general wanting to his train;\n", + "From troop to troop he toils through all the plain,\n", + "“Ye Greeks, be men! the charge of battle bear;\n", + "Your brave associates and yourselves revere!\n", + "Let glorious acts more glorious acts inspire,\n", + "And catch from breast to breast the noble fire!\n", + "On valour’s side the odds of combat lie,\n", + "The brave live glorious, or lamented die;\n", + "The wretch who trembles in the field of fame,\n", + "Meets death, and worse than death, eternal shame!”\n", + "\n", + "These words he seconds with his flying lance,\n", + "To meet whose point was strong Deicoon’s chance:\n", + "Æneas’ friend, and in his native place\n", + "Honour’d and loved like Priam’s royal race:\n", + "Long had he fought the foremost in the field,\n", + "But now the monarch’s lance transpierced his shield:\n", + "His shield too weak the furious dart to stay,\n", + "Through his broad belt the weapon forced its way:\n", + "The grisly wound dismiss’d his soul to hell,\n", + "His arms around him rattled as he fell.\n", + "\n", + "Then fierce Æneas, brandishing his blade,\n", + "In dust Orsilochus and Crethon laid,\n", + "Whose sire Diocleus, wealthy, brave and great,\n", + "In well-built Pheræ held his lofty seat:[152]\n", + "Sprung from Alpheus’ plenteous stream, that yields\n", + "Increase of harvests to the Pylian fields.\n", + "He got Orsilochus, Diocleus he,\n", + "And these descended in the third degree.\n", + "Too early expert in the martial toil,\n", + "In sable ships they left their native soil,\n", + "To avenge Atrides: now, untimely slain,\n", + "They fell with glory on the Phrygian plain.\n", + "So two young mountain lions, nursed with blood\n", + "In deep recesses of the gloomy wood,\n", + "Rush fearless to the plains, and uncontroll’d\n", + "Depopulate the stalls and waste the fold:\n", + "Till pierced at distance from their native den,\n", + "O’erpowered they fall beneath the force of men.\n", + "Prostrate on earth their beauteous bodies lay,\n", + "Like mountain firs, as tall and straight as they.\n", + "Great Menelaus views with pitying eyes,\n", + "Lifts his bright lance, and at the victor flies;\n", + "Mars urged him on; yet, ruthless in his hate,\n", + "The god but urged him to provoke his fate.\n", + "He thus advancing, Nestor’s valiant son\n", + "Shakes for his danger, and neglects his own;\n", + "Struck with the thought, should Helen’s lord be slain,\n", + "And all his country’s glorious labours vain.\n", + "Already met, the threatening heroes stand;\n", + "The spears already tremble in their hand:\n", + "In rush’d Antilochus, his aid to bring,\n", + "And fall or conquer by the Spartan king.\n", + "These seen, the Dardan backward turn’d his course,\n", + "Brave as he was, and shunn’d unequal force.\n", + "The breathless bodies to the Greeks they drew,\n", + "Then mix in combat, and their toils renew.\n", + "\n", + "First, Pylæmenes, great in battle, bled,\n", + "Who sheathed in brass the Paphlagonians led.\n", + "Atrides mark’d him where sublime he stood;\n", + "Fix’d in his throat the javelin drank his blood.\n", + "The faithful Mydon, as he turn’d from fight\n", + "His flying coursers, sunk to endless night;\n", + "A broken rock by Nestor’s son was thrown:\n", + "His bended arm received the falling stone;\n", + "From his numb’d hand the ivory-studded reins,\n", + "Dropp’d in the dust, are trail’d along the plains:\n", + "Meanwhile his temples feel a deadly wound;\n", + "He groans in death, and ponderous sinks to ground:\n", + "Deep drove his helmet in the sands, and there\n", + "The head stood fix’d, the quivering legs in air,\n", + "Till trampled flat beneath the coursers’ feet:\n", + "The youthful victor mounts his empty seat,\n", + "And bears the prize in triumph to the fleet.\n", + "\n", + "Great Hector saw, and, raging at the view,\n", + "Pours on the Greeks: the Trojan troops pursue:\n", + "He fires his host with animating cries,\n", + "And brings along the furies of the skies,\n", + "Mars, stern destroyer! and Bellona dread,\n", + "Flame in the front, and thunder at their head:\n", + "This swells the tumult and the rage of fight;\n", + "That shakes a spear that casts a dreadful light.\n", + "Where Hector march’d, the god of battles shined,\n", + "Now storm’d before him, and now raged behind.\n", + "\n", + "Tydides paused amidst his full career;\n", + "Then first the hero’s manly breast knew fear.\n", + "As when some simple swain his cot forsakes,\n", + "And wide through fens an unknown journey takes:\n", + "If chance a swelling brook his passage stay,\n", + "And foam impervious ’cross the wanderer’s way,\n", + "Confused he stops, a length of country pass’d,\n", + "Eyes the rough waves, and tired, returns at last.\n", + "Amazed no less the great Tydides stands:\n", + "He stay’d, and turning thus address’d his bands:\n", + "\n", + "“No wonder, Greeks! that all to Hector yield;\n", + "Secure of favouring gods, he takes the field;\n", + "His strokes they second, and avert our spears.\n", + "Behold where Mars in mortal arms appears!\n", + "Retire then, warriors, but sedate and slow;\n", + "Retire, but with your faces to the foe.\n", + "Trust not too much your unavailing might;\n", + "’Tis not with Troy, but with the gods ye fight.”\n", + "\n", + "Now near the Greeks the black battalions drew;\n", + "And first two leaders valiant Hector slew:\n", + "His force Anchialus and Mnesthes found,\n", + "In every art of glorious war renown’d;\n", + "In the same car the chiefs to combat ride,\n", + "And fought united, and united died.\n", + "Struck at the sight, the mighty Ajax glows\n", + "With thirst of vengeance, and assaults the foes.\n", + "His massy spear with matchless fury sent,\n", + "Through Amphius’ belt and heaving belly went;\n", + "Amphius Apæsus’ happy soil possess’d,\n", + "With herds abounding, and with treasure bless’d;\n", + "But fate resistless from his country led\n", + "The chief, to perish at his people’s head.\n", + "Shook with his fall his brazen armour rung,\n", + "And fierce, to seize it, conquering Ajax sprung;\n", + "Around his head an iron tempest rain’d;\n", + "A wood of spears his ample shield sustain’d:\n", + "Beneath one foot the yet warm corpse he press’d,\n", + "And drew his javelin from the bleeding breast:\n", + "He could no more; the showering darts denied\n", + "To spoil his glittering arms, and plumy pride.\n", + "Now foes on foes came pouring on the fields,\n", + "With bristling lances, and compacted shields;\n", + "Till in the steely circle straiten’d round,\n", + "Forced he gives way, and sternly quits the ground.\n", + "\n", + "While thus they strive, Tlepolemus the great,[153]\n", + "Urged by the force of unresisted fate,\n", + "Burns with desire Sarpedon’s strength to prove;\n", + "Alcides’ offspring meets the son of Jove.\n", + "Sheathed in bright arms each adverse chief came on.\n", + "Jove’s great descendant, and his greater son.\n", + "Prepared for combat, ere the lance he toss’d,\n", + "The daring Rhodian vents his haughty boast:\n", + "\n", + "“What brings this Lycian counsellor so far,\n", + "To tremble at our arms, not mix in war!\n", + "Know thy vain self, nor let their flattery move,\n", + "Who style thee son of cloud-compelling Jove.\n", + "How far unlike those chiefs of race divine,\n", + "How vast the difference of their deeds and thine!\n", + "Jove got such heroes as my sire, whose soul\n", + "No fear could daunt, nor earth nor hell control.\n", + "Troy felt his arm, and yon proud ramparts stand\n", + "Raised on the ruins of his vengeful hand:\n", + "With six small ships, and but a slender train,\n", + "He left the town a wide-deserted plain.\n", + "But what art thou, who deedless look’st around,\n", + "While unrevenged thy Lycians bite the ground!\n", + "Small aid to Troy thy feeble force can be;\n", + "But wert thou greater, thou must yield to me.\n", + "Pierced by my spear, to endless darkness go!\n", + "I make this present to the shades below.”\n", + "\n", + "The son of Hercules, the Rhodian guide,\n", + "Thus haughty spoke. The Lycian king replied:\n", + "\n", + "“Thy sire, O prince! o’erturn’d the Trojan state,\n", + "Whose perjured monarch well deserved his fate;\n", + "Those heavenly steeds the hero sought so far,\n", + "False he detain’d, the just reward of war.\n", + "Nor so content, the generous chief defied,\n", + "With base reproaches and unmanly pride.\n", + "But you, unworthy the high race you boast,\n", + "Shall raise my glory when thy own is lost:\n", + "Now meet thy fate, and by Sarpedon slain,\n", + "Add one more ghost to Pluto’s gloomy reign.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: both javelins at an instant flew;\n", + "Both struck, both wounded, but Sarpedon’s slew:\n", + "Full in the boaster’s neck the weapon stood,\n", + "Transfix’d his throat, and drank the vital blood;\n", + "The soul disdainful seeks the caves of night,\n", + "And his seal’d eyes for ever lose the light.\n", + "\n", + "Yet not in vain, Tlepolemus, was thrown\n", + "Thy angry lance; which piercing to the bone\n", + "Sarpedon’s thigh, had robb’d the chief of breath;\n", + "But Jove was present, and forbade the death.\n", + "Borne from the conflict by his Lycian throng,\n", + "The wounded hero dragg’d the lance along.\n", + "(His friends, each busied in his several part,\n", + "Through haste, or danger, had not drawn the dart.)\n", + "The Greeks with slain Tlepolemus retired;\n", + "Whose fall Ulysses view’d, with fury fired;\n", + "Doubtful if Jove’s great son he should pursue,\n", + "Or pour his vengeance on the Lycian crew.\n", + "But heaven and fate the first design withstand,\n", + "Nor this great death must grace Ulysses’ hand.\n", + "Minerva drives him on the Lycian train;\n", + "Alastor, Cronius, Halius, strew’d the plain,\n", + "Alcander, Prytanis, Noëmon fell:[154]\n", + "And numbers more his sword had sent to hell,\n", + "But Hector saw; and, furious at the sight,\n", + "Rush’d terrible amidst the ranks of fight.\n", + "With joy Sarpedon view’d the wish’d relief,\n", + "And, faint, lamenting, thus implored the chief:\n", + "\n", + "“O suffer not the foe to bear away\n", + "My helpless corpse, an unassisted prey;\n", + "If I, unbless’d, must see my son no more,\n", + "My much-loved consort, and my native shore,\n", + "Yet let me die in Ilion’s sacred wall;\n", + "Troy, in whose cause I fell, shall mourn my fall.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, nor Hector to the chief replies,\n", + "But shakes his plume, and fierce to combat flies;\n", + "Swift as a whirlwind, drives the scattering foes;\n", + "And dyes the ground with purple as he goes.\n", + "\n", + "Beneath a beech, Jove’s consecrated shade,\n", + "His mournful friends divine Sarpedon laid:\n", + "Brave Pelagon, his favourite chief, was nigh,\n", + "Who wrench’d the javelin from his sinewy thigh.\n", + "The fainting soul stood ready wing’d for flight,\n", + "And o’er his eye-balls swam the shades of night;\n", + "But Boreas rising fresh, with gentle breath,\n", + "Recall’d his spirit from the gates of death.\n", + "\n", + "The generous Greeks recede with tardy pace,\n", + "Though Mars and Hector thunder in their face;\n", + "None turn their backs to mean ignoble flight,\n", + "Slow they retreat, and even retreating fight.\n", + "Who first, who last, by Mars’ and Hector’s hand,\n", + "Stretch’d in their blood, lay gasping on the sand?\n", + "Tenthras the great, Orestes the renown’d\n", + "For managed steeds, and Trechus press’d the ground;\n", + "Next Œnomaus and OEnops’ offspring died;\n", + "Oresbius last fell groaning at their side:\n", + "Oresbius, in his painted mitre gay,\n", + "In fat Bœotia held his wealthy sway,\n", + "Where lakes surround low Hylè’s watery plain;\n", + "A prince and people studious of their gain.\n", + "\n", + "The carnage Juno from the skies survey’d,\n", + "And touch’d with grief bespoke the blue-eyed maid:\n", + "“Oh, sight accursed! Shall faithless Troy prevail,\n", + "And shall our promise to our people fail?\n", + "How vain the word to Menelaus given\n", + "By Jove’s great daughter and the queen of heaven,\n", + "Beneath his arms that Priam’s towers should fall,\n", + "If warring gods for ever guard the wall!\n", + "Mars, red with slaughter, aids our hated foes:\n", + "Haste, let us arm, and force with force oppose!”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke; Minerva burns to meet the war:\n", + "And now heaven’s empress calls her blazing car.\n", + "At her command rush forth the steeds divine;\n", + "Rich with immortal gold their trappings shine.\n", + "Bright Hebe waits; by Hebe, ever young,\n", + "The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung.\n", + "On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel\n", + "Of sounding brass; the polished axle steel.\n", + "Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame;\n", + "The circles gold, of uncorrupted frame,\n", + "Such as the heavens produce: and round the gold\n", + "Two brazen rings of work divine were roll’d.\n", + "The bossy naves of sold silver shone;\n", + "Braces of gold suspend the moving throne:\n", + "The car, behind, an arching figure bore;\n", + "The bending concave form’d an arch before.\n", + "Silver the beam, the extended yoke was gold,\n", + "And golden reins the immortal coursers hold.\n", + "Herself, impatient, to the ready car,\n", + "The coursers joins, and breathes revenge and war.\n", + "\n", + "Pallas disrobes; her radiant veil untied,\n", + "With flowers adorn’d, with art diversified,\n", + "(The laboured veil her heavenly fingers wove,)\n", + "Flows on the pavement of the court of Jove.\n", + "Now heaven’s dread arms her mighty limbs invest,\n", + "Jove’s cuirass blazes on her ample breast;\n", + "Deck’d in sad triumph for the mournful field,\n", + "O’er her broad shoulders hangs his horrid shield,\n", + "Dire, black, tremendous! Round the margin roll’d,\n", + "A fringe of serpents hissing guards the gold:\n", + "Here all the terrors of grim War appear,\n", + "Here rages Force, here tremble Flight and Fear,\n", + "Here storm’d Contention, and here Fury frown’d,\n", + "And the dire orb portentous Gorgon crown’d.\n", + "The massy golden helm she next assumes,\n", + "That dreadful nods with four o’ershading plumes;\n", + "So vast, the broad circumference contains\n", + "A hundred armies on a hundred plains.\n", + "The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;\n", + "Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,\n", + "Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,\n", + "Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o’erturns.\n", + "\n", + "Swift at the scourge the ethereal coursers fly,\n", + "While the smooth chariot cuts the liquid sky.\n", + "Heaven’s gates spontaneous open to the powers,[155]\n", + "Heaven’s golden gates, kept by the winged Hours;[156]\n", + "Commission’d in alternate watch they stand,\n", + "The sun’s bright portals and the skies command,\n", + "Involve in clouds the eternal gates of day,\n", + "Or the dark barrier roll with ease away.\n", + "The sounding hinges ring, on either side\n", + "The gloomy volumes, pierced with light, divide.\n", + "The chariot mounts, where deep in ambient skies,\n", + "Confused, Olympus’ hundred heads arise;\n", + "Where far apart the Thunderer fills his throne,\n", + "O’er all the gods superior and alone.\n", + "There with her snowy hand the queen restrains\n", + "The fiery steeds, and thus to Jove complains:\n", + "\n", + "“O sire! can no resentment touch thy soul?\n", + "Can Mars rebel, and does no thunder roll?\n", + "What lawless rage on yon forbidden plain,\n", + "What rash destruction! and what heroes slain!\n", + "Venus, and Phœbus with the dreadful bow,\n", + "Smile on the slaughter, and enjoy my woe.\n", + "Mad, furious power! whose unrelenting mind\n", + "No god can govern, and no justice bind.\n", + "Say, mighty father! shall we scourge this pride,\n", + "And drive from fight the impetuous homicide?”\n", + "\n", + "To whom assenting, thus the Thunderer said:\n", + "“Go! and the great Minerva be thy aid.\n", + "To tame the monster-god Minerva knows,\n", + "And oft afflicts his brutal breast with woes.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; Saturnia, ardent to obey,\n", + "Lash’d her white steeds along the aerial way.\n", + "Swift down the steep of heaven the chariot rolls,\n", + "Between the expanded earth and starry poles.\n", + "Far as a shepherd, from some point on high,[157]\n", + "O’er the wide main extends his boundless eye,\n", + "Through such a space of air, with thundering sound,\n", + "At every leap the immortal coursers bound\n", + "Troy now they reach’d and touch’d those banks divine,\n", + "Where silver Simois and Scamander join.\n", + "There Juno stopp’d, and (her fair steeds unloosed)\n", + "Of air condensed a vapour circumfused:\n", + "For these, impregnate with celestial dew,\n", + "On Simois’ brink ambrosial herbage grew.\n", + "Thence to relieve the fainting Argive throng,\n", + "Smooth as the sailing doves they glide along.\n", + "\n", + "The best and bravest of the Grecian band\n", + "(A warlike circle) round Tydides stand.\n", + "Such was their look as lions bathed in blood,\n", + "Or foaming boars, the terror of the wood.\n", + "Heaven’s empress mingles with the mortal crowd,\n", + "And shouts, in Stentor’s sounding voice, aloud;\n", + "Stentor the strong, endued with brazen lungs,[158]\n", + "Whose throats surpass’d the force of fifty tongues.\n", + "\n", + "“Inglorious Argives! to your race a shame,\n", + "And only men in figure and in name!\n", + "Once from the walls your timorous foes engaged,\n", + "While fierce in war divine Achilles raged;\n", + "Now issuing fearless they possess the plain,\n", + "Now win the shores, and scarce the seas remain.”\n", + "\n", + "Her speech new fury to their hearts convey’d;\n", + "While near Tydides stood the Athenian maid;\n", + "The king beside his panting steeds she found,\n", + "O’erspent with toil reposing on the ground;\n", + "To cool his glowing wound he sat apart,\n", + "(The wound inflicted by the Lycian dart.)\n", + "Large drops of sweat from all his limbs descend,\n", + "Beneath his ponderous shield his sinews bend,\n", + "Whose ample belt, that o’er his shoulder lay,\n", + "He eased; and wash’d the clotted gore away.\n", + "The goddess leaning o’er the bending yoke,\n", + "Beside his coursers, thus her silence broke:\n", + "\n", + "“Degenerate prince! and not of Tydeus’ kind,\n", + "Whose little body lodged a mighty mind;\n", + "Foremost he press’d in glorious toils to share,\n", + "And scarce refrain’d when I forbade the war.\n", + "Alone, unguarded, once he dared to go,\n", + "And feast, incircled by the Theban foe;\n", + "There braved, and vanquish’d, many a hardy knight;\n", + "Such nerves I gave him, and such force in fight.\n", + "Thou too no less hast been my constant care;\n", + "Thy hands I arm’d, and sent thee forth to war:\n", + "But thee or fear deters, or sloth detains;\n", + "No drop of all thy father warms thy veins.”\n", + "\n", + "The chief thus answered mild: “Immortal maid!\n", + "I own thy presence, and confess thy aid.\n", + "Not fear, thou know’st, withholds me from the plains,\n", + "Nor sloth hath seized me, but thy word restrains:\n", + "From warring gods thou bad’st me turn my spear,\n", + "And Venus only found resistance here.\n", + "Hence, goddess! heedful of thy high commands,\n", + "Loth I gave way, and warn’d our Argive bands:\n", + "For Mars, the homicide, these eyes beheld,\n", + "With slaughter red, and raging round the field.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus Minerva:—“Brave Tydides, hear!\n", + "Not Mars himself, nor aught immortal, fear.\n", + "Full on the god impel thy foaming horse:\n", + "Pallas commands, and Pallas lends thee force.\n", + "Rash, furious, blind, from these to those he flies,\n", + "And every side of wavering combat tries;\n", + "Large promise makes, and breaks the promise made:\n", + "Now gives the Grecians, now the Trojans aid.”[159]\n", + "\n", + "She said, and to the steeds approaching near,\n", + "Drew from his seat the martial charioteer.\n", + "The vigorous power the trembling car ascends,\n", + "Fierce for revenge; and Diomed attends:\n", + "The groaning axle bent beneath the load;\n", + "So great a hero, and so great a god.\n", + "She snatch’d the reins, she lash’d with all her force,\n", + "And full on Mars impelled the foaming horse:\n", + "But first, to hide her heavenly visage, spread\n", + "Black Orcus’ helmet o’er her radiant head.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] DIOMED CASTING HIS SPEAR AT MARS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Just then gigantic Periphas lay slain,\n", + "The strongest warrior of the Ætolian train;\n", + "The god, who slew him, leaves his prostrate prize\n", + "Stretch’d where he fell, and at Tydides flies.\n", + "Now rushing fierce, in equal arms appear\n", + "The daring Greek, the dreadful god of war!\n", + "Full at the chief, above his courser’s head,\n", + "From Mars’s arm the enormous weapon fled:\n", + "Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance\n", + "Far from the car the strong immortal lance.\n", + "Then threw the force of Tydeus’ warlike son;\n", + "The javelin hiss’d; the goddess urged it on:\n", + "Where the broad cincture girt his armour round,\n", + "It pierced the god: his groin received the wound.\n", + "From the rent skin the warrior tugs again\n", + "The smoking steel. Mars bellows with the pain:\n", + "Loud as the roar encountering armies yield,\n", + "When shouting millions shake the thundering field.\n", + "Both armies start, and trembling gaze around;\n", + "And earth and heaven re-bellow to the sound.\n", + "As vapours blown by Auster’s sultry breath,\n", + "Pregnant with plagues, and shedding seeds of death,\n", + "Beneath the rage of burning Sirius rise,\n", + "Choke the parch’d earth, and blacken all the skies;\n", + "In such a cloud the god from combat driven,\n", + "High o’er the dusky whirlwind scales the heaven.\n", + "Wild with his pain, he sought the bright abodes,\n", + "There sullen sat beneath the sire of gods,\n", + "Show’d the celestial blood, and with a groan\n", + "Thus pour’d his plaints before the immortal throne:\n", + "\n", + "“Can Jove, supine, flagitious facts survey,\n", + "And brook the furies of this daring day?\n", + "For mortal men celestial powers engage,\n", + "And gods on gods exert eternal rage:\n", + "From thee, O father! all these ills we bear,\n", + "And thy fell daughter with the shield and spear;\n", + "Thou gavest that fury to the realms of light,\n", + "Pernicious, wild, regardless of the right.\n", + "All heaven beside reveres thy sovereign sway,\n", + "Thy voice we hear, and thy behests obey:\n", + "’Tis hers to offend, and even offending share\n", + "Thy breast, thy counsels, thy distinguish’d care:\n", + "So boundless she, and thou so partial grown,\n", + "Well may we deem the wondrous birth thy own.\n", + "Now frantic Diomed, at her command,\n", + "Against the immortals lifts his raging hand:\n", + "The heavenly Venus first his fury found,\n", + "Me next encountering, me he dared to wound;\n", + "Vanquish’d I fled; even I, the god of fight,\n", + "From mortal madness scarce was saved by flight.\n", + "Else hadst thou seen me sink on yonder plain,\n", + "Heap’d round, and heaving under loads of slain!\n", + "Or pierced with Grecian darts, for ages lie,\n", + "Condemn’d to pain, though fated not to die.”\n", + "\n", + "Him thus upbraiding, with a wrathful look\n", + "The lord of thunders view’d, and stern bespoke:\n", + "“To me, perfidious! this lamenting strain?\n", + "Of lawless force shall lawless Mars complain?\n", + "Of all the gods who tread the spangled skies,\n", + "Thou most unjust, most odious in our eyes!\n", + "Inhuman discord is thy dire delight,\n", + "The waste of slaughter, and the rage of fight.\n", + "No bounds, no law, thy fiery temper quells,\n", + "And all thy mother in thy soul rebels.\n", + "In vain our threats, in vain our power we use;\n", + "She gives the example, and her son pursues.\n", + "Yet long the inflicted pangs thou shall not mourn,\n", + "Sprung since thou art from Jove, and heavenly-born.\n", + "Else, singed with lightning, hadst thou hence been thrown,\n", + "Where chain’d on burning rocks the Titans groan.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he who shakes Olympus with his nod;\n", + "Then gave to Pæon’s care the bleeding god.[160]\n", + "With gentle hand the balm he pour’d around,\n", + "And heal’d the immortal flesh, and closed the wound.\n", + "As when the fig’s press’d juice, infused in cream,\n", + "To curds coagulates the liquid stream,\n", + "Sudden the fluids fix the parts combined;\n", + "Such, and so soon, the ethereal texture join’d.\n", + "Cleansed from the dust and gore, fair Hebe dress’d\n", + "His mighty limbs in an immortal vest.\n", + "Glorious he sat, in majesty restored,\n", + "Fast by the throne of heaven’s superior lord.\n", + "Juno and Pallas mount the bless’d abodes,\n", + "Their task perform’d, and mix among the gods.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] JUNO\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK VI.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE EPISODES OF GLAUCUS AND DIOMED, AND OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The gods having left the field, the Grecians prevail. Helenus, the\n", + "chief augur of Troy, commands Hector to return to the city, in order to\n", + "appoint a solemn procession of the queen and the Trojan matrons to the\n", + "temple of Minerva, to entreat her to remove Diomed from the fight. The\n", + "battle relaxing during the absence of Hector, Glaucus and Diomed have\n", + "an interview between the two armies; where, coming to the knowledge, of\n", + "the friendship and hospitality passed between their ancestors, they\n", + "make exchange of their arms. Hector, having performed the orders of\n", + "Helenus, prevails upon Paris to return to the battle, and, taking a\n", + "tender leave of his wife Andromache, hastens again to the field.\n", + " The scene is first in the field of battle, between the rivers\n", + " Simois and Scamander, and then changes to Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Now heaven forsakes the fight: the immortals yield\n", + "To human force and human skill the field:\n", + "Dark showers of javelins fly from foes to foes;\n", + "Now here, now there, the tide of combat flows;\n", + "While Troy’s famed streams, that bound the deathful plain\n", + "On either side, run purple to the main.\n", + "\n", + "Great Ajax first to conquest led the way,\n", + "Broke the thick ranks, and turn’d the doubtful day.\n", + "The Thracian Acamas his falchion found,\n", + "And hew’d the enormous giant to the ground;\n", + "His thundering arm a deadly stroke impress’d\n", + "Where the black horse-hair nodded o’er his crest;\n", + "Fix’d in his front the brazen weapon lies,\n", + "And seals in endless shades his swimming eyes.\n", + "Next Teuthras’ son distain’d the sands with blood,\n", + "Axylus, hospitable, rich, and good:\n", + "In fair Arisbe’s walls (his native place)[161]\n", + "He held his seat! a friend to human race.\n", + "Fast by the road, his ever-open door\n", + "Obliged the wealthy, and relieved the poor.\n", + "To stern Tydides now he falls a prey,\n", + "No friend to guard him in the dreadful day!\n", + "Breathless the good man fell, and by his side\n", + "His faithful servant, old Calesius died.\n", + "\n", + "By great Euryalus was Dresus slain,\n", + "And next he laid Opheltius on the plain.\n", + "Two twins were near, bold, beautiful, and young,\n", + "From a fair naiad and Bucolion sprung:\n", + "(Laomedon’s white flocks Bucolion fed,\n", + "That monarch’s first-born by a foreign bed;\n", + "In secret woods he won the naiad’s grace,\n", + "And two fair infants crown’d his strong embrace:)\n", + "Here dead they lay in all their youthful charms;\n", + "The ruthless victor stripp’d their shining arms.\n", + "\n", + "Astyalus by Polypœtes fell;\n", + "Ulysses’ spear Pidytes sent to hell;\n", + "By Teucer’s shaft brave Aretaon bled,\n", + "And Nestor’s son laid stern Ablerus dead;\n", + "Great Agamemnon, leader of the brave,\n", + "The mortal wound of rich Elatus gave,\n", + "Who held in Pedasus his proud abode,[162]\n", + "And till’d the banks where silver Satnio flow’d.\n", + "Melanthius by Eurypylus was slain;\n", + "And Phylacus from Leitus flies in vain.\n", + "\n", + "Unbless’d Adrastus next at mercy lies\n", + "Beneath the Spartan spear, a living prize.\n", + "Scared with the din and tumult of the fight,\n", + "His headlong steeds, precipitate in flight,\n", + "Rush’d on a tamarisk’s strong trunk, and broke\n", + "The shatter’d chariot from the crooked yoke;\n", + "Wide o’er the field, resistless as the wind,\n", + "For Troy they fly, and leave their lord behind.\n", + "Prone on his face he sinks beside the wheel:\n", + "Atrides o’er him shakes his vengeful steel;\n", + "The fallen chief in suppliant posture press’d\n", + "The victor’s knees, and thus his prayer address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“O spare my youth, and for the life I owe\n", + "Large gifts of price my father shall bestow.\n", + "When fame shall tell, that, not in battle slain,\n", + "Thy hollow ships his captive son detain:\n", + "Rich heaps of brass shall in thy tent be told,[163]\n", + "And steel well-temper’d, and persuasive gold.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: compassion touch’d the hero’s heart\n", + "He stood, suspended with the lifted dart:\n", + "As pity pleaded for his vanquish’d prize,\n", + "Stern Agamemnon swift to vengeance flies,\n", + "And, furious, thus: “Oh impotent of mind![164]\n", + "Shall these, shall these Atrides’ mercy find?\n", + "Well hast thou known proud Troy’s perfidious land,\n", + "And well her natives merit at thy hand!\n", + "Not one of all the race, nor sex, nor age,\n", + "Shall save a Trojan from our boundless rage:\n", + "Ilion shall perish whole, and bury all;\n", + "Her babes, her infants at the breast, shall fall;[165]\n", + "A dreadful lesson of exampled fate,\n", + "To warn the nations, and to curb the great!”\n", + "\n", + "The monarch spoke; the words, with warmth address’d,\n", + "To rigid justice steel’d his brother’s breast.\n", + "Fierce from his knees the hapless chief he thrust;\n", + "The monarch’s javelin stretch’d him in the dust,\n", + "Then pressing with his foot his panting heart,\n", + "Forth from the slain he tugg’d the reeking dart.\n", + "Old Nestor saw, and roused the warrior’s rage;\n", + "“Thus, heroes! thus the vigorous combat wage;\n", + "No son of Mars descend, for servile gains,\n", + "To touch the booty, while a foe remains.\n", + "Behold yon glittering host, your future spoil!\n", + "First gain the conquest, then reward the toil.”\n", + "\n", + "And now had Greece eternal fame acquired,\n", + "And frighted Troy within her walls, retired,\n", + "Had not sage Helenus her state redress’d,\n", + "Taught by the gods that moved his sacred breast.\n", + "Where Hector stood, with great Æneas join’d,\n", + "The seer reveal’d the counsels of his mind:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye generous chiefs! on whom the immortals lay\n", + "The cares and glories of this doubtful day;\n", + "On whom your aids, your country’s hopes depend;\n", + "Wise to consult, and active to defend!\n", + "Here, at our gates, your brave efforts unite,\n", + "Turn back the routed, and forbid the flight,\n", + "Ere yet their wives’ soft arms the cowards gain,\n", + "The sport and insult of the hostile train.\n", + "When your commands have hearten’d every band,\n", + "Ourselves, here fix’d, will make the dangerous stand;\n", + "Press’d as we are, and sore of former fight,\n", + "These straits demand our last remains of might.\n", + "Meanwhile thou, Hector, to the town retire,\n", + "And teach our mother what the gods require:\n", + "Direct the queen to lead the assembled train\n", + "Of Troy’s chief matrons to Minerva’s fane;[166]\n", + "Unbar the sacred gates, and seek the power,\n", + "With offer’d vows, in Ilion’s topmost tower.\n", + "The largest mantle her rich wardrobes hold,\n", + "Most prized for art, and labour’d o’er with gold,\n", + "Before the goddess’ honour’d knees be spread,\n", + "And twelve young heifers to her altars led:\n", + "If so the power, atoned by fervent prayer,\n", + "Our wives, our infants, and our city spare,\n", + "And far avert Tydides’ wasteful ire,\n", + "That mows whole troops, and makes all Troy retire;\n", + "Not thus Achilles taught our hosts to dread,\n", + "Sprung though he was from more than mortal bed;\n", + "Not thus resistless ruled the stream of fight,\n", + "In rage unbounded, and unmatch’d in might.”\n", + "\n", + "Hector obedient heard: and, with a bound,\n", + "Leap’d from his trembling chariot to the ground;\n", + "Through all his host inspiring force he flies,\n", + "And bids the thunder of the battle rise.\n", + "With rage recruited the bold Trojans glow,\n", + "And turn the tide of conflict on the foe:\n", + "Fierce in the front he shakes two dazzling spears;\n", + "All Greece recedes, and ’midst her triumphs fears;\n", + "Some god, they thought, who ruled the fate of wars,\n", + "Shot down avenging from the vault of stars.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus aloud: “Ye dauntless Dardans, hear!\n", + "And you whom distant nations send to war!\n", + "Be mindful of the strength your fathers bore;\n", + "Be still yourselves, and Hector asks no more.\n", + "One hour demands me in the Trojan wall,\n", + "To bid our altars flame, and victims fall:\n", + "Nor shall, I trust, the matrons’ holy train,\n", + "And reverend elders, seek the gods in vain.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, with ample strides the hero pass’d;\n", + "The shield’s large orb behind his shoulder cast,\n", + "His neck o’ershading, to his ankle hung;\n", + "And as he march’d the brazen buckler rung.\n", + "\n", + "Now paused the battle (godlike Hector gone),[167]\n", + "Where daring Glaucus and great Tydeus’ son\n", + "Between both armies met: the chiefs from far\n", + "Observed each other, and had mark’d for war.\n", + "Near as they drew, Tydides thus began:\n", + "\n", + "“What art thou, boldest of the race of man?\n", + "Our eyes till now that aspect ne’er beheld,\n", + "Where fame is reap’d amid the embattled field;\n", + "Yet far before the troops thou dar’st appear,\n", + "And meet a lance the fiercest heroes fear.\n", + "Unhappy they, and born of luckless sires,\n", + "Who tempt our fury when Minerva fires!\n", + "But if from heaven, celestial, thou descend,\n", + "Know with immortals we no more contend.\n", + "Not long Lycurgus view’d the golden light,\n", + "That daring man who mix’d with gods in fight.\n", + "Bacchus, and Bacchus’ votaries, he drove,\n", + "With brandish’d steel, from Nyssa’s sacred grove:\n", + "Their consecrated spears lay scatter’d round,\n", + "With curling vines and twisted ivy bound;\n", + "While Bacchus headlong sought the briny flood,\n", + "And Thetis’ arms received the trembling god.\n", + "Nor fail’d the crime the immortals’ wrath to move;\n", + "(The immortals bless’d with endless ease above;)\n", + "Deprived of sight by their avenging doom,\n", + "Cheerless he breathed, and wander’d in the gloom,\n", + "Then sunk unpitied to the dire abodes,\n", + "A wretch accursed, and hated by the gods!\n", + "I brave not heaven: but if the fruits of earth\n", + "Sustain thy life, and human be thy birth,\n", + "Bold as thou art, too prodigal of breath,\n", + "Approach, and enter the dark gates of death.”\n", + "\n", + "“What, or from whence I am, or who my sire,\n", + "(Replied the chief,) can Tydeus’ son inquire?\n", + "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,\n", + "Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;\n", + "Another race the following spring supplies;\n", + "They fall successive, and successive rise:\n", + "So generations in their course decay;\n", + "So flourish these, when those are pass’d away.\n", + "But if thou still persist to search my birth,\n", + "Then hear a tale that fills the spacious earth.\n", + "\n", + "“A city stands on Argos’ utmost bound,\n", + "(Argos the fair, for warlike steeds renown’d,)\n", + "Æolian Sisyphus, with wisdom bless’d,\n", + "In ancient time the happy wall possess’d,\n", + "Then call’d Ephyre: Glaucus was his son;\n", + "Great Glaucus, father of Bellerophon,\n", + "Who o’er the sons of men in beauty shined,\n", + "Loved for that valour which preserves mankind.\n", + "Then mighty Praetus Argos’ sceptre sway’d,\n", + "Whose hard commands Bellerophon obey’d.\n", + "With direful jealousy the monarch raged,\n", + "And the brave prince in numerous toils engaged.\n", + "For him Antaea burn’d with lawless flame,\n", + "And strove to tempt him from the paths of fame:\n", + "In vain she tempted the relentless youth,\n", + "Endued with wisdom, sacred fear, and truth.\n", + "Fired at his scorn the queen to Praetus fled,\n", + "And begg’d revenge for her insulted bed:\n", + "Incensed he heard, resolving on his fate;\n", + "But hospitable laws restrain’d his hate:\n", + "To Lycia the devoted youth he sent,\n", + "With tablets seal’d, that told his dire intent.[168]\n", + "Now bless’d by every power who guards the good,\n", + "The chief arrived at Xanthus’ silver flood:\n", + "There Lycia’s monarch paid him honours due,\n", + "Nine days he feasted, and nine bulls he slew.\n", + "But when the tenth bright morning orient glow’d,\n", + "The faithful youth his monarch’s mandate show’d:\n", + "The fatal tablets, till that instant seal’d,\n", + "The deathful secret to the king reveal’d.\n", + "First, dire Chimaera’s conquest was enjoin’d;\n", + "A mingled monster of no mortal kind!\n", + "Behind, a dragon’s fiery tail was spread;\n", + "A goat’s rough body bore a lion’s head;\n", + "Her pitchy nostrils flaky flames expire;\n", + "Her gaping throat emits infernal fire.\n", + "\n", + "“This pest he slaughter’d, (for he read the skies,\n", + "And trusted heaven’s informing prodigies,)\n", + "Then met in arms the Solymæan crew,[169]\n", + "(Fiercest of men,) and those the warrior slew;\n", + "Next the bold Amazons’ whole force defied;\n", + "And conquer’d still, for heaven was on his side.\n", + "\n", + "“Nor ended here his toils: his Lycian foes,\n", + "At his return, a treacherous ambush rose,\n", + "With levell’d spears along the winding shore:\n", + "There fell they breathless, and return’d no more.\n", + "\n", + "“At length the monarch, with repentant grief,\n", + "Confess’d the gods, and god-descended chief;\n", + "His daughter gave, the stranger to detain,\n", + "With half the honours of his ample reign:\n", + "The Lycians grant a chosen space of ground,\n", + "With woods, with vineyards, and with harvests crown’d.\n", + "There long the chief his happy lot possess’d,\n", + "With two brave sons and one fair daughter bless’d;\n", + "(Fair e’en in heavenly eyes: her fruitful love\n", + "Crown’d with Sarpedon’s birth the embrace of Jove;)\n", + "But when at last, distracted in his mind,\n", + "Forsook by heaven, forsaking humankind,\n", + "Wide o’er the Aleian field he chose to stray,\n", + "A long, forlorn, uncomfortable way![170]\n", + "Woes heap’d on woes consumed his wasted heart:\n", + "His beauteous daughter fell by Phoebe’s dart;\n", + "His eldest born by raging Mars was slain,\n", + "In combat on the Solymaean plain.\n", + "Hippolochus survived: from him I came,\n", + "The honour’d author of my birth and name;\n", + "By his decree I sought the Trojan town;\n", + "By his instructions learn to win renown,\n", + "To stand the first in worth as in command,\n", + "To add new honours to my native land,\n", + "Before my eyes my mighty sires to place,\n", + "And emulate the glories of our race.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and transport fill’d Tydides’ heart;\n", + "In earth the generous warrior fix’d his dart,\n", + "Then friendly, thus the Lycian prince address’d:\n", + "“Welcome, my brave hereditary guest!\n", + "Thus ever let us meet, with kind embrace,\n", + "Nor stain the sacred friendship of our race.\n", + "Know, chief, our grandsires have been guests of old;\n", + "Œneus the strong, Bellerophon the bold:\n", + "Our ancient seat his honour’d presence graced,\n", + "Where twenty days in genial rites he pass’d.\n", + "The parting heroes mutual presents left;\n", + "A golden goblet was thy grandsire’s gift;\n", + "Œneus a belt of matchless work bestowed,\n", + "That rich with Tyrian dye refulgent glow’d.\n", + "(This from his pledge I learn’d, which, safely stored\n", + "Among my treasures, still adorns my board:\n", + "For Tydeus left me young, when Thebe’s wall\n", + "Beheld the sons of Greece untimely fall.)\n", + "Mindful of this, in friendship let us join;\n", + "If heaven our steps to foreign lands incline,\n", + "My guest in Argos thou, and I in Lycia thine.\n", + "Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield,\n", + "In the full harvest of yon ample field;\n", + "Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore;\n", + "But thou and Diomed be foes no more.\n", + "Now change we arms, and prove to either host\n", + "We guard the friendship of the line we boast.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having said, the gallant chiefs alight,\n", + "Their hands they join, their mutual faith they plight;\n", + "Brave Glaucus then each narrow thought resign’d,\n", + "(Jove warm’d his bosom, and enlarged his mind,)\n", + "For Diomed’s brass arms, of mean device,\n", + "For which nine oxen paid, (a vulgar price,)\n", + "He gave his own, of gold divinely wrought,[171]\n", + "A hundred beeves the shining purchase bought.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime the guardian of the Trojan state,\n", + "Great Hector, enter’d at the Scæan gate.[172]\n", + "Beneath the beech-tree’s consecrated shades,\n", + "The Trojan matrons and the Trojan maids\n", + "Around him flock’d, all press’d with pious care\n", + "For husbands, brothers, sons, engaged in war.\n", + "He bids the train in long procession go,\n", + "And seek the gods, to avert the impending woe.\n", + "And now to Priam’s stately courts he came,\n", + "Rais’d on arch’d columns of stupendous frame;\n", + "O’er these a range of marble structure runs,\n", + "The rich pavilions of his fifty sons,\n", + "In fifty chambers lodged: and rooms of state,[173]\n", + "Opposed to those, where Priam’s daughters sate.\n", + "Twelve domes for them and their loved spouses shone,\n", + "Of equal beauty, and of polish’d stone.\n", + "Hither great Hector pass’d, nor pass’d unseen\n", + "Of royal Hecuba, his mother-queen.\n", + "(With her Laodice, whose beauteous face\n", + "Surpass’d the nymphs of Troy’s illustrious race.)\n", + "Long in a strict embrace she held her son,\n", + "And press’d his hand, and tender thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“O Hector! say, what great occasion calls\n", + "My son from fight, when Greece surrounds our walls;\n", + "Com’st thou to supplicate the almighty power\n", + "With lifted hands, from Ilion’s lofty tower?\n", + "Stay, till I bring the cup with Bacchus crown’d,\n", + "In Jove’s high name, to sprinkle on the ground,\n", + "And pay due vows to all the gods around.\n", + "Then with a plenteous draught refresh thy soul,\n", + "And draw new spirits from the generous bowl;\n", + "Spent as thou art with long laborious fight,\n", + "The brave defender of thy country’s right.”\n", + "\n", + "“Far hence be Bacchus’ gifts; (the chief rejoin’d;)\n", + "Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind,\n", + "Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noble mind.\n", + "Let chiefs abstain, and spare the sacred juice\n", + "To sprinkle to the gods, its better use.\n", + "By me that holy office were profaned;\n", + "Ill fits it me, with human gore distain’d,\n", + "To the pure skies these horrid hands to raise,\n", + "Or offer heaven’s great Sire polluted praise.\n", + "You, with your matrons, go! a spotless train,\n", + "And burn rich odours in Minerva’s fane.\n", + "The largest mantle your full wardrobes hold,\n", + "Most prized for art, and labour’d o’er with gold,\n", + "Before the goddess’ honour’d knees be spread,\n", + "And twelve young heifers to her altar led.\n", + "So may the power, atoned by fervent prayer,\n", + "Our wives, our infants, and our city spare;\n", + "And far avert Tydides’ wasteful ire,\n", + "Who mows whole troops, and makes all Troy retire.\n", + "Be this, O mother, your religious care:\n", + "I go to rouse soft Paris to the war;\n", + "If yet not lost to all the sense of shame,\n", + "The recreant warrior hear the voice of fame.\n", + "Oh, would kind earth the hateful wretch embrace,\n", + "That pest of Troy, that ruin of our race![174]\n", + "Deep to the dark abyss might he descend,\n", + "Troy yet should flourish, and my sorrows end.”\n", + "\n", + "This heard, she gave command: and summon’d came\n", + "Each noble matron and illustrious dame.\n", + "The Phrygian queen to her rich wardrobe went,\n", + "Where treasured odours breathed a costly scent.\n", + "There lay the vestures of no vulgar art,\n", + "Sidonian maids embroider’d every part,\n", + "Whom from soft Sidon youthful Paris bore,\n", + "With Helen touching on the Tyrian shore.\n", + "Here, as the queen revolved with careful eyes\n", + "The various textures and the various dyes,\n", + "She chose a veil that shone superior far,\n", + "And glow’d refulgent as the morning star.\n", + "Herself with this the long procession leads;\n", + "The train majestically slow proceeds.\n", + "Soon as to Ilion’s topmost tower they come,\n", + "And awful reach the high Palladian dome,\n", + "Antenor’s consort, fair Theano, waits\n", + "As Pallas’ priestess, and unbars the gates.\n", + "With hands uplifted and imploring eyes,\n", + "They fill the dome with supplicating cries.\n", + "The priestess then the shining veil displays,\n", + "Placed on Minerva’s knees, and thus she prays:\n", + "\n", + "“Oh awful goddess! ever-dreadful maid,\n", + "Troy’s strong defence, unconquer’d Pallas, aid!\n", + "Break thou Tydides’ spear, and let him fall\n", + "Prone on the dust before the Trojan wall!\n", + "So twelve young heifers, guiltless of the yoke,\n", + "Shall fill thy temple with a grateful smoke.\n", + "But thou, atoned by penitence and prayer,\n", + "Ourselves, our infants, and our city spare!”\n", + "So pray’d the priestess in her holy fane;\n", + "So vow’d the matrons, but they vow’d in vain.\n", + "\n", + "While these appear before the power with prayers,\n", + "Hector to Paris’ lofty dome repairs.[175]\n", + "Himself the mansion raised, from every part\n", + "Assembling architects of matchless art.\n", + "Near Priam’s court and Hector’s palace stands\n", + "The pompous structure, and the town commands.\n", + "A spear the hero bore of wondrous strength,\n", + "Of full ten cubits was the lance’s length,\n", + "The steely point with golden ringlets join’d,\n", + "Before him brandish’d, at each motion shined\n", + "Thus entering, in the glittering rooms he found\n", + "His brother-chief, whose useless arms lay round,\n", + "His eyes delighting with their splendid show,\n", + "Brightening the shield, and polishing the bow.\n", + "Beside him Helen with her virgins stands,\n", + "Guides their rich labours, and instructs their hands.\n", + "\n", + "Him thus inactive, with an ardent look\n", + "The prince beheld, and high-resenting spoke.\n", + "“Thy hate to Troy, is this the time to show?\n", + "(O wretch ill-fated, and thy country’s foe!)\n", + "Paris and Greece against us both conspire,\n", + "Thy close resentment, and their vengeful ire.\n", + "For thee great Ilion’s guardian heroes fall,\n", + "Till heaps of dead alone defend her wall,\n", + "For thee the soldier bleeds, the matron mourns,\n", + "And wasteful war in all its fury burns.\n", + "Ungrateful man! deserves not this thy care,\n", + "Our troops to hearten, and our toils to share?\n", + "Rise, or behold the conquering flames ascend,\n", + "And all the Phrygian glories at an end.”\n", + "\n", + "“Brother, ’tis just, (replied the beauteous youth,)\n", + "Thy free remonstrance proves thy worth and truth:\n", + "Yet charge my absence less, O generous chief!\n", + "On hate to Troy, than conscious shame and grief:\n", + "Here, hid from human eyes, thy brother sate,\n", + "And mourn’d, in secret, his and Ilion’s fate.\n", + "’Tis now enough; now glory spreads her charms,\n", + "And beauteous Helen calls her chief to arms.\n", + "Conquest to-day my happier sword may bless,\n", + "’Tis man’s to fight, but heaven’s to give success.\n", + "But while I arm, contain thy ardent mind;\n", + "Or go, and Paris shall not lag behind.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HECTOR CHIDING PARIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "He said, nor answer’d Priam’s warlike son;\n", + "When Helen thus with lowly grace begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Oh, generous brother! (if the guilty dame\n", + "That caused these woes deserve a sister’s name!)\n", + "Would heaven, ere all these dreadful deeds were done,\n", + "The day that show’d me to the golden sun\n", + "Had seen my death! why did not whirlwinds bear\n", + "The fatal infant to the fowls of air?\n", + "Why sunk I not beneath the whelming tide,\n", + "And midst the roarings of the waters died?\n", + "Heaven fill’d up all my ills, and I accursed\n", + "Bore all, and Paris of those ills the worst.\n", + "Helen at least a braver spouse might claim,\n", + "Warm’d with some virtue, some regard of fame!\n", + "Now tired with toils, thy fainting limbs recline,\n", + "With toils, sustain’d for Paris’ sake and mine\n", + "The gods have link’d our miserable doom,\n", + "Our present woe, and infamy to come:\n", + "Wide shall it spread, and last through ages long,\n", + "Example sad! and theme of future song.”\n", + "\n", + "The chief replied: “This time forbids to rest;\n", + "The Trojan bands, by hostile fury press’d,\n", + "Demand their Hector, and his arm require;\n", + "The combat urges, and my soul’s on fire.\n", + "Urge thou thy knight to march where glory calls,\n", + "And timely join me, ere I leave the walls.\n", + "Ere yet I mingle in the direful fray,\n", + "My wife, my infant, claim a moment’s stay;\n", + "This day (perhaps the last that sees me here)\n", + "Demands a parting word, a tender tear:\n", + "This day, some god who hates our Trojan land\n", + "May vanquish Hector by a Grecian hand.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and pass’d with sad presaging heart\n", + "To seek his spouse, his soul’s far dearer part;\n", + "At home he sought her, but he sought in vain;\n", + "She, with one maid of all her menial train,\n", + "Had hence retired; and with her second joy,\n", + "The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,\n", + "Pensive she stood on Ilion’s towery height,\n", + "Beheld the war, and sicken’d at the sight;\n", + "There her sad eyes in vain her lord explore,\n", + "Or weep the wounds her bleeding country bore.\n", + "\n", + "But he who found not whom his soul desired,\n", + "Whose virtue charm’d him as her beauty fired,\n", + "Stood in the gates, and ask’d “what way she bent\n", + "Her parting step? If to the fane she went,\n", + "Where late the mourning matrons made resort;\n", + "Or sought her sisters in the Trojan court?”\n", + "“Not to the court, (replied the attendant train,)\n", + "Nor mix’d with matrons to Minerva’s fane:\n", + "To Ilion’s steepy tower she bent her way,\n", + "To mark the fortunes of the doubtful day.\n", + "Troy fled, she heard, before the Grecian sword;\n", + "She heard, and trembled for her absent lord:\n", + "Distracted with surprise, she seem’d to fly,\n", + "Fear on her cheek, and sorrow in her eye.\n", + "The nurse attended with her infant boy,\n", + "The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Hector this heard, return’d without delay;\n", + "Swift through the town he trod his former way,\n", + "Through streets of palaces, and walks of state;\n", + "And met the mourner at the Scæan gate.\n", + "With haste to meet him sprung the joyful fair.\n", + "His blameless wife, Aëtion’s wealthy heir\n", + "(Cilician Thebe great Aëtion sway’d,\n", + "And Hippoplacus’ wide extended shade):\n", + "The nurse stood near, in whose embraces press’d,\n", + "His only hope hung smiling at her breast,\n", + "Whom each soft charm and early grace adorn,\n", + "Fair as the new-born star that gilds the morn.\n", + "To this loved infant Hector gave the name\n", + "Scamandrius, from Scamander’s honour’d stream;\n", + "Astyanax the Trojans call’d the boy,\n", + "From his great father, the defence of Troy.\n", + "Silent the warrior smiled, and pleased resign’d\n", + "To tender passions all his mighty mind;\n", + "His beauteous princess cast a mournful look,\n", + "Hung on his hand, and then dejected spoke;\n", + "Her bosom laboured with a boding sigh,\n", + "And the big tear stood trembling in her eye.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE MEETING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Too daring prince! ah, whither dost thou run?\n", + "Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son!\n", + "And think’st thou not how wretched we shall be,\n", + "A widow I, a helpless orphan he?\n", + "For sure such courage length of life denies,\n", + "And thou must fall, thy virtue’s sacrifice.\n", + "Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;\n", + "Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain.\n", + "O grant me, gods, ere Hector meets his doom,\n", + "All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb!\n", + "So shall my days in one sad tenor run,\n", + "And end with sorrows as they first begun.\n", + "No parent now remains my griefs to share,\n", + "No father’s aid, no mother’s tender care.\n", + "The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire,\n", + "Laid Thebe waste, and slew my warlike sire!\n", + "His fate compassion in the victor bred;\n", + "Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead,\n", + "His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil,\n", + "And laid him decent on the funeral pile;\n", + "Then raised a mountain where his bones were burn’d,\n", + "The mountain-nymphs the rural tomb adorn’d,\n", + "Jove’s sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow\n", + "A barren shade, and in his honour grow.\n", + "\n", + "“By the same arm my seven brave brothers fell;\n", + "In one sad day beheld the gates of hell;\n", + "While the fat herds and snowy flocks they fed,\n", + "Amid their fields the hapless heroes bled!\n", + "My mother lived to wear the victor’s bands,\n", + "The queen of Hippoplacia’s sylvan lands:\n", + "Redeem’d too late, she scarce beheld again\n", + "Her pleasing empire and her native plain,\n", + "When ah! oppress’d by life-consuming woe,\n", + "She fell a victim to Diana’s bow.\n", + "\n", + "“Yet while my Hector still survives, I see\n", + "My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee:\n", + "Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all\n", + "Once more will perish, if my Hector fall,\n", + "Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share:\n", + "Oh, prove a husband’s and a father’s care!\n", + "That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,\n", + "Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy;\n", + "Thou, from this tower defend the important post;\n", + "There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,\n", + "That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,\n", + "And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.\n", + "Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,\n", + "Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven.\n", + "Let others in the field their arms employ,\n", + "But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "The chief replied: “That post shall be my care,\n", + "Not that alone, but all the works of war.\n", + "How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown’d,\n", + "And Troy’s proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground\n", + "Attaint the lustre of my former name,\n", + "Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?\n", + "My early youth was bred to martial pains,\n", + "My soul impels me to the embattled plains!\n", + "Let me be foremost to defend the throne,\n", + "And guard my father’s glories, and my own.\n", + "\n", + "“Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates!\n", + "(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)\n", + "The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,\n", + "And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.\n", + "And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,\n", + "My mother’s death, the ruin of my kind,\n", + "Not Priam’s hoary hairs defiled with gore,\n", + "Not all my brothers gasping on the shore;\n", + "As thine, Andromache! Thy griefs I dread:\n", + "I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!\n", + "In Argive looms our battles to design,\n", + "And woes, of which so large a part was thine!\n", + "To bear the victor’s hard commands, or bring\n", + "The weight of waters from Hyperia’s spring.\n", + "There while you groan beneath the load of life,\n", + "They cry, ‘Behold the mighty Hector’s wife!’\n", + "Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,\n", + "Imbitters all thy woes, by naming me.\n", + "The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,\n", + "A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!\n", + "May I lie cold before that dreadful day,\n", + "Press’d with a load of monumental clay!\n", + "Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,\n", + "Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy\n", + "Stretch’d his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.\n", + "The babe clung crying to his nurse’s breast,\n", + "Scared at the dazzling helm, and nodding crest.\n", + "With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,\n", + "And Hector hasted to relieve his child,\n", + "The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,\n", + "And placed the beaming helmet on the ground;\n", + "Then kiss’d the child, and, lifting high in air,\n", + "Thus to the gods preferr’d a father’s prayer:\n", + "\n", + "“O thou! whose glory fills the ethereal throne,\n", + "And all ye deathless powers! protect my son!\n", + "Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,\n", + "To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,\n", + "Against his country’s foes the war to wage,\n", + "And rise the Hector of the future age!\n", + "So when triumphant from successful toils\n", + "Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,\n", + "Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,\n", + "And say, ‘This chief transcends his father’s fame:’\n", + "While pleased amidst the general shouts of Troy,\n", + "His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,\n", + "Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;\n", + "Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,\n", + "Hush’d to repose, and with a smile survey’d.\n", + "The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,\n", + "She mingled with a smile a tender tear.\n", + "The soften’d chief with kind compassion view’d,\n", + "And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued:\n", + "\n", + "“Andromache! my soul’s far better part,\n", + "Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?\n", + "No hostile hand can antedate my doom,\n", + "Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.\n", + "Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth;\n", + "And such the hard condition of our birth:\n", + "No force can then resist, no flight can save,\n", + "All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.\n", + "No more—but hasten to thy tasks at home,\n", + "There guide the spindle, and direct the loom:\n", + "Me glory summons to the martial scene,\n", + "The field of combat is the sphere for men.\n", + "Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,\n", + "The first in danger as the first in fame.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes\n", + "His towery helmet, black with shading plumes.\n", + "His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,\n", + "Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye\n", + "That stream’d at every look; then, moving slow,\n", + "Sought her own palace, and indulged her woe.\n", + "There, while her tears deplored the godlike man,\n", + "Through all her train the soft infection ran;\n", + "The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed,\n", + "And mourn the living Hector, as the dead.\n", + "\n", + "But now, no longer deaf to honour’s call,\n", + "Forth issues Paris from the palace wall.\n", + "In brazen arms that cast a gleamy ray,\n", + "Swift through the town the warrior bends his way.\n", + "The wanton courser thus with reins unbound[176]\n", + "Breaks from his stall, and beats the trembling ground;\n", + "Pamper’d and proud, he seeks the wonted tides,\n", + "And laves, in height of blood his shining sides;\n", + "His head now freed, he tosses to the skies;\n", + "His mane dishevell’d o’er his shoulders flies;\n", + "He snuffs the females in the distant plain,\n", + "And springs, exulting, to his fields again.\n", + "With equal triumph, sprightly, bold, and gay,\n", + "In arms refulgent as the god of day,\n", + "The son of Priam, glorying in his might,\n", + "Rush’d forth with Hector to the fields of fight.\n", + "\n", + "And now, the warriors passing on the way,\n", + "The graceful Paris first excused his stay.\n", + "To whom the noble Hector thus replied:\n", + "“O chief! in blood, and now in arms, allied!\n", + "Thy power in war with justice none contest;\n", + "Known is thy courage, and thy strength confess’d.\n", + "What pity sloth should seize a soul so brave,\n", + "Or godlike Paris live a woman’s slave!\n", + "My heart weeps blood at what the Trojans say,\n", + "And hopes thy deeds shall wipe the stain away.\n", + "Haste then, in all their glorious labours share,\n", + "For much they suffer, for thy sake, in war.\n", + "These ills shall cease, whene’er by Jove’s decree\n", + "We crown the bowl to heaven and liberty:\n", + "While the proud foe his frustrate triumphs mourns,\n", + "And Greece indignant through her seas returns.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] BOWS AND BOW CASE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] IRIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK VII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE SINGLE COMBAT OF HECTOR AND AJAX.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The battle renewing with double ardour upon the return of Hector,\n", + "Minerva is under apprehensions for the Greeks. Apollo, seeing her\n", + "descend from Olympus, joins her near the Scæan gate. They agree to put\n", + "off the general engagement for that day, and incite Hector to challenge\n", + "the Greeks to a single combat. Nine of the princes accepting the\n", + "challenge, the lot is cast and falls upon Ajax. These heroes, after\n", + "several attacks, are parted by the night. The Trojans calling a\n", + "council, Antenor purposes the delivery of Helen to the Greeks, to which\n", + "Paris will not consent, but offers to restore them her riches. Priam\n", + "sends a herald to make this offer, and to demand a truce for burning\n", + "the dead, the last of which only is agreed to by Agamemnon. When the\n", + "funerals are performed, the Greeks, pursuant to the advice of Nestor,\n", + "erect a fortification to protect their fleet and camp, flanked with\n", + "towers, and defended by a ditch and palisades. Neptune testifies his\n", + "jealousy at this work, but is pacified by a promise from Jupiter. Both\n", + "armies pass the night in feasting but Jupiter disheartens the Trojans\n", + "with thunder, and other signs of his wrath.\n", + " The three and twentieth day ends with the duel of Hector and Ajax,\n", + " the next day the truce is agreed; another is taken up in the\n", + " funeral rites of the slain and one more in building the\n", + " fortification before the ships. So that somewhat about three days\n", + " is employed in this book. The scene lies wholly in the field.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the guardian of the Trojan state,\n", + "Then rush’d impetuous through the Scæan gate.\n", + "Him Paris follow’d to the dire alarms;\n", + "Both breathing slaughter, both resolved in arms.\n", + "As when to sailors labouring through the main,\n", + "That long have heaved the weary oar in vain,\n", + "Jove bids at length the expected gales arise;\n", + "The gales blow grateful, and the vessel flies.\n", + "So welcome these to Troy’s desiring train,\n", + "The bands are cheer’d, the war awakes again.\n", + "\n", + "Bold Paris first the work of death begun\n", + "On great Menestheus, Areithous’ son,\n", + "Sprung from the fair Philomeda’s embrace,\n", + "The pleasing Arnè was his native place.\n", + "Then sunk Eioneus to the shades below,\n", + "Beneath his steely casque[177] he felt the blow\n", + "Full on his neck, from Hector’s weighty hand;\n", + "And roll’d, with limbs relax’d, along the land.\n", + "By Glaucus’ spear the bold Iphinous bleeds,\n", + "Fix’d in the shoulder as he mounts his steeds;\n", + "Headlong he tumbles: his slack nerves unbound,\n", + "Drop the cold useless members on the ground.\n", + "\n", + "When now Minerva saw her Argives slain,\n", + "From vast Olympus to the gleaming plain\n", + "Fierce she descends: Apollo marked her flight,\n", + "Nor shot less swift from Ilion’s towery height.\n", + "Radiant they met, beneath the beechen shade;\n", + "When thus Apollo to the blue-eyed maid:\n", + "\n", + "“What cause, O daughter of Almighty Jove!\n", + "Thus wings thy progress from the realms above?\n", + "Once more impetuous dost thou bend thy way,\n", + "To give to Greece the long divided day?\n", + "Too much has Troy already felt thy hate,\n", + "Now breathe thy rage, and hush the stern debate;\n", + "This day, the business of the field suspend;\n", + "War soon shall kindle, and great Ilion bend;\n", + "Since vengeful goddesses confederate join\n", + "To raze her walls, though built by hands divine.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the progeny of Jove replies:\n", + "“I left, for this, the council of the skies:\n", + "But who shall bid conflicting hosts forbear,\n", + "What art shall calm the furious sons of war?”\n", + "To her the god: “Great Hector’s soul incite\n", + "To dare the boldest Greek to single fight,\n", + "Till Greece, provoked, from all her numbers show\n", + "A warrior worthy to be Hector’s foe.”\n", + "\n", + "At this agreed, the heavenly powers withdrew;\n", + "Sage Helenus their secret counsels knew;\n", + "Hector, inspired, he sought: to him address’d,\n", + "Thus told the dictates of his sacred breast:\n", + "“O son of Priam! let thy faithful ear\n", + "Receive my words: thy friend and brother hear!\n", + "Go forth persuasive, and a while engage\n", + "The warring nations to suspend their rage;\n", + "Then dare the boldest of the hostile train\n", + "To mortal combat on the listed plain.\n", + "For not this day shall end thy glorious date;\n", + "The gods have spoke it, and their voice is fate.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: the warrior heard the word with joy;\n", + "Then with his spear restrain’d the youth of Troy,\n", + "Held by the midst athwart. On either hand\n", + "The squadrons part; the expecting Trojans stand;\n", + "Great Agamemnon bids the Greeks forbear:\n", + "They breathe, and hush the tumult of the war.\n", + "The Athenian maid,[178] and glorious god of day,\n", + "With silent joy the settling hosts survey:\n", + "In form of vultures, on the beech’s height\n", + "They sit conceal’d, and wait the future fight.\n", + "\n", + "The thronging troops obscure the dusky fields,\n", + "Horrid with bristling spears, and gleaming shields.\n", + "As when a general darkness veils the main,\n", + "(Soft Zephyr curling the wide wat’ry plain,)\n", + "The waves scarce heave, the face of ocean sleeps,\n", + "And a still horror saddens all the deeps;\n", + "Thus in thick orders settling wide around,\n", + "At length composed they sit, and shade the ground.\n", + "Great Hector first amidst both armies broke\n", + "The solemn silence, and their powers bespoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Hear, all ye Trojan, all ye Grecian bands,\n", + "What my soul prompts, and what some god commands.\n", + "Great Jove, averse our warfare to compose,\n", + "O’erwhelms the nations with new toils and woes;\n", + "War with a fiercer tide once more returns,\n", + "Till Ilion falls, or till yon navy burns.\n", + "You then, O princes of the Greeks! appear;\n", + "’Tis Hector speaks, and calls the gods to hear:\n", + "From all your troops select the boldest knight,\n", + "And him, the boldest, Hector dares to fight.\n", + "Here if I fall, by chance of battle slain,\n", + "Be his my spoil, and his these arms remain;\n", + "But let my body, to my friends return’d,\n", + "By Trojan hands and Trojan flames be burn’d.\n", + "And if Apollo, in whose aid I trust,\n", + "Shall stretch your daring champion in the dust;\n", + "If mine the glory to despoil the foe;\n", + "On Phœbus’ temple I’ll his arms bestow:\n", + "The breathless carcase to your navy sent,\n", + "Greece on the shore shall raise a monument;\n", + "Which when some future mariner surveys,\n", + "Wash’d by broad Hellespont’s resounding seas,\n", + "Thus shall he say, ‘A valiant Greek lies there,\n", + "By Hector slain, the mighty man of war,’\n", + "The stone shall tell your vanquish’d hero’s name\n", + "And distant ages learn the victor’s fame.”\n", + "\n", + "This fierce defiance Greece astonish’d heard,\n", + "Blush’d to refuse, and to accept it fear’d.\n", + "Stern Menelaus first the silence broke,\n", + "And, inly groaning, thus opprobrious spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Women of Greece! O scandal of your race,\n", + "Whose coward souls your manly form disgrace,\n", + "How great the shame, when every age shall know\n", + "That not a Grecian met this noble foe!\n", + "Go then! resolve to earth, from whence ye grew,\n", + "A heartless, spiritless, inglorious crew!\n", + "Be what ye seem, unanimated clay,\n", + "Myself will dare the danger of the day;\n", + "’Tis man’s bold task the generous strife to try,\n", + "But in the hands of God is victory.”\n", + "\n", + "These words scarce spoke, with generous ardour press’d,\n", + "His manly limbs in azure arms he dress’d.\n", + "That day, Atrides! a superior hand\n", + "Had stretch’d thee breathless on the hostile strand;\n", + "But all at once, thy fury to compose,\n", + "The kings of Greece, an awful band, arose;\n", + "Even he their chief, great Agamemnon, press’d\n", + "Thy daring hand, and this advice address’d:\n", + "“Whither, O Menelaus! wouldst thou run,\n", + "And tempt a fate which prudence bids thee shun?\n", + "Grieved though thou art, forbear the rash design;\n", + "Great Hector’s arm is mightier far than thine:\n", + "Even fierce Achilles learn’d its force to fear,\n", + "And trembling met this dreadful son of war.\n", + "Sit thou secure, amidst thy social band;\n", + "Greece in our cause shall arm some powerful hand.\n", + "The mightiest warrior of the Achaian name,\n", + "Though bold and burning with desire of fame,\n", + "Content the doubtful honour might forego,\n", + "So great the danger, and so brave the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and turn’d his brother’s vengeful mind;\n", + "He stoop’d to reason, and his rage resign’d,\n", + "No longer bent to rush on certain harms;\n", + "His joyful friends unbrace his azure arms.\n", + "\n", + "He from whose lips divine persuasion flows,\n", + "Grave Nestor, then, in graceful act arose;\n", + "Thus to the kings he spoke: “What grief, what shame\n", + "Attend on Greece, and all the Grecian name!\n", + "How shall, alas! her hoary heroes mourn\n", + "Their sons degenerate, and their race a scorn!\n", + "What tears shall down thy silvery beard be roll’d,\n", + "O Peleus, old in arms, in wisdom old!\n", + "Once with what joy the generous prince would hear\n", + "Of every chief who fought this glorious war,\n", + "Participate their fame, and pleased inquire\n", + "Each name, each action, and each hero’s sire!\n", + "Gods! should he see our warriors trembling stand,\n", + "And trembling all before one hostile hand;\n", + "How would he lift his aged arms on high,\n", + "Lament inglorious Greece, and beg to die!\n", + "Oh! would to all the immortal powers above,\n", + "Minerva, Phœbus, and almighty Jove!\n", + "Years might again roll back, my youth renew,\n", + "And give this arm the spring which once it knew\n", + "When fierce in war, where Jardan’s waters fall,\n", + "I led my troops to Phea’s trembling wall,\n", + "And with the Arcadian spears my prowess tried,\n", + "Where Celadon rolls down his rapid tide.[179]\n", + "There Ereuthalion braved us in the field,\n", + "Proud Areithous’ dreadful arms to wield;\n", + "Great Areithous, known from shore to shore\n", + "By the huge, knotted, iron mace he bore;\n", + "No lance he shook, nor bent the twanging bow,\n", + "But broke, with this, the battle of the foe.\n", + "Him not by manly force Lycurgus slew,\n", + "Whose guileful javelin from the thicket flew,\n", + "Deep in a winding way his breast assailed,\n", + "Nor aught the warrior’s thundering mace avail’d.\n", + "Supine he fell: those arms which Mars before\n", + "Had given the vanquish’d, now the victor bore:\n", + "But when old age had dimm’d Lycurgus’ eyes,\n", + "To Ereuthalion he consign’d the prize.\n", + "Furious with this he crush’d our levell’d bands,\n", + "And dared the trial of the strongest hands;\n", + "Nor could the strongest hands his fury stay:\n", + "All saw, and fear’d, his huge tempestuous sway\n", + "Till I, the youngest of the host, appear’d,\n", + "And, youngest, met whom all our army fear’d.\n", + "I fought the chief: my arms Minerva crown’d:\n", + "Prone fell the giant o’er a length of ground.\n", + "What then I was, O were your Nestor now!\n", + "Not Hector’s self should want an equal foe.\n", + "But, warriors, you that youthful vigour boast,\n", + "The flower of Greece, the examples of our host,\n", + "Sprung from such fathers, who such numbers sway,\n", + "Can you stand trembling, and desert the day?”\n", + "\n", + "His warm reproofs the listening kings inflame;\n", + "And nine, the noblest of the Grecian name,\n", + "Up-started fierce: but far before the rest\n", + "The king of men advanced his dauntless breast:\n", + "Then bold Tydides, great in arms, appear’d;\n", + "And next his bulk gigantic Ajax rear’d;\n", + "Oïleus follow’d; Idomen was there,[180]\n", + "And Merion, dreadful as the god of war:\n", + "With these Eurypylus and Thoas stand,\n", + "And wise Ulysses closed the daring band.\n", + "All these, alike inspired with noble rage,\n", + "Demand the fight. To whom the Pylian sage:\n", + "\n", + "“Lest thirst of glory your brave souls divide,\n", + "What chief shall combat, let the gods decide.\n", + "Whom heaven shall choose, be his the chance to raise\n", + "His country’s fame, his own immortal praise.”\n", + "\n", + "The lots produced, each hero signs his own:\n", + "Then in the general’s helm the fates are thrown,[181]\n", + "The people pray, with lifted eyes and hands,\n", + "And vows like these ascend from all the bands:\n", + "“Grant, thou Almighty! in whose hand is fate,\n", + "A worthy champion for the Grecian state:\n", + "This task let Ajax or Tydides prove,\n", + "Or he, the king of kings, beloved by Jove.”\n", + "Old Nestor shook the casque. By heaven inspired,\n", + "Leap’d forth the lot, of every Greek desired.\n", + "This from the right to left the herald bears,\n", + "Held out in order to the Grecian peers;\n", + "Each to his rival yields the mark unknown,\n", + "Till godlike Ajax finds the lot his own;\n", + "Surveys the inscription with rejoicing eyes,\n", + "Then casts before him, and with transport cries:\n", + "\n", + "“Warriors! I claim the lot, and arm with joy;\n", + "Be mine the conquest of this chief of Troy.\n", + "Now while my brightest arms my limbs invest,\n", + "To Saturn’s son be all your vows address’d:\n", + "But pray in secret, lest the foes should hear,\n", + "And deem your prayers the mean effect of fear.\n", + "Said I in secret? No, your vows declare\n", + "In such a voice as fills the earth and air,\n", + "Lives there a chief whom Ajax ought to dread?\n", + "Ajax, in all the toils of battle bred!\n", + "From warlike Salamis I drew my birth,\n", + "And, born to combats, fear no force on earth.”\n", + "\n", + "He said. The troops with elevated eyes,\n", + "Implore the god whose thunder rends the skies:\n", + "“O father of mankind, superior lord!\n", + "On lofty Ida’s holy hill adored:\n", + "Who in the highest heaven hast fix’d thy throne,\n", + "Supreme of gods! unbounded and alone:\n", + "Grant thou, that Telamon may bear away\n", + "The praise and conquest of this doubtful day;\n", + "Or, if illustrious Hector be thy care,\n", + "That both may claim it, and that both may share.”\n", + "\n", + "Now Ajax braced his dazzling armour on;\n", + "Sheathed in bright steel the giant-warrior shone:\n", + "He moves to combat with majestic pace;\n", + "So stalks in arms the grisly god of Thrace,[182]\n", + "When Jove to punish faithless men prepares,\n", + "And gives whole nations to the waste of wars,\n", + "Thus march’d the chief, tremendous as a god;\n", + "Grimly he smiled; earth trembled as he strode:[183]\n", + "His massy javelin quivering in his hand,\n", + "He stood, the bulwark of the Grecian band.\n", + "Through every Argive heart new transport ran;\n", + "All Troy stood trembling at the mighty man:\n", + "Even Hector paused; and with new doubt oppress’d,\n", + "Felt his great heart suspended in his breast:\n", + "’Twas vain to seek retreat, and vain to fear;\n", + "Himself had challenged, and the foe drew near.\n", + "\n", + "Stern Telamon behind his ample shield,\n", + "As from a brazen tower, o’erlook’d the field.\n", + "Huge was its orb, with seven thick folds o’ercast,\n", + "Of tough bull-hides; of solid brass the last,\n", + "(The work of Tychius, who in Hylè dwell’d\n", + "And in all arts of armoury excell’d,)\n", + "This Ajax bore before his manly breast,\n", + "And, threatening, thus his adverse chief address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Hector! approach my arm, and singly know\n", + "What strength thou hast, and what the Grecian foe.\n", + "Achilles shuns the fight; yet some there are,\n", + "Not void of soul, and not unskill’d in war:\n", + "Let him, unactive on the sea-beat shore,\n", + "Indulge his wrath, and aid our arms no more;\n", + "Whole troops of heroes Greece has yet to boast,\n", + "And sends thee one, a sample of her host,\n", + "Such as I am, I come to prove thy might;\n", + "No more—be sudden, and begin the fight.”\n", + "\n", + "“O son of Telamon, thy country’s pride!\n", + "(To Ajax thus the Trojan prince replied)\n", + "Me, as a boy, or woman, wouldst thou fright,\n", + "New to the field, and trembling at the fight?\n", + "Thou meet’st a chief deserving of thy arms,\n", + "To combat born, and bred amidst alarms:\n", + "I know to shift my ground, remount the car,\n", + "Turn, charge, and answer every call of war;\n", + "To right, to left, the dexterous lance I wield,\n", + "And bear thick battle on my sounding shield/\n", + "But open be our fight, and bold each blow;\n", + "I steal no conquest from a noble foe.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and rising, high above the field\n", + "Whirl’d the long lance against the sevenfold shield.\n", + "Full on the brass descending from above\n", + "Through six bull-hides the furious weapon drove,\n", + "Till in the seventh it fix’d. Then Ajax threw;\n", + "Through Hector’s shield the forceful javelin flew,\n", + "His corslet enters, and his garment rends,\n", + "And glancing downwards, near his flank descends.\n", + "The wary Trojan shrinks, and bending low\n", + "Beneath his buckler, disappoints the blow.\n", + "From their bored shields the chiefs their javelins drew,\n", + "Then close impetuous, and the charge renew;\n", + "Fierce as the mountain-lions bathed in blood,\n", + "Or foaming boars, the terror of the wood.\n", + "At Ajax, Hector his long lance extends;\n", + "The blunted point against the buckler bends;\n", + "But Ajax, watchful as his foe drew near,\n", + "Drove through the Trojan targe the knotty spear;\n", + "It reach’d his neck, with matchless strength impell’d!\n", + "Spouts the black gore, and dims his shining shield.\n", + "Yet ceased not Hector thus; but stooping down,\n", + "In his strong hand up-heaved a flinty stone,\n", + "Black, craggy, vast: to this his force he bends;\n", + "Full on the brazen boss the stone descends;\n", + "The hollow brass resounded with the shock:\n", + "Then Ajax seized the fragment of a rock,\n", + "Applied each nerve, and swinging round on high,\n", + "With force tempestuous, let the ruin fly;\n", + "The huge stone thundering through his buckler broke:\n", + "His slacken’d knees received the numbing stroke;\n", + "Great Hector falls extended on the field,\n", + "His bulk supporting on the shatter’d shield:\n", + "Nor wanted heavenly aid: Apollo’s might\n", + "Confirm’d his sinews, and restored to fight.\n", + "And now both heroes their broad falchions drew\n", + "In flaming circles round their heads they flew;\n", + "But then by heralds’ voice the word was given.\n", + "The sacred ministers of earth and heaven:\n", + "Divine Talthybius, whom the Greeks employ,\n", + "And sage Idæus on the part of Troy,\n", + "Between the swords their peaceful sceptres rear’d;\n", + "And first Idæus’ awful voice was heard:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HECTOR AND AJAX SEPARATED BY THE HERALDS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Forbear, my sons! your further force to prove,\n", + "Both dear to men, and both beloved of Jove.\n", + "To either host your matchless worth is known,\n", + "Each sounds your praise, and war is all your own.\n", + "But now the Night extends her awful shade;\n", + "The goddess parts you; be the night obey’d.”[184]\n", + "\n", + "To whom great Ajax his high soul express’d:\n", + "“O sage! to Hector be these words address’d.\n", + "Let him, who first provoked our chiefs to fight,\n", + "Let him demand the sanction of the night;\n", + "If first he ask’d it, I content obey,\n", + "And cease the strife when Hector shows the way.”\n", + "\n", + "“O first of Greeks! (his noble foe rejoin’d)\n", + "Whom heaven adorns, superior to thy kind,\n", + "With strength of body, and with worth of mind!\n", + "Now martial law commands us to forbear;\n", + "Hereafter we shall meet in glorious war,\n", + "Some future day shall lengthen out the strife,\n", + "And let the gods decide of death or life!\n", + "Since, then, the night extends her gloomy shade,\n", + "And heaven enjoins it, be the night obey’d.\n", + "Return, brave Ajax, to thy Grecian friends,\n", + "And joy the nations whom thy arm defends;\n", + "As I shall glad each chief, and Trojan wife,\n", + "Who wearies heaven with vows for Hector’s life.\n", + "But let us, on this memorable day,\n", + "Exchange some gift: that Greece and Troy may say,\n", + "‘Not hate, but glory, made these chiefs contend;\n", + "And each brave foe was in his soul a friend.’”\n", + "\n", + "With that, a sword with stars of silver graced,\n", + "The baldric studded, and the sheath enchased,\n", + "He gave the Greek. The generous Greek bestow’d\n", + "A radiant belt that rich with purple glow’d.\n", + "Then with majestic grace they quit the plain;\n", + "This seeks the Grecian, that the Phrygian train.\n", + "\n", + "The Trojan bands returning Hector wait,\n", + "And hail with joy the Champion of their state;\n", + "Escaped great Ajax, they survey him round,\n", + "Alive, unarm’d, and vigorous from his wound;\n", + "To Troy’s high gates the godlike man they bear\n", + "Their present triumph, as their late despair.\n", + "\n", + "But Ajax, glorying in his hardy deed,\n", + "The well-arm’d Greeks to Agamemnon lead.\n", + "A steer for sacrifice the king design’d,\n", + "Of full five years, and of the nobler kind.\n", + "The victim falls; they strip the smoking hide,\n", + "The beast they quarter, and the joints divide;\n", + "Then spread the tables, the repast prepare,\n", + "Each takes his seat, and each receives his share.\n", + "The king himself (an honorary sign)\n", + "Before great Ajax placed the mighty chine.[185]\n", + "When now the rage of hunger was removed,\n", + "Nestor, in each persuasive art approved,\n", + "The sage whose counsels long had sway’d the rest,\n", + "In words like these his prudent thought express’d:\n", + "\n", + "“How dear, O kings! this fatal day has cost,\n", + "What Greeks are perish’d! what a people lost!\n", + "What tides of blood have drench’d Scamander’s shore!\n", + "What crowds of heroes sunk to rise no more!\n", + "Then hear me, chief! nor let the morrow’s light\n", + "Awake thy squadrons to new toils of fight:\n", + "Some space at least permit the war to breathe,\n", + "While we to flames our slaughter’d friends bequeath,\n", + "From the red field their scatter’d bodies bear,\n", + "And nigh the fleet a funeral structure rear;\n", + "So decent urns their snowy bones may keep,\n", + "And pious children o’er their ashes weep.\n", + "Here, where on one promiscuous pile they blazed,\n", + "High o’er them all a general tomb be raised;\n", + "Next, to secure our camp and naval powers,\n", + "Raise an embattled wall, with lofty towers;\n", + "From space to space be ample gates around,\n", + "For passing chariots; and a trench profound.\n", + "So Greece to combat shall in safety go,\n", + "Nor fear the fierce incursions of the foe.”\n", + "’Twas thus the sage his wholesome counsel moved;\n", + "The sceptred kings of Greece his words approved.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile, convened at Priam’s palace-gate,\n", + "The Trojan peers in nightly council sate;\n", + "A senate void of order, as of choice:\n", + "Their hearts were fearful, and confused their voice.\n", + "Antenor, rising, thus demands their ear:\n", + "“Ye Trojans, Dardans, and auxiliars, hear!\n", + "’Tis heaven the counsel of my breast inspires,\n", + "And I but move what every god requires:\n", + "Let Sparta’s treasures be this hour restored,\n", + "And Argive Helen own her ancient lord.\n", + "The ties of faith, the sworn alliance, broke,\n", + "Our impious battles the just gods provoke.\n", + "As this advice ye practise, or reject,\n", + "So hope success, or dread the dire effect.”\n", + "\n", + "The senior spoke and sate. To whom replied\n", + "The graceful husband of the Spartan bride:\n", + "“Cold counsels, Trojan, may become thy years\n", + "But sound ungrateful in a warrior’s ears:\n", + "Old man, if void of fallacy or art,\n", + "Thy words express the purpose of thy heart,\n", + "Thou, in thy time, more sound advice hast given;\n", + "But wisdom has its date, assign’d by heaven.\n", + "Then hear me, princes of the Trojan name!\n", + "Their treasures I’ll restore, but not the dame;\n", + "My treasures too, for peace, I will resign;\n", + "But be this bright possession ever mine.”\n", + "\n", + "’Twas then, the growing discord to compose,\n", + "Slow from his seat the reverend Priam rose:\n", + "His godlike aspect deep attention drew:\n", + "He paused, and these pacific words ensue:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye Trojans, Dardans, and auxiliar bands!\n", + "Now take refreshment as the hour demands;\n", + "Guard well the walls, relieve the watch of night.\n", + "Till the new sun restores the cheerful light.\n", + "Then shall our herald, to the Atrides sent,\n", + "Before their ships proclaim my son’s intent.\n", + "Next let a truce be ask’d, that Troy may burn\n", + "Her slaughter’d heroes, and their bones inurn;\n", + "That done, once more the fate of war be tried,\n", + "And whose the conquest, mighty Jove decide!”\n", + "\n", + "The monarch spoke: the warriors snatch’d with haste\n", + "(Each at his post in arms) a short repast.\n", + "Soon as the rosy morn had waked the day,\n", + "To the black ships Idæus bent his way;\n", + "There, to the sons of Mars, in council found,\n", + "He raised his voice: the host stood listening round.\n", + "\n", + "“Ye sons of Atreus, and ye Greeks, give ear!\n", + "The words of Troy, and Troy’s great monarch, hear.\n", + "Pleased may ye hear (so heaven succeed my prayers)\n", + "What Paris, author of the war, declares.\n", + "The spoils and treasures he to Ilion bore\n", + "(Oh had he perish’d ere they touch’d our shore!)\n", + "He proffers injured Greece: with large increase\n", + "Of added Trojan wealth to buy the peace.\n", + "But to restore the beauteous bride again,\n", + "This Greece demands, and Troy requests in vain.\n", + "Next, O ye chiefs! we ask a truce to burn\n", + "Our slaughter’d heroes, and their bones inurn.\n", + "That done, once more the fate of war be tried,\n", + "And whose the conquest, mighty Jove decide!”\n", + "\n", + "The Greeks gave ear, but none the silence broke;\n", + "At length Tydides rose, and rising spoke:\n", + "“Oh, take not, friends! defrauded of your fame,\n", + "Their proffer’d wealth, nor even the Spartan dame.\n", + "Let conquest make them ours: fate shakes their wall,\n", + "And Troy already totters to her fall.”\n", + "\n", + "The admiring chiefs, and all the Grecian name,\n", + "With general shouts return’d him loud acclaim.\n", + "Then thus the king of kings rejects the peace:\n", + "“Herald! in him thou hear’st the voice of Greece\n", + "For what remains; let funeral flames be fed\n", + "With heroes’ corps: I war not with the dead:\n", + "Go search your slaughtered chiefs on yonder plain,\n", + "And gratify the manes of the slain.\n", + "Be witness, Jove, whose thunder rolls on high!”\n", + "He said, and rear’d his sceptre to the sky.\n", + "\n", + "To sacred Troy, where all her princes lay\n", + "To wait the event, the herald bent his way.\n", + "He came, and standing in the midst, explain’d\n", + "The peace rejected, but the truce obtain’d.\n", + "Straight to their several cares the Trojans move,\n", + "Some search the plains, some fell the sounding grove:\n", + "Nor less the Greeks, descending on the shore,\n", + "Hew’d the green forests, and the bodies bore.\n", + "And now from forth the chambers of the main,\n", + "To shed his sacred light on earth again,\n", + "Arose the golden chariot of the day,\n", + "And tipp’d the mountains with a purple ray.\n", + "In mingled throngs the Greek and Trojan train\n", + "Through heaps of carnage search’d the mournful plain.\n", + "Scarce could the friend his slaughter’d friend explore,\n", + "With dust dishonour’d, and deformed with gore.\n", + "The wounds they wash’d, their pious tears they shed,\n", + "And, laid along their cars, deplored the dead.\n", + "Sage Priam check’d their grief: with silent haste\n", + "The bodies decent on the piles were placed:\n", + "With melting hearts the cold remains they burn’d,\n", + "And, sadly slow, to sacred Troy return’d.\n", + "Nor less the Greeks their pious sorrows shed,\n", + "And decent on the pile dispose the dead;\n", + "The cold remains consume with equal care;\n", + "And slowly, sadly, to their fleet repair.\n", + "Now, ere the morn had streak’d with reddening light\n", + "The doubtful confines of the day and night,\n", + "About the dying flames the Greeks appear’d,\n", + "And round the pile a general tomb they rear’d.\n", + "Then, to secure the camp and naval powers,\n", + "They raised embattled walls with lofty towers:[186]\n", + "From space to space were ample gates around,\n", + "For passing chariots, and a trench profound\n", + "Of large extent; and deep in earth below,\n", + "Strong piles infix’d stood adverse to the foe.\n", + "\n", + "So toil’d the Greeks: meanwhile the gods above,\n", + "In shining circle round their father Jove,\n", + "Amazed beheld the wondrous works of man:\n", + "Then he, whose trident shakes the earth, began:\n", + "\n", + "“What mortals henceforth shall our power adore,\n", + "Our fanes frequent, our oracles implore,\n", + "If the proud Grecians thus successful boast\n", + "Their rising bulwarks on the sea-beat coast?\n", + "See the long walls extending to the main,\n", + "No god consulted, and no victim slain!\n", + "Their fame shall fill the world’s remotest ends,\n", + "Wide as the morn her golden beam extends;\n", + "While old Laomedon’s divine abodes,\n", + "Those radiant structures raised by labouring gods,\n", + "Shall, razed and lost, in long oblivion sleep.”\n", + "Thus spoke the hoary monarch of the deep.\n", + "\n", + "The almighty Thunderer with a frown replies,\n", + "That clouds the world, and blackens half the skies:\n", + "“Strong god of ocean! thou, whose rage can make\n", + "The solid earth’s eternal basis shake!\n", + "What cause of fear from mortal works could move[187]\n", + "The meanest subject of our realms above?\n", + "Where’er the sun’s refulgent rays are cast,\n", + "Thy power is honour’d, and thy fame shall last.\n", + "But yon proud work no future age shall view,\n", + "No trace remain where once the glory grew.\n", + "The sapp’d foundations by thy force shall fall,\n", + "And, whelm’d beneath the waves, drop the huge wall:\n", + "Vast drifts of sand shall change the former shore:\n", + "The ruin vanish’d, and the name no more.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus they in heaven: while, o’er the Grecian train,\n", + "The rolling sun descending to the main\n", + "Beheld the finish’d work. Their bulls they slew;\n", + "Back from the tents the savoury vapour flew.\n", + "And now the fleet, arrived from Lemnos’ strands,\n", + "With Bacchus’ blessings cheered the generous bands.\n", + "Of fragrant wines the rich Eunaeus sent\n", + "A thousant measures to the royal tent.\n", + "(Eunaeus, whom Hypsipyle of yore\n", + "To Jason, shepherd of his people, bore,)\n", + "The rest they purchased at their proper cost,\n", + "And well the plenteous freight supplied the host:\n", + "Each, in exchange, proportion’d treasures gave;[188]\n", + "Some, brass or iron; some, an ox, or slave.\n", + "All night they feast, the Greek and Trojan powers:\n", + "Those on the fields, and these within their towers.\n", + "But Jove averse the signs of wrath display’d,\n", + "And shot red lightnings through the gloomy shade:\n", + "Humbled they stood; pale horror seized on all,\n", + "While the deep thunder shook the aerial hall.\n", + "Each pour’d to Jove before the bowl was crown’d;\n", + "And large libations drench’d the thirsty ground:\n", + "Then late, refresh’d with sleep from toils of fight,\n", + "Enjoy’d the balmy blessings of the night.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] GREEK AMPHORA—WINE VESSELS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK VIII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE SECOND BATTLE, AND THE DISTRESS OF THE GREEKS.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Jupiter assembles a council of the deities, and threatens them with the\n", + "pains of Tartarus if they assist either side: Minerva only obtains of\n", + "him that she may direct the Greeks by her counsels. The armies join\n", + "battle: Jupiter on Mount Ida weighs in his balances the fates of both,\n", + "and affrights the Greeks with his thunders and lightnings. Nestor alone\n", + "continues in the field in great danger: Diomed relieves him; whose\n", + "exploits, and those of Hector, are excellently described. Juno\n", + "endeavours to animate Neptune to the assistance of the Greeks, but in\n", + "vain. The acts of Teucer, who is at length wounded by Hector, and\n", + "carried off. Juno and Minerva prepare to aid the Grecians, but are\n", + "restrained by Iris, sent from Jupiter. The night puts an end to the\n", + "battle. Hector continues in the field, (the Greeks being driven to\n", + "their fortifications before the ships,) and gives orders to keep the\n", + "watch all night in the camp, to prevent the enemy from re-embarking and\n", + "escaping by flight. They kindle fires through all the fields, and pass\n", + "the night under arms.\n", + " The time of seven and twenty days is employed from the opening of\n", + " the poem to the end of this book. The scene here (except of the\n", + " celestial machines) lies in the field towards the seashore.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn,\n", + "Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn;\n", + "When Jove convened the senate of the skies,\n", + "Where high Olympus’ cloudy tops arise,\n", + "The sire of gods his awful silence broke;\n", + "The heavens attentive trembled as he spoke:[189]\n", + "\n", + "“Celestial states! immortal gods! give ear,\n", + "Hear our decree, and reverence what ye hear;\n", + "The fix’d decree which not all heaven can move;\n", + "Thou, fate! fulfil it! and, ye powers, approve!\n", + "What god but enters yon forbidden field,\n", + "Who yields assistance, or but wills to yield,\n", + "Back to the skies with shame he shall be driven,\n", + "Gash’d with dishonest wounds, the scorn of heaven;\n", + "Or far, oh far, from steep Olympus thrown,\n", + "Low in the dark Tartarean gulf shall groan,\n", + "With burning chains fix’d to the brazen floors,\n", + "And lock’d by hell’s inexorable doors;\n", + "As deep beneath the infernal centre hurl’d,[190]\n", + "As from that centre to the ethereal world.\n", + "Let him who tempts me, dread those dire abodes:\n", + "And know, the Almighty is the god of gods.\n", + "League all your forces, then, ye powers above,\n", + "Join all, and try the omnipotence of Jove.\n", + "Let down our golden everlasting chain[191]\n", + "Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main\n", + "Strive all, of mortal and immortal birth,\n", + "To drag, by this, the Thunderer down to earth:\n", + "Ye strive in vain! if I but stretch this hand,\n", + "I heave the gods, the ocean, and the land;\n", + "I fix the chain to great Olympus’ height,\n", + "And the vast world hangs trembling in my sight!\n", + "For such I reign, unbounded and above;\n", + "And such are men, and gods, compared to Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The all-mighty spoke, nor durst the powers reply:\n", + "A reverend horror silenced all the sky;\n", + "Trembling they stood before their sovereign’s look;\n", + "At length his best-beloved, the power of wisdom, spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“O first and greatest! God, by gods adored\n", + "We own thy might, our father and our lord!\n", + "But, ah! permit to pity human state:\n", + "If not to help, at least lament their fate.\n", + "From fields forbidden we submiss refrain,\n", + "With arms unaiding mourn our Argives slain;\n", + "Yet grant my counsels still their breasts may move,\n", + "Or all must perish in the wrath of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The cloud-compelling god her suit approved,\n", + "And smiled superior on his best beloved;\n", + "Then call’d his coursers, and his chariot took;\n", + "The stedfast firmament beneath them shook:\n", + "Rapt by the ethereal steeds the chariot roll’d;\n", + "Brass were their hoofs, their curling manes of gold:\n", + "Of heaven’s undrossy gold the gods array,\n", + "Refulgent, flash’d intolerable day.\n", + "High on the throne he shines: his coursers fly\n", + "Between the extended earth and starry sky.\n", + "But when to Ida’s topmost height he came,\n", + "(Fair nurse of fountains, and of savage game,)\n", + "Where o’er her pointed summits proudly raised,\n", + "His fane breathed odours, and his altar blazed:\n", + "There, from his radiant car, the sacred sire\n", + "Of gods and men released the steeds of fire:\n", + "Blue ambient mists the immortal steeds embraced;\n", + "High on the cloudy point his seat he placed;\n", + "Thence his broad eye the subject world surveys,\n", + "The town, and tents, and navigable seas.\n", + "\n", + "Now had the Grecians snatch’d a short repast,\n", + "And buckled on their shining arms with haste.\n", + "Troy roused as soon; for on this dreadful day\n", + "The fate of fathers, wives, and infants lay.\n", + "The gates unfolding pour forth all their train;\n", + "Squadrons on squadrons cloud the dusky plain:\n", + "Men, steeds, and chariots shake the trembling ground,\n", + "The tumult thickens, and the skies resound;\n", + "And now with shouts the shocking armies closed,\n", + "To lances lances, shields to shields opposed,\n", + "Host against host with shadowy legends drew,\n", + "The sounding darts in iron tempests flew;\n", + "Victors and vanquish’d join promiscuous cries,\n", + "Triumphant shouts and dying groans arise;\n", + "With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,\n", + "And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.\n", + "Long as the morning beams, increasing bright,\n", + "O’er heaven’s clear azure spread the sacred light,\n", + "Commutual death the fate of war confounds,\n", + "Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds.\n", + "But when the sun the height of heaven ascends,\n", + "The sire of gods his golden scales suspends,[192]\n", + "With equal hand: in these explored the fate\n", + "Of Greece and Troy, and poised the mighty weight:\n", + "Press’d with its load, the Grecian balance lies\n", + "Low sunk on earth, the Trojan strikes the skies.\n", + "Then Jove from Ida’s top his horrors spreads;\n", + "The clouds burst dreadful o’er the Grecian heads;\n", + "Thick lightnings flash; the muttering thunder rolls;\n", + "Their strength he withers, and unmans their souls.\n", + "Before his wrath the trembling hosts retire;\n", + "The gods in terrors, and the skies on fire.\n", + "Nor great Idomeneus that sight could bear,\n", + "Nor each stern Ajax, thunderbolts of war:\n", + "Nor he, the king of war, the alarm sustain’d\n", + "Nestor alone, amidst the storm remain’d.\n", + "Unwilling he remain’d, for Paris’ dart\n", + "Had pierced his courser in a mortal part;\n", + "Fix’d in the forehead, where the springing mane\n", + "Curl’d o’er the brow, it stung him to the brain;\n", + "Mad with his anguish, he begins to rear,\n", + "Paw with his hoofs aloft, and lash the air.\n", + "Scarce had his falchion cut the reins, and freed\n", + "The encumber’d chariot from the dying steed,\n", + "When dreadful Hector, thundering through the war,\n", + "Pour’d to the tumult on his whirling car.\n", + "That day had stretch’d beneath his matchless hand\n", + "The hoary monarch of the Pylian band,\n", + "But Diomed beheld; from forth the crowd\n", + "He rush’d, and on Ulysses call’d aloud:\n", + "\n", + "“Whither, oh whither does Ulysses run?\n", + "Oh, flight unworthy great Laertes’ son!\n", + "Mix’d with the vulgar shall thy fate be found,\n", + "Pierced in the back, a vile, dishonest wound?\n", + "Oh turn and save from Hector’s direful rage\n", + "The glory of the Greeks, the Pylian sage.”\n", + "His fruitless words are lost unheard in air,\n", + "Ulysses seeks the ships, and shelters there.\n", + "But bold Tydides to the rescue goes,\n", + "A single warrior midst a host of foes;\n", + "Before the coursers with a sudden spring\n", + "He leap’d, and anxious thus bespoke the king:\n", + "\n", + "“Great perils, father! wait the unequal fight;\n", + "These younger champions will oppress thy might.\n", + "Thy veins no more with ancient vigour glow,\n", + "Weak is thy servant, and thy coursers slow.\n", + "Then haste, ascend my seat, and from the car\n", + "Observe the steeds of Tros, renown’d in war.\n", + "Practised alike to turn, to stop, to chase,\n", + "To dare the fight, or urge the rapid race:\n", + "These late obey’d Æneas’ guiding rein;\n", + "Leave thou thy chariot to our faithful train;\n", + "With these against yon Trojans will we go,\n", + "Nor shall great Hector want an equal foe;\n", + "Fierce as he is, even he may learn to fear\n", + "The thirsty fury of my flying spear.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus said the chief; and Nestor, skill’d in war,\n", + "Approves his counsel, and ascends the car:\n", + "The steeds he left, their trusty servants hold;\n", + "Eurymedon, and Sthenelus the bold:\n", + "The reverend charioteer directs the course,\n", + "And strains his aged arm to lash the horse.\n", + "Hector they face; unknowing how to fear,\n", + "Fierce he drove on; Tydides whirl’d his spear.\n", + "The spear with erring haste mistook its way,\n", + "But plunged in Eniopeus’ bosom lay.\n", + "His opening hand in death forsakes the rein;\n", + "The steeds fly back: he falls, and spurns the plain.\n", + "Great Hector sorrows for his servant kill’d,\n", + "Yet unrevenged permits to press the field;\n", + "Till, to supply his place and rule the car,\n", + "Rose Archeptolemus, the fierce in war.\n", + "And now had death and horror cover’d all;[193]\n", + "Like timorous flocks the Trojans in their wall\n", + "Inclosed had bled: but Jove with awful sound\n", + "Roll’d the big thunder o’er the vast profound:\n", + "Full in Tydides’ face the lightning flew;\n", + "The ground before him flamed with sulphur blue;\n", + "The quivering steeds fell prostrate at the sight;\n", + "And Nestor’s trembling hand confess’d his fright:\n", + "He dropp’d the reins: and, shook with sacred dread,\n", + "Thus, turning, warn’d the intrepid Diomed:\n", + "\n", + "“O chief! too daring in thy friend’s defence\n", + "Retire advised, and urge the chariot hence.\n", + "This day, averse, the sovereign of the skies\n", + "Assists great Hector, and our palm denies.\n", + "Some other sun may see the happier hour,\n", + "When Greece shall conquer by his heavenly power.\n", + "’Tis not in man his fix’d decree to move:\n", + "The great will glory to submit to Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "“O reverend prince! (Tydides thus replies)\n", + "Thy years are awful, and thy words are wise.\n", + "But ah, what grief! should haughty Hector boast\n", + "I fled inglorious to the guarded coast.\n", + "Before that dire disgrace shall blast my fame,\n", + "O’erwhelm me, earth; and hide a warrior’s shame!”\n", + "To whom Gerenian Nestor thus replied:[194]\n", + "“Gods! can thy courage fear the Phrygian’s pride?\n", + "Hector may vaunt, but who shall heed the boast?\n", + "Not those who felt thy arm, the Dardan host,\n", + "Nor Troy, yet bleeding in her heroes lost;\n", + "Not even a Phrygian dame, who dreads the sword\n", + "That laid in dust her loved, lamented lord.”\n", + "He said, and, hasty, o’er the gasping throng\n", + "Drives the swift steeds: the chariot smokes along;\n", + "The shouts of Trojans thicken in the wind;\n", + "The storm of hissing javelins pours behind.\n", + "Then with a voice that shakes the solid skies,\n", + "Pleased, Hector braves the warrior as he flies.\n", + "“Go, mighty hero! graced above the rest\n", + "In seats of council and the sumptuous feast:\n", + "Now hope no more those honours from thy train;\n", + "Go less than woman, in the form of man!\n", + "To scale our walls, to wrap our towers in flames,\n", + "To lead in exile the fair Phrygian dames,\n", + "Thy once proud hopes, presumptuous prince! are fled;\n", + "This arm shall reach thy heart, and stretch thee dead.”\n", + "\n", + "Now fears dissuade him, and now hopes invite.\n", + "To stop his coursers, and to stand the fight;\n", + "Thrice turn’d the chief, and thrice imperial Jove\n", + "On Ida’s summits thunder’d from above.\n", + "Great Hector heard; he saw the flashing light,\n", + "(The sign of conquest,) and thus urged the fight:\n", + "\n", + "“Hear, every Trojan, Lycian, Dardan band,\n", + "All famed in war, and dreadful hand to hand.\n", + "Be mindful of the wreaths your arms have won,\n", + "Your great forefathers’ glories, and your own.\n", + "Heard ye the voice of Jove? Success and fame\n", + "Await on Troy, on Greece eternal shame.\n", + "In vain they skulk behind their boasted wall,\n", + "Weak bulwarks; destined by this arm to fall.\n", + "High o’er their slighted trench our steeds shall bound,\n", + "And pass victorious o’er the levell’d mound.\n", + "Soon as before yon hollow ships we stand,\n", + "Fight each with flames, and toss the blazing brand;\n", + "Till, their proud navy wrapt in smoke and fires,\n", + "All Greece, encompass’d, in one blaze expires.”\n", + "\n", + "Furious he said; then bending o’er the yoke,\n", + "Encouraged his proud steeds, while thus he spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Now, Xanthus, Æthon, Lampus, urge the chase,\n", + "And thou, Podargus! prove thy generous race;\n", + "Be fleet, be fearless, this important day,\n", + "And all your master’s well-spent care repay.\n", + "For this, high-fed, in plenteous stalls ye stand,\n", + "Served with pure wheat, and by a princess’ hand;\n", + "For this my spouse, of great Aëtion’s line,\n", + "So oft has steep’d the strengthening grain in wine.\n", + "Now swift pursue, now thunder uncontroll’d:\n", + "Give me to seize rich Nestor’s shield of gold;\n", + "From Tydeus’ shoulders strip the costly load,\n", + "Vulcanian arms, the labour of a god:\n", + "These if we gain, then victory, ye powers!\n", + "This night, this glorious night, the fleet is ours!”\n", + "\n", + "That heard, deep anguish stung Saturnia’s soul;\n", + "She shook her throne, that shook the starry pole:\n", + "And thus to Neptune: “Thou, whose force can make\n", + "The stedfast earth from her foundations shake,\n", + "Seest thou the Greeks by fates unjust oppress’d,\n", + "Nor swells thy heart in that immortal breast?\n", + "Yet Ægae, Helicè, thy power obey,[195]\n", + "And gifts unceasing on thine altars lay.\n", + "Would all the deities of Greece combine,\n", + "In vain the gloomy Thunderer might repine:\n", + "Sole should he sit, with scarce a god to friend,\n", + "And see his Trojans to the shades descend:\n", + "Such be the scene from his Idaean bower;\n", + "Ungrateful prospect to the sullen power!”\n", + "\n", + "Neptune with wrath rejects the rash design:\n", + "“What rage, what madness, furious queen! is thine?\n", + "I war not with the highest. All above\n", + "Submit and tremble at the hand of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "Now godlike Hector, to whose matchless might\n", + "Jove gave the glory of the destined fight,\n", + "Squadrons on squadrons drives, and fills the fields\n", + "With close-ranged chariots, and with thicken’d shields.\n", + "Where the deep trench in length extended lay,\n", + "Compacted troops stand wedged in firm array,\n", + "A dreadful front! they shake the brands, and threat\n", + "With long-destroying flames the hostile fleet.\n", + "The king of men, by Juno’s self inspired,\n", + "Toil’d through the tents, and all his army fired.\n", + "Swift as he moved, he lifted in his hand\n", + "His purple robe, bright ensign of command.\n", + "High on the midmost bark the king appear’d:\n", + "There, from Ulysses’ deck, his voice was heard:\n", + "To Ajax and Achilles reach’d the sound,\n", + "Whose distant ships the guarded navy bound.\n", + "“O Argives! shame of human race! (he cried:\n", + "The hollow vessels to his voice replied,)\n", + "Where now are all your glorious boasts of yore,\n", + "Your hasty triumphs on the Lemnian shore?\n", + "Each fearless hero dares a hundred foes,\n", + "While the feast lasts, and while the goblet flows;\n", + "But who to meet one martial man is found,\n", + "When the fight rages, and the flames surround?\n", + "O mighty Jove! O sire of the distress’d!\n", + "Was ever king like me, like me oppress’d?\n", + "With power immense, with justice arm’d in vain;\n", + "My glory ravish’d, and my people slain!\n", + "To thee my vows were breathed from every shore;\n", + "What altar smoked not with our victims’ gore?\n", + "With fat of bulls I fed the constant flame,\n", + "And ask’d destruction to the Trojan name.\n", + "Now, gracious god! far humbler our demand;\n", + "Give these at least to ’scape from Hector’s hand,\n", + "And save the relics of the Grecian land!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus pray’d the king, and heaven’s great father heard\n", + "His vows, in bitterness of soul preferr’d:\n", + "The wrath appeased, by happy signs declares,\n", + "And gives the people to their monarch’s prayers.\n", + "His eagle, sacred bird of heaven! he sent,\n", + "A fawn his talons truss’d, (divine portent!)\n", + "High o’er the wondering hosts he soar’d above,\n", + "Who paid their vows to Panomphaean Jove;\n", + "Then let the prey before his altar fall;\n", + "The Greeks beheld, and transport seized on all:\n", + "Encouraged by the sign, the troops revive,\n", + "And fierce on Troy with doubled fury drive.\n", + "Tydides first, of all the Grecian force,\n", + "O’er the broad ditch impell’d his foaming horse,\n", + "Pierced the deep ranks, their strongest battle tore,\n", + "And dyed his javelin red with Trojan gore.\n", + "Young Agelaus (Phradmon was his sire)\n", + "With flying coursers shunn’d his dreadful ire;\n", + "Struck through the back, the Phrygian fell oppress’d;\n", + "The dart drove on, and issued at his breast:\n", + "Headlong he quits the car: his arms resound;\n", + "His ponderous buckler thunders on the ground.\n", + "Forth rush a tide of Greeks, the passage freed;\n", + "The Atridae first, the Ajaces next succeed:\n", + "Meriones, like Mars in arms renown’d,\n", + "And godlike Idomen, now passed the mound;\n", + "Evaemon’s son next issues to the foe,\n", + "And last young Teucer with his bended bow.\n", + "Secure behind the Telamonian shield\n", + "The skilful archer wide survey’d the field,\n", + "With every shaft some hostile victim slew,\n", + "Then close beneath the sevenfold orb withdrew:\n", + "The conscious infant so, when fear alarms,\n", + "Retires for safety to the mother’s arms.\n", + "Thus Ajax guards his brother in the field,\n", + "Moves as he moves, and turns the shining shield.\n", + "Who first by Teucer’s mortal arrows bled?\n", + "Orsilochus; then fell Ormenus dead:\n", + "The godlike Lycophon next press’d the plain,\n", + "With Chromius, Daetor, Ophelestes slain:\n", + "Bold Hamopaon breathless sunk to ground;\n", + "The bloody pile great Melanippus crown’d.\n", + "Heaps fell on heaps, sad trophies of his art,\n", + "A Trojan ghost attending every dart.\n", + "Great Agamemnon views with joyful eye\n", + "The ranks grow thinner as his arrows fly:\n", + "“O youth forever dear! (the monarch cried)\n", + "Thus, always thus, thy early worth be tried;\n", + "Thy brave example shall retrieve our host,\n", + "Thy country’s saviour, and thy father’s boast!\n", + "Sprung from an alien’s bed thy sire to grace,\n", + "The vigorous offspring of a stolen embrace:\n", + "Proud of his boy, he own’d the generous flame,\n", + "And the brave son repays his cares with fame.\n", + "Now hear a monarch’s vow: If heaven’s high powers\n", + "Give me to raze Troy’s long-defended towers;\n", + "Whatever treasures Greece for me design,\n", + "The next rich honorary gift be thine:\n", + "Some golden tripod, or distinguished car,\n", + "With coursers dreadful in the ranks of war:\n", + "Or some fair captive, whom thy eyes approve,\n", + "Shall recompense the warrior’s toils with love.”\n", + "\n", + "To this the chief: “With praise the rest inspire,\n", + "Nor urge a soul already fill’d with fire.\n", + "What strength I have, be now in battle tried,\n", + "Till every shaft in Phrygian blood be dyed.\n", + "Since rallying from our wall we forced the foe,\n", + "Still aim’d at Hector have I bent my bow:\n", + "Eight forky arrows from this hand have fled,\n", + "And eight bold heroes by their points lie dead:\n", + "But sure some god denies me to destroy\n", + "This fury of the field, this dog of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and twang’d the string. The weapon flies\n", + "At Hector’s breast, and sings along the skies:\n", + "He miss’d the mark; but pierced Gorgythio’s heart,\n", + "And drench’d in royal blood the thirsty dart.\n", + "(Fair Castianira, nymph of form divine,\n", + "This offspring added to king Priam’s line.)\n", + "As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain,[196]\n", + "Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain;\n", + "So sinks the youth: his beauteous head, depress’d\n", + "Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.\n", + "Another shaft the raging archer drew,\n", + "That other shaft with erring fury flew,\n", + "(From Hector, Phœbus turn’d the flying wound,)\n", + "Yet fell not dry or guiltless to the ground:\n", + "Thy breast, brave Archeptolemus! it tore,\n", + "And dipp’d its feathers in no vulgar gore.\n", + "Headlong he falls: his sudden fall alarms\n", + "The steeds, that startle at his sounding arms.\n", + "Hector with grief his charioteer beheld\n", + "All pale and breathless on the sanguine field:\n", + "Then bids Cebriones direct the rein,\n", + "Quits his bright car, and issues on the plain.\n", + "Dreadful he shouts: from earth a stone he took,\n", + "And rush’d on Teucer with the lifted rock.\n", + "The youth already strain’d the forceful yew;\n", + "The shaft already to his shoulder drew;\n", + "The feather in his hand, just wing’d for flight,\n", + "Touch’d where the neck and hollow chest unite;\n", + "There, where the juncture knits the channel bone,\n", + "The furious chief discharged the craggy stone:\n", + "The bow-string burst beneath the ponderous blow,\n", + "And his numb’d hand dismiss’d his useless bow.\n", + "He fell: but Ajax his broad shield display’d,\n", + "And screen’d his brother with the mighty shade;\n", + "Till great Alaster, and Mecistheus, bore\n", + "The batter’d archer groaning to the shore.\n", + "\n", + "Troy yet found grace before the Olympian sire,\n", + "He arm’d their hands, and fill’d their breasts with fire.\n", + "The Greeks repulsed, retreat behind their wall,\n", + "Or in the trench on heaps confusedly fall.\n", + "First of the foe, great Hector march’d along,\n", + "With terror clothed, and more than mortal strong.\n", + "As the bold hound, that gives the lion chase,\n", + "With beating bosom, and with eager pace,\n", + "Hangs on his haunch, or fastens on his heels,\n", + "Guards as he turns, and circles as he wheels;\n", + "Thus oft the Grecians turn’d, but still they flew;\n", + "Thus following, Hector still the hindmost slew.\n", + "When flying they had pass’d the trench profound,\n", + "And many a chief lay gasping on the ground;\n", + "Before the ships a desperate stand they made,\n", + "And fired the troops, and called the gods to aid.\n", + "Fierce on his rattling chariot Hector came:\n", + "His eyes like Gorgon shot a sanguine flame\n", + "That wither’d all their host: like Mars he stood:\n", + "Dire as the monster, dreadful as the god!\n", + "Their strong distress the wife of Jove survey’d;\n", + "Then pensive thus, to war’s triumphant maid:\n", + "\n", + "“O daughter of that god, whose arm can wield\n", + "The avenging bolt, and shake the sable shield!\n", + "Now, in this moment of her last despair,\n", + "Shall wretched Greece no more confess our care,\n", + "Condemn’d to suffer the full force of fate,\n", + "And drain the dregs of heaven’s relentless hate?\n", + "Gods! shall one raging hand thus level all?\n", + "What numbers fell! what numbers yet shall fall!\n", + "What power divine shall Hector’s wrath assuage?\n", + "Still swells the slaughter, and still grows the rage!”\n", + "\n", + "So spake the imperial regent of the skies;\n", + "To whom the goddess with the azure eyes:\n", + "\n", + "“Long since had Hector stain’d these fields with gore,\n", + "Stretch’d by some Argive on his native shore:\n", + "But he above, the sire of heaven, withstands,\n", + "Mocks our attempts, and slights our just demands;\n", + "The stubborn god, inflexible and hard,\n", + "Forgets my service and deserved reward:\n", + "Saved I, for this, his favourite son distress’d,\n", + "By stern Eurystheus with long labours press’d?\n", + "He begg’d, with tears he begg’d, in deep dismay;\n", + "I shot from heaven, and gave his arm the day.\n", + "Oh had my wisdom known this dire event,\n", + "When to grim Pluto’s gloomy gates he went;\n", + "The triple dog had never felt his chain,\n", + "Nor Styx been cross’d, nor hell explored in vain.\n", + "Averse to me of all his heaven of gods,\n", + "At Thetis’ suit the partial Thunderer nods;\n", + "To grace her gloomy, fierce, resenting son,\n", + "My hopes are frustrate, and my Greeks undone.\n", + "Some future day, perhaps, he may be moved\n", + "To call his blue-eyed maid his best beloved.\n", + "Haste, launch thy chariot, through yon ranks to ride;\n", + "Myself will arm, and thunder at thy side.\n", + "Then, goddess! say, shall Hector glory then?\n", + "(That terror of the Greeks, that man of men)\n", + "When Juno’s self, and Pallas shall appear,\n", + "All dreadful in the crimson walks of war!\n", + "What mighty Trojan then, on yonder shore,\n", + "Expiring, pale, and terrible no more,\n", + "Shall feast the fowls, and glut the dogs with gore?”\n", + "\n", + "She ceased, and Juno rein’d the steeds with care:\n", + "(Heaven’s awful empress, Saturn’s other heir:)\n", + "Pallas, meanwhile, her various veil unbound,\n", + "With flowers adorn’d, with art immortal crown’d;\n", + "The radiant robe her sacred fingers wove\n", + "Floats in rich waves, and spreads the court of Jove.\n", + "Her father’s arms her mighty limbs invest,\n", + "His cuirass blazes on her ample breast.\n", + "The vigorous power the trembling car ascends:\n", + "Shook by her arm, the massy javelin bends:\n", + "Huge, ponderous, strong! that when her fury burns\n", + "Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o’erturns.\n", + "\n", + "Saturnia lends the lash; the coursers fly;\n", + "Smooth glides the chariot through the liquid sky.\n", + "Heaven’s gates spontaneous open to the powers,\n", + "Heaven’s golden gates, kept by the winged Hours.\n", + "Commission’d in alternate watch they stand,\n", + "The sun’s bright portals and the skies command;\n", + "Close, or unfold, the eternal gates of day\n", + "Bar heaven with clouds, or roll those clouds away.\n", + "The sounding hinges ring, the clouds divide.\n", + "Prone down the steep of heaven their course they guide.\n", + "But Jove, incensed, from Ida’s top survey’d,\n", + "And thus enjoin’d the many-colour’d maid.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] JUNO AND MINERVA GOING TO ASSIST THE GREEKS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Thaumantia! mount the winds, and stop their car;\n", + "Against the highest who shall wage the war?\n", + "If furious yet they dare the vain debate,\n", + "Thus have I spoke, and what I speak is fate:\n", + "Their coursers crush’d beneath the wheels shall lie,\n", + "Their car in fragments, scatter’d o’er the sky:\n", + "My lightning these rebellious shall confound,\n", + "And hurl them flaming, headlong, to the ground,\n", + "Condemn’d for ten revolving years to weep\n", + "The wounds impress’d by burning thunder deep.\n", + "So shall Minerva learn to fear our ire,\n", + "Nor dare to combat hers and nature’s sire.\n", + "For Juno, headstrong and imperious still,\n", + "She claims some title to transgress our will.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift as the wind, the various-colour’d maid\n", + "From Ida’s top her golden wings display’d;\n", + "To great Olympus’ shining gate she flies,\n", + "There meets the chariot rushing down the skies,\n", + "Restrains their progress from the bright abodes,\n", + "And speaks the mandate of the sire of gods.\n", + "\n", + "“What frenzy goddesses! what rage can move\n", + "Celestial minds to tempt the wrath of Jove?\n", + "Desist, obedient to his high command:\n", + "This is his word; and know his word shall stand:\n", + "His lightning your rebellion shall confound,\n", + "And hurl ye headlong, flaming, to the ground;\n", + "Your horses crush’d beneath the wheels shall lie,\n", + "Your car in fragments scatter’d o’er the sky;\n", + "Yourselves condemn’d ten rolling years to weep\n", + "The wounds impress’d by burning thunder deep.\n", + "So shall Minerva learn to fear his ire,\n", + "Nor dare to combat hers and nature’s sire.\n", + "For Juno, headstrong and imperious still,\n", + "She claims some title to transgress his will:\n", + "But thee, what desperate insolence has driven\n", + "To lift thy lance against the king of heaven?”\n", + "\n", + "Then, mounting on the pinions of the wind,\n", + "She flew; and Juno thus her rage resign’d:\n", + "\n", + "“O daughter of that god, whose arm can wield\n", + "The avenging bolt, and shake the saber shield!\n", + "No more let beings of superior birth\n", + "Contend with Jove for this low race of earth;\n", + "Triumphant now, now miserably slain,\n", + "They breathe or perish as the fates ordain:\n", + "But Jove’s high counsels full effect shall find;\n", + "And, ever constant, ever rule mankind.”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke, and backward turn’d her steeds of light,\n", + "Adorn’d with manes of gold, and heavenly bright.\n", + "The Hours unloosed them, panting as they stood,\n", + "And heap’d their mangers with ambrosial food.\n", + "There tied, they rest in high celestial stalls;\n", + "The chariot propp’d against the crystal walls,\n", + "The pensive goddesses, abash’d, controll’d,\n", + "Mix with the gods, and fill their seats of gold.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE HOURS TAKING THE HORSES FROM JUNO’S CAR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "And now the Thunderer meditates his flight\n", + "From Ida’s summits to the Olympian height.\n", + "Swifter than thought, the wheels instinctive fly,\n", + "Flame through the vast of air, and reach the sky.\n", + "’Twas Neptune’s charge his coursers to unbrace,\n", + "And fix the car on its immortal base;\n", + "There stood the chariot, beaming forth its rays,\n", + "Till with a snowy veil he screen’d the blaze.\n", + "He, whose all-conscious eyes the world behold,\n", + "The eternal Thunderer sat, enthroned in gold.\n", + "High heaven the footstool of his feet he makes,\n", + "And wide beneath him all Olympus shakes.\n", + "Trembling afar the offending powers appear’d,\n", + "Confused and silent, for his frown they fear’d.\n", + "He saw their soul, and thus his word imparts:\n", + "“Pallas and Juno! say, why heave your hearts?\n", + "Soon was your battle o’er: proud Troy retired\n", + "Before your face, and in your wrath expired.\n", + "But know, whoe’er almighty power withstand!\n", + "Unmatch’d our force, unconquer’d is our hand:\n", + "Who shall the sovereign of the skies control?\n", + "Not all the gods that crown the starry pole.\n", + "Your hearts shall tremble, if our arms we take,\n", + "And each immortal nerve with horror shake.\n", + "For thus I speak, and what I speak shall stand;\n", + "What power soe’er provokes our lifted hand,\n", + "On this our hill no more shall hold his place;\n", + "Cut off, and exiled from the ethereal race.”\n", + "\n", + "Juno and Pallas grieving hear the doom,\n", + "But feast their souls on Ilion’s woes to come.\n", + "Though secret anger swell’d Minerva’s breast,\n", + "The prudent goddess yet her wrath repress’d;\n", + "But Juno, impotent of rage, replies:\n", + "“What hast thou said, O tyrant of the skies!\n", + "Strength and omnipotence invest thy throne;\n", + "’Tis thine to punish; ours to grieve alone.\n", + "For Greece we grieve, abandon’d by her fate\n", + "To drink the dregs of thy unmeasured hate.\n", + "From fields forbidden we submiss refrain,\n", + "With arms unaiding see our Argives slain;\n", + "Yet grant our counsels still their breasts may move,\n", + "Lest all should perish in the rage of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "The goddess thus; and thus the god replies,\n", + "Who swells the clouds, and blackens all the skies:\n", + "\n", + "“The morning sun, awaked by loud alarms,\n", + "Shall see the almighty Thunderer in arms.\n", + "What heaps of Argives then shall load the plain,\n", + "Those radiant eyes shall view, and view in vain.\n", + "Nor shall great Hector cease the rage of fight,\n", + "The navy flaming, and thy Greeks in flight,\n", + "Even till the day when certain fates ordain\n", + "That stern Achilles (his Patroclus slain)\n", + "Shall rise in vengeance, and lay waste the plain.\n", + "For such is fate, nor canst thou turn its course\n", + "With all thy rage, with all thy rebel force.\n", + "Fly, if thy wilt, to earth’s remotest bound,\n", + "Where on her utmost verge the seas resound;\n", + "Where cursed Iapetus and Saturn dwell,\n", + "Fast by the brink, within the streams of hell;\n", + "No sun e’er gilds the gloomy horrors there;\n", + "No cheerful gales refresh the lazy air:\n", + "There arm once more the bold Titanian band;\n", + "And arm in vain; for what I will, shall stand.”\n", + "\n", + "Now deep in ocean sunk the lamp of light,\n", + "And drew behind the cloudy veil of night:\n", + "The conquering Trojans mourn his beams decay’d;\n", + "The Greeks rejoicing bless the friendly shade.\n", + "\n", + "The victors keep the field; and Hector calls\n", + "A martial council near the navy walls;\n", + "These to Scamander’s bank apart he led,\n", + "Where thinly scatter’d lay the heaps of dead.\n", + "The assembled chiefs, descending on the ground,\n", + "Attend his order, and their prince surround.\n", + "A massy spear he bore of mighty strength,\n", + "Of full ten cubits was the lance’s length;\n", + "The point was brass, refulgent to behold,\n", + "Fix’d to the wood with circling rings of gold:\n", + "The noble Hector on his lance reclined,\n", + "And, bending forward, thus reveal’d his mind:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye valiant Trojans, with attention hear!\n", + "Ye Dardan bands, and generous aids, give ear!\n", + "This day, we hoped, would wrap in conquering flame\n", + "Greece with her ships, and crown our toils with fame.\n", + "But darkness now, to save the cowards, falls,\n", + "And guards them trembling in their wooden walls.\n", + "Obey the night, and use her peaceful hours\n", + "Our steeds to forage, and refresh our powers.\n", + "Straight from the town be sheep and oxen sought,\n", + "And strengthening bread and generous wine be brought.\n", + "Wide o’er the field, high blazing to the sky,\n", + "Let numerous fires the absent sun supply,\n", + "The flaming piles with plenteous fuel raise,\n", + "Till the bright morn her purple beam displays;\n", + "Lest, in the silence and the shades of night,\n", + "Greece on her sable ships attempt her flight.\n", + "Not unmolested let the wretches gain\n", + "Their lofty decks, or safely cleave the main;\n", + "Some hostile wound let every dart bestow,\n", + "Some lasting token of the Phrygian foe,\n", + "Wounds, that long hence may ask their spouses’ care.\n", + "And warn their children from a Trojan war.\n", + "Now through the circuit of our Ilion wall,\n", + "Let sacred heralds sound the solemn call;\n", + "To bid the sires with hoary honours crown’d,\n", + "And beardless youths, our battlements surround.\n", + "Firm be the guard, while distant lie our powers,\n", + "And let the matrons hang with lights the towers;\n", + "Lest, under covert of the midnight shade,\n", + "The insidious foe the naked town invade.\n", + "Suffice, to-night, these orders to obey;\n", + "A nobler charge shall rouse the dawning day.\n", + "The gods, I trust, shall give to Hector’s hand\n", + "From these detested foes to free the land,\n", + "Who plough’d, with fates averse, the watery way:\n", + "For Trojan vultures a predestined prey.\n", + "Our common safety must be now the care;\n", + "But soon as morning paints the fields of air,\n", + "Sheathed in bright arms let every troop engage,\n", + "And the fired fleet behold the battle rage.\n", + "Then, then shall Hector and Tydides prove\n", + "Whose fates are heaviest in the scales of Jove.\n", + "To-morrow’s light (O haste the glorious morn!)\n", + "Shall see his bloody spoils in triumph borne,\n", + "With this keen javelin shall his breast be gored,\n", + "And prostrate heroes bleed around their lord.\n", + "Certain as this, oh! might my days endure,\n", + "From age inglorious, and black death secure;\n", + "So might my life and glory know no bound,\n", + "Like Pallas worshipp’d, like the sun renown’d!\n", + "As the next dawn, the last they shall enjoy,\n", + "Shall crush the Greeks, and end the woes of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "The leader spoke. From all his host around\n", + "Shouts of applause along the shores resound.\n", + "Each from the yoke the smoking steeds untied,\n", + "And fix’d their headstalls to his chariot-side.\n", + "Fat sheep and oxen from the town are led,\n", + "With generous wine, and all-sustaining bread,\n", + "Full hecatombs lay burning on the shore:\n", + "The winds to heaven the curling vapours bore.\n", + "Ungrateful offering to the immortal powers![197]\n", + "Whose wrath hung heavy o’er the Trojan towers:\n", + "Nor Priam nor his sons obtain’d their grace;\n", + "Proud Troy they hated, and her guilty race.\n", + "\n", + "The troops exulting sat in order round,\n", + "And beaming fires illumined all the ground.\n", + "As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,[198]\n", + "O’er heaven’s pure azure spreads her sacred light,\n", + "When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,\n", + "And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene,\n", + "Around her throne the vivid planets roll,\n", + "And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole,\n", + "O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,\n", + "And tip with silver every mountain’s head:\n", + "Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,\n", + "A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:\n", + "The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,\n", + "Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.\n", + "So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,\n", + "And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays.\n", + "The long reflections of the distant fires\n", + "Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.\n", + "A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,\n", + "And shoot a shady lustre o’er the field.\n", + "Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,\n", + "Whose umber’d arms, by fits, thick flashes send,\n", + "Loud neigh the coursers o’er their heaps of corn,\n", + "And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK IX.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Agamemnon, after the last day’s defeat, proposes to the Greeks to quit\n", + "the siege, and return to their country. Diomed opposes this, and Nestor\n", + "seconds him, praising his wisdom and resolution. He orders the guard to\n", + "be strengthened, and a council summoned to deliberate what measures are\n", + "to be followed in this emergency. Agamemnon pursues this advice, and\n", + "Nestor further prevails upon him to send ambassadors to Achilles, in\n", + "order to move him to a reconciliation. Ulysses and Ajax are made choice\n", + "of, who are accompanied by old Phœnix. They make, each of them, very\n", + "moving and pressing speeches, but are rejected with roughness by\n", + "Achilles, who notwithstanding retains Phœnix in his tent. The\n", + "ambassadors return unsuccessfully to the camp, and the troops betake\n", + "themselves to sleep.\n", + " This book, and the next following, take up the space of one night,\n", + " which is the twenty-seventh from the beginning of the poem. The\n", + " scene lies on the sea-shore, the station of the Grecian ships.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus joyful Troy maintain’d the watch of night;\n", + "While fear, pale comrade of inglorious flight,[199]\n", + "And heaven-bred horror, on the Grecian part,\n", + "Sat on each face, and sadden’d every heart.\n", + "As from its cloudy dungeon issuing forth,\n", + "A double tempest of the west and north\n", + "Swells o’er the sea, from Thracia’s frozen shore,\n", + "Heaps waves on waves, and bids the Ægean roar:\n", + "This way and that the boiling deeps are toss’d:\n", + "Such various passions urged the troubled host,\n", + "Great Agamemnon grieved above the rest;\n", + "Superior sorrows swell’d his royal breast;\n", + "Himself his orders to the heralds bears,\n", + "To bid to council all the Grecian peers,\n", + "But bid in whispers: these surround their chief,\n", + "In solemn sadness and majestic grief.\n", + "The king amidst the mournful circle rose:\n", + "Down his wan cheek a briny torrent flows.\n", + "So silent fountains, from a rock’s tall head,\n", + "In sable streams soft-trickling waters shed.\n", + "With more than vulgar grief he stood oppress’d;\n", + "Words, mix’d with sighs, thus bursting from his breast:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye sons of Greece! partake your leader’s care;\n", + "Fellows in arms and princes of the war!\n", + "Of partial Jove too justly we complain,\n", + "And heavenly oracles believed in vain.\n", + "A safe return was promised to our toils,\n", + "With conquest honour’d and enrich’d with spoils:\n", + "Now shameful flight alone can save the host;\n", + "Our wealth, our people, and our glory lost.\n", + "So Jove decrees, almighty lord of all!\n", + "Jove, at whose nod whole empires rise or fall,\n", + "Who shakes the feeble props of human trust,\n", + "And towers and armies humbles to the dust.\n", + "Haste then, for ever quit these fatal fields,\n", + "Haste to the joys our native country yields;\n", + "Spread all your canvas, all your oars employ,\n", + "Nor hope the fall of heaven-defended Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: deep silence held the Grecian band;\n", + "Silent, unmov’d in dire dismay they stand;\n", + "A pensive scene! till Tydeus’ warlike son\n", + "Roll’d on the king his eyes, and thus begun:\n", + "“When kings advise us to renounce our fame,\n", + "First let him speak who first has suffer’d shame.\n", + "If I oppose thee, prince! thy wrath withhold,\n", + "The laws of council bid my tongue be bold.\n", + "Thou first, and thou alone, in fields of fight,\n", + "Durst brand my courage, and defame my might:\n", + "Nor from a friend the unkind reproach appear’d,\n", + "The Greeks stood witness, all our army heard.\n", + "The gods, O chief! from whom our honours spring,\n", + "The gods have made thee but by halves a king:\n", + "They gave thee sceptres, and a wide command;\n", + "They gave dominion o’er the seas and land;\n", + "The noblest power that might the world control\n", + "They gave thee not—a brave and virtuous soul.\n", + "Is this a general’s voice, that would suggest\n", + "Fears like his own to every Grecian breast?\n", + "Confiding in our want of worth, he stands;\n", + "And if we fly, ’tis what our king commands.\n", + "Go thou, inglorious! from the embattled plain;\n", + "Ships thou hast store, and nearest to the main;\n", + "A noble care the Grecians shall employ,\n", + "To combat, conquer, and extirpate Troy.\n", + "Here Greece shall stay; or, if all Greece retire,\n", + "Myself shall stay, till Troy or I expire;\n", + "Myself, and Sthenelus, will fight for fame;\n", + "God bade us fight, and ’twas with God we came.”\n", + "\n", + "He ceased; the Greeks loud acclamations raise,\n", + "And voice to voice resounds Tydides’ praise.\n", + "Wise Nestor then his reverend figure rear’d;\n", + "He spoke: the host in still attention heard:[200]\n", + "\n", + "“O truly great! in whom the gods have join’d\n", + "Such strength of body with such force of mind:\n", + "In conduct, as in courage, you excel,\n", + "Still first to act what you advise so well.\n", + "These wholesome counsels which thy wisdom moves,\n", + "Applauding Greece with common voice approves.\n", + "Kings thou canst blame; a bold but prudent youth:\n", + "And blame even kings with praise, because with truth.\n", + "And yet those years that since thy birth have run\n", + "Would hardly style thee Nestor’s youngest son.\n", + "Then let me add what yet remains behind,\n", + "A thought unfinish’d in that generous mind;\n", + "Age bids me speak! nor shall the advice I bring\n", + "Distaste the people, or offend the king:\n", + "\n", + "“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right,\n", + "Unworthy property, unworthy light,\n", + "Unfit for public rule, or private care,\n", + "That wretch, that monster, who delights in war;\n", + "Whose lust is murder, and whose horrid joy,\n", + "To tear his country, and his kind destroy!\n", + "This night, refresh and fortify thy train;\n", + "Between the trench and wall let guards remain:\n", + "Be that the duty of the young and bold;\n", + "But thou, O king, to council call the old;\n", + "Great is thy sway, and weighty are thy cares;\n", + "Thy high commands must spirit all our wars.\n", + "With Thracian wines recruit thy honour’d guests,\n", + "For happy counsels flow from sober feasts.\n", + "Wise, weighty counsels aid a state distress’d,\n", + "And such a monarch as can choose the best.\n", + "See what a blaze from hostile tents aspires,\n", + "How near our fleet approach the Trojan fires!\n", + "Who can, unmoved, behold the dreadful light?\n", + "What eye beholds them, and can close to-night?\n", + "This dreadful interval determines all;\n", + "To-morrow, Troy must flame, or Greece must fall.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus spoke the hoary sage: the rest obey;\n", + "Swift through the gates the guards direct their way.\n", + "His son was first to pass the lofty mound,\n", + "The generous Thrasymed, in arms renown’d:\n", + "Next him, Ascalaphus, Iälmen, stood,\n", + "The double offspring of the warrior-god:\n", + "Deipyrus, Aphareus, Merion join,\n", + "And Lycomed of Creon’s noble line.\n", + "Seven were the leaders of the nightly bands,\n", + "And each bold chief a hundred spears commands.\n", + "The fires they light, to short repasts they fall,\n", + "Some line the trench, and others man the wall.\n", + "\n", + "The king of men, on public counsels bent,\n", + "Convened the princes in his ample tent,\n", + "Each seized a portion of the kingly feast,\n", + "But stay’d his hand when thirst and hunger ceased.\n", + "Then Nestor spoke, for wisdom long approved,\n", + "And slowly rising, thus the council moved.\n", + "\n", + "“Monarch of nations! whose superior sway\n", + "Assembled states, and lords of earth obey,\n", + "The laws and sceptres to thy hand are given,\n", + "And millions own the care of thee and Heaven.\n", + "O king! the counsels of my age attend;\n", + "With thee my cares begin, with thee must end.\n", + "Thee, prince! it fits alike to speak and hear,\n", + "Pronounce with judgment, with regard give ear,\n", + "To see no wholesome motion be withstood,\n", + "And ratify the best for public good.\n", + "Nor, though a meaner give advice, repine,\n", + "But follow it, and make the wisdom thine.\n", + "Hear then a thought, not now conceived in haste,\n", + "At once my present judgment and my past.\n", + "When from Pelides’ tent you forced the maid,\n", + "I first opposed, and faithful, durst dissuade;\n", + "But bold of soul, when headlong fury fired,\n", + "You wronged the man, by men and gods admired:\n", + "Now seek some means his fatal wrath to end,\n", + "With prayers to move him, or with gifts to bend.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king. “With justice hast thou shown\n", + "A prince’s faults, and I with reason own.\n", + "That happy man, whom Jove still honours most,\n", + "Is more than armies, and himself a host.\n", + "Bless’d in his love, this wondrous hero stands;\n", + "Heaven fights his war, and humbles all our bands.\n", + "Fain would my heart, which err’d through frantic rage,\n", + "The wrathful chief and angry gods assuage.\n", + "If gifts immense his mighty soul can bow,[201]\n", + "Hear, all ye Greeks, and witness what I vow.\n", + "Ten weighty talents of the purest gold,\n", + "And twice ten vases of refulgent mould:\n", + "Seven sacred tripods, whose unsullied frame\n", + "Yet knows no office, nor has felt the flame;\n", + "Twelve steeds unmatch’d in fleetness and in force,\n", + "And still victorious in the dusty course;\n", + "(Rich were the man whose ample stores exceed\n", + "The prizes purchased by their winged speed;)\n", + "Seven lovely captives of the Lesbian line,\n", + "Skill’d in each art, unmatch’d in form divine,\n", + "The same I chose for more than vulgar charms,\n", + "When Lesbos sank beneath the hero’s arms:\n", + "All these, to buy his friendship, shall be paid,\n", + "And join’d with these the long-contested maid;\n", + "With all her charms, Briseïs I resign,\n", + "And solemn swear those charms were never mine;\n", + "Untouch’d she stay’d, uninjured she removes,\n", + "Pure from my arms, and guiltless of my loves,[202]\n", + "These instant shall be his; and if the powers\n", + "Give to our arms proud Ilion’s hostile towers,\n", + "Then shall he store (when Greece the spoil divides)\n", + "With gold and brass his loaded navy’s sides:\n", + "Besides, full twenty nymphs of Trojan race\n", + "With copious love shall crown his warm embrace,\n", + "Such as himself will choose; who yield to none,\n", + "Or yield to Helen’s heavenly charms alone.\n", + "Yet hear me further: when our wars are o’er,\n", + "If safe we land on Argos’ fruitful shore,\n", + "There shall he live my son, our honours share,\n", + "And with Orestes’ self divide my care.\n", + "Yet more—three daughters in my court are bred,\n", + "And each well worthy of a royal bed;\n", + "Laodice and Iphigenia fair,[203]\n", + "And bright Chrysothemis with golden hair;\n", + "Her let him choose whom most his eyes approve,\n", + "I ask no presents, no reward for love:\n", + "Myself will give the dower; so vast a store\n", + "As never father gave a child before.\n", + "Seven ample cities shall confess his sway,\n", + "Him Enope, and Pheræ him obey,\n", + "Cardamyle with ample turrets crown’d,\n", + "And sacred Pedasus for vines renown’d;\n", + "Æpea fair, the pastures Hira yields,\n", + "And rich Antheia with her flowery fields:[204]\n", + "The whole extent to Pylos’ sandy plain,\n", + "Along the verdant margin of the main.\n", + "There heifers graze, and labouring oxen toil;\n", + "Bold are the men, and generous is the soil;\n", + "There shall he reign, with power and justice crown’d,\n", + "And rule the tributary realms around.\n", + "All this I give, his vengeance to control,\n", + "And sure all this may move his mighty soul.\n", + "Pluto, the grisly god, who never spares,\n", + "Who feels no mercy, and who hears no prayers,\n", + "Lives dark and dreadful in deep hell’s abodes,\n", + "And mortals hate him, as the worst of gods.\n", + "Great though he be, it fits him to obey,\n", + "Since more than his my years, and more my sway.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] PLUTO\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The monarch thus. The reverend Nestor then:\n", + "“Great Agamemnon! glorious king of men!\n", + "Such are thy offers as a prince may take,\n", + "And such as fits a generous king to make.\n", + "Let chosen delegates this hour be sent\n", + "(Myself will name them) to Pelides’ tent.\n", + "Let Phœnix lead, revered for hoary age,\n", + "Great Ajax next, and Ithacus the sage.\n", + "Yet more to sanctify the word you send,\n", + "Let Hodius and Eurybates attend.\n", + "Now pray to Jove to grant what Greece demands;\n", + "Pray in deep silence,[205] and with purest hands.”[206]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "He said; and all approved. The heralds bring\n", + "The cleansing water from the living spring.\n", + "The youth with wine the sacred goblets crown’d,\n", + "And large libations drench’d the sands around.\n", + "The rite perform’d, the chiefs their thirst allay,\n", + "Then from the royal tent they take their way;\n", + "Wise Nestor turns on each his careful eye,\n", + "Forbids to offend, instructs them to apply;\n", + "Much he advised them all, Ulysses most,\n", + "To deprecate the chief, and save the host.\n", + "Through the still night they march, and hear the roar\n", + "Of murmuring billows on the sounding shore.\n", + "To Neptune, ruler of the seas profound,\n", + "Whose liquid arms the mighty globe surround,\n", + "They pour forth vows, their embassy to bless,\n", + "And calm the rage of stern Æacides.\n", + "And now, arrived, where on the sandy bay\n", + "The Myrmidonian tents and vessels lay;\n", + "Amused at ease, the godlike man they found,\n", + "Pleased with the solemn harp’s harmonious sound.\n", + "(The well wrought harp from conquered Thebae came;\n", + "Of polish’d silver was its costly frame.)\n", + "With this he soothes his angry soul, and sings\n", + "The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings.\n", + "Patroclus only of the royal train,\n", + "Placed in his tent, attends the lofty strain:\n", + "Full opposite he sat, and listen’d long,\n", + "In silence waiting till he ceased the song.\n", + "Unseen the Grecian embassy proceeds\n", + "To his high tent; the great Ulysses leads.\n", + "Achilles starting, as the chiefs he spied,\n", + "Leap’d from his seat, and laid the harp aside.\n", + "With like surprise arose Menoetius’ son:\n", + "Pelides grasp’d their hands, and thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Princes, all hail! whatever brought you here.\n", + "Or strong necessity, or urgent fear;\n", + "Welcome, though Greeks! for not as foes ye came;\n", + "To me more dear than all that bear the name.”\n", + "\n", + "With that, the chiefs beneath his roof he led,\n", + "And placed in seats with purple carpets spread.\n", + "Then thus—“Patroclus, crown a larger bowl,\n", + "Mix purer wine, and open every soul.\n", + "Of all the warriors yonder host can send,\n", + "Thy friend most honours these, and these thy friend.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: Patroclus o’er the blazing fire\n", + "Heaps in a brazen vase three chines entire:\n", + "The brazen vase Automedon sustains,\n", + "Which flesh of porker, sheep, and goat contains.\n", + "Achilles at the genial feast presides,\n", + "The parts transfixes, and with skill divides.\n", + "Meanwhile Patroclus sweats, the fire to raise;\n", + "The tent is brighten’d with the rising blaze:\n", + "Then, when the languid flames at length subside,\n", + "He strows a bed of glowing embers wide,\n", + "Above the coals the smoking fragments turns\n", + "And sprinkles sacred salt from lifted urns;\n", + "With bread the glittering canisters they load,\n", + "Which round the board Menoetius’ son bestow’d;\n", + "Himself, opposed to Ulysses full in sight,\n", + "Each portion parts, and orders every rite.\n", + "The first fat offering to the immortals due,\n", + "Amidst the greedy flames Patroclus threw;\n", + "Then each, indulging in the social feast,\n", + "His thirst and hunger soberly repress’d.\n", + "That done, to Phœnix Ajax gave the sign:\n", + "Not unperceived; Ulysses crown’d with wine\n", + "The foaming bowl, and instant thus began,\n", + "His speech addressing to the godlike man.\n", + "\n", + "“Health to Achilles! happy are thy guests!\n", + "Not those more honour’d whom Atrides feasts:\n", + "Though generous plenty crown thy loaded boards,\n", + "That, Agamemnon’s regal tent affords;\n", + "But greater cares sit heavy on our souls,\n", + "Nor eased by banquets or by flowing bowls.\n", + "What scenes of slaughter in yon fields appear!\n", + "The dead we mourn, and for the living fear;\n", + "Greece on the brink of fate all doubtful stands,\n", + "And owns no help but from thy saving hands:\n", + "Troy and her aids for ready vengeance call;\n", + "Their threatening tents already shade our wall:\n", + "Hear how with shouts their conquest they proclaim,\n", + "And point at every ship their vengeful flame!\n", + "For them the father of the gods declares,\n", + "Theirs are his omens, and his thunder theirs.\n", + "See, full of Jove, avenging Hector rise!\n", + "See! heaven and earth the raging chief defies;\n", + "What fury in his breast, what lightning in his eyes!\n", + "He waits but for the morn, to sink in flame\n", + "The ships, the Greeks, and all the Grecian name.\n", + "Heavens! how my country’s woes distract my mind,\n", + "Lest Fate accomplish all his rage design’d!\n", + "And must we, gods! our heads inglorious lay\n", + "In Trojan dust, and this the fatal day?\n", + "Return, Achilles: oh return, though late,\n", + "To save thy Greeks, and stop the course of Fate;\n", + "If in that heart or grief or courage lies,\n", + "Rise to redeem; ah, yet to conquer, rise!\n", + "The day may come, when, all our warriors slain,\n", + "That heart shall melt, that courage rise in vain:\n", + "Regard in time, O prince divinely brave!\n", + "Those wholesome counsels which thy father gave.\n", + "When Peleus in his aged arms embraced\n", + "His parting son, these accents were his last:\n", + "\n", + "“‘My child! with strength, with glory, and success,\n", + "Thy arms may Juno and Minerva bless!\n", + "Trust that to Heaven: but thou, thy cares engage\n", + "To calm thy passions, and subdue thy rage:\n", + "From gentler manners let thy glory grow,\n", + "And shun contention, the sure source of woe;\n", + "That young and old may in thy praise combine,\n", + "The virtues of humanity be thine—’\n", + "This now-despised advice thy father gave;\n", + "Ah! check thy anger; and be truly brave.\n", + "If thou wilt yield to great Atrides’ prayers,\n", + "Gifts worthy thee his royal hand prepares;\n", + "If not—but hear me, while I number o’er\n", + "The proffer’d presents, an exhaustless store.\n", + "Ten weighty talents of the purest gold,\n", + "And twice ten vases of refulgent mould;\n", + "Seven sacred tripods, whose unsullied frame\n", + "Yet knows no office, nor has felt the flame;\n", + "Twelve steeds unmatched in fleetness and in force,\n", + "And still victorious in the dusty course;\n", + "(Rich were the man, whose ample stores exceed\n", + "The prizes purchased by their winged speed;)\n", + "Seven lovely captives of the Lesbian line,\n", + "Skill’d in each art, unmatch’d in form divine,\n", + "The same he chose for more than vulgar charms,\n", + "When Lesbos sank beneath thy conquering arms.\n", + "All these, to buy thy friendship shall be paid,\n", + "And, join’d with these, the long-contested maid;\n", + "With all her charms, Briseïs he’ll resign,\n", + "And solemn swear those charms were only thine;\n", + "Untouch’d she stay’d, uninjured she removes,\n", + "Pure from his arms, and guiltless of his loves.\n", + "These instant shall be thine; and if the powers\n", + "Give to our arms proud Ilion’s hostile towers,\n", + "Then shalt thou store (when Greece the spoil divides)\n", + "With gold and brass thy loaded navy’s sides.\n", + "Besides, full twenty nymphs of Trojan race\n", + "With copious love shall crown thy warm embrace;\n", + "Such as thyself shall chose; who yield to none,\n", + "Or yield to Helen’s heavenly charms alone.\n", + "Yet hear me further: when our wars are o’er,\n", + "If safe we land on Argos’ fruitful shore,\n", + "There shalt thou live his son, his honour share,\n", + "And with Orestes’ self divide his care.\n", + "Yet more—three daughters in his court are bred,\n", + "And each well worthy of a royal bed:\n", + "Laodice and Iphigenia fair,\n", + "And bright Chrysothemis with golden hair:\n", + "Her shalt thou wed whom most thy eyes approve;\n", + "He asks no presents, no reward for love:\n", + "Himself will give the dower; so vast a store\n", + "As never father gave a child before.\n", + "Seven ample cities shall confess thy sway,\n", + "The Enope and Pheræ thee obey,\n", + "Cardamyle with ample turrets crown’d,\n", + "And sacred Pedasus, for vines renown’d:\n", + "Æpea fair, the pastures Hira yields,\n", + "And rich Antheia with her flowery fields;\n", + "The whole extent to Pylos’ sandy plain,\n", + "Along the verdant margin of the main.\n", + "There heifers graze, and labouring oxen toil;\n", + "Bold are the men, and generous is the soil.\n", + "There shalt thou reign, with power and justice crown’d,\n", + "And rule the tributary realms around.\n", + "Such are the proffers which this day we bring,\n", + "Such the repentance of a suppliant king.\n", + "But if all this, relentless, thou disdain,\n", + "If honour and if interest plead in vain,\n", + "Yet some redress to suppliant Greece afford,\n", + "And be, amongst her guardian gods, adored.\n", + "If no regard thy suffering country claim,\n", + "Hear thy own glory, and the voice of fame:\n", + "For now that chief, whose unresisted ire\n", + "Made nations tremble, and whole hosts retire,\n", + "Proud Hector, now, the unequal fight demands,\n", + "And only triumphs to deserve thy hands.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the goddess-born: “Ulysses, hear\n", + "A faithful speech, that knows nor art nor fear;\n", + "What in my secret soul is understood,\n", + "My tongue shall utter, and my deeds make good.\n", + "Let Greece then know, my purpose I retain:\n", + "Nor with new treaties vex my peace in vain.\n", + "Who dares think one thing, and another tell,\n", + "My heart detests him as the gates of hell.\n", + "\n", + "“Then thus in short my fix’d resolves attend,\n", + "Which nor Atrides nor his Greeks can bend;\n", + "Long toils, long perils in their cause I bore,\n", + "But now the unfruitful glories charm no more.\n", + "Fight or not fight, a like reward we claim,\n", + "The wretch and hero find their prize the same.\n", + "Alike regretted in the dust he lies,\n", + "Who yields ignobly, or who bravely dies.\n", + "Of all my dangers, all my glorious pains,\n", + "A life of labours, lo! what fruit remains?\n", + "As the bold bird her helpless young attends,\n", + "From danger guards them, and from want defends;\n", + "In search of prey she wings the spacious air,\n", + "And with the untasted food supplies her care:\n", + "For thankless Greece such hardships have I braved,\n", + "Her wives, her infants, by my labours saved;\n", + "Long sleepless nights in heavy arms I stood,\n", + "And sweat laborious days in dust and blood.\n", + "I sack’d twelve ample cities on the main,[207]\n", + "And twelve lay smoking on the Trojan plain:\n", + "Then at Atrides’ haughty feet were laid\n", + "The wealth I gathered, and the spoils I made.\n", + "Your mighty monarch these in peace possess’d;\n", + "Some few my soldiers had, himself the rest.\n", + "Some present, too, to every prince was paid;\n", + "And every prince enjoys the gift he made:\n", + "I only must refund, of all his train;\n", + "See what pre-eminence our merits gain!\n", + "My spoil alone his greedy soul delights:\n", + "My spouse alone must bless his lustful nights:\n", + "The woman, let him (as he may) enjoy;\n", + "But what’s the quarrel, then, of Greece to Troy?\n", + "What to these shores the assembled nations draws,\n", + "What calls for vengeance but a woman’s cause?\n", + "Are fair endowments and a beauteous face\n", + "Beloved by none but those of Atreus’ race?\n", + "The wife whom choice and passion doth approve,\n", + "Sure every wise and worthy man will love.\n", + "Nor did my fair one less distinction claim;\n", + "Slave as she was, my soul adored the dame.\n", + "Wrong’d in my love, all proffers I disdain;\n", + "Deceived for once, I trust not kings again.\n", + "Ye have my answer—what remains to do,\n", + "Your king, Ulysses, may consult with you.\n", + "What needs he the defence this arm can make?\n", + "Has he not walls no human force can shake?\n", + "Has he not fenced his guarded navy round\n", + "With piles, with ramparts, and a trench profound?\n", + "And will not these (the wonders he has done)\n", + "Repel the rage of Priam’s single son?\n", + "There was a time (’twas when for Greece I fought)\n", + "When Hector’s prowess no such wonders wrought;\n", + "He kept the verge of Troy, nor dared to wait\n", + "Achilles’ fury at the Scæan gate;\n", + "He tried it once, and scarce was saved by fate.\n", + "But now those ancient enmities are o’er;\n", + "To-morrow we the favouring gods implore;\n", + "Then shall you see our parting vessels crown’d,\n", + "And hear with oars the Hellespont resound.\n", + "The third day hence shall Pythia greet our sails,[208]\n", + "If mighty Neptune send propitious gales;\n", + "Pythia to her Achilles shall restore\n", + "The wealth he left for this detested shore:\n", + "Thither the spoils of this long war shall pass,\n", + "The ruddy gold, the steel, and shining brass:\n", + "My beauteous captives thither I’ll convey,\n", + "And all that rests of my unravish’d prey.\n", + "One only valued gift your tyrant gave,\n", + "And that resumed—the fair Lyrnessian slave.\n", + "Then tell him: loud, that all the Greeks may hear,\n", + "And learn to scorn the wretch they basely fear;\n", + "(For arm’d in impudence, mankind he braves,\n", + "And meditates new cheats on all his slaves;\n", + "Though shameless as he is, to face these eyes\n", + "Is what he dares not: if he dares he dies;)\n", + "Tell him, all terms, all commerce I decline,\n", + "Nor share his council, nor his battle join;\n", + "For once deceiv’d, was his; but twice were mine,\n", + "No—let the stupid prince, whom Jove deprives\n", + "Of sense and justice, run where frenzy drives;\n", + "His gifts are hateful: kings of such a kind\n", + "Stand but as slaves before a noble mind,\n", + "Not though he proffer’d all himself possess’d,\n", + "And all his rapine could from others wrest:\n", + "Not all the golden tides of wealth that crown\n", + "The many-peopled Orchomenian town;[209]\n", + "Not all proud Thebes’ unrivall’d walls contain,\n", + "The world’s great empress on the Egyptian plain\n", + "(That spreads her conquests o’er a thousand states,\n", + "And pours her heroes through a hundred gates,\n", + "Two hundred horsemen and two hundred cars\n", + "From each wide portal issuing to the wars);[210]\n", + "Though bribes were heap’d on bribes, in number more\n", + "Than dust in fields, or sands along the shore;\n", + "Should all these offers for my friendship call,\n", + "’Tis he that offers, and I scorn them all.\n", + "Atrides’ daughter never shall be led\n", + "(An ill-match’d consort) to Achilles’ bed;\n", + "Like golden Venus though she charm’d the heart,\n", + "And vied with Pallas in the works of art;\n", + "Some greater Greek let those high nuptials grace,\n", + "I hate alliance with a tyrant’s race.\n", + "If heaven restore me to my realms with life,\n", + "The reverend Peleus shall elect my wife;\n", + "Thessalian nymphs there are of form divine,\n", + "And kings that sue to mix their blood with mine.\n", + "Bless’d in kind love, my years shall glide away,\n", + "Content with just hereditary sway;\n", + "There, deaf for ever to the martial strife,\n", + "Enjoy the dear prerogative of life.\n", + "Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold.\n", + "Not all Apollo’s Pythian treasures hold,\n", + "Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,\n", + "Can bribe the poor possession of a day!\n", + "Lost herds and treasures we by arms regain,\n", + "And steeds unrivall’d on the dusty plain:\n", + "But from our lips the vital spirit fled,\n", + "Returns no more to wake the silent dead.\n", + "My fates long since by Thetis were disclosed,\n", + "And each alternate, life or fame, proposed;\n", + "Here, if I stay, before the Trojan town,\n", + "Short is my date, but deathless my renown:\n", + "If I return, I quit immortal praise\n", + "For years on years, and long-extended days.\n", + "Convinced, though late, I find my fond mistake,\n", + "And warn the Greeks the wiser choice to make;\n", + "To quit these shores, their native seats enjoy,\n", + "Nor hope the fall of heaven-defended Troy.\n", + "Jove’s arm display’d asserts her from the skies!\n", + "Her hearts are strengthen’d, and her glories rise.\n", + "Go then to Greece, report our fix’d design;\n", + "Bid all your counsels, all your armies join,\n", + "Let all your forces, all your arts conspire,\n", + "To save the ships, the troops, the chiefs, from fire.\n", + "One stratagem has fail’d, and others will:\n", + "Ye find, Achilles is unconquer’d still.\n", + "Go then—digest my message as ye may—\n", + "But here this night let reverend Phœnix stay:\n", + "His tedious toils and hoary hairs demand\n", + "A peaceful death in Pythia’s friendly land.\n", + "But whether he remain or sail with me,\n", + "His age be sacred, and his will be free.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] GREEK GALLEY\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The son of Peleus ceased: the chiefs around\n", + "In silence wrapt, in consternation drown’d,\n", + "Attend the stern reply. Then Phœnix rose;\n", + "(Down his white beard a stream of sorrow flows;)\n", + "And while the fate of suffering Greece he mourn’d,\n", + "With accent weak these tender words return’d.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] PROSERPINE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Divine Achilles! wilt thou then retire,\n", + "And leave our hosts in blood, our fleets on fire?\n", + "If wrath so dreadful fill thy ruthless mind,\n", + "How shall thy friend, thy Phœnix, stay behind?\n", + "The royal Peleus, when from Pythia’s coast\n", + "He sent thee early to the Achaian host;\n", + "Thy youth as then in sage debates unskill’d,\n", + "And new to perils of the direful field:\n", + "He bade me teach thee all the ways of war,\n", + "To shine in councils, and in camps to dare.\n", + "Never, ah, never let me leave thy side!\n", + "No time shall part us, and no fate divide,\n", + "Not though the god, that breathed my life, restore\n", + "The bloom I boasted, and the port I bore,\n", + "When Greece of old beheld my youthful flames\n", + "(Delightful Greece, the land of lovely dames),\n", + "My father faithless to my mother’s arms,\n", + "Old as he was, adored a stranger’s charms.\n", + "I tried what youth could do (at her desire)\n", + "To win the damsel, and prevent my sire.\n", + "My sire with curses loads my hated head,\n", + "And cries, ‘Ye furies! barren be his bed.’\n", + "Infernal Jove, the vengeful fiends below,\n", + "And ruthless Proserpine, confirm’d his vow.\n", + "Despair and grief distract my labouring mind!\n", + "Gods! what a crime my impious heart design’d!\n", + "I thought (but some kind god that thought suppress’d)\n", + "To plunge the poniard in my father’s breast;\n", + "Then meditate my flight: my friends in vain\n", + "With prayers entreat me, and with force detain.\n", + "On fat of rams, black bulls, and brawny swine,\n", + "They daily feast, with draughts of fragrant wine;\n", + "Strong guards they placed, and watch’d nine nights entire;\n", + "The roofs and porches flamed with constant fire.\n", + "The tenth, I forced the gates, unseen of all:\n", + "And, favour’d by the night, o’erleap’d the wall,\n", + "My travels thence through spacious Greece extend;\n", + "In Phthia’s court at last my labours end.\n", + "Your sire received me, as his son caress’d,\n", + "With gifts enrich’d, and with possessions bless’d.\n", + "The strong Dolopians thenceforth own’d my reign,\n", + "And all the coast that runs along the main.\n", + "By love to thee his bounties I repaid,\n", + "And early wisdom to thy soul convey’d:\n", + "Great as thou art, my lessons made thee brave:\n", + "A child I took thee, but a hero gave.\n", + "Thy infant breast a like affection show’d;\n", + "Still in my arms (an ever-pleasing load)\n", + "Or at my knee, by Phœnix wouldst thou stand;\n", + "No food was grateful but from Phœnix’ hand.[211]\n", + "I pass my watchings o’er thy helpless years,\n", + "The tender labours, the compliant cares,\n", + "The gods (I thought) reversed their hard decree,\n", + "And Phœnix felt a father’s joys in thee:\n", + "Thy growing virtues justified my cares,\n", + "And promised comfort to my silver hairs.\n", + "Now be thy rage, thy fatal rage, resign’d;\n", + "A cruel heart ill suits a manly mind:\n", + "The gods (the only great, and only wise)\n", + "Are moved by offerings, vows, and sacrifice;\n", + "Offending man their high compassion wins,\n", + "And daily prayers atone for daily sins.\n", + "Prayers are Jove’s daughters, of celestial race,\n", + "Lame are their feet, and wrinkled is their face;\n", + "With humble mien, and with dejected eyes,\n", + "Constant they follow, where injustice flies.\n", + "Injustice swift, erect, and unconfined,\n", + "Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind,\n", + "While Prayers, to heal her wrongs, move slow behind.\n", + "Who hears these daughters of almighty Jove,\n", + "For him they mediate to the throne above:\n", + "When man rejects the humble suit they make,\n", + "The sire revenges for the daughters’ sake;\n", + "From Jove commission’d, fierce injustice then\n", + "Descends to punish unrelenting men.\n", + "O let not headlong passion bear the sway\n", + "These reconciling goddesses obey:\n", + "Due honours to the seed of Jove belong,\n", + "Due honours calm the fierce, and bend the strong.\n", + "Were these not paid thee by the terms we bring,\n", + "Were rage still harbour’d in the haughty king;\n", + "Nor Greece nor all her fortunes should engage\n", + "Thy friend to plead against so just a rage.\n", + "But since what honour asks the general sends,\n", + "And sends by those whom most thy heart commends;\n", + "The best and noblest of the Grecian train;\n", + "Permit not these to sue, and sue in vain!\n", + "Let me (my son) an ancient fact unfold,\n", + "A great example drawn from times of old;\n", + "Hear what our fathers were, and what their praise,\n", + "Who conquer’d their revenge in former days.\n", + "\n", + "“Where Calydon on rocky mountains stands[212]\n", + "Once fought the Ætolian and Curetian bands;\n", + "To guard it those; to conquer, these advance;\n", + "And mutual deaths were dealt with mutual chance.\n", + "The silver Cynthia bade contention rise,\n", + "In vengeance of neglected sacrifice;\n", + "On Œneus fields she sent a monstrous boar,\n", + "That levell’d harvests, and whole forests tore:\n", + "This beast (when many a chief his tusks had slain)\n", + "Great Meleager stretch’d along the plain,\n", + "Then, for his spoils, a new debate arose,\n", + "The neighbour nations thence commencing foes.\n", + "Strong as they were, the bold Curetes fail’d,\n", + "While Meleager’s thundering arm prevail’d:\n", + "Till rage at length inflamed his lofty breast\n", + "(For rage invades the wisest and the best).\n", + "\n", + "“Cursed by Althaea, to his wrath he yields,\n", + "And in his wife’s embrace forgets the fields.\n", + "(She from Marpessa sprung, divinely fair,\n", + "And matchless Idas, more than man in war:\n", + "The god of day adored the mother’s charms;\n", + "Against the god the father bent his arms:\n", + "The afflicted pair, their sorrows to proclaim,\n", + "From Cleopatra changed their daughter’s name,\n", + "And call’d Alcyone; a name to show\n", + "The father’s grief, the mourning mother’s woe.)\n", + "To her the chief retired from stern debate,\n", + "But found no peace from fierce Althaea’s hate:\n", + "Althaea’s hate the unhappy warrior drew,\n", + "Whose luckless hand his royal uncle slew;\n", + "She beat the ground, and call’d the powers beneath\n", + "On her own son to wreak her brother’s death;\n", + "Hell heard her curses from the realms profound,\n", + "And the red fiends that walk the nightly round.\n", + "In vain Ætolia her deliverer waits,\n", + "War shakes her walls, and thunders at her gates.\n", + "She sent ambassadors, a chosen band,\n", + "Priests of the gods, and elders of the land;\n", + "Besought the chief to save the sinking state:\n", + "Their prayers were urgent, and their proffers great:\n", + "(Full fifty acres of the richest ground,\n", + "Half pasture green, and half with vineyards crown’d:)\n", + "His suppliant father, aged Œneus, came;\n", + "His sisters follow’d; even the vengeful dame,\n", + "Althaea, sues; his friends before him fall:\n", + "He stands relentless, and rejects them all.\n", + "Meanwhile the victor’s shouts ascend the skies;\n", + "The walls are scaled; the rolling flames arise;\n", + "At length his wife (a form divine) appears,\n", + "With piercing cries, and supplicating tears;\n", + "She paints the horrors of a conquer’d town,\n", + "The heroes slain, the palaces o’erthrown,\n", + "The matrons ravish’d, the whole race enslaved:\n", + "The warrior heard, he vanquish’d, and he saved.\n", + "The Ætolians, long disdain’d, now took their turn,\n", + "And left the chief their broken faith to mourn.\n", + "Learn hence, betimes to curb pernicious ire,\n", + "Nor stay till yonder fleets ascend in fire;\n", + "Accept the presents; draw thy conquering sword;\n", + "And be amongst our guardian gods adored.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he: the stern Achilles thus replied:\n", + "“My second father, and my reverend guide:\n", + "Thy friend, believe me, no such gifts demands,\n", + "And asks no honours from a mortal’s hands;\n", + "Jove honours me, and favours my designs;\n", + "His pleasure guides me, and his will confines;\n", + "And here I stay (if such his high behest)\n", + "While life’s warm spirit beats within my breast.\n", + "Yet hear one word, and lodge it in thy heart:\n", + "No more molest me on Atrides’ part:\n", + "Is it for him these tears are taught to flow,\n", + "For him these sorrows? for my mortal foe?\n", + "A generous friendship no cold medium knows,\n", + "Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;\n", + "One should our interests and our passions be;\n", + "My friend must hate the man that injures me.\n", + "Do this, my Phœnix, ’tis a generous part;\n", + "And share my realms, my honours, and my heart.\n", + "Let these return: our voyage, or our stay,\n", + "Rest undetermined till the dawning day.”\n", + "\n", + "He ceased; then order’d for the sage’s bed\n", + "A warmer couch with numerous carpets spread.\n", + "With that, stern Ajax his long silence broke,\n", + "And thus, impatient, to Ulysses spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Hence let us go—why waste we time in vain?\n", + "See what effect our low submissions gain!\n", + "Liked or not liked, his words we must relate,\n", + "The Greeks expect them, and our heroes wait.\n", + "Proud as he is, that iron heart retains\n", + "Its stubborn purpose, and his friends disdains.\n", + "Stern and unpitying! if a brother bleed,\n", + "On just atonement, we remit the deed;\n", + "A sire the slaughter of his son forgives;\n", + "The price of blood discharged, the murderer lives:\n", + "The haughtiest hearts at length their rage resign,\n", + "And gifts can conquer every soul but thine.[213]\n", + "The gods that unrelenting breast have steel’d,\n", + "And cursed thee with a mind that cannot yield.\n", + "One woman-slave was ravish’d from thy arms:\n", + "Lo, seven are offer’d, and of equal charms.\n", + "Then hear, Achilles! be of better mind;\n", + "Revere thy roof, and to thy guests be kind;\n", + "And know the men of all the Grecian host,\n", + "Who honour worth, and prize thy valour most.”\n", + "\n", + "“O soul of battles, and thy people’s guide!\n", + "(To Ajax thus the first of Greeks replied)\n", + "Well hast thou spoke; but at the tyrant’s name\n", + "My rage rekindles, and my soul’s on flame:\n", + "’Tis just resentment, and becomes the brave:\n", + "Disgraced, dishonour’d, like the vilest slave!\n", + "Return, then, heroes! and our answer bear,\n", + "The glorious combat is no more my care;\n", + "Not till, amidst yon sinking navy slain,\n", + "The blood of Greeks shall dye the sable main;\n", + "Not till the flames, by Hector’s fury thrown,\n", + "Consume your vessels, and approach my own;\n", + "Just there, the impetuous homicide shall stand,\n", + "There cease his battle, and there feel our hand.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, each prince a double goblet crown’d,\n", + "And cast a large libation on the ground;\n", + "Then to their vessels, through the gloomy shades,\n", + "The chiefs return; divine Ulysses leads.\n", + "Meantime Achilles’ slaves prepared a bed,\n", + "With fleeces, carpets, and soft linen spread:\n", + "There, till the sacred morn restored the day,\n", + "In slumber sweet the reverend Phœnix lay.\n", + "But in his inner tent, an ampler space,\n", + "Achilles slept; and in his warm embrace\n", + "Fair Diomede of the Lesbian race.\n", + "Last, for Patroclus was the couch prepared,\n", + "Whose nightly joys the beauteous Iphis shared;\n", + "Achilles to his friend consign’d her charms\n", + "When Scyros fell before his conquering arms.\n", + "\n", + "And now the elected chiefs whom Greece had sent,\n", + "Pass’d through the hosts, and reach’d the royal tent.\n", + "Then rising all, with goblets in their hands,\n", + "The peers and leaders of the Achaian bands\n", + "Hail’d their return: Atrides first begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Say what success? divine Laertes’ son!\n", + "Achilles’ high resolves declare to all:\n", + "Returns the chief, or must our navy fall?”\n", + "\n", + "“Great king of nations! (Ithacus replied)\n", + "Fix’d is his wrath, unconquer’d is his pride;\n", + "He slights thy friendship, thy proposals scorns,\n", + "And, thus implored, with fiercer fury burns.\n", + "To save our army, and our fleets to free,\n", + "Is not his care; but left to Greece and thee.\n", + "Your eyes shall view, when morning paints the sky,\n", + "Beneath his oars the whitening billows fly;\n", + "Us too he bids our oars and sails employ,\n", + "Nor hope the fall of heaven-protected Troy;\n", + "For Jove o’ershades her with his arm divine,\n", + "Inspires her war, and bids her glory shine.\n", + "Such was his word: what further he declared,\n", + "These sacred heralds and great Ajax heard.\n", + "But Phœnix in his tent the chief retains,\n", + "Safe to transport him to his native plains\n", + "When morning dawns; if other he decree,\n", + "His age is sacred, and his choice is free.”\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses ceased: the great Achaian host,\n", + "With sorrow seized, in consternation lost,\n", + "Attend the stern reply. Tydides broke\n", + "The general silence, and undaunted spoke.\n", + "“Why should we gifts to proud Achilles send,\n", + "Or strive with prayers his haughty soul to bend?\n", + "His country’s woes he glories to deride,\n", + "And prayers will burst that swelling heart with pride.\n", + "Be the fierce impulse of his rage obey’d,\n", + "Our battles let him or desert or aid;\n", + "Then let him arm when Jove or he think fit:\n", + "That, to his madness, or to Heaven commit:\n", + "What for ourselves we can, is always ours;\n", + "This night, let due repast refresh our powers;\n", + "(For strength consists in spirits and in blood,\n", + "And those are owed to generous wine and food;)\n", + "But when the rosy messenger of day\n", + "Strikes the blue mountains with her golden ray,\n", + "Ranged at the ships, let all our squadrons shine\n", + "In flaming arms, a long-extended line:\n", + "In the dread front let great Atrides stand,\n", + "The first in danger, as in high command.”\n", + "\n", + "Shouts of acclaim the listening heroes raise,\n", + "Then each to Heaven the due libations pays;\n", + "Till sleep, descending o’er the tents, bestows\n", + "The grateful blessings of desired repose.[214]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK X.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE NIGHT-ADVENTURE OF DIOMED AND ULYSSES.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Upon the refusal of Achilles to return to the army, the distress of\n", + "Agamemnon is described in the most lively manner. He takes no rest that\n", + "night, but passes through the camp, awaking the leaders, and contriving\n", + "all possible methods for the public safety. Menelaus, Nestor, Ulysses,\n", + "and Diomed are employed in raising the rest of the captains. They call\n", + "a council of war, and determine to send scouts into the enemies’ camp,\n", + "to learn their posture, and discover their intentions. Diomed\n", + "undertakes this hazardous enterprise, and makes choice of Ulysses for\n", + "his companion. In their passage they surprise Dolon, whom Hector had\n", + "sent on a like design to the camp of the Grecians. From him they are\n", + "informed of the situation of the Trojan and auxiliary forces, and\n", + "particularly of Rhesus, and the Thracians who were lately arrived. They\n", + "pass on with success; kill Rhesus, with several of his officers, and\n", + "seize the famous horses of that prince, with which they return in\n", + "triumph to the camp.\n", + " The same night continues; the scene lies in the two camps.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "All night the chiefs before their vessels lay,\n", + "And lost in sleep the labours of the day:\n", + "All but the king: with various thoughts oppress’d,[215]\n", + "His country’s cares lay rolling in his breast.\n", + "As when by lightnings Jove’s ethereal power\n", + "Foretels the rattling hail, or weighty shower,\n", + "Or sends soft snows to whiten all the shore,\n", + "Or bids the brazen throat of war to roar;\n", + "By fits one flash succeeds as one expires,\n", + "And heaven flames thick with momentary fires:\n", + "So bursting frequent from Atrides’ breast,\n", + "Sighs following sighs his inward fears confess’d.\n", + "Now o’er the fields, dejected, he surveys\n", + "From thousand Trojan fires the mounting blaze;\n", + "Hears in the passing wind their music blow,\n", + "And marks distinct the voices of the foe.\n", + "Now looking backwards to the fleet and coast,\n", + "Anxious he sorrows for the endangered host.\n", + "He rends his hair, in sacrifice to Jove,\n", + "And sues to him that ever lives above:\n", + "Inly he groans; while glory and despair\n", + "Divide his heart, and wage a double war.\n", + "\n", + "A thousand cares his labouring breast revolves;\n", + "To seek sage Nestor now the chief resolves,\n", + "With him, in wholesome counsels, to debate\n", + "What yet remains to save the afflicted state.\n", + "He rose, and first he cast his mantle round,\n", + "Next on his feet the shining sandals bound;\n", + "A lion’s yellow spoils his back conceal’d;\n", + "His warlike hand a pointed javelin held.\n", + "Meanwhile his brother, press’d with equal woes,\n", + "Alike denied the gifts of soft repose,\n", + "Laments for Greece, that in his cause before\n", + "So much had suffer’d and must suffer more.\n", + "A leopard’s spotted hide his shoulders spread:\n", + "A brazen helmet glitter’d on his head:\n", + "Thus (with a javelin in his hand) he went\n", + "To wake Atrides in the royal tent.\n", + "Already waked, Atrides he descried,\n", + "His armour buckling at his vessel’s side.\n", + "Joyful they met; the Spartan thus begun:\n", + "“Why puts my brother his bright armour on?\n", + "Sends he some spy, amidst these silent hours,\n", + "To try yon camp, and watch the Trojan powers?\n", + "But say, what hero shall sustain that task?\n", + "Such bold exploits uncommon courage ask;\n", + "Guideless, alone, through night’s dark shade to go,\n", + "And midst a hostile camp explore the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king: “In such distress we stand,\n", + "No vulgar counsel our affairs demand;\n", + "Greece to preserve, is now no easy part,\n", + "But asks high wisdom, deep design, and art.\n", + "For Jove, averse, our humble prayer denies,\n", + "And bows his head to Hector’s sacrifice.\n", + "What eye has witness’d, or what ear believed,\n", + "In one great day, by one great arm achieved,\n", + "Such wondrous deeds as Hector’s hand has done,\n", + "And we beheld, the last revolving sun?\n", + "What honours the beloved of Jove adorn!\n", + "Sprung from no god, and of no goddess born;\n", + "Yet such his acts, as Greeks unborn shall tell,\n", + "And curse the battle where their fathers fell.\n", + "\n", + "“Now speed thy hasty course along the fleet,\n", + "There call great Ajax, and the prince of Crete;\n", + "Ourself to hoary Nestor will repair;\n", + "To keep the guards on duty be his care,\n", + "(For Nestor’s influence best that quarter guides,\n", + "Whose son with Merion, o’er the watch presides.”)\n", + "To whom the Spartan: “These thy orders borne,\n", + "Say, shall I stay, or with despatch return?”\n", + "“There shall thou stay, (the king of men replied,)\n", + "Else may we miss to meet, without a guide,\n", + "The paths so many, and the camp so wide.\n", + "Still, with your voice the slothful soldiers raise,\n", + "Urge by their fathers’ fame their future praise.\n", + "Forget we now our state and lofty birth;\n", + "Not titles here, but works, must prove our worth.\n", + "To labour is the lot of man below;\n", + "And when Jove gave us life, he gave us woe.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, each parted to his several cares:\n", + "The king to Nestor’s sable ship repairs;\n", + "The sage protector of the Greeks he found\n", + "Stretch’d in his bed with all his arms around;\n", + "The various-colour’d scarf, the shield he rears,\n", + "The shining helmet, and the pointed spears;\n", + "The dreadful weapons of the warrior’s rage,\n", + "That, old in arms, disdain’d the peace of age.\n", + "Then, leaning on his hand his watchful head,\n", + "The hoary monarch raised his eyes and said:\n", + "\n", + "“What art thou, speak, that on designs unknown,\n", + "While others sleep, thus range the camp alone;\n", + "Seek’st thou some friend or nightly sentinel?\n", + "Stand off, approach not, but thy purpose tell.”\n", + "\n", + "“O son of Neleus, (thus the king rejoin’d,)\n", + "Pride of the Greeks, and glory of thy kind!\n", + "Lo, here the wretched Agamemnon stands,\n", + "The unhappy general of the Grecian bands,\n", + "Whom Jove decrees with daily cares to bend,\n", + "And woes, that only with his life shall end!\n", + "Scarce can my knees these trembling limbs sustain,\n", + "And scarce my heart support its load of pain.\n", + "No taste of sleep these heavy eyes have known,\n", + "Confused, and sad, I wander thus alone,\n", + "With fears distracted, with no fix’d design;\n", + "And all my people’s miseries are mine.\n", + "If aught of use thy waking thoughts suggest,\n", + "(Since cares, like mine, deprive thy soul of rest,)\n", + "Impart thy counsel, and assist thy friend;\n", + "Now let us jointly to the trench descend,\n", + "At every gate the fainting guard excite,\n", + "Tired with the toils of day and watch of night;\n", + "Else may the sudden foe our works invade,\n", + "So near, and favour’d by the gloomy shade.”\n", + "\n", + "To him thus Nestor: “Trust the powers above,\n", + "Nor think proud Hector’s hopes confirm’d by Jove:\n", + "How ill agree the views of vain mankind,\n", + "And the wise counsels of the eternal mind!\n", + "Audacious Hector, if the gods ordain\n", + "That great Achilles rise and rage again,\n", + "What toils attend thee, and what woes remain!\n", + "Lo, faithful Nestor thy command obeys;\n", + "The care is next our other chiefs to raise:\n", + "Ulysses, Diomed, we chiefly need;\n", + "Meges for strength, Oïleus famed for speed.\n", + "Some other be despatch’d of nimbler feet,\n", + "To those tall ships, remotest of the fleet,\n", + "Where lie great Ajax and the king of Crete.[216]\n", + "To rouse the Spartan I myself decree;\n", + "Dear as he is to us, and dear to thee,\n", + "Yet must I tax his sloth, that claims no share\n", + "With his great brother in his martial care:\n", + "Him it behoved to every chief to sue,\n", + "Preventing every part perform’d by you;\n", + "For strong necessity our toils demands,\n", + "Claims all our hearts, and urges all our hands.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king: “With reverence we allow\n", + "Thy just rebukes, yet learn to spare them now:\n", + "My generous brother is of gentle kind,\n", + "He seems remiss, but bears a valiant mind;\n", + "Through too much deference to our sovereign sway,\n", + "Content to follow when we lead the way:\n", + "But now, our ills industrious to prevent,\n", + "Long ere the rest he rose, and sought my tent.\n", + "The chiefs you named, already at his call,\n", + "Prepare to meet us near the navy-wall;\n", + "Assembling there, between the trench and gates,\n", + "Near the night-guards, our chosen council waits.”\n", + "\n", + "“Then none (said Nestor) shall his rule withstand,\n", + "For great examples justify command.”\n", + "With that, the venerable warrior rose;\n", + "The shining greaves his manly legs enclose;\n", + "His purple mantle golden buckles join’d,\n", + "Warm with the softest wool, and doubly lined.\n", + "Then rushing from his tent, he snatch’d in haste\n", + "His steely lance, that lighten’d as he pass’d.\n", + "The camp he traversed through the sleeping crowd,\n", + "Stopp’d at Ulysses’ tent, and call’d aloud.\n", + "Ulysses, sudden as the voice was sent,\n", + "Awakes, starts up, and issues from his tent.\n", + "“What new distress, what sudden cause of fright,\n", + "Thus leads you wandering in the silent night?”\n", + "“O prudent chief! (the Pylian sage replied)\n", + "Wise as thou art, be now thy wisdom tried:\n", + "Whatever means of safety can be sought,\n", + "Whatever counsels can inspire our thought,\n", + "Whatever methods, or to fly or fight;\n", + "All, all depend on this important night!”\n", + "He heard, return’d, and took his painted shield;\n", + "Then join’d the chiefs, and follow’d through the field.\n", + "Without his tent, bold Diomed they found,\n", + "All sheathed in arms, his brave companions round:\n", + "Each sunk in sleep, extended on the field,\n", + "His head reclining on his bossy shield.\n", + "A wood of spears stood by, that, fix’d upright,\n", + "Shot from their flashing points a quivering light.\n", + "A bull’s black hide composed the hero’s bed;\n", + "A splendid carpet roll’d beneath his head.\n", + "Then, with his foot, old Nestor gently shakes\n", + "The slumbering chief, and in these words awakes:\n", + "\n", + "“Rise, son of Tydeus! to the brave and strong\n", + "Rest seems inglorious, and the night too long.\n", + "But sleep’st thou now, when from yon hill the foe\n", + "Hangs o’er the fleet, and shades our walls below?”\n", + "\n", + "At this, soft slumber from his eyelids fled;\n", + "The warrior saw the hoary chief, and said:\n", + "“Wondrous old man! whose soul no respite knows,\n", + "Though years and honours bid thee seek repose,\n", + "Let younger Greeks our sleeping warriors wake;\n", + "Ill fits thy age these toils to undertake.”\n", + "“My friend, (he answered,) generous is thy care;\n", + "These toils, my subjects and my sons might bear;\n", + "Their loyal thoughts and pious love conspire\n", + "To ease a sovereign and relieve a sire:\n", + "But now the last despair surrounds our host;\n", + "No hour must pass, no moment must be lost;\n", + "Each single Greek, in this conclusive strife,\n", + "Stands on the sharpest edge of death or life:\n", + "Yet, if my years thy kind regard engage,\n", + "Employ thy youth as I employ my age;\n", + "Succeed to these my cares, and rouse the rest;\n", + "He serves me most, who serves his country best.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, the hero o’er his shoulders flung\n", + "A lion’s spoils, that to his ankles hung;\n", + "Then seized his ponderous lance, and strode along.\n", + "Meges the bold, with Ajax famed for speed,\n", + "The warrior roused, and to the entrenchments lead.\n", + "\n", + "And now the chiefs approach the nightly guard;\n", + "A wakeful squadron, each in arms prepared:\n", + "The unwearied watch their listening leaders keep,\n", + "And, couching close, repel invading sleep.\n", + "So faithful dogs their fleecy charge maintain,\n", + "With toil protected from the prowling train;\n", + "When the gaunt lioness, with hunger bold,\n", + "Springs from the mountains toward the guarded fold:\n", + "Through breaking woods her rustling course they hear;\n", + "Loud, and more loud, the clamours strike their ear\n", + "Of hounds and men: they start, they gaze around,\n", + "Watch every side, and turn to every sound.\n", + "Thus watch’d the Grecians, cautious of surprise,\n", + "Each voice, each motion, drew their ears and eyes:\n", + "Each step of passing feet increased the affright;\n", + "And hostile Troy was ever full in sight.\n", + "Nestor with joy the wakeful band survey’d,\n", + "And thus accosted through the gloomy shade.\n", + "“’Tis well, my sons! your nightly cares employ;\n", + "Else must our host become the scorn of Troy.\n", + "Watch thus, and Greece shall live.” The hero said;\n", + "Then o’er the trench the following chieftains led.\n", + "His son, and godlike Merion, march’d behind\n", + "(For these the princes to their council join’d).\n", + "The trenches pass’d, the assembled kings around\n", + "In silent state the consistory crown’d.\n", + "A place there was, yet undefiled with gore,\n", + "The spot where Hector stopp’d his rage before;\n", + "When night descending, from his vengeful hand\n", + "Reprieved the relics of the Grecian band:\n", + "(The plain beside with mangled corps was spread,\n", + "And all his progress mark’d by heaps of dead:)\n", + "There sat the mournful kings: when Neleus’ son,\n", + "The council opening, in these words begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Is there (said he) a chief so greatly brave,\n", + "His life to hazard, and his country save?\n", + "Lives there a man, who singly dares to go\n", + "To yonder camp, or seize some straggling foe?\n", + "Or favour’d by the night approach so near,\n", + "Their speech, their counsels, and designs to hear?\n", + "If to besiege our navies they prepare,\n", + "Or Troy once more must be the seat of war?\n", + "This could he learn, and to our peers recite,\n", + "And pass unharm’d the dangers of the night;\n", + "What fame were his through all succeeding days,\n", + "While Phœbus shines, or men have tongues to praise!\n", + "What gifts his grateful country would bestow!\n", + "What must not Greece to her deliverer owe?\n", + "A sable ewe each leader should provide,\n", + "With each a sable lambkin by her side;\n", + "At every rite his share should be increased,\n", + "And his the foremost honours of the feast.”\n", + "\n", + "Fear held them mute: alone, untaught to fear,\n", + "Tydides spoke—“The man you seek is here.\n", + "Through yon black camps to bend my dangerous way,\n", + "Some god within commands, and I obey.\n", + "But let some other chosen warrior join,\n", + "To raise my hopes, and second my design.\n", + "By mutual confidence and mutual aid,\n", + "Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made;\n", + "The wise new prudence from the wise acquire,\n", + "And one brave hero fans another’s fire.”\n", + "\n", + "Contending leaders at the word arose;\n", + "Each generous breast with emulation glows;\n", + "So brave a task each Ajax strove to share,\n", + "Bold Merion strove, and Nestor’s valiant heir;\n", + "The Spartan wish’d the second place to gain,\n", + "And great Ulysses wish’d, nor wish’d in vain.\n", + "Then thus the king of men the contest ends:\n", + "“Thou first of warriors, and thou best of friends,\n", + "Undaunted Diomed! what chief to join\n", + "In this great enterprise, is only thine.\n", + "Just be thy choice, without affection made;\n", + "To birth, or office, no respect be paid;\n", + "Let worth determine here.” The monarch spake,\n", + "And inly trembled for his brother’s sake.\n", + "\n", + "“Then thus (the godlike Diomed rejoin’d)\n", + "My choice declares the impulse of my mind.\n", + "How can I doubt, while great Ulysses stands\n", + "To lend his counsels and assist our hands?\n", + "A chief, whose safety is Minerva’s care;\n", + "So famed, so dreadful, in the works of war:\n", + "Bless’d in his conduct, I no aid require;\n", + "Wisdom like his might pass through flames of fire.”\n", + "\n", + "“It fits thee not, before these chiefs of fame,\n", + "(Replied the sage,) to praise me, or to blame:\n", + "Praise from a friend, or censure from a foe,\n", + "Are lost on hearers that our merits know.\n", + "But let us haste—Night rolls the hours away,\n", + "The reddening orient shows the coming day,\n", + "The stars shine fainter on the ethereal plains,\n", + "And of night’s empire but a third remains.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having spoke, with generous ardour press’d,\n", + "In arms terrific their huge limbs they dress’d.\n", + "A two-edged falchion Thrasymed the brave,\n", + "And ample buckler, to Tydides gave:\n", + "Then in a leathern helm he cased his head,\n", + "Short of its crest, and with no plume o’erspread:\n", + "(Such as by youths unused to arms are worn:)\n", + "No spoils enrich it, and no studs adorn.\n", + "Next him Ulysses took a shining sword,\n", + "A bow and quiver, with bright arrows stored:\n", + "A well-proved casque, with leather braces bound,\n", + "(Thy gift, Meriones,) his temples crown’d;\n", + "Soft wool within; without, in order spread,[217]\n", + "A boar’s white teeth grinn’d horrid o’er his head.\n", + "This from Amyntor, rich Ormenus’ son,\n", + "Autolycus by fraudful rapine won,\n", + "And gave Amphidamas; from him the prize\n", + "Molus received, the pledge of social ties;\n", + "The helmet next by Merion was possess’d,\n", + "And now Ulysses’ thoughtful temples press’d.\n", + "Thus sheathed in arms, the council they forsake,\n", + "And dark through paths oblique their progress take.\n", + "Just then, in sign she favour’d their intent,\n", + "A long-wing’d heron great Minerva sent:\n", + "This, though surrounding shades obscured their view,\n", + "By the shrill clang and whistling wings they knew.\n", + "As from the right she soar’d, Ulysses pray’d,\n", + "Hail’d the glad omen, and address’d the maid:\n", + "\n", + "“O daughter of that god whose arm can wield\n", + "The avenging bolt, and shake the saber shield!\n", + "O thou! for ever present in my way,\n", + "Who all my motions, all my toils survey!\n", + "Safe may we pass beneath the gloomy shade,\n", + "Safe by thy succour to our ships convey’d,\n", + "And let some deed this signal night adorn,\n", + "To claim the tears of Trojans yet unborn.”\n", + "\n", + "Then godlike Diomed preferr’d his prayer:\n", + "“Daughter of Jove, unconquer’d Pallas! hear.\n", + "Great queen of arms, whose favour Tydeus won,\n", + "As thou defend’st the sire, defend the son.\n", + "When on Æsopus’ banks the banded powers\n", + "Of Greece he left, and sought the Theban towers,\n", + "Peace was his charge; received with peaceful show,\n", + "He went a legate, but return’d a foe:\n", + "Then help’d by thee, and cover’d by thy shield,\n", + "He fought with numbers, and made numbers yield.\n", + "So now be present, O celestial maid!\n", + "So still continue to the race thine aid!\n", + "A youthful steer shall fall beneath the stroke,\n", + "Untamed, unconscious of the galling yoke,\n", + "With ample forehead, and with spreading horns,\n", + "Whose taper tops refulgent gold adorns.”\n", + "The heroes pray’d, and Pallas from the skies\n", + "Accords their vow, succeeds their enterprise.\n", + "Now, like two lions panting for the prey,\n", + "With dreadful thoughts they trace the dreary way,\n", + "Through the black horrors of the ensanguined plain,\n", + "Through dust, through blood, o’er arms, and hills of slain.\n", + "\n", + "Nor less bold Hector, and the sons of Troy,\n", + "On high designs the wakeful hours employ;\n", + "The assembled peers their lofty chief enclosed;\n", + "Who thus the counsels of his breast proposed:\n", + "\n", + "“What glorious man, for high attempts prepared,\n", + "Dares greatly venture for a rich reward?\n", + "Of yonder fleet a bold discovery make,\n", + "What watch they keep, and what resolves they take?\n", + "If now subdued they meditate their flight,\n", + "And, spent with toil, neglect the watch of night?\n", + "His be the chariot that shall please him most,\n", + "Of all the plunder of the vanquish’d host;\n", + "His the fair steeds that all the rest excel,\n", + "And his the glory to have served so well.”\n", + "\n", + "A youth there was among the tribes of Troy,\n", + "Dolon his name, Eumedes’ only boy,\n", + "(Five girls beside the reverend herald told.)\n", + "Rich was the son in brass, and rich in gold;\n", + "Not bless’d by nature with the charms of face,\n", + "But swift of foot, and matchless in the race.\n", + "“Hector! (he said) my courage bids me meet\n", + "This high achievement, and explore the fleet:\n", + "But first exalt thy sceptre to the skies,\n", + "And swear to grant me the demanded prize;\n", + "The immortal coursers, and the glittering car,\n", + "That bear Pelides through the ranks of war.\n", + "Encouraged thus, no idle scout I go,\n", + "Fulfil thy wish, their whole intention know,\n", + "Even to the royal tent pursue my way,\n", + "And all their counsels, all their aims betray.”\n", + "\n", + "The chief then heaved the golden sceptre high,\n", + "Attesting thus the monarch of the sky:\n", + "“Be witness thou! immortal lord of all!\n", + "Whose thunder shakes the dark aerial hall:\n", + "By none but Dolon shall this prize be borne,\n", + "And him alone the immortal steeds adorn.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus Hector swore: the gods were call’d in vain,\n", + "But the rash youth prepares to scour the plain:\n", + "Across his back the bended bow he flung,\n", + "A wolf’s grey hide around his shoulders hung,\n", + "A ferret’s downy fur his helmet lined,\n", + "And in his hand a pointed javelin shined.\n", + "Then (never to return) he sought the shore,\n", + "And trod the path his feet must tread no more.\n", + "Scarce had he pass’d the steeds and Trojan throng,\n", + "(Still bending forward as he coursed along,)\n", + "When, on the hollow way, the approaching tread\n", + "Ulysses mark’d, and thus to Diomed;\n", + "\n", + "“O friend! I hear some step of hostile feet,\n", + "Moving this way, or hastening to the fleet;\n", + "Some spy, perhaps, to lurk beside the main;\n", + "Or nightly pillager that strips the slain.\n", + "Yet let him pass, and win a little space;\n", + "Then rush behind him, and prevent his pace.\n", + "But if too swift of foot he flies before,\n", + "Confine his course along the fleet and shore,\n", + "Betwixt the camp and him our spears employ,\n", + "And intercept his hoped return to Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "With that they stepp’d aside, and stoop’d their head,\n", + "(As Dolon pass’d,) behind a heap of dead:\n", + "Along the path the spy unwary flew;\n", + "Soft, at just distance, both the chiefs pursue.\n", + "So distant they, and such the space between,\n", + "As when two teams of mules divide the green,\n", + "(To whom the hind like shares of land allows,)\n", + "When now new furrows part the approaching ploughs.\n", + "Now Dolon, listening, heard them as they pass’d;\n", + "Hector (he thought) had sent, and check’d his haste,\n", + "Till scarce at distance of a javelin’s throw,\n", + "No voice succeeding, he perceived the foe.\n", + "As when two skilful hounds the leveret wind;\n", + "Or chase through woods obscure the trembling hind;\n", + "Now lost, now seen, they intercept his way,\n", + "And from the herd still turn the flying prey:\n", + "So fast, and with such fears, the Trojan flew;\n", + "So close, so constant, the bold Greeks pursue.\n", + "Now almost on the fleet the dastard falls,\n", + "And mingles with the guards that watch the walls;\n", + "When brave Tydides stopp’d; a gen’rous thought\n", + "(Inspired by Pallas) in his bosom wrought,\n", + "Lest on the foe some forward Greek advance,\n", + "And snatch the glory from his lifted lance.\n", + "Then thus aloud: “Whoe’er thou art, remain;\n", + "This javelin else shall fix thee to the plain.”\n", + "He said, and high in air the weapon cast,\n", + "Which wilful err’d, and o’er his shoulder pass’d;\n", + "Then fix’d in earth. Against the trembling wood\n", + "The wretch stood propp’d, and quiver’d as he stood;\n", + "A sudden palsy seized his turning head;\n", + "His loose teeth chatter’d, and his colour fled;\n", + "The panting warriors seize him as he stands,\n", + "And with unmanly tears his life demands.\n", + "\n", + "“O spare my youth, and for the breath I owe,\n", + "Large gifts of price my father shall bestow:\n", + "Vast heaps of brass shall in your ships be told,\n", + "And steel well-temper’d and refulgent gold.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom Ulysses made this wise reply:\n", + "“Whoe’er thou art, be bold, nor fear to die.\n", + "What moves thee, say, when sleep has closed the sight,\n", + "To roam the silent fields in dead of night?\n", + "Cam’st thou the secrets of our camp to find,\n", + "By Hector prompted, or thy daring mind?\n", + "Or art some wretch by hopes of plunder led,\n", + "Through heaps of carnage, to despoil the dead?”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus pale Dolon, with a fearful look:\n", + "(Still, as he spoke, his limbs with horror shook:)\n", + "“Hither I came, by Hector’s words deceived;\n", + "Much did he promise, rashly I believed:\n", + "No less a bribe than great Achilles’ car,\n", + "And those swift steeds that sweep the ranks of war,\n", + "Urged me, unwilling, this attempt to make;\n", + "To learn what counsels, what resolves you take:\n", + "If now subdued, you fix your hopes on flight,\n", + "And, tired with toils, neglect the watch of night.”\n", + "\n", + "“Bold was thy aim, and glorious was the prize,\n", + "(Ulysses, with a scornful smile, replies,)\n", + "Far other rulers those proud steeds demand,\n", + "And scorn the guidance of a vulgar hand;\n", + "Even great Achilles scarce their rage can tame,\n", + "Achilles sprung from an immortal dame.\n", + "But say, be faithful, and the truth recite!\n", + "Where lies encamp’d the Trojan chief to-night?\n", + "Where stand his coursers? in what quarter sleep\n", + "Their other princes? tell what watch they keep:\n", + "Say, since this conquest, what their counsels are;\n", + "Or here to combat, from their city far,\n", + "Or back to Ilion’s walls transfer the war?”\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses thus, and thus Eumedes’ son:\n", + "“What Dolon knows, his faithful tongue shall own.\n", + "Hector, the peers assembling in his tent,\n", + "A council holds at Ilus’ monument.\n", + "No certain guards the nightly watch partake;\n", + "Where’er yon fires ascend, the Trojans wake:\n", + "Anxious for Troy, the guard the natives keep;\n", + "Safe in their cares, the auxiliar forces sleep,\n", + "Whose wives and infants, from the danger far,\n", + "Discharge their souls of half the fears of war.”\n", + "\n", + "“Then sleep those aids among the Trojan train,\n", + "(Inquired the chief,) or scattered o’er the plain?”\n", + "To whom the spy: “Their powers they thus dispose\n", + "The Paeons, dreadful with their bended bows,\n", + "The Carians, Caucons, the Pelasgian host,\n", + "And Leleges, encamp along the coast.\n", + "Not distant far, lie higher on the land\n", + "The Lycian, Mysian, and Mæonian band,\n", + "And Phrygia’s horse, by Thymbras’ ancient wall;\n", + "The Thracians utmost, and apart from all.\n", + "These Troy but lately to her succour won,\n", + "Led on by Rhesus, great Eioneus’ son:\n", + "I saw his coursers in proud triumph go,\n", + "Swift as the wind, and white as winter-snow;\n", + "Rich silver plates his shining car infold;\n", + "His solid arms, refulgent, flame with gold;\n", + "No mortal shoulders suit the glorious load,\n", + "Celestial panoply, to grace a god!\n", + "Let me, unhappy, to your fleet be borne,\n", + "Or leave me here, a captive’s fate to mourn,\n", + "In cruel chains, till your return reveal\n", + "The truth or falsehood of the news I tell.”\n", + "\n", + "To this Tydides, with a gloomy frown:\n", + "“Think not to live, though all the truth be shown:\n", + "Shall we dismiss thee, in some future strife\n", + "To risk more bravely thy now forfeit life?\n", + "Or that again our camps thou may’st explore?\n", + "No—once a traitor, thou betray’st no more.”\n", + "\n", + "Sternly he spoke, and as the wretch prepared\n", + "With humble blandishment to stroke his beard,\n", + "Like lightning swift the wrathful falchion flew,\n", + "Divides the neck, and cuts the nerves in two;\n", + "One instant snatch’d his trembling soul to hell,\n", + "The head, yet speaking, mutter’d as it fell.\n", + "The furry helmet from his brow they tear,\n", + "The wolf’s grey hide, the unbended bow and spear;\n", + "These great Ulysses lifting to the skies,\n", + "To favouring Pallas dedicates the prize:\n", + "\n", + "“Great queen of arms, receive this hostile spoil,\n", + "And let the Thracian steeds reward our toil;\n", + "Thee, first of all the heavenly host, we praise;\n", + "O speed our labours, and direct our ways!”\n", + "This said, the spoils, with dropping gore defaced,\n", + "High on a spreading tamarisk he placed;\n", + "Then heap’d with reeds and gathered boughs the plain,\n", + "To guide their footsteps to the place again.\n", + "\n", + "Through the still night they cross the devious fields,\n", + "Slippery with blood, o’er arms and heaps of shields,\n", + "Arriving where the Thracian squadrons lay,\n", + "And eased in sleep the labours of the day.\n", + "Ranged in three lines they view the prostrate band:\n", + "The horses yoked beside each warrior stand.\n", + "Their arms in order on the ground reclined,\n", + "Through the brown shade the fulgid weapons shined:\n", + "Amidst lay Rhesus, stretch’d in sleep profound,\n", + "And the white steeds behind his chariot bound.\n", + "The welcome sight Ulysses first descries,\n", + "And points to Diomed the tempting prize.\n", + "“The man, the coursers, and the car behold!\n", + "Described by Dolon, with the arms of gold.\n", + "Now, brave Tydides! now thy courage try,\n", + "Approach the chariot, and the steeds untie;\n", + "Or if thy soul aspire to fiercer deeds,\n", + "Urge thou the slaughter, while I seize the steeds.”\n", + "\n", + "Pallas (this said) her hero’s bosom warms,\n", + "Breathed in his heart, and strung his nervous arms;\n", + "Where’er he pass’d, a purple stream pursued\n", + "His thirsty falchion, fat with hostile blood,\n", + "Bathed all his footsteps, dyed the fields with gore,\n", + "And a low groan remurmur’d through the shore.\n", + "So the grim lion, from his nightly den,\n", + "O’erleaps the fences, and invades the pen,\n", + "On sheep or goats, resistless in his way,\n", + "He falls, and foaming rends the guardless prey;\n", + "Nor stopp’d the fury of his vengeful hand,\n", + "Till twelve lay breathless of the Thracian band.\n", + "Ulysses following, as his partner slew,\n", + "Back by the foot each slaughter’d warrior drew;\n", + "The milk-white coursers studious to convey\n", + "Safe to the ships, he wisely cleared the way:\n", + "Lest the fierce steeds, not yet to battles bred,\n", + "Should start, and tremble at the heaps of dead.\n", + "Now twelve despatch’d, the monarch last they found;\n", + "Tydides’ falchion fix’d him to the ground.\n", + "Just then a deathful dream Minerva sent,\n", + "A warlike form appear’d before his tent,\n", + "Whose visionary steel his bosom tore:\n", + "So dream’d the monarch, and awaked no more.[218]\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses now the snowy steeds detains,\n", + "And leads them, fasten’d by the silver reins;\n", + "These, with his bow unbent, he lash’d along;\n", + "(The scourge forgot, on Rhesus’ chariot hung;)\n", + "Then gave his friend the signal to retire;\n", + "But him, new dangers, new achievements fire;\n", + "Doubtful he stood, or with his reeking blade\n", + "To send more heroes to the infernal shade,\n", + "Drag off the car where Rhesus’ armour lay,\n", + "Or heave with manly force, and lift away.\n", + "While unresolved the son of Tydeus stands,\n", + "Pallas appears, and thus her chief commands:\n", + "\n", + "“Enough, my son; from further slaughter cease,\n", + "Regard thy safety, and depart in peace;\n", + "Haste to the ships, the gotten spoils enjoy,\n", + "Nor tempt too far the hostile gods of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "The voice divine confess’d the martial maid;\n", + "In haste he mounted, and her word obey’d;\n", + "The coursers fly before Ulysses’ bow,\n", + "Swift as the wind, and white as winter-snow.\n", + "\n", + "Not unobserved they pass’d: the god of light\n", + "Had watch’d his Troy, and mark’d Minerva’s flight,\n", + "Saw Tydeus’ son with heavenly succour bless’d,\n", + "And vengeful anger fill’d his sacred breast.\n", + "Swift to the Trojan camp descends the power,\n", + "And wakes Hippocoon in the morning-hour;\n", + "(On Rhesus’ side accustom’d to attend,\n", + "A faithful kinsman, and instructive friend;)\n", + "He rose, and saw the field deform’d with blood,\n", + "An empty space where late the coursers stood,\n", + "The yet-warm Thracians panting on the coast;\n", + "For each he wept, but for his Rhesus most:\n", + "Now while on Rhesus’ name he calls in vain,\n", + "The gathering tumult spreads o’er all the plain;\n", + "On heaps the Trojans rush, with wild affright,\n", + "And wondering view the slaughters of the night.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile the chiefs, arriving at the shade\n", + "Where late the spoils of Hector’s spy were laid,\n", + "Ulysses stopp’d; to him Tydides bore\n", + "The trophy, dropping yet with Dolon’s gore:\n", + "Then mounts again; again their nimbler feet\n", + "The coursers ply, and thunder towards the fleet.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] DIOMED AND ULYSSES RETURNING WITH THE SPOILS OF RHESUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Old Nestor first perceived the approaching sound,\n", + "Bespeaking thus the Grecian peers around:\n", + "“Methinks the noise of trampling steeds I hear,\n", + "Thickening this way, and gathering on my ear;\n", + "Perhaps some horses of the Trojan breed\n", + "(So may, ye gods! my pious hopes succeed)\n", + "The great Tydides and Ulysses bear,\n", + "Return’d triumphant with this prize of war.\n", + "Yet much I fear (ah, may that fear be vain!)\n", + "The chiefs outnumber’d by the Trojan train;\n", + "Perhaps, even now pursued, they seek the shore;\n", + "Or, oh! perhaps those heroes are no more.”\n", + "\n", + "Scarce had he spoke, when, lo! the chiefs appear,\n", + "And spring to earth; the Greeks dismiss their fear:\n", + "With words of friendship and extended hands\n", + "They greet the kings; and Nestor first demands:\n", + "\n", + "“Say thou, whose praises all our host proclaim,\n", + "Thou living glory of the Grecian name!\n", + "Say whence these coursers? by what chance bestow’d,\n", + "The spoil of foes, or present of a god?\n", + "Not those fair steeds, so radiant and so gay,\n", + "That draw the burning chariot of the day.\n", + "Old as I am, to age I scorn to yield,\n", + "And daily mingle in the martial field;\n", + "But sure till now no coursers struck my sight\n", + "Like these, conspicuous through the ranks of fight.\n", + "Some god, I deem, conferred the glorious prize,\n", + "Bless’d as ye are, and favourites of the skies;\n", + "The care of him who bids the thunder roar,\n", + "And her, whose fury bathes the world with gore.”\n", + "\n", + "“Father! not so, (sage Ithacus rejoin’d,)\n", + "The gifts of heaven are of a nobler kind.\n", + "Of Thracian lineage are the steeds ye view,\n", + "Whose hostile king the brave Tydides slew;\n", + "Sleeping he died, with all his guards around,\n", + "And twelve beside lay gasping on the ground.\n", + "These other spoils from conquer’d Dolon came,\n", + "A wretch, whose swiftness was his only fame;\n", + "By Hector sent our forces to explore,\n", + "He now lies headless on the sandy shore.”\n", + "\n", + "Then o’er the trench the bounding coursers flew;\n", + "The joyful Greeks with loud acclaim pursue.\n", + "Straight to Tydides’ high pavilion borne,\n", + "The matchless steeds his ample stalls adorn:\n", + "The neighing coursers their new fellows greet,\n", + "And the full racks are heap’d with generous wheat.\n", + "But Dolon’s armour, to his ships convey’d,\n", + "High on the painted stern Ulysses laid,\n", + "A trophy destin’d to the blue-eyed maid.\n", + "\n", + "Now from nocturnal sweat and sanguine stain\n", + "They cleanse their bodies in the neighb’ring main:\n", + "Then in the polished bath, refresh’d from toil,\n", + "Their joints they supple with dissolving oil,\n", + "In due repast indulge the genial hour,\n", + "And first to Pallas the libations pour:\n", + "They sit, rejoicing in her aid divine,\n", + "And the crown’d goblet foams with floods of wine.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XI.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE THIRD BATTLE, AND THE ACTS OF AGAMEMNON.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Agamemnon, having armed himself, leads the Grecians to battle; Hector\n", + "prepares the Trojans to receive them, while Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva\n", + "give the signals of war. Agamemnon bears all before him and Hector is\n", + "commanded by Jupiter (who sends Iris for that purpose) to decline the\n", + "engagement, till the king shall be wounded and retire from the field.\n", + "He then makes a great slaughter of the enemy. Ulysses and Diomed put a\n", + "stop to him for a time but the latter, being wounded by Paris, is\n", + "obliged to desert his companion, who is encompassed by the Trojans,\n", + "wounded, and in the utmost danger, till Menelaus and Ajax rescue him.\n", + "Hector comes against Ajax, but that hero alone opposes multitudes, and\n", + "rallies the Greeks. In the meantime Machaon, in the other wing of the\n", + "army, is pierced with an arrow by Paris, and carried from the fight in\n", + "Nestor’s chariot. Achilles (who overlooked the action from his ship)\n", + "sent Patroclus to inquire which of the Greeks was wounded in that\n", + "manner; Nestor entertains him in his tent with an account of the\n", + "accidents of the day, and a long recital of some former wars which he\n", + "remembered, tending to put Patroclus upon persuading Achilles to fight\n", + "for his countrymen, or at least to permit him to do it, clad in\n", + "Achilles’ armour. Patroclus, on his return, meets Eurypylus also\n", + "wounded, and assists him in that distress.\n", + " This book opens with the eight-and-twentieth day of the poem, and\n", + " the same day, with its various actions and adventures is extended\n", + " through the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth,\n", + " seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth books. The scene lies in\n", + " the field near the monument of Ilus.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The saffron morn, with early blushes spread,[219]\n", + "Now rose refulgent from Tithonus’ bed;\n", + "With new-born day to gladden mortal sight,\n", + "And gild the courts of heaven with sacred light:\n", + "When baleful Eris, sent by Jove’s command,\n", + "The torch of discord blazing in her hand,\n", + "Through the red skies her bloody sign extends,\n", + "And, wrapt in tempests, o’er the fleet descends.\n", + "High on Ulysses’ bark her horrid stand\n", + "She took, and thunder’d through the seas and land.\n", + "\n", + "Even Ajax and Achilles heard the sound,\n", + "Whose ships, remote, the guarded navy bound,\n", + "Thence the black fury through the Grecian throng\n", + "With horror sounds the loud Orthian song:\n", + "The navy shakes, and at the dire alarms\n", + "Each bosom boils, each warrior starts to arms.\n", + "No more they sigh, inglorious to return,\n", + "But breathe revenge, and for the combat burn.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE DESCENT OF DISCORD\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The king of men his hardy host inspires\n", + "With loud command, with great example fires!\n", + "Himself first rose, himself before the rest\n", + "His mighty limbs in radiant armour dress’d,\n", + "And first he cased his manly legs around\n", + "In shining greaves with silver buckles bound;\n", + "The beaming cuirass next adorn’d his breast,\n", + "The same which once king Cinyras possess’d:\n", + "(The fame of Greece and her assembled host\n", + "Had reach’d that monarch on the Cyprian coast;\n", + "’Twas then, the friendship of the chief to gain,\n", + "This glorious gift he sent, nor sent in vain:)\n", + "Ten rows of azure steel the work infold,\n", + "Twice ten of tin, and twelve of ductile gold;\n", + "Three glittering dragons to the gorget rise,\n", + "Whose imitated scales against the skies\n", + "Reflected various light, and arching bow’d,\n", + "Like colour’d rainbows o’er a showery cloud\n", + "(Jove’s wondrous bow, of three celestial dies,\n", + "Placed as a sign to man amidst the skies).\n", + "A radiant baldric, o’er his shoulder tied,\n", + "Sustain’d the sword that glitter’d at his side:\n", + "Gold was the hilt, a silver sheath encased\n", + "The shining blade, and golden hangers graced.\n", + "His buckler’s mighty orb was next display’d,\n", + "That round the warrior cast a dreadful shade;\n", + "Ten zones of brass its ample brim surround,\n", + "And twice ten bosses the bright convex crown’d:\n", + "Tremendous Gorgon frown’d upon its field,\n", + "And circling terrors fill’d the expressive shield:\n", + "Within its concave hung a silver thong,\n", + "On which a mimic serpent creeps along,\n", + "His azure length in easy waves extends,\n", + "Till in three heads the embroider’d monster ends.\n", + "Last o’er his brows his fourfold helm he placed,\n", + "With nodding horse-hair formidably graced;\n", + "And in his hands two steely javelins wields,\n", + "That blaze to heaven, and lighten all the fields.\n", + "\n", + "That instant Juno, and the martial maid,\n", + "In happy thunders promised Greece their aid;\n", + "High o’er the chief they clash’d their arms in air,\n", + "And, leaning from the clouds, expect the war.\n", + "\n", + "Close to the limits of the trench and mound,\n", + "The fiery coursers to their chariots bound\n", + "The squires restrain’d: the foot, with those who wield\n", + "The lighter arms, rush forward to the field.\n", + "To second these, in close array combined,\n", + "The squadrons spread their sable wings behind.\n", + "Now shouts and tumults wake the tardy sun,\n", + "As with the light the warriors’ toils begun.\n", + "Even Jove, whose thunder spoke his wrath, distill’d\n", + "Red drops of blood o’er all the fatal field;[220]\n", + "The woes of men unwilling to survey,\n", + "And all the slaughters that must stain the day.\n", + "\n", + "Near Ilus’ tomb, in order ranged around,\n", + "The Trojan lines possess’d the rising ground:\n", + "There wise Polydamas and Hector stood;\n", + "Æneas, honour’d as a guardian god;\n", + "Bold Polybus, Agenor the divine;\n", + "The brother-warriors of Antenor’s line:\n", + "With youthful Acamas, whose beauteous face\n", + "And fair proportion match’d the ethereal race.\n", + "Great Hector, cover’d with his spacious shield,\n", + "Plies all the troops, and orders all the field.\n", + "As the red star now shows his sanguine fires\n", + "Through the dark clouds, and now in night retires,\n", + "Thus through the ranks appear’d the godlike man,\n", + "Plunged in the rear, or blazing in the van;\n", + "While streamy sparkles, restless as he flies,\n", + "Flash from his arms, as lightning from the skies.\n", + "As sweating reapers in some wealthy field,\n", + "Ranged in two bands, their crooked weapons wield,\n", + "Bear down the furrows, till their labours meet;\n", + "Thick fall the heapy harvests at their feet:\n", + "So Greece and Troy the field of war divide,\n", + "And falling ranks are strow’d on every side.\n", + "None stoop’d a thought to base inglorious flight;[221]\n", + "But horse to horse, and man to man they fight,\n", + "Not rabid wolves more fierce contest their prey;\n", + "Each wounds, each bleeds, but none resign the day.\n", + "Discord with joy the scene of death descries,\n", + "And drinks large slaughter at her sanguine eyes:\n", + "Discord alone, of all the immortal train,\n", + "Swells the red horrors of this direful plain:\n", + "The gods in peace their golden mansions fill,\n", + "Ranged in bright order on the Olympian hill:\n", + "But general murmurs told their griefs above,\n", + "And each accused the partial will of Jove.\n", + "Meanwhile apart, superior, and alone,\n", + "The eternal Monarch, on his awful throne,\n", + "Wrapt in the blaze of boundless glory sate;\n", + "And fix’d, fulfill’d the just decrees of fate.\n", + "On earth he turn’d his all-considering eyes,\n", + "And mark’d the spot where Ilion’s towers arise;\n", + "The sea with ships, the fields with armies spread,\n", + "The victor’s rage, the dying, and the dead.\n", + "\n", + "Thus while the morning-beams, increasing bright,\n", + "O’er heaven’s pure azure spread the glowing light,\n", + "Commutual death the fate of war confounds,\n", + "Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds.\n", + "But now (what time in some sequester’d vale\n", + "The weary woodman spreads his sparing meal,\n", + "When his tired arms refuse the axe to rear,\n", + "And claim a respite from the sylvan war;\n", + "But not till half the prostrate forests lay\n", + "Stretch’d in long ruin, and exposed to day)\n", + "Then, nor till then, the Greeks’ impulsive might\n", + "Pierced the black phalanx, and let in the light.\n", + "Great Agamemnon then the slaughter led,\n", + "And slew Bienor at his people’s head:\n", + "Whose squire Oïleus, with a sudden spring,\n", + "Leap’d from the chariot to revenge his king;\n", + "But in his front he felt the fatal wound,\n", + "Which pierced his brain, and stretch’d him on the ground.\n", + "Atrides spoil’d, and left them on the plain:\n", + "Vain was their youth, their glittering armour vain:\n", + "Now soil’d with dust, and naked to the sky,\n", + "Their snowy limbs and beauteous bodies lie.\n", + "\n", + "Two sons of Priam next to battle move,\n", + "The product, one of marriage, one of love:[222]\n", + "In the same car the brother-warriors ride;\n", + "This took the charge to combat, that to guide:\n", + "Far other task, than when they wont to keep,\n", + "On Ida’s tops, their father’s fleecy sheep.\n", + "These on the mountains once Achilles found,\n", + "And captive led, with pliant osiers bound;\n", + "Then to their sire for ample sums restored;\n", + "But now to perish by Atrides’ sword:\n", + "Pierced in the breast the base-born Isus bleeds:\n", + "Cleft through the head his brother’s fate succeeds,\n", + "Swift to the spoil the hasty victor falls,\n", + "And, stript, their features to his mind recalls.\n", + "The Trojans see the youths untimely die,\n", + "But helpless tremble for themselves, and fly.\n", + "So when a lion ranging o’er the lawns,\n", + "Finds, on some grassy lair, the couching fawns,\n", + "Their bones he cracks, their reeking vitals draws,\n", + "And grinds the quivering flesh with bloody jaws;\n", + "The frighted hind beholds, and dares not stay,\n", + "But swift through rustling thickets bursts her way;\n", + "All drown’d in sweat, the panting mother flies,\n", + "And the big tears roll trickling from her eyes.\n", + "\n", + "Amidst the tumult of the routed train,\n", + "The sons of false Antimachus were slain;\n", + "He who for bribes his faithless counsels sold,\n", + "And voted Helen’s stay for Paris’ gold.\n", + "Atrides mark’d, as these their safety sought,\n", + "And slew the children for the father’s fault;\n", + "Their headstrong horse unable to restrain,\n", + "They shook with fear, and dropp’d the silken rein;\n", + "Then in the chariot on their knees they fall,\n", + "And thus with lifted hands for mercy call:\n", + "\n", + "“O spare our youth, and for the life we owe,\n", + "Antimachus shall copious gifts bestow:\n", + "Soon as he hears, that, not in battle slain,\n", + "The Grecian ships his captive sons detain,\n", + "Large heaps of brass in ransom shall be told,\n", + "And steel well-tempered, and persuasive gold.”\n", + "\n", + "These words, attended with the flood of tears,\n", + "The youths address’d to unrelenting ears:\n", + "The vengeful monarch gave this stern reply:\n", + "“If from Antimachus ye spring, ye die;\n", + "The daring wretch who once in council stood\n", + "To shed Ulysses’ and my brother’s blood,\n", + "For proffer’d peace! and sues his seed for grace?\n", + "No, die, and pay the forfeit of your race.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, Pisander from the car he cast,\n", + "And pierced his breast: supine he breathed his last.\n", + "His brother leap’d to earth; but, as he lay,\n", + "The trenchant falchion lopp’d his hands away;\n", + "His sever’d head was toss’d among the throng,\n", + "And, rolling, drew a bloody train along.\n", + "Then, where the thickest fought, the victor flew;\n", + "The king’s example all his Greeks pursue.\n", + "Now by the foot the flying foot were slain,\n", + "Horse trod by horse, lay foaming on the plain.\n", + "From the dry fields thick clouds of dust arise,\n", + "Shade the black host, and intercept the skies.\n", + "The brass-hoof’d steeds tumultuous plunge and bound,\n", + "And the thick thunder beats the labouring ground,\n", + "Still slaughtering on, the king of men proceeds;\n", + "The distanced army wonders at his deeds,\n", + "As when the winds with raging flames conspire,\n", + "And o’er the forests roll the flood of fire,\n", + "In blazing heaps the grove’s old honours fall,\n", + "And one refulgent ruin levels all:\n", + "Before Atrides’ rage so sinks the foe,\n", + "Whole squadrons vanish, and proud heads lie low.\n", + "The steeds fly trembling from his waving sword,\n", + "And many a car, now lighted of its lord,\n", + "Wide o’er the field with guideless fury rolls,\n", + "Breaking their ranks, and crushing out their souls;\n", + "While his keen falchion drinks the warriors’ lives;\n", + "More grateful, now, to vultures than their wives!\n", + "\n", + "Perhaps great Hector then had found his fate,\n", + "But Jove and destiny prolong’d his date.\n", + "Safe from the darts, the care of heaven he stood,\n", + "Amidst alarms, and death, and dust, and blood.\n", + "\n", + "Now past the tomb where ancient Ilus lay,\n", + "Through the mid field the routed urge their way:\n", + "Where the wild figs the adjoining summit crown,\n", + "The path they take, and speed to reach the town.\n", + "As swift, Atrides with loud shouts pursued,\n", + "Hot with his toil, and bathed in hostile blood.\n", + "Now near the beech-tree, and the Scæan gates,\n", + "The hero halts, and his associates waits.\n", + "Meanwhile on every side around the plain,\n", + "Dispersed, disorder’d, fly the Trojan train.\n", + "So flies a herd of beeves, that hear dismay’d\n", + "The lion’s roaring through the midnight shade;\n", + "On heaps they tumble with successless haste;\n", + "The savage seizes, draws, and rends the last.\n", + "Not with less fury stern Atrides flew,\n", + "Still press’d the rout, and still the hindmost slew;\n", + "Hurl’d from their cars the bravest chiefs are kill’d,\n", + "And rage, and death, and carnage load the field.\n", + "\n", + "Now storms the victor at the Trojan wall;\n", + "Surveys the towers, and meditates their fall.\n", + "But Jove descending shook the Idaean hills,\n", + "And down their summits pour’d a hundred rills:\n", + "The unkindled lightning in his hand he took,\n", + "And thus the many-coloured maid bespoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Iris, with haste thy golden wings display,\n", + "To godlike Hector this our word convey—\n", + "While Agamemnon wastes the ranks around,\n", + "Fights in the front, and bathes with blood the ground,\n", + "Bid him give way; but issue forth commands,\n", + "And trust the war to less important hands:\n", + "But when, or wounded by the spear or dart,\n", + "That chief shall mount his chariot, and depart,\n", + "Then Jove shall string his arm, and fire his breast,\n", + "Then to her ships shall flying Greece be press’d,\n", + "Till to the main the burning sun descend,\n", + "And sacred night her awful shade extend.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and Iris at his word obey’d;\n", + "On wings of winds descends the various maid.\n", + "The chief she found amidst the ranks of war,\n", + "Close to the bulwarks, on his glittering car.\n", + "The goddess then: “O son of Priam, hear!\n", + "From Jove I come, and his high mandate bear.\n", + "While Agamemnon wastes the ranks around,\n", + "Fights in the front, and bathes with blood the ground,\n", + "Abstain from fight; yet issue forth commands,\n", + "And trust the war to less important hands:\n", + "But when, or wounded by the spear or dart,\n", + "The chief shall mount his chariot, and depart,\n", + "Then Jove shall string thy arm, and fire thy breast,\n", + "Then to her ships shall flying Greece be press’d,\n", + "Till to the main the burning sun descend,\n", + "And sacred night her awful shade extend.”\n", + "\n", + "She said, and vanish’d. Hector, with a bound,\n", + "Springs from his chariot on the trembling ground,\n", + "In clanging arms: he grasps in either hand\n", + "A pointed lance, and speeds from band to band;\n", + "Revives their ardour, turns their steps from flight,\n", + "And wakes anew the dying flames of fight.\n", + "They stand to arms: the Greeks their onset dare,\n", + "Condense their powers, and wait the coming war.\n", + "New force, new spirit, to each breast returns;\n", + "The fight renew’d with fiercer fury burns:\n", + "The king leads on: all fix on him their eye,\n", + "And learn from him to conquer, or to die.\n", + "\n", + "Ye sacred nine! celestial Muses! tell,\n", + "Who faced him first, and by his prowess fell?\n", + "The great Iphidamas, the bold and young,\n", + "From sage Antenor and Theano sprung;\n", + "Whom from his youth his grandsire Cisseus bred,\n", + "And nursed in Thrace where snowy flocks are fed.\n", + "Scarce did the down his rosy cheeks invest,\n", + "And early honour warm his generous breast,\n", + "When the kind sire consign’d his daughter’s charms\n", + "(Theano’s sister) to his youthful arms.\n", + "But call’d by glory to the wars of Troy,\n", + "He leaves untasted the first fruits of joy;\n", + "From his loved bride departs with melting eyes,\n", + "And swift to aid his dearer country flies.\n", + "With twelve black ships he reach’d Percope’s strand,\n", + "Thence took the long laborious march by land.\n", + "Now fierce for fame, before the ranks he springs,\n", + "Towering in arms, and braves the king of kings.\n", + "Atrides first discharged the missive spear;\n", + "The Trojan stoop’d, the javelin pass’d in air.\n", + "Then near the corslet, at the monarch’s heart,\n", + "With all his strength, the youth directs his dart:\n", + "But the broad belt, with plates of silver bound,\n", + "The point rebated, and repell’d the wound.\n", + "Encumber’d with the dart, Atrides stands,\n", + "Till, grasp’d with force, he wrench’d it from his hands;\n", + "At once his weighty sword discharged a wound\n", + "Full on his neck, that fell’d him to the ground.\n", + "Stretch’d in the dust the unhappy warrior lies,\n", + "And sleep eternal seals his swimming eyes.\n", + "Oh worthy better fate! oh early slain!\n", + "Thy country’s friend; and virtuous, though in vain!\n", + "No more the youth shall join his consort’s side,\n", + "At once a virgin, and at once a bride!\n", + "No more with presents her embraces meet,\n", + "Or lay the spoils of conquest at her feet,\n", + "On whom his passion, lavish of his store,\n", + "Bestow’d so much, and vainly promised more!\n", + "Unwept, uncover’d, on the plain he lay,\n", + "While the proud victor bore his arms away.\n", + "\n", + "Coon, Antenor’s eldest hope, was nigh:\n", + "Tears, at the sight, came starting from his eye,\n", + "While pierced with grief the much-loved youth he view’d,\n", + "And the pale features now deform’d with blood.\n", + "Then, with his spear, unseen, his time he took,\n", + "Aim’d at the king, and near his elbow strook.\n", + "The thrilling steel transpierced the brawny part,\n", + "And through his arm stood forth the barbed dart.\n", + "Surprised the monarch feels, yet void of fear\n", + "On Coon rushes with his lifted spear:\n", + "His brother’s corpse the pious Trojan draws,\n", + "And calls his country to assert his cause;\n", + "Defends him breathless on the sanguine field,\n", + "And o’er the body spreads his ample shield.\n", + "Atrides, marking an unguarded part,\n", + "Transfix’d the warrior with his brazen dart;\n", + "Prone on his brother’s bleeding breast he lay,\n", + "The monarch’s falchion lopp’d his head away:\n", + "The social shades the same dark journey go,\n", + "And join each other in the realms below.\n", + "\n", + "The vengeful victor rages round the fields,\n", + "With every weapon art or fury yields:\n", + "By the long lance, the sword, or ponderous stone,\n", + "Whole ranks are broken, and whole troops o’erthrown.\n", + "This, while yet warm distill’d the purple flood;\n", + "But when the wound grew stiff with clotted blood,\n", + "Then grinding tortures his strong bosom rend,\n", + "Less keen those darts the fierce Ilythiae send:\n", + "(The powers that cause the teeming matron’s throes,\n", + "Sad mothers of unutterable woes!)\n", + "Stung with the smart, all-panting with the pain,\n", + "He mounts the car, and gives his squire the rein;\n", + "Then with a voice which fury made more strong,\n", + "And pain augmented, thus exhorts the throng:\n", + "\n", + "“O friends! O Greeks! assert your honours won;\n", + "Proceed, and finish what this arm begun:\n", + "Lo! angry Jove forbids your chief to stay,\n", + "And envies half the glories of the day.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: the driver whirls his lengthful thong;\n", + "The horses fly; the chariot smokes along.\n", + "Clouds from their nostrils the fierce coursers blow,\n", + "And from their sides the foam descends in snow;\n", + "Shot through the battle in a moment’s space,\n", + "The wounded monarch at his tent they place.\n", + "\n", + "No sooner Hector saw the king retired,\n", + "But thus his Trojans and his aids he fired:\n", + "“Hear, all ye Dardan, all ye Lycian race!\n", + "Famed in close fight, and dreadful face to face:\n", + "Now call to mind your ancient trophies won,\n", + "Your great forefathers’ virtues, and your own.\n", + "Behold, the general flies! deserts his powers!\n", + "Lo, Jove himself declares the conquest ours!\n", + "Now on yon ranks impel your foaming steeds;\n", + "And, sure of glory, dare immortal deeds.”\n", + "\n", + "With words like these the fiery chief alarms\n", + "His fainting host, and every bosom warms.\n", + "As the bold hunter cheers his hounds to tear\n", + "The brindled lion, or the tusky bear:\n", + "With voice and hand provokes their doubting heart,\n", + "And springs the foremost with his lifted dart:\n", + "So godlike Hector prompts his troops to dare;\n", + "Nor prompts alone, but leads himself the war.\n", + "On the black body of the foe he pours;\n", + "As from the cloud’s deep bosom, swell’d with showers,\n", + "A sudden storm the purple ocean sweeps,\n", + "Drives the wild waves, and tosses all the deeps.\n", + "Say, Muse! when Jove the Trojan’s glory crown’d,\n", + "Beneath his arm what heroes bit the ground?\n", + "Assaeus, Dolops, and Autonous died,\n", + "Opites next was added to their side;\n", + "Then brave Hipponous, famed in many a fight,\n", + "Opheltius, Orus, sunk to endless night;\n", + "Æsymnus, Agelaus; all chiefs of name;\n", + "The rest were vulgar deaths unknown to fame.\n", + "As when a western whirlwind, charged with storms,\n", + "Dispels the gather’d clouds that Notus forms:\n", + "The gust continued, violent and strong,\n", + "Rolls sable clouds in heaps on heaps along;\n", + "Now to the skies the foaming billows rears,\n", + "Now breaks the surge, and wide the bottom bares:\n", + "Thus, raging Hector, with resistless hands,\n", + "O’erturns, confounds, and scatters all their bands.\n", + "Now the last ruin the whole host appals;\n", + "Now Greece had trembled in her wooden walls;\n", + "But wise Ulysses call’d Tydides forth,\n", + "His soul rekindled, and awaked his worth.\n", + "“And stand we deedless, O eternal shame!\n", + "Till Hector’s arm involve the ships in flame?\n", + "Haste, let us join, and combat side by side.”\n", + "The warrior thus, and thus the friend replied:\n", + "\n", + "“No martial toil I shun, no danger fear;\n", + "Let Hector come; I wait his fury here.\n", + "But Jove with conquest crowns the Trojan train:\n", + "And, Jove our foe, all human force is vain.”\n", + "\n", + "He sigh’d; but, sighing, raised his vengeful steel,\n", + "And from his car the proud Thymbraeus fell:\n", + "Molion, the charioteer, pursued his lord,\n", + "His death ennobled by Ulysses’ sword.\n", + "There slain, they left them in eternal night,\n", + "Then plunged amidst the thickest ranks of fight.\n", + "So two wild boars outstrip the following hounds,\n", + "Then swift revert, and wounds return for wounds.\n", + "Stern Hector’s conquests in the middle plain\n", + "Stood check’d awhile, and Greece respired again.\n", + "\n", + "The sons of Merops shone amidst the war;\n", + "Towering they rode in one refulgent car:\n", + "In deep prophetic arts their father skill’d,\n", + "Had warn’d his children from the Trojan field.\n", + "Fate urged them on: the father warn’d in vain;\n", + "They rush’d to fight, and perish’d on the plain;\n", + "Their breasts no more the vital spirit warms;\n", + "The stern Tydides strips their shining arms.\n", + "Hypirochus by great Ulysses dies,\n", + "And rich Hippodamus becomes his prize.\n", + "Great Jove from Ide with slaughter fills his sight,\n", + "And level hangs the doubtful scale of fight.\n", + "By Tydeus’ lance Agastrophus was slain,\n", + "The far-famed hero of Pæonian strain;\n", + "Wing’d with his fears, on foot he strove to fly,\n", + "His steeds too distant, and the foe too nigh:\n", + "Through broken orders, swifter than the wind,\n", + "He fled, but flying left his life behind.\n", + "This Hector sees, as his experienced eyes\n", + "Traverse the files, and to the rescue flies;\n", + "Shouts, as he pass’d, the crystal regions rend,\n", + "And moving armies on his march attend.\n", + "Great Diomed himself was seized with fear,\n", + "And thus bespoke his brother of the war:\n", + "\n", + "“Mark how this way yon bending squadrons yield!\n", + "The storm rolls on, and Hector rules the field:\n", + "Here stand his utmost force.”—The warrior said;\n", + "Swift at the word his ponderous javelin fled;\n", + "Nor miss’d its aim, but where the plumage danced\n", + "Razed the smooth cone, and thence obliquely glanced.\n", + "Safe in his helm (the gift of Phœbus’ hands)\n", + "Without a wound the Trojan hero stands;\n", + "But yet so stunn’d, that, staggering on the plain.\n", + "His arm and knee his sinking bulk sustain;\n", + "O’er his dim sight the misty vapours rise,\n", + "And a short darkness shades his swimming eyes.\n", + "Tydides followed to regain his lance;\n", + "While Hector rose, recover’d from the trance,\n", + "Remounts his car, and herds amidst the crowd:\n", + "The Greek pursues him, and exults aloud:\n", + "“Once more thank Phœbus for thy forfeit breath,\n", + "Or thank that swiftness which outstrips the death.\n", + "Well by Apollo are thy prayers repaid,\n", + "And oft that partial power has lent his aid.\n", + "Thou shall not long the death deserved withstand,\n", + "If any god assist Tydides’ hand.\n", + "Fly then, inglorious! but thy flight, this day,\n", + "Whole hecatombs of Trojan ghosts shall pay,”\n", + "\n", + "Him, while he triumph’d, Paris eyed from far,\n", + "(The spouse of Helen, the fair cause of war;)\n", + "Around the fields his feather’d shafts he sent,\n", + "From ancient Ilus’ ruin’d monument:\n", + "Behind the column placed, he bent his bow,\n", + "And wing’d an arrow at the unwary foe;\n", + "Just as he stoop’d, Agastrophus’s crest\n", + "To seize, and drew the corslet from his breast,\n", + "The bowstring twang’d; nor flew the shaft in vain,\n", + "But pierced his foot, and nail’d it to the plain.\n", + "The laughing Trojan, with a joyful spring.\n", + "Leaps from his ambush, and insults the king.\n", + "\n", + "“He bleeds! (he cries) some god has sped my dart!\n", + "Would the same god had fix’d it in his heart!\n", + "So Troy, relieved from that wide-wasting hand,\n", + "Should breathe from slaughter and in combat stand:\n", + "Whose sons now tremble at his darted spear,\n", + "As scatter’d lambs the rushing lion fear.”\n", + "\n", + "He dauntless thus: “Thou conqueror of the fair,\n", + "Thou woman-warrior with the curling hair;\n", + "Vain archer! trusting to the distant dart,\n", + "Unskill’d in arms to act a manly part!\n", + "Thou hast but done what boys or women can;\n", + "Such hands may wound, but not incense a man.\n", + "Nor boast the scratch thy feeble arrow gave,\n", + "A coward’s weapon never hurts the brave.\n", + "Not so this dart, which thou may’st one day feel;\n", + "Fate wings its flight, and death is on the steel:\n", + "Where this but lights, some noble life expires;\n", + "Its touch makes orphans, bathes the cheeks of sires,\n", + "Steeps earth in purple, gluts the birds of air,\n", + "And leaves such objects as distract the fair.”\n", + "Ulysses hastens with a trembling heart,\n", + "Before him steps, and bending draws the dart:\n", + "Forth flows the blood; an eager pang succeeds;\n", + "Tydides mounts, and to the navy speeds.\n", + "\n", + "Now on the field Ulysses stands alone,\n", + "The Greeks all fled, the Trojans pouring on;\n", + "But stands collected in himself, and whole,\n", + "And questions thus his own unconquer’d soul:\n", + "\n", + "“What further subterfuge, what hopes remain?\n", + "What shame, inglorious if I quit the plain?\n", + "What danger, singly if I stand the ground,\n", + "My friends all scatter’d, all the foes around?\n", + "Yet wherefore doubtful? let this truth suffice,\n", + "The brave meets danger, and the coward flies.\n", + "To die or conquer, proves a hero’s heart;\n", + "And, knowing this, I know a soldier’s part.”\n", + "\n", + "Such thoughts revolving in his careful breast,\n", + "Near, and more near, the shady cohorts press’d;\n", + "These, in the warrior, their own fate enclose;\n", + "And round him deep the steely circle grows.\n", + "So fares a boar whom all the troop surrounds\n", + "Of shouting huntsmen and of clamorous hounds;\n", + "He grinds his ivory tusks; he foams with ire;\n", + "His sanguine eye-balls glare with living fire;\n", + "By these, by those, on every part is plied;\n", + "And the red slaughter spreads on every side.\n", + "Pierced through the shoulder, first Deiopis fell;\n", + "Next Ennomus and Thoon sank to hell;\n", + "Chersidamas, beneath the navel thrust,\n", + "Falls prone to earth, and grasps the bloody dust.\n", + "Charops, the son of Hippasus, was near;\n", + "Ulysses reach’d him with the fatal spear;\n", + "But to his aid his brother Socus flies,\n", + "Socus the brave, the generous, and the wise.\n", + "Near as he drew, the warrior thus began:\n", + "\n", + "“O great Ulysses! much-enduring man!\n", + "Not deeper skill’d in every martial sleight,\n", + "Than worn to toils, and active in the fight!\n", + "This day two brothers shall thy conquest grace,\n", + "And end at once the great Hippasian race,\n", + "Or thou beneath this lance must press the field.”\n", + "He said, and forceful pierced his spacious shield:\n", + "Through the strong brass the ringing javelin thrown,\n", + "Plough’d half his side, and bared it to the bone.\n", + "By Pallas’ care, the spear, though deep infix’d,\n", + "Stopp’d short of life, nor with his entrails mix’d.\n", + "\n", + "The wound not mortal wise Ulysses knew,\n", + "Then furious thus (but first some steps withdrew):\n", + "“Unhappy man! whose death our hands shall grace,\n", + "Fate calls thee hence and finish’d is thy race.\n", + "Nor longer check my conquests on the foe;\n", + "But, pierced by this, to endless darkness go,\n", + "And add one spectre to the realms below!”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, while Socus, seized with sudden fright,\n", + "Trembling gave way, and turn’d his back to flight;\n", + "Between his shoulders pierced the following dart,\n", + "And held its passage through the panting heart:\n", + "Wide in his breast appear’d the grisly wound;\n", + "He falls; his armour rings against the ground.\n", + "Then thus Ulysses, gazing on the slain:\n", + "“Famed son of Hippasus! there press the plain;\n", + "There ends thy narrow span assign’d by fate,\n", + "Heaven owes Ulysses yet a longer date.\n", + "Ah, wretch! no father shall thy corpse compose;\n", + "Thy dying eyes no tender mother close;\n", + "But hungry birds shall tear those balls away,\n", + "And hovering vultures scream around their prey.\n", + "Me Greece shall honour, when I meet my doom,\n", + "With solemn funerals and a lasting tomb.”\n", + "\n", + "Then raging with intolerable smart,\n", + "He writhes his body, and extracts the dart.\n", + "The dart a tide of spouting gore pursued,\n", + "And gladden’d Troy with sight of hostile blood.\n", + "Now troops on troops the fainting chief invade,\n", + "Forced he recedes, and loudly calls for aid.\n", + "Thrice to its pitch his lofty voice he rears;\n", + "The well-known voice thrice Menelaus hears:\n", + "Alarm’d, to Ajax Telamon he cried,\n", + "Who shares his labours, and defends his side:\n", + "“O friend! Ulysses’ shouts invade my ear;\n", + "Distressed he seems, and no assistance near;\n", + "Strong as he is, yet one opposed to all,\n", + "Oppress’d by multitudes, the best may fall.\n", + "Greece robb’d of him must bid her host despair,\n", + "And feel a loss not ages can repair.”\n", + "\n", + "Then, where the cry directs, his course he bends;\n", + "Great Ajax, like the god of war, attends,\n", + "The prudent chief in sore distress they found,\n", + "With bands of furious Trojans compass’d round.[223]\n", + "As when some huntsman, with a flying spear,\n", + "From the blind thicket wounds a stately deer;\n", + "Down his cleft side, while fresh the blood distils,\n", + "He bounds aloft, and scuds from hills to hills,\n", + "Till life’s warm vapour issuing through the wound,\n", + "Wild mountain-wolves the fainting beast surround:\n", + "Just as their jaws his prostrate limbs invade,\n", + "The lion rushes through the woodland shade,\n", + "The wolves, though hungry, scour dispersed away;\n", + "The lordly savage vindicates his prey.\n", + "Ulysses thus, unconquer’d by his pains,\n", + "A single warrior half a host sustains:\n", + "But soon as Ajax leaves his tower-like shield,\n", + "The scattered crowds fly frighted o’er the field;\n", + "Atrides’ arm the sinking hero stays,\n", + "And, saved from numbers, to his car conveys.\n", + "\n", + "Victorious Ajax plies the routed crew;\n", + "And first Doryclus, Priam’s son, he slew,\n", + "On strong Pandocus next inflicts a wound,\n", + "And lays Lysander bleeding on the ground.\n", + "As when a torrent, swell’d with wintry rains,\n", + "Pours from the mountains o’er the deluged plains,\n", + "And pines and oaks, from their foundations torn,\n", + "A country’s ruins! to the seas are borne:\n", + "Fierce Ajax thus o’erwhelms the yielding throng;\n", + "Men, steeds, and chariots, roll in heaps along.\n", + "\n", + "But Hector, from this scene of slaughter far,\n", + "Raged on the left, and ruled the tide of war:\n", + "Loud groans proclaim his progress through the plain,\n", + "And deep Scamander swells with heaps of slain.\n", + "There Nestor and Idomeneus oppose\n", + "The warrior’s fury; there the battle glows;\n", + "There fierce on foot, or from the chariot’s height,\n", + "His sword deforms the beauteous ranks of fight.\n", + "The spouse of Helen, dealing darts around,\n", + "Had pierced Machaon with a distant wound:\n", + "In his right shoulder the broad shaft appear’d,\n", + "And trembling Greece for her physician fear’d.\n", + "To Nestor then Idomeneus begun:\n", + "“Glory of Greece, old Neleus’ valiant son!\n", + "Ascend thy chariot, haste with speed away,\n", + "And great Machaon to the ships convey;\n", + "A wise physician skill’d our wounds to heal,\n", + "Is more than armies to the public weal.”\n", + "Old Nestor mounts the seat; beside him rode\n", + "The wounded offspring of the healing god.\n", + "He lends the lash; the steeds with sounding feet\n", + "Shake the dry field, and thunder toward the fleet.\n", + "\n", + "But now Cebriones, from Hector’s car,\n", + "Survey’d the various fortune of the war:\n", + "“While here (he cried) the flying Greeks are slain,\n", + "Trojans on Trojans yonder load the plain.\n", + "Before great Ajax see the mingled throng\n", + "Of men and chariots driven in heaps along!\n", + "I know him well, distinguish’d o’er the field\n", + "By the broad glittering of the sevenfold shield.\n", + "Thither, O Hector, thither urge thy steeds,\n", + "There danger calls, and there the combat bleeds;\n", + "There horse and foot in mingled deaths unite,\n", + "And groans of slaughter mix with shouts of fight.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having spoke, the driver’s lash resounds;\n", + "Swift through the ranks the rapid chariot bounds;\n", + "Stung by the stroke, the coursers scour the fields,\n", + "O’er heaps of carcases, and hills of shields.\n", + "The horses’ hoofs are bathed in heroes’ gore,\n", + "And, dashing, purple all the car before;\n", + "The groaning axle sable drops distils,\n", + "And mangled carnage clogs the rapid wheels.\n", + "Here Hector, plunging through the thickest fight,\n", + "Broke the dark phalanx, and let in the light:\n", + "(By the long lance, the sword, or ponderous stone,\n", + "The ranks he scatter’d and the troops o’erthrown:)\n", + "Ajax he shuns, through all the dire debate,\n", + "And fears that arm whose force he felt so late.\n", + "But partial Jove, espousing Hector’s part,\n", + "Shot heaven-bred horror through the Grecian’s heart;\n", + "Confused, unnerved in Hector’s presence grown,\n", + "Amazed he stood, with terrors not his own.\n", + "O’er his broad back his moony shield he threw,\n", + "And, glaring round, by tardy steps withdrew.\n", + "Thus the grim lion his retreat maintains,\n", + "Beset with watchful dogs, and shouting swains;\n", + "Repulsed by numbers from the nightly stalls,\n", + "Though rage impels him, and though hunger calls,\n", + "Long stands the showering darts, and missile fires;\n", + "Then sourly slow the indignant beast retires:\n", + "So turn’d stern Ajax, by whole hosts repell’d,\n", + "While his swoln heart at every step rebell’d.\n", + "\n", + "As the slow beast, with heavy strength endued,\n", + "In some wide field by troops of boys pursued,\n", + "Though round his sides a wooden tempest rain,\n", + "Crops the tall harvest, and lays waste the plain;\n", + "Thick on his hide the hollow blows resound,\n", + "The patient animal maintains his ground,\n", + "Scarce from the field with all their efforts chased,\n", + "And stirs but slowly when he stirs at last:\n", + "On Ajax thus a weight of Trojans hung,\n", + "The strokes redoubled on his buckler rung;\n", + "Confiding now in bulky strength he stands,\n", + "Now turns, and backward bears the yielding bands;\n", + "Now stiff recedes, yet hardly seems to fly,\n", + "And threats his followers with retorted eye.\n", + "Fix’d as the bar between two warring powers,\n", + "While hissing darts descend in iron showers:\n", + "In his broad buckler many a weapon stood,\n", + "Its surface bristled with a quivering wood;\n", + "And many a javelin, guiltless on the plain,\n", + "Marks the dry dust, and thirsts for blood in vain.\n", + "But bold Eurypylus his aid imparts,\n", + "And dauntless springs beneath a cloud of darts;\n", + "Whose eager javelin launch’d against the foe,\n", + "Great Apisaon felt the fatal blow;\n", + "From his torn liver the red current flow’d,\n", + "And his slack knees desert their dying load.\n", + "The victor rushing to despoil the dead,\n", + "From Paris’ bow a vengeful arrow fled;\n", + "Fix’d in his nervous thigh the weapon stood,\n", + "Fix’d was the point, but broken was the wood.\n", + "Back to the lines the wounded Greek retired,\n", + "Yet thus retreating, his associates fired:\n", + "\n", + "“What god, O Grecians! has your hearts dismay’d?\n", + "Oh, turn to arms; ’tis Ajax claims your aid.\n", + "This hour he stands the mark of hostile rage,\n", + "And this the last brave battle he shall wage:\n", + "Haste, join your forces; from the gloomy grave\n", + "The warrior rescue, and your country save.”\n", + "Thus urged the chief: a generous troop appears,\n", + "Who spread their bucklers, and advance their spears,\n", + "To guard their wounded friend: while thus they stand\n", + "With pious care, great Ajax joins the band:\n", + "Each takes new courage at the hero’s sight;\n", + "The hero rallies, and renews the fight.\n", + "\n", + "Thus raged both armies like conflicting fires,\n", + "While Nestor’s chariot far from fight retires:\n", + "His coursers steep’d in sweat, and stain’d with gore,\n", + "The Greeks’ preserver, great Machaon, bore.\n", + "That hour Achilles, from the topmost height\n", + "Of his proud fleet, o’erlook’d the fields of fight;\n", + "His feasted eyes beheld around the plain\n", + "The Grecian rout, the slaying, and the slain.\n", + "His friend Machaon singled from the rest,\n", + "A transient pity touch’d his vengeful breast.\n", + "Straight to Menoetius’ much-loved son he sent:\n", + "Graceful as Mars, Patroclus quits his tent;\n", + "In evil hour! Then fate decreed his doom,\n", + "And fix’d the date of all his woes to come.\n", + "\n", + "“Why calls my friend? thy loved injunctions lay;\n", + "Whate’er thy will, Patroclus shall obey.”\n", + "\n", + "“O first of friends! (Pelides thus replied)\n", + "Still at my heart, and ever at my side!\n", + "The time is come, when yon despairing host\n", + "Shall learn the value of the man they lost:\n", + "Now at my knees the Greeks shall pour their moan,\n", + "And proud Atrides tremble on his throne.\n", + "Go now to Nestor, and from him be taught\n", + "What wounded warrior late his chariot brought:\n", + "For, seen at distance, and but seen behind,\n", + "His form recall’d Machaon to my mind;\n", + "Nor could I, through yon cloud, discern his face,\n", + "The coursers pass’d me with so swift a pace.”\n", + "\n", + "The hero said. His friend obey’d with haste,\n", + "Through intermingled ships and tents he pass’d;\n", + "The chiefs descending from their car he found:\n", + "The panting steeds Eurymedon unbound.\n", + "The warriors standing on the breezy shore,\n", + "To dry their sweat, and wash away the gore,\n", + "Here paused a moment, while the gentle gale\n", + "Convey’d that freshness the cool seas exhale;\n", + "Then to consult on farther methods went,\n", + "And took their seats beneath the shady tent.\n", + "The draught prescribed, fair Hecamede prepares,\n", + "Arsinous’ daughter, graced with golden hairs:\n", + "(Whom to his aged arms, a royal slave,\n", + "Greece, as the prize of Nestor’s wisdom gave:)\n", + "A table first with azure feet she placed;\n", + "Whose ample orb a brazen charger graced;\n", + "Honey new-press’d, the sacred flour of wheat,\n", + "And wholesome garlic, crown’d the savoury treat,\n", + "Next her white hand an antique goblet brings,\n", + "A goblet sacred to the Pylian kings\n", + "From eldest times: emboss’d with studs of gold,\n", + "Two feet support it, and four handles hold;\n", + "On each bright handle, bending o’er the brink,\n", + "In sculptured gold, two turtles seem to drink:\n", + "A massy weight, yet heaved with ease by him,\n", + "When the brisk nectar overlook’d the brim.\n", + "Temper’d in this, the nymph of form divine\n", + "Pours a large portion of the Pramnian wine;\n", + "With goat’s-milk cheese a flavourous taste bestows,\n", + "And last with flour the smiling surface strows:\n", + "This for the wounded prince the dame prepares:\n", + "The cordial beverage reverend Nestor shares:\n", + "Salubrious draughts the warriors’ thirst allay,\n", + "And pleasing conference beguiles the day.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime Patroclus, by Achilles sent,\n", + "Unheard approached, and stood before the tent.\n", + "Old Nestor, rising then, the hero led\n", + "To his high seat: the chief refused and said:\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis now no season for these kind delays;\n", + "The great Achilles with impatience stays.\n", + "To great Achilles this respect I owe;\n", + "Who asks, what hero, wounded by the foe,\n", + "Was borne from combat by thy foaming steeds?\n", + "With grief I see the great Machaon bleeds.\n", + "This to report, my hasty course I bend;\n", + "Thou know’st the fiery temper of my friend.”\n", + "“Can then the sons of Greece (the sage rejoin’d)\n", + "Excite compassion in Achilles’ mind?\n", + "Seeks he the sorrows of our host to know?\n", + "This is not half the story of our woe.\n", + "Tell him, not great Machaon bleeds alone,\n", + "Our bravest heroes in the navy groan,\n", + "Ulysses, Agamemnon, Diomed,\n", + "And stern Eurypylus, already bleed.\n", + "But, ah! what flattering hopes I entertain!\n", + "Achilles heeds not, but derides our pain:\n", + "Even till the flames consume our fleet he stays,\n", + "And waits the rising of the fatal blaze.\n", + "Chief after chief the raging foe destroys;\n", + "Calm he looks on, and every death enjoys.\n", + "Now the slow course of all-impairing time\n", + "Unstrings my nerves, and ends my manly prime;\n", + "Oh! had I still that strength my youth possess’d,\n", + "When this bold arm the Epeian powers oppress’d,\n", + "The bulls of Elis in glad triumph led,\n", + "And stretch’d the great Itymonaeus dead!\n", + "Then from my fury fled the trembling swains,\n", + "And ours was all the plunder of the plains:\n", + "Fifty white flocks, full fifty herds of swine,\n", + "As many goats, as many lowing kine:\n", + "And thrice the number of unrivall’d steeds,\n", + "All teeming females, and of generous breeds.\n", + "These, as my first essay of arms, I won;\n", + "Old Neleus gloried in his conquering son.\n", + "Thus Elis forced, her long arrears restored,\n", + "And shares were parted to each Pylian lord.\n", + "The state of Pyle was sunk to last despair,\n", + "When the proud Elians first commenced the war:\n", + "For Neleus’ sons Alcides’ rage had slain;\n", + "Of twelve bold brothers, I alone remain!\n", + "Oppress’d, we arm’d; and now this conquest gain’d,\n", + "My sire three hundred chosen sheep obtain’d.\n", + "(That large reprisal he might justly claim,\n", + "For prize defrauded, and insulted fame,\n", + "When Elis’ monarch, at the public course,\n", + "Detain’d his chariot, and victorious horse.)\n", + "The rest the people shared; myself survey’d\n", + "The just partition, and due victims paid.\n", + "Three days were past, when Elis rose to war,\n", + "With many a courser, and with many a car;\n", + "The sons of Actor at their army’s head\n", + "(Young as they were) the vengeful squadrons led.\n", + "High on the rock fair Thryoessa stands,\n", + "Our utmost frontier on the Pylian lands:\n", + "Not far the streams of famed Alphaeus flow:\n", + "The stream they pass’d, and pitch’d their tents below.\n", + "Pallas, descending in the shades of night,\n", + "Alarms the Pylians and commands the fight.\n", + "Each burns for fame, and swells with martial pride,\n", + "Myself the foremost; but my sire denied;\n", + "Fear’d for my youth, exposed to stern alarms;\n", + "And stopp’d my chariot, and detain’d my arms.\n", + "My sire denied in vain: on foot I fled\n", + "Amidst our chariots; for the goddess led.\n", + "\n", + "“Along fair Arene’s delightful plain\n", + "Soft Minyas rolls his waters to the main:\n", + "There, horse and foot, the Pylian troops unite,\n", + "And sheathed in arms, expect the dawning light.\n", + "Thence, ere the sun advanced his noon-day flame,\n", + "To great Alphaeus’ sacred source we came.\n", + "There first to Jove our solemn rites were paid;\n", + "An untamed heifer pleased the blue-eyed maid;\n", + "A bull, Alphaeus; and a bull was slain\n", + "To the blue monarch of the watery main.\n", + "In arms we slept, beside the winding flood,\n", + "While round the town the fierce Epeians stood.\n", + "Soon as the sun, with all-revealing ray,\n", + "Flamed in the front of Heaven, and gave the day.\n", + "Bright scenes of arms, and works of war appear;\n", + "The nations meet; there Pylos, Elis here.\n", + "The first who fell, beneath my javelin bled;\n", + "King Augias’ son, and spouse of Agamede:\n", + "(She that all simples’ healing virtues knew,\n", + "And every herb that drinks the morning dew:)\n", + "I seized his car, the van of battle led;\n", + "The Epeians saw, they trembled, and they fled.\n", + "The foe dispersed, their bravest warrior kill’d,\n", + "Fierce as the whirlwind now I swept the field:\n", + "Full fifty captive chariots graced my train;\n", + "Two chiefs from each fell breathless to the plain.\n", + "Then Actor’s sons had died, but Neptune shrouds\n", + "The youthful heroes in a veil of clouds.\n", + "O’er heapy shields, and o’er the prostrate throng,\n", + "Collecting spoils, and slaughtering all along,\n", + "Through wide Buprasian fields we forced the foes,\n", + "Where o’er the vales the Olenian rocks arose;\n", + "Till Pallas stopp’d us where Alisium flows.\n", + "Even there the hindmost of the rear I slay,\n", + "And the same arm that led concludes the day;\n", + "Then back to Pyle triumphant take my way.\n", + "There to high Jove were public thanks assign’d,\n", + "As first of gods; to Nestor, of mankind.\n", + "Such then I was, impell’d by youthful blood;\n", + "So proved my valour for my country’s good.\n", + "\n", + "“Achilles with unactive fury glows,\n", + "And gives to passion what to Greece he owes.\n", + "How shall he grieve, when to the eternal shade\n", + "Her hosts shall sink, nor his the power to aid!\n", + "O friend! my memory recalls the day,\n", + "When, gathering aids along the Grecian sea,\n", + "I, and Ulysses, touch’d at Phthia’s port,\n", + "And entered Peleus’ hospitable court.\n", + "A bull to Jove he slew in sacrifice,\n", + "And pour’d libations on the flaming thighs.\n", + "Thyself, Achilles, and thy reverend sire\n", + "Menoetius, turn’d the fragments on the fire.\n", + "Achilles sees us, to the feast invites;\n", + "Social we sit, and share the genial rites.\n", + "We then explained the cause on which we came,\n", + "Urged you to arms, and found you fierce for fame.\n", + "Your ancient fathers generous precepts gave;\n", + "Peleus said only this:—‘My son! be brave.’\n", + "Menoetius thus: ‘Though great Achilles shine\n", + "In strength superior, and of race divine,\n", + "Yet cooler thoughts thy elder years attend;\n", + "Let thy just counsels aid, and rule thy friend.’\n", + "Thus spoke your father at Thessalia’s court:\n", + "Words now forgot, though now of vast import.\n", + "Ah! try the utmost that a friend can say:\n", + "Such gentle force the fiercest minds obey;\n", + "Some favouring god Achilles’ heart may move;\n", + "Though deaf to glory, he may yield to love.\n", + "If some dire oracle his breast alarm,\n", + "If aught from Heaven withhold his saving arm,\n", + "Some beam of comfort yet on Greece may shine,\n", + "If thou but lead the Myrmidonian line;\n", + "Clad in Achilles’ arms, if thou appear,\n", + "Proud Troy may tremble, and desist from war;\n", + "Press’d by fresh forces, her o’er-labour’d train\n", + "Shall seek their walls, and Greece respire again.”\n", + "\n", + "This touch’d his generous heart, and from the tent\n", + "Along the shore with hasty strides he went;\n", + "Soon as he came, where, on the crowded strand,\n", + "The public mart and courts of justice stand,\n", + "Where the tall fleet of great Ulysses lies,\n", + "And altars to the guardian gods arise;\n", + "There, sad, he met the brave Euaemon’s son,\n", + "Large painful drops from all his members run;\n", + "An arrow’s head yet rooted in his wound,\n", + "The sable blood in circles mark’d the ground.\n", + "As faintly reeling he confess’d the smart,\n", + "Weak was his pace, but dauntless was his heart.\n", + "Divine compassion touch’d Patroclus’ breast,\n", + "Who, sighing, thus his bleeding friend address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Ah, hapless leaders of the Grecian host!\n", + "Thus must ye perish on a barbarous coast?\n", + "Is this your fate, to glut the dogs with gore,\n", + "Far from your friends, and from your native shore?\n", + "Say, great Eurypylus! shall Greece yet stand?\n", + "Resists she yet the raging Hector’s hand?\n", + "Or are her heroes doom’d to die with shame,\n", + "And this the period of our wars and fame?”\n", + "\n", + "Eurypylus replies: “No more, my friend;\n", + "Greece is no more! this day her glories end;\n", + "Even to the ships victorious Troy pursues,\n", + "Her force increasing as her toil renews.\n", + "Those chiefs, that used her utmost rage to meet,\n", + "Lie pierced with wounds, and bleeding in the fleet.\n", + "But, thou, Patroclus! act a friendly part,\n", + "Lead to my ships, and draw this deadly dart;\n", + "With lukewarm water wash the gore away;\n", + "With healing balms the raging smart allay,\n", + "Such as sage Chiron, sire of pharmacy,\n", + "Once taught Achilles, and Achilles thee.\n", + "Of two famed surgeons, Podalirius stands\n", + "This hour surrounded by the Trojan bands;\n", + "And great Machaon, wounded in his tent,\n", + "Now wants that succour which so oft he lent.”\n", + "\n", + "To him the chief: “What then remains to do?\n", + "The event of things the gods alone can view.\n", + "Charged by Achilles’ great command I fly,\n", + "And bear with haste the Pylian king’s reply:\n", + "But thy distress this instant claims relief.”\n", + "He said, and in his arms upheld the chief.\n", + "The slaves their master’s slow approach survey’d,\n", + "And hides of oxen on the floor display’d:\n", + "There stretch’d at length the wounded hero lay;\n", + "Patroclus cut the forky steel away:\n", + "Then in his hands a bitter root he bruised;\n", + "The wound he wash’d, the styptic juice infused.\n", + "The closing flesh that instant ceased to glow,\n", + "The wound to torture, and the blood to flow.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HERCULES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE BATTLE AT THE GRECIAN WALL.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The Greeks having retired into their intrenchments, Hector attempts to\n", + "force them; but it proving impossible to pass the ditch, Polydamas\n", + "advises to quit their chariots, and manage the attack on foot. The\n", + "Trojans follow his counsel; and having divided their army into five\n", + "bodies of foot, begin the assault. But upon the signal of an eagle with\n", + "a serpent in his talons, which appeared on the left hand of the\n", + "Trojans, Polydamas endeavours to withdraw them again. This Hector\n", + "opposes, and continues the attack; in which, after many actions,\n", + "Sarpedon makes the first breach in the wall. Hector also, casting a\n", + "stone of vast size, forces open one of the gates, and enters at the\n", + "head of his troops, who victoriously pursue the Grecians even to their\n", + "ships.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "While thus the hero’s pious cares attend\n", + "The cure and safety of his wounded friend,\n", + "Trojans and Greeks with clashing shields engage,\n", + "And mutual deaths are dealt with mutual rage.\n", + "Nor long the trench or lofty walls oppose;\n", + "With gods averse the ill-fated works arose;\n", + "Their powers neglected, and no victim slain,\n", + "The walls were raised, the trenches sunk in vain.\n", + "\n", + "Without the gods, how short a period stands\n", + "The proudest monument of mortal hands!\n", + "This stood while Hector and Achilles raged,\n", + "While sacred Troy the warring hosts engaged;\n", + "But when her sons were slain, her city burn’d,\n", + "And what survived of Greece to Greece return’d;\n", + "Then Neptune and Apollo shook the shore,\n", + "Then Ida’s summits pour’d their watery store;\n", + "Rhesus and Rhodius then unite their rills,\n", + "Caresus roaring down the stony hills,\n", + "Æsepus, Granicus, with mingled force,\n", + "And Xanthus foaming from his fruitful source;\n", + "And gulfy Simois, rolling to the main[224]\n", + "Helmets, and shields, and godlike heroes slain:\n", + "These, turn’d by Phœbus from their wonted ways,\n", + "Deluged the rampire nine continual days;\n", + "The weight of waters saps the yielding wall,\n", + "And to the sea the floating bulwarks fall.\n", + "Incessant cataracts the Thunderer pours,\n", + "And half the skies descend in sluicy showers.\n", + "The god of ocean, marching stern before,\n", + "With his huge trident wounds the trembling shore,\n", + "Vast stones and piles from their foundation heaves,\n", + "And whelms the smoky ruin in the waves.\n", + "Now smooth’d with sand, and levell’d by the flood,\n", + "No fragment tells where once the wonder stood;\n", + "In their old bounds the rivers roll again,\n", + "Shine ’twixt the hills, or wander o’er the plain.[225]\n", + "\n", + "But this the gods in later times perform;\n", + "As yet the bulwark stood, and braved the storm;\n", + "The strokes yet echoed of contending powers;\n", + "War thunder’d at the gates, and blood distain’d the towers.\n", + "Smote by the arm of Jove with dire dismay,\n", + "Close by their hollow ships the Grecians lay:\n", + "Hector’s approach in every wind they hear,\n", + "And Hector’s fury every moment fear.\n", + "He, like a whirlwind, toss’d the scattering throng,\n", + "Mingled the troops, and drove the field along.\n", + "So ’midst the dogs and hunters’ daring bands,\n", + "Fierce of his might, a boar or lion stands;\n", + "Arm’d foes around a dreadful circle form,\n", + "And hissing javelins rain an iron storm:\n", + "His powers untamed, their bold assault defy,\n", + "And where he turns the rout disperse or die:\n", + "He foams, he glares, he bounds against them all,\n", + "And if he falls, his courage makes him fall.\n", + "With equal rage encompass’d Hector glows;\n", + "Exhorts his armies, and the trenches shows.\n", + "The panting steeds impatient fury breathe,\n", + "And snort and tremble at the gulf beneath;\n", + "Just at the brink they neigh, and paw the ground,\n", + "And the turf trembles, and the skies resound.\n", + "Eager they view’d the prospect dark and deep,\n", + "Vast was the leap, and headlong hung the steep;\n", + "The bottom bare, (a formidable show!)\n", + "And bristled thick with sharpen’d stakes below.\n", + "The foot alone this strong defence could force,\n", + "And try the pass impervious to the horse.\n", + "This saw Polydamas; who, wisely brave,\n", + "Restrain’d great Hector, and this counsel gave:\n", + "\n", + "“O thou, bold leader of the Trojan bands!\n", + "And you, confederate chiefs from foreign lands!\n", + "What entrance here can cumbrous chariots find,\n", + "The stakes beneath, the Grecian walls behind?\n", + "No pass through those, without a thousand wounds,\n", + "No space for combat in yon narrow bounds.\n", + "Proud of the favours mighty Jove has shown,\n", + "On certain dangers we too rashly run:\n", + "If ’tis his will our haughty foes to tame,\n", + "Oh may this instant end the Grecian name!\n", + "Here, far from Argos, let their heroes fall,\n", + "And one great day destroy and bury all!\n", + "But should they turn, and here oppress our train,\n", + "What hopes, what methods of retreat remain?\n", + "Wedged in the trench, by our own troops confused,\n", + "In one promiscuous carnage crush’d and bruised,\n", + "All Troy must perish, if their arms prevail,\n", + "Nor shall a Trojan live to tell the tale.\n", + "Hear then, ye warriors! and obey with speed;\n", + "Back from the trenches let your steeds be led;\n", + "Then all alighting, wedged in firm array,\n", + "Proceed on foot, and Hector lead the way.\n", + "So Greece shall stoop before our conquering power,\n", + "And this (if Jove consent) her fatal hour.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] POLYDAMAS ADVISING HECTOR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "This counsel pleased: the godlike Hector sprung\n", + "Swift from his seat; his clanging armour rung.\n", + "The chief’s example follow’d by his train,\n", + "Each quits his car, and issues on the plain,\n", + "By orders strict the charioteers enjoin’d\n", + "Compel the coursers to their ranks behind.\n", + "The forces part in five distinguish’d bands,\n", + "And all obey their several chiefs’ commands.\n", + "The best and bravest in the first conspire,\n", + "Pant for the fight, and threat the fleet with fire:\n", + "Great Hector glorious in the van of these,\n", + "Polydamas, and brave Cebriones.\n", + "Before the next the graceful Paris shines,\n", + "And bold Alcathous, and Agenor joins.\n", + "The sons of Priam with the third appear,\n", + "Deiphobus, and Helenas the seer;\n", + "In arms with these the mighty Asius stood,\n", + "Who drew from Hyrtacus his noble blood,\n", + "And whom Arisba’s yellow coursers bore,\n", + "The coursers fed on Sellè’s winding shore.\n", + "Antenor’s sons the fourth battalion guide,\n", + "And great Æneas, born on fountful Ide.\n", + "Divine Sarpedon the last band obey’d,\n", + "Whom Glaucus and Asteropaeus aid.\n", + "Next him, the bravest, at their army’s head,\n", + "But he more brave than all the hosts he led.\n", + "\n", + "Now with compacted shields in close array,\n", + "The moving legions speed their headlong way:\n", + "Already in their hopes they fire the fleet,\n", + "And see the Grecians gasping at their feet.\n", + "\n", + "While every Trojan thus, and every aid,\n", + "The advice of wise Polydamas obey’d,\n", + "Asius alone, confiding in his car,\n", + "His vaunted coursers urged to meet the war.\n", + "Unhappy hero! and advised in vain;\n", + "Those wheels returning ne’er shall mark the plain;\n", + "No more those coursers with triumphant joy\n", + "Restore their master to the gates of Troy!\n", + "Black death attends behind the Grecian wall,\n", + "And great Idomeneus shall boast thy fall!\n", + "Fierce to the left he drives, where from the plain\n", + "The flying Grecians strove their ships to gain;\n", + "Swift through the wall their horse and chariots pass’d,\n", + "The gates half-open’d to receive the last.\n", + "Thither, exulting in his force, he flies:\n", + "His following host with clamours rend the skies:\n", + "To plunge the Grecians headlong in the main,\n", + "Such their proud hopes; but all their hopes were vain!\n", + "\n", + "To guard the gates, two mighty chiefs attend,\n", + "Who from the Lapiths’ warlike race descend;\n", + "This Polypœtes, great Perithous’ heir,\n", + "And that Leonteus, like the god of war.\n", + "As two tall oaks, before the wall they rise;\n", + "Their roots in earth, their heads amidst the skies:\n", + "Whose spreading arms with leafy honours crown’d,\n", + "Forbid the tempest, and protect the ground;\n", + "High on the hills appears their stately form,\n", + "And their deep roots for ever brave the storm.\n", + "So graceful these, and so the shock they stand\n", + "Of raging Asius, and his furious band.\n", + "Orestes, Acamas, in front appear,\n", + "And Œnomaus and Thoon close the rear:\n", + "In vain their clamours shake the ambient fields,\n", + "In vain around them beat their hollow shields;\n", + "The fearless brothers on the Grecians call,\n", + "To guard their navies, and defend the wall.\n", + "Even when they saw Troy’s sable troops impend,\n", + "And Greece tumultuous from her towers descend,\n", + "Forth from the portals rush’d the intrepid pair,\n", + "Opposed their breasts, and stood themselves the war.\n", + "So two wild boars spring furious from their den,\n", + "Roused with the cries of dogs and voice of men;\n", + "On every side the crackling trees they tear,\n", + "And root the shrubs, and lay the forest bare;\n", + "They gnash their tusks, with fire their eye-balls roll,\n", + "Till some wide wound lets out their mighty soul.\n", + "Around their heads the whistling javelins sung,\n", + "With sounding strokes their brazen targets rung;\n", + "Fierce was the fight, while yet the Grecian powers\n", + "Maintain’d the walls, and mann’d the lofty towers:\n", + "To save their fleet their last efforts they try,\n", + "And stones and darts in mingled tempests fly.\n", + "\n", + "As when sharp Boreas blows abroad, and brings\n", + "The dreary winter on his frozen wings;\n", + "Beneath the low-hung clouds the sheets of snow\n", + "Descend, and whiten all the fields below:\n", + "So fast the darts on either army pour,\n", + "So down the rampires rolls the rocky shower:\n", + "Heavy, and thick, resound the batter’d shields,\n", + "And the deaf echo rattles round the fields.\n", + "\n", + "With shame repulsed, with grief and fury driven,\n", + "The frantic Asius thus accuses Heaven:\n", + "“In powers immortal who shall now believe?\n", + "Can those too flatter, and can Jove deceive?\n", + "What man could doubt but Troy’s victorious power\n", + "Should humble Greece, and this her fatal hour?\n", + "But like when wasps from hollow crannies drive,\n", + "To guard the entrance of their common hive,\n", + "Darkening the rock, while with unwearied wings\n", + "They strike the assailants, and infix their stings;\n", + "A race determined, that to death contend:\n", + "So fierce these Greeks their last retreats defend.\n", + "Gods! shall two warriors only guard their gates,\n", + "Repel an army, and defraud the fates?”\n", + "\n", + "These empty accents mingled with the wind,\n", + "Nor moved great Jove’s unalterable mind;\n", + "To godlike Hector and his matchless might\n", + "Was owed the glory of the destined fight.\n", + "Like deeds of arms through all the forts were tried,\n", + "And all the gates sustain’d an equal tide;\n", + "Through the long walls the stony showers were heard,\n", + "The blaze of flames, the flash of arms appear’d.\n", + "The spirit of a god my breast inspire,\n", + "To raise each act to life, and sing with fire!\n", + "While Greece unconquer’d kept alive the war,\n", + "Secure of death, confiding in despair;\n", + "And all her guardian gods, in deep dismay,\n", + "With unassisting arms deplored the day.\n", + "\n", + "Even yet the dauntless Lapithae maintain\n", + "The dreadful pass, and round them heap the slain.\n", + "First Damasus, by Polypœtes’ steel,\n", + "Pierced through his helmet’s brazen visor, fell;\n", + "The weapon drank the mingled brains and gore!\n", + "The warrior sinks, tremendous now no more!\n", + "Next Ormenus and Pylon yield their breath:\n", + "Nor less Leonteus strews the field with death;\n", + "First through the belt Hippomachus he gored,\n", + "Then sudden waved his unresisted sword:\n", + "Antiphates, as through the ranks he broke,\n", + "The falchion struck, and fate pursued the stroke:\n", + "Iamenus, Orestes, Menon, bled;\n", + "And round him rose a monument of dead.\n", + "Meantime, the bravest of the Trojan crew,\n", + "Bold Hector and Polydamas, pursue;\n", + "Fierce with impatience on the works to fall,\n", + "And wrap in rolling flames the fleet and wall.\n", + "These on the farther bank now stood and gazed,\n", + "By Heaven alarm’d, by prodigies amazed:\n", + "A signal omen stopp’d the passing host,\n", + "Their martial fury in their wonder lost.\n", + "Jove’s bird on sounding pinions beat the skies;\n", + "A bleeding serpent of enormous size,\n", + "His talons truss’d; alive, and curling round,\n", + "He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound:\n", + "Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,\n", + "In airy circles wings his painful way,\n", + "Floats on the winds, and rends the heaven with cries:\n", + "Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies.\n", + "They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll’d,\n", + "And Jove’s portent with beating hearts behold.\n", + "Then first Polydamas the silence broke,\n", + "Long weigh’d the signal, and to Hector spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“How oft, my brother, thy reproach I bear,\n", + "For words well meant, and sentiments sincere?\n", + "True to those counsels which I judge the best,\n", + "I tell the faithful dictates of my breast.\n", + "To speak his thoughts is every freeman’s right,\n", + "In peace, in war, in council, and in fight;\n", + "And all I move, deferring to thy sway,\n", + "But tends to raise that power which I obey.\n", + "Then hear my words, nor may my words be vain!\n", + "Seek not this day the Grecian ships to gain;\n", + "For sure, to warn us, Jove his omen sent,\n", + "And thus my mind explains its clear event:\n", + "The victor eagle, whose sinister flight\n", + "Retards our host, and fills our hearts with fright,\n", + "Dismiss’d his conquest in the middle skies,\n", + "Allow’d to seize, but not possess the prize;\n", + "Thus, though we gird with fires the Grecian fleet,\n", + "Though these proud bulwalks tumble at our feet,\n", + "Toils unforeseen, and fiercer, are decreed;\n", + "More woes shall follow, and more heroes bleed.\n", + "So bodes my soul, and bids me thus advise;\n", + "For thus a skilful seer would read the skies.”\n", + "\n", + "To him then Hector with disdain return’d:\n", + "(Fierce as he spoke, his eyes with fury burn’d:)\n", + "“Are these the faithful counsels of thy tongue?\n", + "Thy will is partial, not thy reason wrong:\n", + "Or if the purpose of thy heart thou vent,\n", + "Sure heaven resumes the little sense it lent.\n", + "What coward counsels would thy madness move\n", + "Against the word, the will reveal’d of Jove?\n", + "The leading sign, the irrevocable nod,\n", + "And happy thunders of the favouring god,\n", + "These shall I slight, and guide my wavering mind\n", + "By wandering birds that flit with every wind?\n", + "Ye vagrants of the sky! your wings extend,\n", + "Or where the suns arise, or where descend;\n", + "To right, to left, unheeded take your way,\n", + "While I the dictates of high heaven obey.\n", + "Without a sign his sword the brave man draws,\n", + "And asks no omen but his country’s cause.\n", + "But why should’st thou suspect the war’s success?\n", + "None fears it more, as none promotes it less:\n", + "Though all our chiefs amidst yon ships expire,\n", + "Trust thy own cowardice to escape their fire.\n", + "Troy and her sons may find a general grave,\n", + "But thou canst live, for thou canst be a slave.\n", + "Yet should the fears that wary mind suggests\n", + "Spread their cold poison through our soldiers’ breasts,\n", + "My javelin can revenge so base a part,\n", + "And free the soul that quivers in thy heart.”\n", + "\n", + "Furious he spoke, and, rushing to the wall,\n", + "Calls on his host; his host obey the call;\n", + "With ardour follow where their leader flies:\n", + "Redoubling clamours thunder in the skies.\n", + "Jove breathes a whirlwind from the hills of Ide,\n", + "And drifts of dust the clouded navy hide;\n", + "He fills the Greeks with terror and dismay,\n", + "And gives great Hector the predestined day.\n", + "Strong in themselves, but stronger in his aid,\n", + "Close to the works their rigid siege they laid.\n", + "In vain the mounds and massy beams defend,\n", + "While these they undermine, and those they rend;\n", + "Upheaved the piles that prop the solid wall;\n", + "And heaps on heaps the smoky ruins fall.\n", + "Greece on her ramparts stands the fierce alarms;\n", + "The crowded bulwarks blaze with waving arms,\n", + "Shield touching shield, a long refulgent row;\n", + "Whence hissing darts, incessant, rain below.\n", + "The bold Ajaces fly from tower to tower,\n", + "And rouse, with flame divine, the Grecian power.\n", + "The generous impulse every Greek obeys;\n", + "Threats urge the fearful; and the valiant, praise.\n", + "\n", + "“Fellows in arms! whose deeds are known to fame,\n", + "And you, whose ardour hopes an equal name!\n", + "Since not alike endued with force or art;\n", + "Behold a day when each may act his part!\n", + "A day to fire the brave, and warm the cold,\n", + "To gain new glories, or augment the old.\n", + "Urge those who stand, and those who faint, excite;\n", + "Drown Hector’s vaunts in loud exhorts of fight;\n", + "Conquest, not safety, fill the thoughts of all;\n", + "Seek not your fleet, but sally from the wall;\n", + "So Jove once more may drive their routed train,\n", + "And Troy lie trembling in her walls again.”\n", + "\n", + "Their ardour kindles all the Grecian powers;\n", + "And now the stones descend in heavier showers.\n", + "As when high Jove his sharp artillery forms,\n", + "And opes his cloudy magazine of storms;\n", + "In winter’s bleak uncomfortable reign,\n", + "A snowy inundation hides the plain;\n", + "He stills the winds, and bids the skies to sleep;\n", + "Then pours the silent tempest thick and deep;\n", + "And first the mountain-tops are cover’d o’er,\n", + "Then the green fields, and then the sandy shore;\n", + "Bent with the weight, the nodding woods are seen,\n", + "And one bright waste hides all the works of men:\n", + "The circling seas, alone absorbing all,\n", + "Drink the dissolving fleeces as they fall:\n", + "So from each side increased the stony rain,\n", + "And the white ruin rises o’er the plain.\n", + "\n", + "Thus godlike Hector and his troops contend\n", + "To force the ramparts, and the gates to rend:\n", + "Nor Troy could conquer, nor the Greeks would yield,\n", + "Till great Sarpedon tower’d amid the field;\n", + "For mighty Jove inspired with martial flame\n", + "His matchless son, and urged him on to fame.\n", + "In arms he shines, conspicuous from afar,\n", + "And bears aloft his ample shield in air;\n", + "Within whose orb the thick bull-hides were roll’d,\n", + "Ponderous with brass, and bound with ductile gold:\n", + "And while two pointed javelins arm his hands,\n", + "Majestic moves along, and leads his Lycian bands.\n", + "\n", + "So press’d with hunger, from the mountain’s brow\n", + "Descends a lion on the flocks below;\n", + "So stalks the lordly savage o’er the plain,\n", + "In sullen majesty, and stern disdain:\n", + "In vain loud mastiffs bay him from afar,\n", + "And shepherds gall him with an iron war;\n", + "Regardless, furious, he pursues his way;\n", + "He foams, he roars, he rends the panting prey.\n", + "\n", + "Resolved alike, divine Sarpedon glows\n", + "With generous rage that drives him on the foes.\n", + "He views the towers, and meditates their fall,\n", + "To sure destruction dooms the aspiring wall;\n", + "Then casting on his friend an ardent look,\n", + "Fired with the thirst of glory, thus he spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,[226]\n", + "Where Xanthus’ streams enrich the Lycian plain,\n", + "Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field,\n", + "And hills where vines their purple harvest yield,\n", + "Our foaming bowls with purer nectar crown’d,\n", + "Our feasts enhanced with music’s sprightly sound?\n", + "Why on those shores are we with joy survey’d,\n", + "Admired as heroes, and as gods obey’d,\n", + "Unless great acts superior merit prove,\n", + "And vindicate the bounteous powers above?\n", + "’Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace;\n", + "The first in valour, as the first in place;\n", + "That when with wondering eyes our martial bands\n", + "Behold our deeds transcending our commands,\n", + "Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state,\n", + "Whom those that envy dare not imitate!\n", + "Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,\n", + "Which claims no less the fearful and the brave,\n", + "For lust of fame I should not vainly dare\n", + "In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.\n", + "But since, alas! ignoble age must come,\n", + "Disease, and death’s inexorable doom,\n", + "The life, which others pay, let us bestow,\n", + "And give to fame what we to nature owe;\n", + "Brave though we fall, and honour’d if we live,\n", + "Or let us glory gain, or glory give!”\n", + "\n", + "He said; his words the listening chief inspire\n", + "With equal warmth, and rouse the warrior’s fire;\n", + "The troops pursue their leaders with delight,\n", + "Rush to the foe, and claim the promised fight.\n", + "Menestheus from on high the storm beheld\n", + "Threatening the fort, and blackening in the field:\n", + "Around the walls he gazed, to view from far\n", + "What aid appear’d to avert the approaching war,\n", + "And saw where Teucer with the Ajaces stood,\n", + "Of fight insatiate, prodigal of blood.\n", + "In vain he calls; the din of helms and shields\n", + "Rings to the skies, and echoes through the fields,\n", + "The brazen hinges fly, the walls resound,\n", + "Heaven trembles, roar the mountains, thunders all the ground.\n", + "Then thus to Thoos: “Hence with speed (he said),\n", + "And urge the bold Ajaces to our aid;\n", + "Their strength, united, best may help to bear\n", + "The bloody labours of the doubtful war:\n", + "Hither the Lycian princes bend their course,\n", + "The best and bravest of the hostile force.\n", + "But if too fiercely there the foes contend,\n", + "Let Telamon, at least, our towers defend,\n", + "And Teucer haste with his unerring bow\n", + "To share the danger, and repel the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift, at the word, the herald speeds along\n", + "The lofty ramparts, through the martial throng,\n", + "And finds the heroes bathed in sweat and gore,\n", + "Opposed in combat on the dusty shore.\n", + "“Ye valiant leaders of our warlike bands!\n", + "Your aid (said Thoos) Peteus’ son demands;\n", + "Your strength, united, best may help to bear\n", + "The bloody labours of the doubtful war:\n", + "Thither the Lycian princes bend their course,\n", + "The best and bravest of the hostile force.\n", + "But if too fiercely, here, the foes contend,\n", + "At least, let Telamon those towers defend,\n", + "And Teucer haste with his unerring bow\n", + "To share the danger, and repel the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "Straight to the fort great Ajax turn’d his care,\n", + "And thus bespoke his brothers of the war:\n", + "“Now, valiant Lycomede! exert your might,\n", + "And, brave Oïleus, prove your force in fight;\n", + "To you I trust the fortune of the field,\n", + "Till by this arm the foe shall be repell’d:\n", + "That done, expect me to complete the day.\n", + "Then with his sevenfold shield he strode away.”\n", + "With equal steps bold Teucer press’d the shore,\n", + "Whose fatal bow the strong Pandion bore.\n", + "\n", + "High on the walls appear’d the Lycian powers,\n", + "Like some black tempest gathering round the towers:\n", + "The Greeks, oppress’d, their utmost force unite,\n", + "Prepared to labour in the unequal fight:\n", + "The war renews, mix’d shouts and groans arise;\n", + "Tumultuous clamour mounts, and thickens in the skies.\n", + "Fierce Ajax first the advancing host invades,\n", + "And sends the brave Epicles to the shades,\n", + "Sarpedon’s friend. Across the warrior’s way,\n", + "Rent from the walls, a rocky fragment lay;\n", + "In modern ages not the strongest swain\n", + "Could heave the unwieldy burden from the plain:\n", + "He poised, and swung it round; then toss’d on high,\n", + "It flew with force, and labour’d up the sky;\n", + "Full on the Lycian’s helmet thundering down,\n", + "The ponderous ruin crush’d his batter’d crown.\n", + "As skilful divers from some airy steep\n", + "Headlong descend, and shoot into the deep,\n", + "So falls Epicles; then in groans expires,\n", + "And murmuring to the shades the soul retires.\n", + "\n", + "While to the ramparts daring Glaucus drew,\n", + "From Teucer’s hand a winged arrow flew;\n", + "The bearded shaft the destined passage found,\n", + "And on his naked arm inflicts a wound.\n", + "The chief, who fear’d some foe’s insulting boast\n", + "Might stop the progress of his warlike host,\n", + "Conceal’d the wound, and, leaping from his height\n", + "Retired reluctant from the unfinish’d fight.\n", + "Divine Sarpedon with regret beheld\n", + "Disabled Glaucus slowly quit the field;\n", + "His beating breast with generous ardour glows,\n", + "He springs to fight, and flies upon the foes.\n", + "Alcmaon first was doom’d his force to feel;\n", + "Deep in his breast he plunged the pointed steel;\n", + "Then from the yawning wound with fury tore\n", + "The spear, pursued by gushing streams of gore:\n", + "Down sinks the warrior with a thundering sound,\n", + "His brazen armour rings against the ground.\n", + "\n", + "Swift to the battlement the victor flies,\n", + "Tugs with full force, and every nerve applies:\n", + "It shakes; the ponderous stones disjointed yield;\n", + "The rolling ruins smoke along the field.\n", + "A mighty breach appears; the walls lie bare;\n", + "And, like a deluge, rushes in the war.\n", + "At once bold Teucer draws the twanging bow,\n", + "And Ajax sends his javelin at the foe;\n", + "Fix’d in his belt the feather’d weapon stood,\n", + "And through his buckler drove the trembling wood;\n", + "But Jove was present in the dire debate,\n", + "To shield his offspring, and avert his fate.\n", + "The prince gave back, not meditating flight,\n", + "But urging vengeance, and severer fight;\n", + "Then raised with hope, and fired with glory’s charms,\n", + "His fainting squadrons to new fury warms.\n", + "“O where, ye Lycians, is the strength you boast?\n", + "Your former fame and ancient virtue lost!\n", + "The breach lies open, but your chief in vain\n", + "Attempts alone the guarded pass to gain:\n", + "Unite, and soon that hostile fleet shall fall:\n", + "The force of powerful union conquers all.”\n", + "\n", + "This just rebuke inflamed the Lycian crew;\n", + "They join, they thicken, and the assault renew:\n", + "Unmoved the embodied Greeks their fury dare,\n", + "And fix’d support the weight of all the war;\n", + "Nor could the Greeks repel the Lycian powers,\n", + "Nor the bold Lycians force the Grecian towers.\n", + "As on the confines of adjoining grounds,\n", + "Two stubborn swains with blows dispute their bounds;\n", + "They tug, they sweat; but neither gain, nor yield,\n", + "One foot, one inch, of the contended field;\n", + "Thus obstinate to death, they fight, they fall;\n", + "Nor these can keep, nor those can win the wall.\n", + "Their manly breasts are pierced with many a wound,\n", + "Loud strokes are heard, and rattling arms resound;\n", + "The copious slaughter covers all the shore,\n", + "And the high ramparts drip with human gore.\n", + "\n", + "As when two scales are charged with doubtful loads,\n", + "From side to side the trembling balance nods,\n", + "(While some laborious matron, just and poor,\n", + "With nice exactness weighs her woolly store,)\n", + "Till poised aloft, the resting beam suspends\n", + "Each equal weight; nor this, nor that, descends:[227]\n", + "So stood the war, till Hector’s matchless might,\n", + "With fates prevailing, turn’d the scale of fight.\n", + "Fierce as a whirlwind up the walls he flies,\n", + "And fires his host with loud repeated cries.\n", + "“Advance, ye Trojans! lend your valiant hands,\n", + "Haste to the fleet, and toss the blazing brands!”\n", + "They hear, they run; and, gathering at his call,\n", + "Raise scaling engines, and ascend the wall:\n", + "Around the works a wood of glittering spears\n", + "Shoots up, and all the rising host appears.\n", + "A ponderous stone bold Hector heaved to throw,\n", + "Pointed above, and rough and gross below:\n", + "Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise,\n", + "Such men as live in these degenerate days:\n", + "Yet this, as easy as a swain could bear\n", + "The snowy fleece, he toss’d, and shook in air;\n", + "For Jove upheld, and lighten’d of its load\n", + "The unwieldy rock, the labour of a god.\n", + "Thus arm’d, before the folded gates he came,\n", + "Of massy substance, and stupendous frame;\n", + "With iron bars and brazen hinges strong,\n", + "On lofty beams of solid timber hung:\n", + "Then thundering through the planks with forceful sway,\n", + "Drives the sharp rock; the solid beams give way,\n", + "The folds are shatter’d; from the crackling door\n", + "Leap the resounding bars, the flying hinges roar.\n", + "Now rushing in, the furious chief appears,\n", + "Gloomy as night![228] and shakes two shining spears:\n", + "A dreadful gleam from his bright armour came,\n", + "And from his eye-balls flash’d the living flame.\n", + "He moves a god, resistless in his course,\n", + "And seems a match for more than mortal force.\n", + "Then pouring after, through the gaping space,\n", + "A tide of Trojans flows, and fills the place;\n", + "The Greeks behold, they tremble, and they fly;\n", + "The shore is heap’d with death, and tumult rends the sky.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] GREEK ALTAR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XIII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE FOURTH BATTLE CONTINUED, IN WHICH NEPTUNE ASSISTS THE GREEKS: THE\n", + "ACTS OF IDOMENEUS.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Neptune, concerned for the loss of the Grecians, upon seeing the\n", + "fortification forced by Hector, (who had entered the gate near the\n", + "station of the Ajaces,) assumes the shape of Calchas, and inspires\n", + "those heroes to oppose him: then, in the form of one of the generals,\n", + "encourages the other Greeks who had retired to their vessels. The\n", + "Ajaces form their troops in a close phalanx, and put a stop to Hector\n", + "and the Trojans. Several deeds of valour are performed; Meriones,\n", + "losing his spear in the encounter, repairs to seek another at the tent\n", + "of Idomeneus: this occasions a conversation between those two warriors,\n", + "who return together to the battle. Idomeneus signalizes his courage\n", + "above the rest; he kills Othryoneus, Asius, and Alcathous: Deiphobus\n", + "and Æneas march against him, and at length Idomeneus retires. Menelaus\n", + "wounds Helenus, and kills Pisander. The Trojans are repulsed on the\n", + "left wing; Hector still keeps his ground against the Ajaces, till,\n", + "being galled by the Locrian slingers and archers, Polydamas advises to\n", + "call a council of war: Hector approves of his advice, but goes first to\n", + "rally the Trojans; upbraids Paris, rejoins Polydamas, meets Ajax again,\n", + "and renews the attack.\n", + " The eight-and-twentieth day still continues. The scene is between\n", + " the Grecian wall and the sea-shore.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "When now the Thunderer on the sea-beat coast\n", + "Had fix’d great Hector and his conquering host,\n", + "He left them to the fates, in bloody fray\n", + "To toil and struggle through the well-fought day.\n", + "Then turn’d to Thracia from the field of fight\n", + "Those eyes that shed insufferable light,\n", + "To where the Mysians prove their martial force,\n", + "And hardy Thracians tame the savage horse;\n", + "And where the far-famed Hippomolgian strays,\n", + "Renown’d for justice and for length of days;[229]\n", + "Thrice happy race! that, innocent of blood,\n", + "From milk, innoxious, seek their simple food:\n", + "Jove sees delighted; and avoids the scene\n", + "Of guilty Troy, of arms, and dying men:\n", + "No aid, he deems, to either host is given,\n", + "While his high law suspends the powers of Heaven.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime the monarch of the watery main\n", + "Observed the Thunderer, nor observed in vain.\n", + "In Samothracia, on a mountain’s brow,\n", + "Whose waving woods o’erhung the deeps below,\n", + "He sat; and round him cast his azure eyes\n", + "Where Ida’s misty tops confusedly rise;\n", + "Below, fair Ilion’s glittering spires were seen;\n", + "The crowded ships and sable seas between.\n", + "There, from the crystal chambers of the main\n", + "Emerged, he sat, and mourn’d his Argives slain.\n", + "At Jove incensed, with grief and fury stung,\n", + "Prone down the rocky steep he rush’d along;\n", + "Fierce as he pass’d, the lofty mountains nod,\n", + "The forest shakes; earth trembled as he trod,\n", + "And felt the footsteps of the immortal god.\n", + "From realm to realm three ample strides he took,\n", + "And, at the fourth, the distant Ægae shook.\n", + "\n", + "Far in the bay his shining palace stands,\n", + "Eternal frame! not raised by mortal hands:\n", + "This having reach’d, his brass-hoof’d steeds he reins,\n", + "Fleet as the winds, and deck’d with golden manes.\n", + "Refulgent arms his mighty limbs infold,\n", + "Immortal arms of adamant and gold.\n", + "He mounts the car, the golden scourge applies,\n", + "He sits superior, and the chariot flies:\n", + "His whirling wheels the glassy surface sweep;\n", + "The enormous monsters rolling o’er the deep\n", + "Gambol around him on the watery way,\n", + "And heavy whales in awkward measures play;\n", + "The sea subsiding spreads a level plain,\n", + "Exults, and owns the monarch of the main;\n", + "The parting waves before his coursers fly;\n", + "The wondering waters leave his axle dry.\n", + "\n", + "Deep in the liquid regions lies a cave,\n", + "Between where Tenedos the surges lave,\n", + "And rocky Imbrus breaks the rolling wave:\n", + "There the great ruler of the azure round\n", + "Stopp’d his swift chariot, and his steeds unbound,\n", + "Fed with ambrosial herbage from his hand,\n", + "And link’d their fetlocks with a golden band,\n", + "Infrangible, immortal: there they stay:\n", + "The father of the floods pursues his way:\n", + "Where, like a tempest, darkening heaven around,\n", + "Or fiery deluge that devours the ground,\n", + "The impatient Trojans, in a gloomy throng,\n", + "Embattled roll’d, as Hector rush’d along:\n", + "To the loud tumult and the barbarous cry\n", + "The heavens re-echo, and the shores reply:\n", + "They vow destruction to the Grecian name,\n", + "And in their hopes the fleets already flame.\n", + "\n", + "But Neptune, rising from the seas profound,\n", + "The god whose earthquakes rock the solid ground,\n", + "Now wears a mortal form; like Calchas seen,\n", + "Such his loud voice, and such his manly mien;\n", + "His shouts incessant every Greek inspire,\n", + "But most the Ajaces, adding fire to fire.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] NEPTUNE RISING FROM THE SEA\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis yours, O warriors, all our hopes to raise:\n", + "Oh recollect your ancient worth and praise!\n", + "’Tis yours to save us, if you cease to fear;\n", + "Flight, more than shameful, is destructive here.\n", + "On other works though Troy with fury fall,\n", + "And pour her armies o’er our batter’d wall:\n", + "There Greece has strength: but this, this part o’erthrown,\n", + "Her strength were vain; I dread for you alone:\n", + "Here Hector rages like the force of fire,\n", + "Vaunts of his gods, and calls high Jove his sire:\n", + "If yet some heavenly power your breast excite,\n", + "Breathe in your hearts, and string your arms to fight,\n", + "Greece yet may live, her threaten’d fleet maintain:\n", + "And Hector’s force, and Jove’s own aid, be vain.”\n", + "\n", + "Then with his sceptre, that the deep controls,\n", + "He touch’d the chiefs, and steel’d their manly souls:\n", + "Strength, not their own, the touch divine imparts,\n", + "Prompts their light limbs, and swells their daring hearts.\n", + "Then, as a falcon from the rocky height,\n", + "Her quarry seen, impetuous at the sight,\n", + "Forth-springing instant, darts herself from high,\n", + "Shoots on the wing, and skims along the sky:\n", + "Such, and so swift, the power of ocean flew;\n", + "The wide horizon shut him from their view.\n", + "\n", + "The inspiring god Oïleus’ active son\n", + "Perceived the first, and thus to Telamon:\n", + "\n", + "“Some god, my friend, some god in human form\n", + "Favouring descends, and wills to stand the storm.\n", + "Not Calchas this, the venerable seer;\n", + "Short as he turned, I saw the power appear:\n", + "I mark’d his parting, and the steps he trod;\n", + "His own bright evidence reveals a god.\n", + "Even now some energy divine I share,\n", + "And seem to walk on wings, and tread in air!”\n", + "\n", + "“With equal ardour (Telamon returns)\n", + "My soul is kindled, and my bosom burns;\n", + "New rising spirits all my force alarm,\n", + "Lift each impatient limb, and brace my arm.\n", + "This ready arm, unthinking, shakes the dart;\n", + "The blood pours back, and fortifies my heart:\n", + "Singly, methinks, yon towering chief I meet,\n", + "And stretch the dreadful Hector at my feet.”\n", + "\n", + "Full of the god that urged their burning breast,\n", + "The heroes thus their mutual warmth express’d.\n", + "Neptune meanwhile the routed Greeks inspired;\n", + "Who, breathless, pale, with length of labours tired,\n", + "Pant in the ships; while Troy to conquest calls,\n", + "And swarms victorious o’er their yielding walls:\n", + "Trembling before the impending storm they lie,\n", + "While tears of rage stand burning in their eye.\n", + "Greece sunk they thought, and this their fatal hour;\n", + "But breathe new courage as they feel the power.\n", + "Teucer and Leitus first his words excite;\n", + "Then stern Peneleus rises to the fight;\n", + "Thoas, Deipyrus, in arms renown’d,\n", + "And Merion next, the impulsive fury found;\n", + "Last Nestor’s son the same bold ardour takes,\n", + "While thus the god the martial fire awakes:\n", + "\n", + "“Oh lasting infamy, oh dire disgrace\n", + "To chiefs of vigorous youth, and manly race!\n", + "I trusted in the gods, and you, to see\n", + "Brave Greece victorious, and her navy free:\n", + "Ah, no—the glorious combat you disclaim,\n", + "And one black day clouds all her former fame.\n", + "Heavens! what a prodigy these eyes survey,\n", + "Unseen, unthought, till this amazing day!\n", + "Fly we at length from Troy’s oft-conquer’d bands?\n", + "And falls our fleet by such inglorious hands?\n", + "A rout undisciplined, a straggling train,\n", + "Not born to glories of the dusty plain;\n", + "Like frighted fawns from hill to hill pursued,\n", + "A prey to every savage of the wood:\n", + "Shall these, so late who trembled at your name,\n", + "Invade your camps, involve your ships in flame?\n", + "A change so shameful, say, what cause has wrought?\n", + "The soldiers’ baseness, or the general’s fault?\n", + "Fools! will ye perish for your leader’s vice;\n", + "The purchase infamy, and life the price?\n", + "’Tis not your cause, Achilles’ injured fame:\n", + "Another’s is the crime, but yours the shame.\n", + "Grant that our chief offend through rage or lust,\n", + "Must you be cowards, if your king’s unjust?\n", + "Prevent this evil, and your country save:\n", + "Small thought retrieves the spirits of the brave.\n", + "Think, and subdue! on dastards dead to fame\n", + "I waste no anger, for they feel no shame:\n", + "But you, the pride, the flower of all our host,\n", + "My heart weeps blood to see your glory lost!\n", + "Nor deem this day, this battle, all you lose;\n", + "A day more black, a fate more vile, ensues.\n", + "Let each reflect, who prizes fame or breath,\n", + "On endless infamy, on instant death:\n", + "For, lo! the fated time, the appointed shore:\n", + "Hark! the gates burst, the brazen barriers roar!\n", + "Impetuous Hector thunders at the wall;\n", + "The hour, the spot, to conquer, or to fall.”\n", + "\n", + "These words the Grecians’ fainting hearts inspire,\n", + "And listening armies catch the godlike fire.\n", + "Fix’d at his post was each bold Ajax found,\n", + "With well-ranged squadrons strongly circled round:\n", + "So close their order, so disposed their fight,\n", + "As Pallas’ self might view with fix’d delight;\n", + "Or had the god of war inclined his eyes,\n", + "The god of war had own’d a just surprise.\n", + "A chosen phalanx, firm, resolved as fate,\n", + "Descending Hector and his battle wait.\n", + "An iron scene gleams dreadful o’er the fields,\n", + "Armour in armour lock’d, and shields in shields,\n", + "Spears lean on spears, on targets targets throng,\n", + "Helms stuck to helms, and man drove man along.\n", + "The floating plumes unnumber’d wave above,\n", + "As when an earthquake stirs the nodding grove;\n", + "And levell’d at the skies with pointing rays,\n", + "Their brandish’d lances at each motion blaze.\n", + "\n", + "Thus breathing death, in terrible array,\n", + "The close compacted legions urged their way:\n", + "Fierce they drove on, impatient to destroy;\n", + "Troy charged the first, and Hector first of Troy.\n", + "As from some mountain’s craggy forehead torn,\n", + "A rock’s round fragment flies, with fury borne,\n", + "(Which from the stubborn stone a torrent rends,)\n", + "Precipitate the ponderous mass descends:\n", + "From steep to steep the rolling ruin bounds;\n", + "At every shock the crackling wood resounds;\n", + "Still gathering force, it smokes; and urged amain,\n", + "Whirls, leaps, and thunders down, impetuous to the plain:\n", + "There stops—so Hector. Their whole force he proved,[230]\n", + "Resistless when he raged, and, when he stopp’d, unmoved.\n", + "\n", + "On him the war is bent, the darts are shed,\n", + "And all their falchions wave around his head:\n", + "Repulsed he stands, nor from his stand retires;\n", + "But with repeated shouts his army fires.\n", + "“Trojans! be firm; this arm shall make your way\n", + "Through yon square body, and that black array:\n", + "Stand, and my spear shall rout their scattering power,\n", + "Strong as they seem, embattled like a tower;\n", + "For he that Juno’s heavenly bosom warms,\n", + "The first of gods, this day inspires our arms.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and roused the soul in every breast:\n", + "Urged with desire of fame, beyond the rest,\n", + "Forth march’d Deiphobus; but, marching, held\n", + "Before his wary steps his ample shield.\n", + "Bold Merion aim’d a stroke (nor aim’d it wide);\n", + "The glittering javelin pierced the tough bull-hide;\n", + "But pierced not through: unfaithful to his hand,\n", + "The point broke short, and sparkled in the sand.\n", + "The Trojan warrior, touch’d with timely fear,\n", + "On the raised orb to distance bore the spear.\n", + "The Greek, retreating, mourn’d his frustrate blow,\n", + "And cursed the treacherous lance that spared a foe;\n", + "Then to the ships with surly speed he went,\n", + "To seek a surer javelin in his tent.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile with rising rage the battle glows,\n", + "The tumult thickens, and the clamour grows.\n", + "By Teucer’s arm the warlike Imbrius bleeds,\n", + "The son of Mentor, rich in generous steeds.\n", + "Ere yet to Troy the sons of Greece were led,\n", + "In fair Pedaeus’ verdant pastures bred,\n", + "The youth had dwelt, remote from war’s alarms,\n", + "And blest in bright Medesicaste’s arms:\n", + "(This nymph, the fruit of Priam’s ravish’d joy,\n", + "Allied the warrior to the house of Troy:)\n", + "To Troy, when glory call’d his arms, he came,\n", + "And match’d the bravest of her chiefs in fame:\n", + "With Priam’s sons, a guardian of the throne,\n", + "He lived, beloved and honour’d as his own.\n", + "Him Teucer pierced between the throat and ear:\n", + "He groans beneath the Telamonian spear.\n", + "As from some far-seen mountain’s airy crown,\n", + "Subdued by steel, a tall ash tumbles down,\n", + "And soils its verdant tresses on the ground;\n", + "So falls the youth; his arms the fall resound.\n", + "Then Teucer rushing to despoil the dead,\n", + "From Hector’s hand a shining javelin fled:\n", + "He saw, and shunn’d the death; the forceful dart\n", + "Sung on, and pierced Amphimachus’s heart,\n", + "Cteatus’ son, of Neptune’s forceful line;\n", + "Vain was his courage, and his race divine!\n", + "Prostrate he falls; his clanging arms resound,\n", + "And his broad buckler thunders on the ground.\n", + "To seize his beamy helm the victor flies,\n", + "And just had fastened on the dazzling prize,\n", + "When Ajax’ manly arm a javelin flung;\n", + "Full on the shield’s round boss the weapon rung;\n", + "He felt the shock, nor more was doom’d to feel,\n", + "Secure in mail, and sheath’d in shining steel.\n", + "Repulsed he yields; the victor Greeks obtain\n", + "The spoils contested, and bear off the slain.\n", + "Between the leaders of the Athenian line,\n", + "(Stichius the brave, Menestheus the divine,)\n", + "Deplored Amphimachus, sad object! lies;\n", + "Imbrius remains the fierce Ajaces’ prize.\n", + "As two grim lions bear across the lawn,\n", + "Snatch’d from devouring hounds, a slaughter’d fawn.\n", + "In their fell jaws high-lifting through the wood,\n", + "And sprinkling all the shrubs with drops of blood;\n", + "So these, the chief: great Ajax from the dead\n", + "Strips his bright arms; Oïleus lops his head:\n", + "Toss’d like a ball, and whirl’d in air away,\n", + "At Hector’s feet the gory visage lay.\n", + "\n", + "The god of ocean, fired with stern disdain,\n", + "And pierced with sorrow for his grandson slain,\n", + "Inspires the Grecian hearts, confirms their hands,\n", + "And breathes destruction on the Trojan bands.\n", + "Swift as a whirlwind rushing to the fleet,\n", + "He finds the lance-famed Idomen of Crete,\n", + "His pensive brow the generous care express’d\n", + "With which a wounded soldier touch’d his breast,\n", + "Whom in the chance of war a javelin tore,\n", + "And his sad comrades from the battle bore;\n", + "Him to the surgeons of the camp he sent:\n", + "That office paid, he issued from his tent\n", + "Fierce for the fight: to whom the god begun,\n", + "In Thoas’ voice, Andræmon’s valiant son,\n", + "Who ruled where Calydon’s white rocks arise,\n", + "And Pleuron’s chalky cliffs emblaze the skies:\n", + "\n", + "“Where’s now the imperious vaunt, the daring boast,\n", + "Of Greece victorious, and proud Ilion lost?”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king: “On Greece no blame be thrown;\n", + "Arms are her trade, and war is all her own.\n", + "Her hardy heroes from the well-fought plains\n", + "Nor fear withholds, nor shameful sloth detains:\n", + "’Tis heaven, alas! and Jove’s all-powerful doom,\n", + "That far, far distant from our native home\n", + "Wills us to fall inglorious! Oh, my friend!\n", + "Once foremost in the fight, still prone to lend\n", + "Or arms or counsels, now perform thy best,\n", + "And what thou canst not singly, urge the rest.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he: and thus the god whose force can make\n", + "The solid globe’s eternal basis shake:\n", + "“Ah! never may he see his native land,\n", + "But feed the vultures on this hateful strand,\n", + "Who seeks ignobly in his ships to stay,\n", + "Nor dares to combat on this signal day!\n", + "For this, behold! in horrid arms I shine,\n", + "And urge thy soul to rival acts with mine.\n", + "Together let us battle on the plain;\n", + "Two, not the worst; nor even this succour vain:\n", + "Not vain the weakest, if their force unite;\n", + "But ours, the bravest have confess’d in fight.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, he rushes where the combat burns;\n", + "Swift to his tent the Cretan king returns:\n", + "From thence, two javelins glittering in his hand,\n", + "And clad in arms that lighten’d all the strand,\n", + "Fierce on the foe the impetuous hero drove,\n", + "Like lightning bursting from the arm of Jove,\n", + "Which to pale man the wrath of heaven declares,\n", + "Or terrifies the offending world with wars;\n", + "In streamy sparkles, kindling all the skies,\n", + "From pole to pole the trail of glory flies:\n", + "Thus his bright armour o’er the dazzled throng\n", + "Gleam’d dreadful, as the monarch flash’d along.\n", + "\n", + "Him, near his tent, Meriones attends;\n", + "Whom thus he questions: “Ever best of friends!\n", + "O say, in every art of battle skill’d,\n", + "What holds thy courage from so brave a field?\n", + "On some important message art thou bound,\n", + "Or bleeds my friend by some unhappy wound?\n", + "Inglorious here, my soul abhors to stay,\n", + "And glows with prospects of th’ approaching day.”\n", + "\n", + "“O prince! (Meriones replies) whose care\n", + "Leads forth the embattled sons of Crete to war;\n", + "This speaks my grief: this headless lance I wield;\n", + "The rest lies rooted in a Trojan shield.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the Cretan: “Enter, and receive\n", + "The wonted weapons; those my tent can give;\n", + "Spears I have store, (and Trojan lances all,)\n", + "That shed a lustre round the illumined wall,\n", + "Though I, disdainful of the distant war,\n", + "Nor trust the dart, nor aim the uncertain spear,\n", + "Yet hand to hand I fight, and spoil the slain;\n", + "And thence these trophies, and these arms I gain.\n", + "Enter, and see on heaps the helmets roll’d,\n", + "And high-hung spears, and shields that flame with gold.”\n", + "\n", + "“Nor vain (said Merion) are our martial toils;\n", + "We too can boast of no ignoble spoils:\n", + "But those my ship contains; whence distant far,\n", + "I fight conspicuous in the van of war,\n", + "What need I more? If any Greek there be\n", + "Who knows not Merion, I appeal to thee.”\n", + "\n", + "To this, Idomeneus: “The fields of fight\n", + "Have proved thy valour, and unconquer’d might:\n", + "And were some ambush for the foes design’d,\n", + "Even there thy courage would not lag behind:\n", + "In that sharp service, singled from the rest,\n", + "The fear of each, or valour, stands confess’d.\n", + "No force, no firmness, the pale coward shows;\n", + "He shifts his place: his colour comes and goes:\n", + "A dropping sweat creeps cold on every part;\n", + "Against his bosom beats his quivering heart;\n", + "Terror and death in his wild eye-balls stare;\n", + "With chattering teeth he stands, and stiffening hair,\n", + "And looks a bloodless image of despair!\n", + "Not so the brave—still dauntless, still the same,\n", + "Unchanged his colour, and unmoved his frame:\n", + "Composed his thought, determined is his eye,\n", + "And fix’d his soul, to conquer or to die:\n", + "If aught disturb the tenour of his breast,\n", + "’Tis but the wish to strike before the rest.\n", + "\n", + "“In such assays thy blameless worth is known,\n", + "And every art of dangerous war thy own.\n", + "By chance of fight whatever wounds you bore,\n", + "Those wounds were glorious all, and all before;\n", + "Such as may teach, ’twas still thy brave delight\n", + "T’oppose thy bosom where thy foremost fight.\n", + "But why, like infants, cold to honour’s charms,\n", + "Stand we to talk, when glory calls to arms?\n", + "Go—from my conquer’d spears the choicest take,\n", + "And to their owners send them nobly back.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift at the word bold Merion snatch’d a spear\n", + "And, breathing slaughter, follow’d to the war.\n", + "So Mars armipotent invades the plain,\n", + "(The wide destroyer of the race of man,)\n", + "Terror, his best-beloved son, attends his course,\n", + "Arm’d with stern boldness, and enormous force;\n", + "The pride of haughty warriors to confound,\n", + "And lay the strength of tyrants on the ground:\n", + "From Thrace they fly, call’d to the dire alarms\n", + "Of warring Phlegyans, and Ephyrian arms;\n", + "Invoked by both, relentless they dispose,\n", + "To these glad conquest, murderous rout to those.\n", + "So march’d the leaders of the Cretan train,\n", + "And their bright arms shot horror o’er the plain.\n", + "\n", + "Then first spake Merion: “Shall we join the right,\n", + "Or combat in the centre of the fight?\n", + "Or to the left our wonted succour lend?\n", + "Hazard and fame all parts alike attend.”\n", + "\n", + "“Not in the centre (Idomen replied:)\n", + "Our ablest chieftains the main battle guide;\n", + "Each godlike Ajax makes that post his care,\n", + "And gallant Teucer deals destruction there,\n", + "Skill’d or with shafts to gall the distant field,\n", + "Or bear close battle on the sounding shield.\n", + "These can the rage of haughty Hector tame:\n", + "Safe in their arms, the navy fears no flame,\n", + "Till Jove himself descends, his bolts to shed,\n", + "And hurl the blazing ruin at our head.\n", + "Great must he be, of more than human birth,\n", + "Nor feed like mortals on the fruits of earth.\n", + "Him neither rocks can crush, nor steel can wound,\n", + "Whom Ajax fells not on the ensanguined ground.\n", + "In standing fight he mates Achilles’ force,\n", + "Excell’d alone in swiftness in the course.\n", + "Then to the left our ready arms apply,\n", + "And live with glory, or with glory die.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: and Merion to th’ appointed place,\n", + "Fierce as the god of battles, urged his pace.\n", + "Soon as the foe the shining chiefs beheld\n", + "Rush like a fiery torrent o’er the field,\n", + "Their force embodied in a tide they pour;\n", + "The rising combat sounds along the shore.\n", + "As warring winds, in Sirius’ sultry reign,\n", + "From different quarters sweep the sandy plain;\n", + "On every side the dusty whirlwinds rise,\n", + "And the dry fields are lifted to the skies:\n", + "Thus by despair, hope, rage, together driven,\n", + "Met the black hosts, and, meeting, darken’d heaven.\n", + "All dreadful glared the iron face of war,\n", + "Bristled with upright spears, that flash’d afar;\n", + "Dire was the gleam of breastplates, helms, and shields,\n", + "And polish’d arms emblazed the flaming fields:\n", + "Tremendous scene! that general horror gave,\n", + "But touch’d with joy the bosoms of the brave.\n", + "\n", + "Saturn’s great sons in fierce contention vied,\n", + "And crowds of heroes in their anger died.\n", + "The sire of earth and heaven, by Thetis won\n", + "To crown with glory Peleus’ godlike son,\n", + "Will’d not destruction to the Grecian powers,\n", + "But spared awhile the destined Trojan towers;\n", + "While Neptune, rising from his azure main,\n", + "Warr’d on the king of heaven with stern disdain,\n", + "And breathed revenge, and fired the Grecian train.\n", + "Gods of one source, of one ethereal race,\n", + "Alike divine, and heaven their native place;\n", + "But Jove the greater; first-born of the skies,\n", + "And more than men, or gods, supremely wise.\n", + "For this, of Jove’s superior might afraid,\n", + "Neptune in human form conceal’d his aid.\n", + "These powers enfold the Greek and Trojan train\n", + "In war and discord’s adamantine chain,\n", + "Indissolubly strong: the fatal tie\n", + "Is stretch’d on both, and close compell’d they die.\n", + "\n", + "Dreadful in arms, and grown in combats grey,\n", + "The bold Idomeneus controls the day.\n", + "First by his hand Othryoneus was slain,\n", + "Swell’d with false hopes, with mad ambition vain;\n", + "Call’d by the voice of war to martial fame,\n", + "From high Cabesus’ distant walls he came;\n", + "Cassandra’s love he sought, with boasts of power,\n", + "And promised conquest was the proffer’d dower.\n", + "The king consented, by his vaunts abused;\n", + "The king consented, but the fates refused.\n", + "Proud of himself, and of the imagined bride,\n", + "The field he measured with a larger stride.\n", + "Him as he stalk’d, the Cretan javelin found;\n", + "Vain was his breastplate to repel the wound:\n", + "His dream of glory lost, he plunged to hell;\n", + "His arms resounded as the boaster fell.\n", + "The great Idomeneus bestrides the dead;\n", + "“And thus (he cries) behold thy promise sped!\n", + "Such is the help thy arms to Ilion bring,\n", + "And such the contract of the Phrygian king!\n", + "Our offers now, illustrious prince! receive;\n", + "For such an aid what will not Argos give?\n", + "To conquer Troy, with ours thy forces join,\n", + "And count Atrides’ fairest daughter thine.\n", + "Meantime, on further methods to advise,\n", + "Come, follow to the fleet thy new allies;\n", + "There hear what Greece has on her part to say.”\n", + "He spoke, and dragg’d the gory corse away.\n", + "This Asius view’d, unable to contain,\n", + "Before his chariot warring on the plain:\n", + "(His crowded coursers, to his squire consign’d,\n", + "Impatient panted on his neck behind:)\n", + "To vengeance rising with a sudden spring,\n", + "He hoped the conquest of the Cretan king.\n", + "The wary Cretan, as his foe drew near,\n", + "Full on his throat discharged the forceful spear:\n", + "Beneath the chin the point was seen to glide,\n", + "And glitter’d, extant at the further side.\n", + "As when the mountain-oak, or poplar tall,\n", + "Or pine, fit mast for some great admiral,\n", + "Groans to the oft-heaved axe, with many a wound,\n", + "Then spreads a length of ruin o’er the ground:\n", + "So sunk proud Asius in that dreadful day,\n", + "And stretch’d before his much-loved coursers lay.\n", + "He grinds the dust distain’d with streaming gore,\n", + "And, fierce in death, lies foaming on the shore.\n", + "Deprived of motion, stiff with stupid fear,\n", + "Stands all aghast his trembling charioteer,\n", + "Nor shuns the foe, nor turns the steeds away,\n", + "But falls transfix’d, an unresisting prey:\n", + "Pierced by Antilochus, he pants beneath\n", + "The stately car, and labours out his breath.\n", + "Thus Asius’ steeds (their mighty master gone)\n", + "Remain the prize of Nestor’s youthful son.\n", + "\n", + "Stabb’d at the sight, Deiphobus drew nigh,\n", + "And made, with force, the vengeful weapon fly.\n", + "The Cretan saw; and, stooping, caused to glance\n", + "From his slope shield the disappointed lance.\n", + "Beneath the spacious targe, (a blazing round,\n", + "Thick with bull-hides and brazen orbits bound,\n", + "On his raised arm by two strong braces stay’d,)\n", + "He lay collected in defensive shade.\n", + "O’er his safe head the javelin idly sung,\n", + "And on the tinkling verge more faintly rung.\n", + "Even then the spear the vigorous arm confess’d,\n", + "And pierced, obliquely, king Hypsenor’s breast:\n", + "Warm’d in his liver, to the ground it bore\n", + "The chief, his people’s guardian now no more!\n", + "\n", + "“Not unattended (the proud Trojan cries)\n", + "Nor unrevenged, lamented Asius lies:\n", + "For thee, through hell’s black portals stand display’d,\n", + "This mate shall joy thy melancholy shade.”\n", + "\n", + "Heart-piercing anguish, at the haughty boast,\n", + "Touch’d every Greek, but Nestor’s son the most.\n", + "Grieved as he was, his pious arms attend,\n", + "And his broad buckler shields his slaughter’d friend:\n", + "Till sad Mecistheus and Alastor bore\n", + "His honour’d body to the tented shore.\n", + "\n", + "Nor yet from fight Idomeneus withdraws;\n", + "Resolved to perish in his country’s cause,\n", + "Or find some foe, whom heaven and he shall doom\n", + "To wail his fate in death’s eternal gloom.\n", + "He sees Alcathous in the front aspire:\n", + "Great Æsyetes was the hero’s sire;\n", + "His spouse Hippodame, divinely fair,\n", + "Anchises’ eldest hope, and darling care:\n", + "Who charm’d her parents’ and her husband’s heart\n", + "With beauty, sense, and every work of art:\n", + "He once of Ilion’s youth the loveliest boy,\n", + "The fairest she of all the fair of Troy.\n", + "By Neptune now the hapless hero dies,\n", + "Who covers with a cloud those beauteous eyes,\n", + "And fetters every limb: yet bent to meet\n", + "His fate he stands; nor shuns the lance of Crete.\n", + "Fix’d as some column, or deep-rooted oak,\n", + "While the winds sleep; his breast received the stroke.\n", + "Before the ponderous stroke his corslet yields,\n", + "Long used to ward the death in fighting fields.\n", + "The riven armour sends a jarring sound;\n", + "His labouring heart heaves with so strong a bound,\n", + "The long lance shakes, and vibrates in the wound;\n", + "Fast flowing from its source, as prone he lay,\n", + "Life’s purple tide impetuous gush’d away.\n", + "\n", + "Then Idomen, insulting o’er the slain:\n", + "“Behold, Deiphobus! nor vaunt in vain:\n", + "See! on one Greek three Trojan ghosts attend;\n", + "This, my third victim, to the shades I send.\n", + "Approaching now thy boasted might approve,\n", + "And try the prowess of the seed of Jove.\n", + "From Jove, enamour’d of a mortal dame,\n", + "Great Minos, guardian of his country, came:\n", + "Deucalion, blameless prince, was Minos’ heir;\n", + "His first-born I, the third from Jupiter:\n", + "O’er spacious Crete, and her bold sons, I reign,\n", + "And thence my ships transport me through the main:\n", + "Lord of a host, o’er all my host I shine,\n", + "A scourge to thee, thy father, and thy line.”\n", + "\n", + "The Trojan heard; uncertain or to meet,\n", + "Alone, with venturous arms the king of Crete,\n", + "Or seek auxiliar force; at length decreed\n", + "To call some hero to partake the deed,\n", + "Forthwith Æneas rises to his thought:\n", + "For him in Troy’s remotest lines he sought,\n", + "Where he, incensed at partial Priam, stands,\n", + "And sees superior posts in meaner hands.\n", + "To him, ambitious of so great an aid,\n", + "The bold Deiphobus approach’d, and said:\n", + "\n", + "“Now, Trojan prince, employ thy pious arms,\n", + "If e’er thy bosom felt fair honour’s charms.\n", + "Alcathous dies, thy brother and thy friend;\n", + "Come, and the warrior’s loved remains defend.\n", + "Beneath his cares thy early youth was train’d,\n", + "One table fed you, and one roof contain’d.\n", + "This deed to fierce Idomeneus we owe;\n", + "Haste, and revenge it on th’ insulting foe.”\n", + "\n", + "Æneas heard, and for a space resign’d\n", + "To tender pity all his manly mind;\n", + "Then rising in his rage, he burns to fight:\n", + "The Greek awaits him with collected might.\n", + "As the fell boar, on some rough mountain’s head,\n", + "Arm’d with wild terrors, and to slaughter bred,\n", + "When the loud rustics rise, and shout from far,\n", + "Attends the tumult, and expects the war;\n", + "O’er his bent back the bristly horrors rise;\n", + "Fires stream in lightning from his sanguine eyes,\n", + "His foaming tusks both dogs and men engage;\n", + "But most his hunters rouse his mighty rage:\n", + "So stood Idomeneus, his javelin shook,\n", + "And met the Trojan with a lowering look.\n", + "Antilochus, Deipyrus, were near,\n", + "The youthful offspring of the god of war,\n", + "Merion, and Aphareus, in field renown’d:\n", + "To these the warrior sent his voice around.\n", + "“Fellows in arms! your timely aid unite;\n", + "Lo, great Æneas rushes to the fight:\n", + "Sprung from a god, and more than mortal bold;\n", + "He fresh in youth, and I in arms grown old.\n", + "Else should this hand, this hour decide the strife,\n", + "The great dispute, of glory, or of life.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and all, as with one soul, obey’d;\n", + "Their lifted bucklers cast a dreadful shade\n", + "Around the chief. Æneas too demands\n", + "Th’ assisting forces of his native bands;\n", + "Paris, Deiphobus, Agenor, join;\n", + "(Co-aids and captains of the Trojan line;)\n", + "In order follow all th’ embodied train,\n", + "Like Ida’s flocks proceeding o’er the plain;\n", + "Before his fleecy care, erect and bold,\n", + "Stalks the proud ram, the father of the bold.\n", + "With joy the swain surveys them, as he leads\n", + "To the cool fountains, through the well-known meads:\n", + "So joys Æneas, as his native band\n", + "Moves on in rank, and stretches o’er the land.\n", + "\n", + "Round dread Alcathous now the battle rose;\n", + "On every side the steely circle grows;\n", + "Now batter’d breast-plates and hack’d helmets ring,\n", + "And o’er their heads unheeded javelins sing.\n", + "Above the rest, two towering chiefs appear,\n", + "There great Idomeneus, Æneas here.\n", + "Like gods of war, dispensing fate, they stood,\n", + "And burn’d to drench the ground with mutual blood.\n", + "The Trojan weapon whizz’d along in air;\n", + "The Cretan saw, and shunn’d the brazen spear:\n", + "Sent from an arm so strong, the missive wood\n", + "Stuck deep in earth, and quiver’d where it stood.\n", + "But OEnomas received the Cretan’s stroke;\n", + "The forceful spear his hollow corslet broke,\n", + "It ripp’d his belly with a ghastly wound,\n", + "And roll’d the smoking entrails on the ground.\n", + "Stretch’d on the plain, he sobs away his breath,\n", + "And, furious, grasps the bloody dust in death.\n", + "The victor from his breast the weapon tears;\n", + "His spoils he could not, for the shower of spears.\n", + "Though now unfit an active war to wage,\n", + "Heavy with cumbrous arms, stiff with cold age,\n", + "His listless limbs unable for the course,\n", + "In standing fight he yet maintains his force;\n", + "Till faint with labour, and by foes repell’d,\n", + "His tired slow steps he drags from off the field.\n", + "Deiphobus beheld him as he pass’d,\n", + "And, fired with hate, a parting javelin cast:\n", + "The javelin err’d, but held its course along,\n", + "And pierced Ascalaphus, the brave and young:\n", + "The son of Mars fell gasping on the ground,\n", + "And gnash’d the dust, all bloody with his wound.\n", + "\n", + "Nor knew the furious father of his fall;\n", + "High-throned amidst the great Olympian hall,\n", + "On golden clouds th’ immortal synod sate;\n", + "Detain’d from bloody war by Jove and Fate.\n", + "\n", + "Now, where in dust the breathless hero lay,\n", + "For slain Ascalaphus commenced the fray,\n", + "Deiphobus to seize his helmet flies,\n", + "And from his temples rends the glittering prize;\n", + "Valiant as Mars, Meriones drew near,\n", + "And on his loaded arm discharged his spear:\n", + "He drops the weight, disabled with the pain;\n", + "The hollow helmet rings against the plain.\n", + "Swift as a vulture leaping on his prey,\n", + "From his torn arm the Grecian rent away\n", + "The reeking javelin, and rejoin’d his friends.\n", + "His wounded brother good Polites tends;\n", + "Around his waist his pious arms he threw,\n", + "And from the rage of battle gently drew:\n", + "Him his swift coursers, on his splendid car,\n", + "Rapt from the lessening thunder of the war;\n", + "To Troy they drove him, groaning from the shore,\n", + "And sprinkling, as he pass’d, the sands with gore.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile fresh slaughter bathes the sanguine ground,\n", + "Heaps fall on heaps, and heaven and earth resound.\n", + "Bold Aphareus by great Æneas bled;\n", + "As toward the chief he turn’d his daring head,\n", + "He pierced his throat; the bending head, depress’d\n", + "Beneath his helmet, nods upon his breast;\n", + "His shield reversed o’er the fallen warrior lies,\n", + "And everlasting slumber seals his eyes.\n", + "Antilochus, as Thoon turn’d him round,\n", + "Transpierced his back with a dishonest wound:\n", + "The hollow vein, that to the neck extends\n", + "Along the chine, his eager javelin rends:\n", + "Supine he falls, and to his social train\n", + "Spreads his imploring arms, but spreads in vain.\n", + "Thv exulting victor, leaping where he lay,\n", + "From his broad shoulders tore the spoils away;\n", + "His time observed; for closed by foes around,\n", + "On all sides thick the peals of arms resound.\n", + "His shield emboss’d the ringing storm sustains,\n", + "But he impervious and untouch’d remains.\n", + "(Great Neptune’s care preserved from hostile rage\n", + "This youth, the joy of Nestor’s glorious age.)\n", + "In arms intrepid, with the first he fought,\n", + "Faced every foe, and every danger sought;\n", + "His winged lance, resistless as the wind,\n", + "Obeys each motion of the master’s mind!\n", + "Restless it flies, impatient to be free,\n", + "And meditates the distant enemy.\n", + "The son of Asius, Adamas, drew near,\n", + "And struck his target with the brazen spear\n", + "Fierce in his front: but Neptune wards the blow,\n", + "And blunts the javelin of th’ eluded foe:\n", + "In the broad buckler half the weapon stood,\n", + "Splinter’d on earth flew half the broken wood.\n", + "Disarm’d, he mingled in the Trojan crew;\n", + "But Merion’s spear o’ertook him as he flew,\n", + "Deep in the belly’s rim an entrance found,\n", + "Where sharp the pang, and mortal is the wound.\n", + "Bending he fell, and doubled to the ground,\n", + "Lay panting. Thus an ox in fetters tied,\n", + "While death’s strong pangs distend his labouring side,\n", + "His bulk enormous on the field displays;\n", + "His heaving heart beats thick as ebbing life decays.\n", + "The spear the conqueror from his body drew,\n", + "And death’s dim shadows swarm before his view.\n", + "Next brave Deipyrus in dust was laid:\n", + "King Helenus waved high the Thracian blade,\n", + "And smote his temples with an arm so strong,\n", + "The helm fell off, and roll’d amid the throng:\n", + "There for some luckier Greek it rests a prize;\n", + "For dark in death the godlike owner lies!\n", + "Raging with grief, great Menelaus burns,\n", + "And fraught with vengeance, to the victor turns:\n", + "That shook the ponderous lance, in act to throw;\n", + "And this stood adverse with the bended bow:\n", + "Full on his breast the Trojan arrow fell,\n", + "But harmless bounded from the plated steel.\n", + "As on some ample barn’s well harden’d floor,\n", + "(The winds collected at each open door,)\n", + "While the broad fan with force is whirl’d around,\n", + "Light leaps the golden grain, resulting from the ground:\n", + "So from the steel that guards Atrides’ heart,\n", + "Repell’d to distance flies the bounding dart.\n", + "Atrides, watchful of the unwary foe,\n", + "Pierced with his lance the hand that grasp’d the bow.\n", + "And nailed it to the yew: the wounded hand\n", + "Trail’d the long lance that mark’d with blood the sand:\n", + "But good Agenor gently from the wound\n", + "The spear solicits, and the bandage bound;\n", + "A sling’s soft wool, snatch’d from a soldier’s side,\n", + "At once the tent and ligature supplied.\n", + "\n", + "Behold! Pisander, urged by fate’s decree,\n", + "Springs through the ranks to fall, and fall by thee,\n", + "Great Menelaus! to enchance thy fame:\n", + "High-towering in the front, the warrior came.\n", + "First the sharp lance was by Atrides thrown;\n", + "The lance far distant by the winds was blown.\n", + "Nor pierced Pisander through Atrides’ shield:\n", + "Pisander’s spear fell shiver’d on the field.\n", + "Not so discouraged, to the future blind,\n", + "Vain dreams of conquest swell his haughty mind;\n", + "Dauntless he rushes where the Spartan lord\n", + "Like lightning brandish’d his far beaming sword.\n", + "His left arm high opposed the shining shield:\n", + "His right beneath, the cover’d pole-axe held;\n", + "(An olive’s cloudy grain the handle made,\n", + "Distinct with studs, and brazen was the blade;)\n", + "This on the helm discharged a noble blow;\n", + "The plume dropp’d nodding to the plain below,\n", + "Shorn from the crest. Atrides waved his steel:\n", + "Deep through his front the weighty falchion fell;\n", + "The crashing bones before its force gave way;\n", + "In dust and blood the groaning hero lay:\n", + "Forced from their ghastly orbs, and spouting gore,\n", + "The clotted eye-balls tumble on the shore.\n", + "And fierce Atrides spurn’d him as he bled,\n", + "Tore off his arms, and, loud-exulting, said:\n", + "\n", + "“Thus, Trojans, thus, at length be taught to fear;\n", + "O race perfidious, who delight in war!\n", + "Already noble deeds ye have perform’d;\n", + "A princess raped transcends a navy storm’d:\n", + "In such bold feats your impious might approve,\n", + "Without th’ assistance, or the fear of Jove.\n", + "The violated rites, the ravish’d dame;\n", + "Our heroes slaughter’d and our ships on flame,\n", + "Crimes heap’d on crimes, shall bend your glory down,\n", + "And whelm in ruins yon flagitious town.\n", + "O thou, great father! lord of earth and skies,\n", + "Above the thought of man, supremely wise!\n", + "If from thy hand the fates of mortals flow,\n", + "From whence this favour to an impious foe?\n", + "A godless crew, abandon’d and unjust,\n", + "Still breathing rapine, violence, and lust?\n", + "The best of things, beyond their measure, cloy;\n", + "Sleep’s balmy blessing, love’s endearing joy;\n", + "The feast, the dance; whate’er mankind desire,\n", + "Even the sweet charms of sacred numbers tire.\n", + "But Troy for ever reaps a dire delight\n", + "In thirst of slaughter, and in lust of fight.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, he seized (while yet the carcase heaved)\n", + "The bloody armour, which his train received:\n", + "Then sudden mix’d among the warring crew,\n", + "And the bold son of Pylæmenes slew.\n", + "Harpalion had through Asia travell’d far,\n", + "Following his martial father to the war:\n", + "Through filial love he left his native shore,\n", + "Never, ah, never to behold it more!\n", + "His unsuccessful spear he chanced to fling\n", + "Against the target of the Spartan king;\n", + "Thus of his lance disarm’d, from death he flies,\n", + "And turns around his apprehensive eyes.\n", + "Him, through the hip transpiercing as he fled,\n", + "The shaft of Merion mingled with the dead.\n", + "Beneath the bone the glancing point descends,\n", + "And, driving down, the swelling bladder rends:\n", + "Sunk in his sad companions’ arms he lay,\n", + "And in short pantings sobb’d his soul away;\n", + "(Like some vile worm extended on the ground;)\n", + "While life’s red torrent gush’d from out the wound.\n", + "\n", + "Him on his car the Paphlagonian train\n", + "In slow procession bore from off the plain.\n", + "The pensive father, father now no more!\n", + "Attends the mournful pomp along the shore;\n", + "And unavailing tears profusely shed;\n", + "And, unrevenged, deplored his offspring dead.\n", + "\n", + "Paris from far the moving sight beheld,\n", + "With pity soften’d and with fury swell’d:\n", + "His honour’d host, a youth of matchless grace,\n", + "And loved of all the Paphlagonian race!\n", + "With his full strength he bent his angry bow,\n", + "And wing’d the feather’d vengeance at the foe.\n", + "A chief there was, the brave Euchenor named,\n", + "For riches much, and more for virtue famed.\n", + "Who held his seat in Corinth’s stately town;\n", + "Polydus’ son, a seer of old renown.\n", + "Oft had the father told his early doom,\n", + "By arms abroad, or slow disease at home:\n", + "He climb’d his vessel, prodigal of breath,\n", + "And chose the certain glorious path to death.\n", + "Beneath his ear the pointed arrow went;\n", + "The soul came issuing at the narrow vent:\n", + "His limbs, unnerved, drop useless on the ground,\n", + "And everlasting darkness shades him round.\n", + "\n", + "Nor knew great Hector how his legions yield,\n", + "(Wrapp’d in the cloud and tumult of the field:)\n", + "Wide on the left the force of Greece commands,\n", + "And conquest hovers o’er th’ Achaian bands;\n", + "With such a tide superior virtue sway’d,\n", + "And he that shakes the solid earth gave aid.\n", + "But in the centre Hector fix’d remain’d,\n", + "Where first the gates were forced, and bulwarks gain’d;\n", + "There, on the margin of the hoary deep,\n", + "(Their naval station where the Ajaces keep.\n", + "And where low walls confine the beating tides,\n", + "Whose humble barrier scarce the foe divides;\n", + "Where late in fight both foot and horse engaged,\n", + "And all the thunder of the battle raged,)\n", + "There join’d, the whole Bœotian strength remains,\n", + "The proud Iaonians with their sweeping trains,\n", + "Locrians and Phthians, and th’ Epaean force;\n", + "But join’d, repel not Hector’s fiery course.\n", + "The flower of Athens, Stichius, Phidas, led;\n", + "Bias and great Menestheus at their head:\n", + "Meges the strong the Epaean bands controll’d,\n", + "And Dracius prudent, and Amphion bold:\n", + "The Phthians, Medon, famed for martial might,\n", + "And brave Podarces, active in the fight.\n", + "This drew from Phylacus his noble line;\n", + "Iphiclus’ son: and that (Oïleus) thine:\n", + "(Young Ajax’ brother, by a stolen embrace;\n", + "He dwelt far distant from his native place,\n", + "By his fierce step-dame from his father’s reign\n", + "Expell’d and exiled for her brother slain:)\n", + "These rule the Phthians, and their arms employ,\n", + "Mix’d with Bœotians, on the shores of Troy.\n", + "\n", + "Now side by side, with like unwearied care,\n", + "Each Ajax laboured through the field of war:\n", + "So when two lordly bulls, with equal toil,\n", + "Force the bright ploughshare through the fallow soil,\n", + "Join’d to one yoke, the stubborn earth they tear,\n", + "And trace large furrows with the shining share;\n", + "O’er their huge limbs the foam descends in snow,\n", + "And streams of sweat down their sour foreheads flow.\n", + "A train of heroes followed through the field,\n", + "Who bore by turns great Ajax’ sevenfold shield;\n", + "Whene’er he breathed, remissive of his might,\n", + "Tired with the incessant slaughters of the fight.\n", + "No following troops his brave associate grace:\n", + "In close engagement an unpractised race,\n", + "The Locrian squadrons nor the javelin wield,\n", + "Nor bear the helm, nor lift the moony shield;\n", + "But skill’d from far the flying shaft to wing,\n", + "Or whirl the sounding pebble from the sling,\n", + "Dexterous with these they aim a certain wound,\n", + "Or fell the distant warrior to the ground.\n", + "Thus in the van the Telamonian train,\n", + "Throng’d in bright arms, a pressing fight maintain:\n", + "Far in the rear the Locrian archers lie,\n", + "Whose stones and arrows intercept the sky,\n", + "The mingled tempest on the foes they pour;\n", + "Troy’s scattering orders open to the shower.\n", + "\n", + "Now had the Greeks eternal fame acquired,\n", + "And the gall’d Ilians to their walls retired;\n", + "But sage Polydamas, discreetly brave,\n", + "Address’d great Hector, and this counsel gave:\n", + "\n", + "“Though great in all, thou seem’st averse to lend\n", + "Impartial audience to a faithful friend;\n", + "To gods and men thy matchless worth is known,\n", + "And every art of glorious war thy own;\n", + "But in cool thought and counsel to excel,\n", + "How widely differs this from warring well!\n", + "Content with what the bounteous gods have given,\n", + "Seek not alone to engross the gifts of Heaven.\n", + "To some the powers of bloody war belong,\n", + "To some sweet music and the charm of song;\n", + "To few, and wondrous few, has Jove assign’d\n", + "A wise, extensive, all-considering mind;\n", + "Their guardians these, the nations round confess,\n", + "And towns and empires for their safety bless.\n", + "If Heaven have lodged this virtue in my breast,\n", + "Attend, O Hector! what I judge the best,\n", + "See, as thou mov’st, on dangers dangers spread,\n", + "And war’s whole fury burns around thy head.\n", + "Behold! distress’d within yon hostile wall,\n", + "How many Trojans yield, disperse, or fall!\n", + "What troops, out-number’d, scarce the war maintain!\n", + "And what brave heroes at the ships lie slain!\n", + "Here cease thy fury: and, the chiefs and kings\n", + "Convoked to council, weigh the sum of things.\n", + "Whether (the gods succeeding our desires)\n", + "To yon tall ships to bear the Trojan fires;\n", + "Or quit the fleet, and pass unhurt away,\n", + "Contented with the conquest of the day.\n", + "I fear, I fear, lest Greece, not yet undone,\n", + "Pay the large debt of last revolving sun;\n", + "Achilles, great Achilles, yet remains\n", + "On yonder decks, and yet o’erlooks the plains!”\n", + "\n", + "The counsel pleased; and Hector, with a bound,\n", + "Leap’d from his chariot on the trembling ground;\n", + "Swift as he leap’d his clanging arms resound.\n", + "“To guard this post (he cried) thy art employ,\n", + "And here detain the scatter’d youth of Troy;\n", + "Where yonder heroes faint, I bend my way,\n", + "And hasten back to end the doubtful day.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, the towering chief prepares to go,\n", + "Shakes his white plumes that to the breezes flow,\n", + "And seems a moving mountain topp’d with snow.\n", + "Through all his host, inspiring force, he flies,\n", + "And bids anew the martial thunder rise.\n", + "To Panthus’ son, at Hector’s high command\n", + "Haste the bold leaders of the Trojan band:\n", + "But round the battlements, and round the plain,\n", + "For many a chief he look’d, but look’d in vain;\n", + "Deiphobus, nor Helenus the seer,\n", + "Nor Asius’ son, nor Asius’ self appear:\n", + "For these were pierced with many a ghastly wound,\n", + "Some cold in death, some groaning on the ground;\n", + "Some low in dust, (a mournful object) lay;\n", + "High on the wall some breathed their souls away.\n", + "\n", + "Far on the left, amid the throng he found\n", + "(Cheering the troops, and dealing deaths around)\n", + "The graceful Paris; whom, with fury moved,\n", + "Opprobrious thus, th’ impatient chief reproved:\n", + "\n", + "“Ill-fated Paris! slave to womankind,\n", + "As smooth of face as fraudulent of mind!\n", + "Where is Deiphobus, where Asius gone?\n", + "The godlike father, and th’ intrepid son?\n", + "The force of Helenus, dispensing fate;\n", + "And great Othryoneus, so fear’d of late?\n", + "Black fate hang’s o’er thee from th’ avenging gods,\n", + "Imperial Troy from her foundations nods;\n", + "Whelm’d in thy country’s ruin shalt thou fall,\n", + "And one devouring vengeance swallow all.”\n", + "\n", + "When Paris thus: “My brother and my friend,\n", + "Thy warm impatience makes thy tongue offend,\n", + "In other battles I deserved thy blame,\n", + "Though then not deedless, nor unknown to fame:\n", + "But since yon rampart by thy arms lay low,\n", + "I scatter’d slaughter from my fatal bow.\n", + "The chiefs you seek on yonder shore lie slain;\n", + "Of all those heroes, two alone remain;\n", + "Deiphobus, and Helenus the seer,\n", + "Each now disabled by a hostile spear.\n", + "Go then, successful, where thy soul inspires:\n", + "This heart and hand shall second all thy fires:\n", + "What with this arm I can, prepare to know,\n", + "Till death for death be paid, and blow for blow.\n", + "But ’tis not ours, with forces not our own\n", + "To combat: strength is of the gods alone.”\n", + "These words the hero’s angry mind assuage:\n", + "Then fierce they mingle where the thickest rage.\n", + "Around Polydamas, distain’d with blood,\n", + "Cebrion, Phalces, stern Orthaeus stood,\n", + "Palmus, with Polypœtes the divine,\n", + "And two bold brothers of Hippotion’s line\n", + "(Who reach’d fair Ilion, from Ascania far,\n", + "The former day; the next engaged in war).\n", + "As when from gloomy clouds a whirlwind springs,\n", + "That bears Jove’s thunder on its dreadful wings,\n", + "Wide o’er the blasted fields the tempest sweeps;\n", + "Then, gather’d, settles on the hoary deeps;\n", + "The afflicted deeps tumultuous mix and roar;\n", + "The waves behind impel the waves before,\n", + "Wide rolling, foaming high, and tumbling to the shore:\n", + "Thus rank on rank, the thick battalions throng,\n", + "Chief urged on chief, and man drove man along.\n", + "Far o’er the plains, in dreadful order bright,\n", + "The brazen arms reflect a beamy light:\n", + "Full in the blazing van great Hector shined,\n", + "Like Mars commission’d to confound mankind.\n", + "Before him flaming his enormous shield,\n", + "Like the broad sun, illumined all the field;\n", + "His nodding helm emits a streamy ray;\n", + "His piercing eyes through all the battle stray,\n", + "And, while beneath his targe he flash’d along,\n", + "Shot terrors round, that wither’d e’en the strong.\n", + "\n", + "Thus stalk’d he, dreadful; death was in his look:\n", + "Whole nations fear’d; but not an Argive shook.\n", + "The towering Ajax, with an ample stride,\n", + "Advanced the first, and thus the chief defied:\n", + "\n", + "“Hector! come on; thy empty threats forbear;\n", + "’Tis not thy arm, ’tis thundering Jove we fear:\n", + "The skill of war to us not idly given,\n", + "Lo! Greece is humbled, not by Troy, but Heaven.\n", + "Vain are the hopes that haughty mind imparts,\n", + "To force our fleet: the Greeks have hands and hearts.\n", + "Long ere in flames our lofty navy fall,\n", + "Your boasted city, and your god-built wall,\n", + "Shall sink beneath us, smoking on the ground;\n", + "And spread a long unmeasured ruin round.\n", + "The time shall come, when, chased along the plain,\n", + "Even thou shalt call on Jove, and call in vain;\n", + "Even thou shalt wish, to aid thy desperate course,\n", + "The wings of falcons for thy flying horse;\n", + "Shalt run, forgetful of a warrior’s fame,\n", + "While clouds of friendly dust conceal thy shame.”\n", + "\n", + "As thus he spoke, behold, in open view,\n", + "On sounding wings a dexter eagle flew.\n", + "To Jove’s glad omen all the Grecians rise,\n", + "And hail, with shouts, his progress through the skies:\n", + "Far-echoing clamours bound from side to side;\n", + "They ceased; and thus the chief of Troy replied:\n", + "\n", + "“From whence this menace, this insulting strain?\n", + "Enormous boaster! doom’d to vaunt in vain.\n", + "So may the gods on Hector life bestow,\n", + "(Not that short life which mortals lead below,\n", + "But such as those of Jove’s high lineage born,\n", + "The blue-eyed maid, or he that gilds the morn,)\n", + "As this decisive day shall end the fame\n", + "Of Greece, and Argos be no more a name.\n", + "And thou, imperious! if thy madness wait\n", + "The lance of Hector, thou shalt meet thy fate:\n", + "That giant-corse, extended on the shore,\n", + "Shall largely feast the fowls with fat and gore.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and like a lion stalk’d along:\n", + "With shouts incessant earth and ocean rung,\n", + "Sent from his following host: the Grecian train\n", + "With answering thunders fill’d the echoing plain;\n", + "A shout that tore heaven’s concave, and, above,\n", + "Shook the fix’d splendours of the throne of Jove.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] GREEK EARRINGS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XIV.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.[231]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "JUNO DECEIVES JUPITER BY THE GIRDLE OF VENUS.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Nestor, sitting at the table with Machaon, is alarmed with the\n", + "increasing clamour of war, and hastens to Agamemnon; on his way he\n", + "meets that prince with Diomed and Ulysses, whom he informs of the\n", + "extremity of the danger. Agamemnon proposes to make their escape by\n", + "night, which Ulysses withstands; to which Diomed adds his advice, that,\n", + "wounded as they were, they should go forth and encourage the army with\n", + "their presence, which advice is pursued. Juno, seeing the partiality of\n", + "Jupiter to the Trojans, forms a design to over-reach him: she sets off\n", + "her charms with the utmost care, and (the more surely to enchant him)\n", + "obtains the magic girdle of Venus. She then applies herself to the god\n", + "of sleep, and, with some difficulty, persuades him to seal the eyes of\n", + "Jupiter: this done, she goes to mount Ida, where the god, at first\n", + "sight, is ravished with her beauty, sinks in her embraces, and is laid\n", + "asleep. Neptune takes advantage of his slumber, and succours the\n", + "Greeks: Hector is struck to the ground with a prodigious stone by Ajax,\n", + "and carried off from the battle: several actions succeed, till the\n", + "Trojans, much distressed, are obliged to give way: the lesser Ajax\n", + "signalizes himself in a particular manner.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "But not the genial feast, nor flowing bowl,\n", + "Could charm the cares of Nestor’s watchful soul;\n", + "His startled ears the increasing cries attend;\n", + "Then thus, impatient, to his wounded friend:\n", + "\n", + "“What new alarm, divine Machaon, say,\n", + "What mix’d events attend this mighty day?\n", + "Hark! how the shouts divide, and how they meet,\n", + "And now come full, and thicken to the fleet!\n", + "Here with the cordial draught dispel thy care,\n", + "Let Hecamede the strengthening bath prepare,\n", + "Refresh thy wound, and cleanse the clotted gore;\n", + "While I the adventures of the day explore.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: and, seizing Thrasymedes’ shield,\n", + "(His valiant offspring,) hasten’d to the field;\n", + "(That day the son his father’s buckler bore;)\n", + "Then snatch’d a lance, and issued from the door.\n", + "Soon as the prospect open’d to his view,\n", + "His wounded eyes the scene of sorrow knew;\n", + "Dire disarray! the tumult of the fight,\n", + "The wall in ruins, and the Greeks in flight.\n", + "As when old ocean’s silent surface sleeps,\n", + "The waves just heaving on the purple deeps:\n", + "While yet the expected tempest hangs on high,\n", + "Weighs down the cloud, and blackens in the sky,\n", + "The mass of waters will no wind obey;\n", + "Jove sends one gust, and bids them roll away.\n", + "While wavering counsels thus his mind engage,\n", + "Fluctuates in doubtful thought the Pylian sage,\n", + "To join the host, or to the general haste;\n", + "Debating long, he fixes on the last:\n", + "Yet, as he moves, the sight his bosom warms,\n", + "The field rings dreadful with the clang of arms,\n", + "The gleaming falchions flash, the javelins fly;\n", + "Blows echo blows, and all or kill or die.\n", + "\n", + "Him, in his march, the wounded princes meet,\n", + "By tardy steps ascending from the fleet:\n", + "The king of men, Ulysses the divine,\n", + "And who to Tydeus owes his noble line[232]\n", + "(Their ships at distance from the battle stand,\n", + "In lines advanced along the shelving strand:\n", + "Whose bay, the fleet unable to contain\n", + "At length; beside the margin of the main,\n", + "Rank above rank, the crowded ships they moor:\n", + "Who landed first, lay highest on the shore.)\n", + "Supported on the spears, they took their way,\n", + "Unfit to fight, but anxious for the day.\n", + "Nestor’s approach alarm’d each Grecian breast,\n", + "Whom thus the general of the host address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“O grace and glory of the Achaian name;\n", + "What drives thee, Nestor, from the field of fame?\n", + "Shall then proud Hector see his boast fulfill’d,\n", + "Our fleets in ashes, and our heroes kill’d?\n", + "Such was his threat, ah! now too soon made good,\n", + "On many a Grecian bosom writ in blood.\n", + "Is every heart inflamed with equal rage\n", + "Against your king, nor will one chief engage?\n", + "And have I lived to see with mournful eyes\n", + "In every Greek a new Achilles rise?”\n", + "\n", + "Gerenian Nestor then: “So fate has will’d;\n", + "And all-confirming time has fate fulfill’d.\n", + "Not he that thunders from the aerial bower,\n", + "Not Jove himself, upon the past has power.\n", + "The wall, our late inviolable bound,\n", + "And best defence, lies smoking on the ground:\n", + "Even to the ships their conquering arms extend,\n", + "And groans of slaughter’d Greeks to heaven ascend.\n", + "On speedy measures then employ your thought\n", + "In such distress! if counsel profit aught:\n", + "Arms cannot much: though Mars our souls incite,\n", + "These gaping wounds withhold us from the fight.”\n", + "\n", + "To him the monarch: “That our army bends,\n", + "That Troy triumphant our high fleet ascends,\n", + "And that the rampart, late our surest trust\n", + "And best defence, lies smoking in the dust;\n", + "All this from Jove’s afflictive hand we bear,\n", + "Who, far from Argos, wills our ruin here.\n", + "Past are the days when happier Greece was blest,\n", + "And all his favour, all his aid confess’d;\n", + "Now heaven averse, our hands from battle ties,\n", + "And lifts the Trojan glory to the skies.\n", + "Cease we at length to waste our blood in vain,\n", + "And launch what ships lie nearest to the main;\n", + "Leave these at anchor, till the coming night:\n", + "Then, if impetuous Troy forbear the fight,\n", + "Bring all to sea, and hoist each sail for flight.\n", + "Better from evils, well foreseen, to run,\n", + "Than perish in the danger we may shun.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he. The sage Ulysses thus replies,\n", + "While anger flash’d from his disdainful eyes:\n", + "“What shameful words (unkingly as thou art)\n", + "Fall from that trembling tongue and timorous heart?\n", + "Oh were thy sway the curse of meaner powers,\n", + "And thou the shame of any host but ours!\n", + "A host, by Jove endued with martial might,\n", + "And taught to conquer, or to fall in fight:\n", + "Adventurous combats and bold wars to wage,\n", + "Employ’d our youth, and yet employs our age.\n", + "And wilt thou thus desert the Trojan plain?\n", + "And have whole streams of blood been spilt in vain?\n", + "In such base sentence if thou couch thy fear,\n", + "Speak it in whispers, lest a Greek should hear.\n", + "Lives there a man so dead to fame, who dares\n", + "To think such meanness, or the thought declares?\n", + "And comes it even from him whose sovereign sway\n", + "The banded legions of all Greece obey?\n", + "Is this a general’s voice that calls to flight,\n", + "While war hangs doubtful, while his soldiers fight?\n", + "What more could Troy? What yet their fate denies\n", + "Thou givest the foe: all Greece becomes their prize.\n", + "No more the troops (our hoisted sails in view,\n", + "Themselves abandon’d) shall the fight pursue;\n", + "But thy ships flying, with despair shall see;\n", + "And owe destruction to a prince like thee.”\n", + "\n", + "“Thy just reproofs (Atrides calm replies)\n", + "Like arrows pierce me, for thy words are wise.\n", + "Unwilling as I am to lose the host,\n", + "I force not Greece to quit this hateful coast;\n", + "Glad I submit, whoe’er, or young, or old,\n", + "Aught, more conducive to our weal, unfold.”\n", + "\n", + "Tydides cut him short, and thus began:\n", + "“Such counsel if you seek, behold the man\n", + "Who boldly gives it, and what he shall say,\n", + "Young though he be, disdain not to obey:\n", + "A youth, who from the mighty Tydeus springs,\n", + "May speak to councils and assembled kings.\n", + "Hear then in me the great OEnides’ son,\n", + "Whose honoured dust (his race of glory run)\n", + "Lies whelm’d in ruins of the Theban wall;\n", + "Brave in his life, and glorious in his fall.\n", + "With three bold sons was generous Prothous bless’d,\n", + "Who Pleuron’s walls and Calydon possess’d;\n", + "Melas and Agrius, but (who far surpass’d\n", + "The rest in courage) Œneus was the last.\n", + "From him, my sire. From Calydon expell’d,\n", + "He pass’d to Argos, and in exile dwell’d;\n", + "The monarch’s daughter there (so Jove ordain’d)\n", + "He won, and flourish’d where Adrastus reign’d;\n", + "There, rich in fortune’s gifts, his acres till’d,\n", + "Beheld his vines their liquid harvest yield,\n", + "And numerous flocks that whiten’d all the field.\n", + "Such Tydeus was, the foremost once in fame!\n", + "Nor lives in Greece a stranger to his name.\n", + "Then, what for common good my thoughts inspire,\n", + "Attend, and in the son respect the sire.\n", + "Though sore of battle, though with wounds oppress’d,\n", + "Let each go forth, and animate the rest,\n", + "Advance the glory which he cannot share,\n", + "Though not partaker, witness of the war.\n", + "But lest new wounds on wounds o’erpower us quite,\n", + "Beyond the missile javelin’s sounding flight,\n", + "Safe let us stand; and, from the tumult far,\n", + "Inspire the ranks, and rule the distant war.”\n", + "\n", + "He added not: the listening kings obey,\n", + "Slow moving on; Atrides leads the way.\n", + "The god of ocean (to inflame their rage)\n", + "Appears a warrior furrowed o’er with age;\n", + "Press’d in his own, the general’s hand he took,\n", + "And thus the venerable hero spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Atrides! lo! with what disdainful eye\n", + "Achilles sees his country’s forces fly;\n", + "Blind, impious man! whose anger is his guide,\n", + "Who glories in unutterable pride.\n", + "So may he perish, so may Jove disclaim\n", + "The wretch relentless, and o’erwhelm with shame!\n", + "But Heaven forsakes not thee: o’er yonder sands\n", + "Soon shall thou view the scattered Trojan bands\n", + "Fly diverse; while proud kings, and chiefs renown’d,\n", + "Driven heaps on heaps, with clouds involved around\n", + "Of rolling dust, their winged wheels employ\n", + "To hide their ignominious heads in Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, then rush’d amid the warrior crew,\n", + "And sent his voice before him as he flew,\n", + "Loud, as the shout encountering armies yield\n", + "When twice ten thousand shake the labouring field;\n", + "Such was the voice, and such the thundering sound\n", + "Of him whose trident rends the solid ground.\n", + "Each Argive bosom beats to meet the fight,\n", + "And grisly war appears a pleasing sight.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime Saturnia from Olympus’ brow,\n", + "High-throned in gold, beheld the fields below;\n", + "With joy the glorious conflict she survey’d,\n", + "Where her great brother gave the Grecians aid.\n", + "But placed aloft, on Ida’s shady height\n", + "She sees her Jove, and trembles at the sight.\n", + "Jove to deceive, what methods shall she try,\n", + "What arts, to blind his all-beholding eye?\n", + "At length she trusts her power; resolved to prove\n", + "The old, yet still successful, cheat of love;\n", + "Against his wisdom to oppose her charms,\n", + "And lull the lord of thunders in her arms.\n", + "\n", + "Swift to her bright apartment she repairs,\n", + "Sacred to dress and beauty’s pleasing cares:\n", + "With skill divine had Vulcan form’d the bower,\n", + "Safe from access of each intruding power.\n", + "Touch’d with her secret key, the doors unfold:\n", + "Self-closed, behind her shut the valves of gold.\n", + "Here first she bathes; and round her body pours\n", + "Soft oils of fragrance, and ambrosial showers:\n", + "The winds, perfumed, the balmy gale convey\n", + "Through heaven, through earth, and all the aerial way:\n", + "Spirit divine! whose exhalation greets\n", + "The sense of gods with more than mortal sweets.\n", + "Thus while she breathed of heaven, with decent pride\n", + "Her artful hands the radiant tresses tied;\n", + "Part on her head in shining ringlets roll’d,\n", + "Part o’er her shoulders waved like melted gold.\n", + "Around her next a heavenly mantle flow’d,\n", + "That rich with Pallas’ labour’d colours glow’d:\n", + "Large clasps of gold the foldings gather’d round,\n", + "A golden zone her swelling bosom bound.\n", + "Far-beaming pendants tremble in her ear,\n", + "Each gem illumined with a triple star.\n", + "Then o’er her head she cast a veil more white\n", + "Than new-fallen snow, and dazzling as the light.\n", + "Last her fair feet celestial sandals grace.\n", + "Thus issuing radiant with majestic pace,\n", + "Forth from the dome the imperial goddess moves,\n", + "And calls the mother of the smiles and loves.\n", + "\n", + "“How long (to Venus thus apart she cried)\n", + "Shall human strife celestial minds divide?\n", + "Ah yet, will Venus aid Saturnia’s joy,\n", + "And set aside the cause of Greece and Troy?”\n", + "\n", + "“Let heaven’s dread empress (Cytheraea said)\n", + "Speak her request, and deem her will obey’d.”\n", + "\n", + "“Then grant me (said the queen) those conquering charms,\n", + "That power, which mortals and immortals warms,\n", + "That love, which melts mankind in fierce desires,\n", + "And burns the sons of heaven with sacred fires!\n", + "\n", + "“For lo! I haste to those remote abodes,\n", + "Where the great parents, (sacred source of gods!)\n", + "Ocean and Tethys their old empire keep,\n", + "On the last limits of the land and deep.\n", + "In their kind arms my tender years were past;\n", + "What time old Saturn, from Olympus cast,\n", + "Of upper heaven to Jove resign’d the reign,\n", + "Whelm’d under the huge mass of earth and main.\n", + "For strife, I hear, has made the union cease,\n", + "Which held so long that ancient pair in peace.\n", + "What honour, and what love, shall I obtain,\n", + "If I compose those fatal feuds again;\n", + "Once more their minds in mutual ties engage,\n", + "And, what my youth has owed, repay their age!”\n", + "\n", + "She said. With awe divine, the queen of love\n", + "Obey’d the sister and the wife of Jove;\n", + "And from her fragrant breast the zone embraced,[233]\n", + "With various skill and high embroidery graced.\n", + "In this was every art, and every charm,\n", + "To win the wisest, and the coldest warm:\n", + "Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire,\n", + "The kind deceit, the still-reviving fire,\n", + "Persuasive speech, and the more persuasive sighs,\n", + "Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.\n", + "This on her hand the Cyprian Goddess laid:\n", + "“Take this, and with it all thy wish;” she said.\n", + "With smiles she took the charm; and smiling press’d\n", + "The powerful cestus to her snowy breast.\n", + "\n", + "Then Venus to the courts of Jove withdrew;\n", + "Whilst from Olympus pleased Saturnia flew.\n", + "O’er high Pieria thence her course she bore,\n", + "O’er fair Emathia’s ever-pleasing shore,\n", + "O’er Hemus’ hills with snows eternal crown’d;\n", + "Nor once her flying foot approach’d the ground.\n", + "Then taking wing from Athos’ lofty steep,\n", + "She speeds to Lemnos o’er the rolling deep,\n", + "And seeks the cave of Death’s half-brother, Sleep.[234]\n", + "\n", + "“Sweet pleasing Sleep! (Saturnia thus began)\n", + "Who spread’st thy empire o’er each god and man;\n", + "If e’er obsequious to thy Juno’s will,\n", + "O power of slumbers! hear, and favour still.\n", + "Shed thy soft dews on Jove’s immortal eyes,\n", + "While sunk in love’s entrancing joys he lies.\n", + "A splendid footstool, and a throne, that shine\n", + "With gold unfading, Somnus, shall be thine;\n", + "The work of Vulcan; to indulge thy ease,\n", + "When wine and feasts thy golden humours please.”\n", + "\n", + "“Imperial dame (the balmy power replies),\n", + "Great Saturn’s heir, and empress of the skies!\n", + "O’er other gods I spread my easy chain;\n", + "The sire of all, old Ocean, owns my reign.\n", + "And his hush’d waves lie silent on the main.\n", + "But how, unbidden, shall I dare to steep\n", + "Jove’s awful temples in the dew of sleep?\n", + "Long since, too venturous, at thy bold command,\n", + "On those eternal lids I laid my hand;\n", + "What time, deserting Ilion’s wasted plain,\n", + "His conquering son, Alcides, plough’d the main.\n", + "When lo! the deeps arise, the tempests roar,\n", + "And drive the hero to the Coan shore:\n", + "Great Jove, awaking, shook the blest abodes\n", + "With rising wrath, and tumbled gods on gods;\n", + "Me chief he sought, and from the realms on high\n", + "Had hurl’d indignant to the nether sky,\n", + "But gentle Night, to whom I fled for aid,\n", + "(The friend of earth and heaven,) her wings display’d;\n", + "Impower’d the wrath of gods and men to tame,\n", + "Even Jove revered the venerable dame.”\n", + "\n", + "“Vain are thy fears (the queen of heaven replies,\n", + "And, speaking, rolls her large majestic eyes);\n", + "Think’st thou that Troy has Jove’s high favour won,\n", + "Like great Alcides, his all-conquering son?\n", + "Hear, and obey the mistress of the skies,\n", + "Nor for the deed expect a vulgar prize;\n", + "For know, thy loved-one shall be ever thine,\n", + "The youngest Grace, Pasithaë the divine.”[235]\n", + "\n", + "“Swear then (he said) by those tremendous floods\n", + "That roar through hell, and bind the invoking gods:\n", + "Let the great parent earth one hand sustain,\n", + "And stretch the other o’er the sacred main:\n", + "Call the black Titans, that with Chronos dwell,\n", + "To hear and witness from the depths of hell;\n", + "That she, my loved-one, shall be ever mine,\n", + "The youngest Grace, Pasithaë the divine.”\n", + "\n", + "The queen assents, and from the infernal bowers\n", + "Invokes the sable subtartarean powers,\n", + "And those who rule the inviolable floods,\n", + "Whom mortals name the dread Titanian gods.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] SLEEP ESCAPING FROM THE WRATH OF JUPITER\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Then swift as wind, o’er Lemnos’ smoky isle\n", + "They wing their way, and Imbrus’ sea-beat soil;\n", + "Through air, unseen, involved in darkness glide,\n", + "And light on Lectos, on the point of Ide:\n", + "(Mother of savages, whose echoing hills\n", + "Are heard resounding with a hundred rills:)\n", + "Fair Ida trembles underneath the god;\n", + "Hush’d are her mountains, and her forests nod.\n", + "There on a fir, whose spiry branches rise\n", + "To join its summit to the neighbouring skies;\n", + "Dark in embowering shade, conceal’d from sight,\n", + "Sat Sleep, in likeness of the bird of night.\n", + "(Chalcis his name by those of heavenly birth,\n", + "But call’d Cymindis by the race of earth.)\n", + "\n", + "To Ida’s top successful Juno flies;\n", + "Great Jove surveys her with desiring eyes:\n", + "The god, whose lightning sets the heavens on fire,\n", + "Through all his bosom feels the fierce desire;\n", + "Fierce as when first by stealth he seized her charms,\n", + "Mix’d with her soul, and melted in her arms:\n", + "Fix’d on her eyes he fed his eager look,\n", + "Then press’d her hand, and thus with transport spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Why comes my goddess from the ethereal sky,\n", + "And not her steeds and flaming chariot nigh?”\n", + "\n", + "Then she—“I haste to those remote abodes\n", + "Where the great parents of the deathless gods,\n", + "The reverend Ocean and gray Tethys, reign,\n", + "On the last limits of the land and main.\n", + "I visit these, to whose indulgent cares\n", + "I owe the nursing of my tender years:\n", + "For strife, I hear, has made that union cease\n", + "Which held so long that ancient pair in peace.\n", + "The steeds, prepared my chariot to convey\n", + "O’er earth and seas, and through the aerial way,\n", + "Wait under Ide: of thy superior power\n", + "To ask consent, I leave the Olympian bower;\n", + "Nor seek, unknown to thee, the sacred cells\n", + "Deep under seas, where hoary Ocean dwells.”\n", + "\n", + "“For that (said Jove) suffice another day!\n", + "But eager love denies the least delay.\n", + "Let softer cares the present hour employ,\n", + "And be these moments sacred all to joy.\n", + "Ne’er did my soul so strong a passion prove,\n", + "Or for an earthly, or a heavenly love:\n", + "Not when I press’d Ixion’s matchless dame,\n", + "Whence rose Pirithous like the gods in fame:\n", + "Not when fair Danae felt the shower of gold\n", + "Stream into life, whence Perseus brave and bold.\n", + "Not thus I burn’d for either Theban dame:\n", + "(Bacchus from this, from that Alcides came:)\n", + "Nor Phœnix’ daughter, beautiful and young,\n", + "Whence godlike Rhadamanth and Minos sprung.[236]\n", + "Not thus I burn’d for fair Latona’s face,\n", + "Nor comelier Ceres’ more majestic grace.\n", + "Not thus even for thyself I felt desire,\n", + "As now my veins receive the pleasing fire.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke; the goddess with the charming eyes\n", + "Glows with celestial red, and thus replies:\n", + "“Is this a scene for love? On Ida’s height,\n", + "Exposed to mortal and immortal sight!\n", + "Our joys profaned by each familiar eye;\n", + "The sport of heaven, and fable of the sky:\n", + "How shall I e’er review the blest abodes,\n", + "Or mix among the senate of the gods?\n", + "Shall I not think, that, with disorder’d charms,\n", + "All heaven beholds me recent from thy arms?\n", + "With skill divine has Vulcan form’d thy bower,\n", + "Sacred to love and to the genial hour;\n", + "If such thy will, to that recess retire,\n", + "In secret there indulge thy soft desire.”\n", + "\n", + "She ceased; and, smiling with superior love,\n", + "Thus answer’d mild the cloud-compelling Jove:\n", + "“Nor god nor mortal shall our joys behold,\n", + "Shaded with clouds, and circumfused in gold;\n", + "Not even the sun, who darts through heaven his rays,\n", + "And whose broad eye the extended earth surveys.”\n", + "\n", + "Gazing he spoke, and, kindling at the view,\n", + "His eager arms around the goddess threw.\n", + "Glad Earth perceives, and from her bosom pours\n", + "Unbidden herbs and voluntary flowers:\n", + "Thick new-born violets a soft carpet spread,\n", + "And clustering lotos swell’d the rising bed,\n", + "And sudden hyacinths the turf bestrow,[237]\n", + "And flamy crocus made the mountain glow\n", + "There golden clouds conceal the heavenly pair,\n", + "Steep’d in soft joys and circumfused with air;\n", + "Celestial dews, descending o’er the ground,\n", + "Perfume the mount, and breathe ambrosia round:\n", + "At length, with love and sleep’s soft power oppress’d,\n", + "The panting thunderer nods, and sinks to rest.\n", + "\n", + "Now to the navy borne on silent wings,\n", + "To Neptune’s ear soft Sleep his message brings;\n", + "Beside him sudden, unperceived, he stood,\n", + "And thus with gentle words address’d the god:\n", + "\n", + "“Now, Neptune! now, the important hour employ,\n", + "To check a while the haughty hopes of Troy:\n", + "While Jove yet rests, while yet my vapours shed\n", + "The golden vision round his sacred head;\n", + "For Juno’s love, and Somnus’ pleasing ties,\n", + "Have closed those awful and eternal eyes.”\n", + "Thus having said, the power of slumber flew,\n", + "On human lids to drop the balmy dew.\n", + "Neptune, with zeal increased, renews his care,\n", + "And towering in the foremost ranks of war,\n", + "Indignant thus—“Oh once of martial fame!\n", + "O Greeks! if yet ye can deserve the name!\n", + "This half-recover’d day shall Troy obtain?\n", + "Shall Hector thunder at your ships again?\n", + "Lo! still he vaunts, and threats the fleet with fires,\n", + "While stern Achilles in his wrath retires.\n", + "One hero’s loss too tamely you deplore,\n", + "Be still yourselves, and ye shall need no more.\n", + "Oh yet, if glory any bosom warms,\n", + "Brace on your firmest helms, and stand to arms:\n", + "His strongest spear each valiant Grecian wield,\n", + "Each valiant Grecian seize his broadest shield;\n", + "Let to the weak the lighter arms belong,\n", + "The ponderous targe be wielded by the strong.\n", + "Thus arm’d, not Hector shall our presence stay;\n", + "Myself, ye Greeks! myself will lead the way.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] GREEK SHIELD\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The troops assent; their martial arms they change:\n", + "The busy chiefs their banded legions range.\n", + "The kings, though wounded, and oppress’d with pain,\n", + "With helpful hands themselves assist the train.\n", + "The strong and cumbrous arms the valiant wield,\n", + "The weaker warrior takes a lighter shield.\n", + "Thus sheath’d in shining brass, in bright array\n", + "The legions march, and Neptune leads the way:\n", + "His brandish’d falchion flames before their eyes,\n", + "Like lightning flashing through the frighted skies.\n", + "Clad in his might, the earth-shaking power appears;\n", + "Pale mortals tremble, and confess their fears.\n", + "\n", + "Troy’s great defender stands alone unawed,\n", + "Arms his proud host, and dares oppose a god:\n", + "And lo! the god, and wondrous man, appear:\n", + "The sea’s stern ruler there, and Hector here.\n", + "The roaring main, at her great master’s call,\n", + "Rose in huge ranks, and form’d a watery wall\n", + "Around the ships: seas hanging o’er the shores,\n", + "Both armies join: earth thunders, ocean roars.\n", + "Not half so loud the bellowing deeps resound,\n", + "When stormy winds disclose the dark profound;\n", + "Less loud the winds that from the Æolian hall\n", + "Roar through the woods, and make whole forests fall;\n", + "Less loud the woods, when flames in torrents pour,\n", + "Catch the dry mountain, and its shades devour;\n", + "With such a rage the meeting hosts are driven,\n", + "And such a clamour shakes the sounding heaven.\n", + "The first bold javelin, urged by Hector’s force,\n", + "Direct at Ajax’ bosom winged its course;\n", + "But there no pass the crossing belts afford,\n", + "(One braced his shield, and one sustain’d his sword.)\n", + "Then back the disappointed Trojan drew,\n", + "And cursed the lance that unavailing flew:\n", + "But ’scaped not Ajax; his tempestuous hand\n", + "A ponderous stone upheaving from the sand,\n", + "(Where heaps laid loose beneath the warrior’s feet,\n", + "Or served to ballast, or to prop the fleet,)\n", + "Toss’d round and round, the missive marble flings;\n", + "On the razed shield the fallen ruin rings,\n", + "Full on his breast and throat with force descends;\n", + "Nor deaden’d there its giddy fury spends,\n", + "But whirling on, with many a fiery round,\n", + "Smokes in the dust, and ploughs into the ground.\n", + "As when the bolt, red-hissing from above,\n", + "Darts on the consecrated plant of Jove,\n", + "The mountain-oak in flaming ruin lies,\n", + "Black from the blow, and smokes of sulphur rise;\n", + "Stiff with amaze the pale beholders stand,\n", + "And own the terrors of the almighty hand!\n", + "So lies great Hector prostrate on the shore;\n", + "His slacken’d hand deserts the lance it bore;\n", + "His following shield the fallen chief o’erspread;\n", + "Beneath his helmet dropp’d his fainting head;\n", + "His load of armour, sinking to the ground,\n", + "Clanks on the field, a dead and hollow sound.\n", + "Loud shouts of triumph fill the crowded plain;\n", + "Greece sees, in hope, Troy’s great defender slain:\n", + "All spring to seize him; storms of arrows fly,\n", + "And thicker javelins intercept the sky.\n", + "In vain an iron tempest hisses round;\n", + "He lies protected, and without a wound.[238]\n", + "Polydamas, Agenor the divine,\n", + "The pious warrior of Anchises’ line,\n", + "And each bold leader of the Lycian band,\n", + "With covering shields (a friendly circle) stand,\n", + "His mournful followers, with assistant care,\n", + "The groaning hero to his chariot bear;\n", + "His foaming coursers, swifter than the wind,\n", + "Speed to the town, and leave the war behind.\n", + "\n", + "When now they touch’d the mead’s enamell’d side,\n", + "Where gentle Xanthus rolls his easy tide,\n", + "With watery drops the chief they sprinkle round,\n", + "Placed on the margin of the flowery ground.\n", + "Raised on his knees, he now ejects the gore;\n", + "Now faints anew, low-sinking on the shore;\n", + "By fits he breathes, half views the fleeting skies,\n", + "And seals again, by fits, his swimming eyes.\n", + "\n", + "Soon as the Greeks the chief’s retreat beheld,\n", + "With double fury each invades the field.\n", + "Oilean Ajax first his javelin sped,\n", + "Pierced by whose point the son of Enops bled;\n", + "(Satnius the brave, whom beauteous Neis bore\n", + "Amidst her flocks on Satnio’s silver shore;)\n", + "Struck through the belly’s rim, the warrior lies\n", + "Supine, and shades eternal veil his eyes.\n", + "An arduous battle rose around the dead;\n", + "By turns the Greeks, by turns the Trojans bled.\n", + "\n", + "Fired with revenge, Polydamas drew near,\n", + "And at Prothoënor shook the trembling spear;\n", + "The driving javelin through his shoulder thrust,\n", + "He sinks to earth, and grasps the bloody dust.\n", + "“Lo thus (the victor cries) we rule the field,\n", + "And thus their arms the race of Panthus wield:\n", + "From this unerring hand there flies no dart\n", + "But bathes its point within a Grecian heart.\n", + "Propp’d on that spear to which thou owest thy fall,\n", + "Go, guide thy darksome steps to Pluto’s dreary hall.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and sorrow touch’d each Argive breast:\n", + "The soul of Ajax burn’d above the rest.\n", + "As by his side the groaning warrior fell,\n", + "At the fierce foe he launch’d his piercing steel;\n", + "The foe, reclining, shunn’d the flying death;\n", + "But fate, Archilochus, demands thy breath:\n", + "Thy lofty birth no succour could impart,\n", + "The wings of death o’ertook thee on the dart;\n", + "Swift to perform heaven’s fatal will, it fled\n", + "Full on the juncture of the neck and head,\n", + "And took the joint, and cut the nerves in twain:\n", + "The dropping head first tumbled on the plain.\n", + "So just the stroke, that yet the body stood\n", + "Erect, then roll’d along the sands in blood.\n", + "\n", + "“Here, proud Polydamas, here turn thy eyes!\n", + "(The towering Ajax loud-insulting cries:)\n", + "Say, is this chief extended on the plain\n", + "A worthy vengeance for Prothoënor slain?\n", + "Mark well his port! his figure and his face\n", + "Nor speak him vulgar, nor of vulgar race;\n", + "Some lines, methinks, may make his lineage known,\n", + "Antenor’s brother, or perhaps his son.”\n", + "\n", + "He spake, and smiled severe, for well he knew\n", + "The bleeding youth: Troy sadden’d at the view.\n", + "But furious Acamas avenged his cause;\n", + "As Promachus his slaughtered brother draws,\n", + "He pierced his heart—“Such fate attends you all,\n", + "Proud Argives! destined by our arms to fall.\n", + "Not Troy alone, but haughty Greece, shall share\n", + "The toils, the sorrows, and the wounds of war.\n", + "Behold your Promachus deprived of breath,\n", + "A victim owed to my brave brother’s death.\n", + "Not unappeased he enters Pluto’s gate,\n", + "Who leaves a brother to revenge his fate.”\n", + "\n", + "Heart-piercing anguish struck the Grecian host,\n", + "But touch’d the breast of bold Peneleus most;\n", + "At the proud boaster he directs his course;\n", + "The boaster flies, and shuns superior force.\n", + "But young Ilioneus received the spear;\n", + "Ilioneus, his father’s only care:\n", + "(Phorbas the rich, of all the Trojan train\n", + "Whom Hermes loved, and taught the arts of gain:)\n", + "Full in his eye the weapon chanced to fall,\n", + "And from the fibres scoop’d the rooted ball,\n", + "Drove through the neck, and hurl’d him to the plain;\n", + "He lifts his miserable arms in vain!\n", + "Swift his broad falchion fierce Peneleus spread,\n", + "And from the spouting shoulders struck his head;\n", + "To earth at once the head and helmet fly;\n", + "The lance, yet sticking through the bleeding eye,\n", + "The victor seized; and, as aloft he shook\n", + "The gory visage, thus insulting spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Trojans! your great Ilioneus behold!\n", + "Haste, to his father let the tale be told:\n", + "Let his high roofs resound with frantic woe,\n", + "Such as the house of Promachus must know;\n", + "Let doleful tidings greet his mother’s ear,\n", + "Such as to Promachus’ sad spouse we bear,\n", + "When we victorious shall to Greece return,\n", + "And the pale matron in our triumphs mourn.”\n", + "\n", + "Dreadful he spoke, then toss’d the head on high;\n", + "The Trojans hear, they tremble, and they fly:\n", + "Aghast they gaze around the fleet and wall,\n", + "And dread the ruin that impends on all.\n", + "\n", + "Daughters of Jove! that on Olympus shine,\n", + "Ye all-beholding, all-recording nine!\n", + "O say, when Neptune made proud Ilion yield,\n", + "What chief, what hero first embrued the field?\n", + "Of all the Grecians what immortal name,\n", + "And whose bless’d trophies, will ye raise to fame?\n", + "\n", + "Thou first, great Ajax! on the unsanguined plain\n", + "Laid Hyrtius, leader of the Mysian train.\n", + "Phalces and Mermer, Nestor’s son o’erthrew,\n", + "Bold Merion, Morys and Hippotion slew.\n", + "Strong Periphaetes and Prothoon bled,\n", + "By Teucer’s arrows mingled with the dead,\n", + "Pierced in the flank by Menelaus’ steel,\n", + "His people’s pastor, Hyperenor fell;\n", + "Eternal darkness wrapp’d the warrior round,\n", + "And the fierce soul came rushing through the wound.\n", + "But stretch’d in heaps before Oïleus’ son,\n", + "Fall mighty numbers, mighty numbers run;\n", + "Ajax the less, of all the Grecian race\n", + "Skill’d in pursuit, and swiftest in the chase.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] BACCHUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XV.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE FIFTH BATTLE AT THE SHIPS; AND THE ACTS OF AJAX.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Jupiter, awaking, sees the Trojans repulsed from the trenches, Hector\n", + "in a swoon, and Neptune at the head of the Greeks: he is highly\n", + "incensed at the artifice of Juno, who appeases him by her submissions;\n", + "she is then sent to Iris and Apollo. Juno, repairing to the assembly of\n", + "the gods, attempts, with extraordinary address, to incense them against\n", + "Jupiter; in particular she touches Mars with a violent resentment; he\n", + "is ready to take arms, but is prevented by Minerva. Iris and Apollo\n", + "obey the orders of Jupiter; Iris commands Neptune to leave the battle,\n", + "to which, after much reluctance and passion, he consents. Apollo\n", + "reinspires Hector with vigour, brings him back to the battle, marches\n", + "before him with his ægis, and turns the fortune of the fight. He\n", + "breaks down great part of the Grecian wall: the Trojans rush in, and\n", + "attempt to fire the first line of the fleet, but are, as yet, repelled\n", + "by the greater Ajax with a prodigious slaughter.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Now in swift flight they pass the trench profound,\n", + "And many a chief lay gasping on the ground:\n", + "Then stopp’d and panted, where the chariots lie\n", + "Fear on their cheek, and horror in their eye.\n", + "Meanwhile, awaken’d from his dream of love,\n", + "On Ida’s summit sat imperial Jove:\n", + "Round the wide fields he cast a careful view,\n", + "There saw the Trojans fly, the Greeks pursue;\n", + "These proud in arms, those scatter’d o’er the plain\n", + "And, ’midst the war, the monarch of the main.\n", + "Not far, great Hector on the dust he spies,\n", + "(His sad associates round with weeping eyes,)\n", + "Ejecting blood, and panting yet for breath,\n", + "His senses wandering to the verge of death.\n", + "The god beheld him with a pitying look,\n", + "And thus, incensed, to fraudful Juno spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“O thou, still adverse to the eternal will,\n", + "For ever studious in promoting ill!\n", + "Thy arts have made the godlike Hector yield,\n", + "And driven his conquering squadrons from the field.\n", + "Canst thou, unhappy in thy wiles, withstand\n", + "Our power immense, and brave the almighty hand?\n", + "Hast thou forgot, when, bound and fix’d on high,\n", + "From the vast concave of the spangled sky,\n", + "I hung thee trembling in a golden chain,\n", + "And all the raging gods opposed in vain?\n", + "Headlong I hurl’d them from the Olympian hall,\n", + "Stunn’d in the whirl, and breathless with the fall.\n", + "For godlike Hercules these deeds were done,\n", + "Nor seem’d the vengeance worthy such a son:\n", + "When, by thy wiles induced, fierce Boreas toss’d\n", + "The shipwreck’d hero on the Coan coast,\n", + "Him through a thousand forms of death I bore,\n", + "And sent to Argos, and his native shore.\n", + "Hear this, remember, and our fury dread,\n", + "Nor pull the unwilling vengeance on thy head;\n", + "Lest arts and blandishments successless prove,\n", + "Thy soft deceits, and well-dissembled love.”\n", + "\n", + "The Thunderer spoke: imperial Juno mourn’d,\n", + "And, trembling, these submissive words return’d:\n", + "\n", + "“By every oath that powers immortal ties,\n", + "The foodful earth and all-infolding skies;\n", + "By thy black waves, tremendous Styx! that flow\n", + "Through the drear realms of gliding ghosts below;\n", + "By the dread honours of thy sacred head,\n", + "And that unbroken vow, our virgin bed!\n", + "Not by my arts the ruler of the main\n", + "Steeps Troy in blood, and ranges round the plain:\n", + "By his own ardour, his own pity sway’d,\n", + "To help his Greeks, he fought and disobey’d:\n", + "Else had thy Juno better counsels given,\n", + "And taught submission to the sire of heaven.”\n", + "\n", + "“Think’st thou with me? fair empress of the skies!\n", + "(The immortal father with a smile replies;)\n", + "Then soon the haughty sea-god shall obey,\n", + "Nor dare to act but when we point the way.\n", + "If truth inspires thy tongue, proclaim our will\n", + "To yon bright synod on the Olympian hill;\n", + "Our high decree let various Iris know,\n", + "And call the god that bears the silver bow.\n", + "Let her descend, and from the embattled plain\n", + "Command the sea-god to his watery reign:\n", + "While Phœbus hastes great Hector to prepare\n", + "To rise afresh, and once more wake the war:\n", + "His labouring bosom re-inspires with breath,\n", + "And calls his senses from the verge of death.\n", + "Greece chased by Troy, even to Achilles’ fleet,\n", + "Shall fall by thousands at the hero’s feet.\n", + "He, not untouch’d with pity, to the plain\n", + "Shall send Patroclus, but shall send in vain.\n", + "What youths he slaughters under Ilion’s walls!\n", + "Even my loved son, divine Sarpedon, falls!\n", + "Vanquish’d at last by Hector’s lance he lies.\n", + "Then, nor till then, shall great Achilles rise:\n", + "And lo! that instant, godlike Hector dies.\n", + "From that great hour the war’s whole fortune turns,\n", + "Pallas assists, and lofty Ilion burns.\n", + "Not till that day shall Jove relax his rage,\n", + "Nor one of all the heavenly host engage\n", + "In aid of Greece. The promise of a god\n", + "I gave, and seal’d it with the almighty nod,\n", + "Achilles’ glory to the stars to raise;\n", + "Such was our word, and fate the word obeys.”\n", + "\n", + "The trembling queen (the almighty order given)\n", + "Swift from the Idaean summit shot to heaven.\n", + "As some wayfaring man, who wanders o’er\n", + "In thought a length of lands he trod before,\n", + "Sends forth his active mind from place to place,\n", + "Joins hill to dale, and measures space with space:\n", + "So swift flew Juno to the bless’d abodes,\n", + "If thought of man can match the speed of gods.\n", + "There sat the powers in awful synod placed;\n", + "They bow’d, and made obeisance as she pass’d\n", + "Through all the brazen dome:[239] with goblets crown’d\n", + "They hail her queen; the nectar streams around.\n", + "Fair Themis first presents the golden bowl,\n", + "And anxious asks what cares disturb her soul?\n", + "\n", + "To whom the white-arm’d goddess thus replies:\n", + "“Enough thou know’st the tyrant of the skies,\n", + "Severely bent his purpose to fulfil,\n", + "Unmoved his mind, and unrestrain’d his will.\n", + "Go thou, the feasts of heaven attend thy call;\n", + "Bid the crown’d nectar circle round the hall:\n", + "But Jove shall thunder through the ethereal dome\n", + "Such stern decrees, such threaten’d woes to come,\n", + "As soon shall freeze mankind with dire surprise,\n", + "And damp the eternal banquets of the skies.”\n", + "\n", + "The goddess said, and sullen took her place;\n", + "Black horror sadden’d each celestial face.\n", + "To see the gathering grudge in every breast,\n", + "Smiles on her lips a spleenful joy express’d;\n", + "While on her wrinkled front, and eyebrow bent,\n", + "Sat stedfast care, and lowering discontent.\n", + "Thus she proceeds—“Attend, ye powers above!\n", + "But know, ’tis madness to contest with Jove:\n", + "Supreme he sits; and sees, in pride of sway.\n", + "Your vassal godheads grudgingly obey:\n", + "Fierce in the majesty of power controls;\n", + "Shakes all the thrones of heaven, and bends the poles.\n", + "Submiss, immortals! all he wills, obey:\n", + "And thou, great Mars, begin and show the way.\n", + "Behold Ascalaphus! behold him die,\n", + "But dare not murmur, dare not vent a sigh;\n", + "Thy own loved boasted offspring lies o’erthrown,\n", + "If that loved boasted offspring be thy own.”\n", + "\n", + "Stern Mars, with anguish for his slaughter’d son,\n", + "Smote his rebelling breast, and fierce begun:\n", + "“Thus then, immortals! thus shall Mars obey;\n", + "Forgive me, gods, and yield my vengeance way:\n", + "Descending first to yon forbidden plain,\n", + "The god of battles dares avenge the slain;\n", + "Dares, though the thunder bursting o’er my head\n", + "Should hurl me blazing on those heaps of dead.”\n", + "\n", + "With that he gives command to Fear and Flight\n", + "To join his rapid coursers for the fight:\n", + "Then grim in arms, with hasty vengeance flies;\n", + "Arms that reflect a radiance through the skies.\n", + "And now had Jove, by bold rebellion driven,\n", + "Discharged his wrath on half the host of heaven;\n", + "But Pallas, springing through the bright abode,\n", + "Starts from her azure throne to calm the god.\n", + "Struck for the immortal race with timely fear,\n", + "From frantic Mars she snatch’d the shield and spear;\n", + "Then the huge helmet lifting from his head,\n", + "Thus to the impetuous homicide she said:\n", + "\n", + "“By what wild passion, furious! art thou toss’d?\n", + "Striv’st thou with Jove? thou art already lost.\n", + "Shall not the Thunderer’s dread command restrain,\n", + "And was imperial Juno heard in vain?\n", + "Back to the skies wouldst thou with shame be driven,\n", + "And in thy guilt involve the host of heaven?\n", + "Ilion and Greece no more should Jove engage,\n", + "The skies would yield an ampler scene of rage;\n", + "Guilty and guiltless find an equal fate\n", + "And one vast ruin whelm the Olympian state.\n", + "Cease then thy offspring’s death unjust to call;\n", + "Heroes as great have died, and yet shall fall.\n", + "Why should heaven’s law with foolish man comply\n", + "Exempted from the race ordain’d to die?”\n", + "\n", + "This menace fix’d the warrior to his throne;\n", + "Sullen he sat, and curb’d the rising groan.\n", + "Then Juno call’d (Jove’s orders to obey)\n", + "The winged Iris, and the god of day.\n", + "“Go wait the Thunderer’s will (Saturnia cried)\n", + "On yon tall summit of the fountful Ide:\n", + "There in the father’s awful presence stand,\n", + "Receive, and execute his dread command.”\n", + "\n", + "She said, and sat; the god that gilds the day,\n", + "And various Iris, wing their airy way.\n", + "Swift as the wind, to Ida’s hills they came,\n", + "(Fair nurse of fountains, and of savage game)\n", + "There sat the eternal; he whose nod controls\n", + "The trembling world, and shakes the steady poles.\n", + "Veil’d in a mist of fragrance him they found,\n", + "With clouds of gold and purple circled round.\n", + "Well-pleased the Thunderer saw their earnest care,\n", + "And prompt obedience to the queen of air;\n", + "Then (while a smile serenes his awful brow)\n", + "Commands the goddess of the showery bow:\n", + "\n", + "“Iris! descend, and what we here ordain,\n", + "Report to yon mad tyrant of the main.\n", + "Bid him from fight to his own deeps repair,\n", + "Or breathe from slaughter in the fields of air.\n", + "If he refuse, then let him timely weigh\n", + "Our elder birthright, and superior sway.\n", + "How shall his rashness stand the dire alarms,\n", + "If heaven’s omnipotence descend in arms?\n", + "Strives he with me, by whom his power was given,\n", + "And is there equal to the lord of heaven?”\n", + "\n", + "The all-mighty spoke; the goddess wing’d her flight\n", + "To sacred Ilion from the Idaean height.\n", + "Swift as the rattling hail, or fleecy snows,\n", + "Drive through the skies, when Boreas fiercely blows;\n", + "So from the clouds descending Iris falls,\n", + "And to blue Neptune thus the goddess calls:\n", + "\n", + "“Attend the mandate of the sire above!\n", + "In me behold the messenger of Jove:\n", + "He bids thee from forbidden wars repair\n", + "To thine own deeps, or to the fields of air.\n", + "This if refused, he bids thee timely weigh\n", + "His elder birthright, and superior sway.\n", + "How shall thy rashness stand the dire alarms\n", + "If heaven’s omnipotence descend in arms?\n", + "Striv’st thou with him by whom all power is given?\n", + "And art thou equal to the lord of heaven?”\n", + "\n", + "“What means the haughty sovereign of the skies?\n", + "(The king of ocean thus, incensed, replies;)\n", + "Rule as he will his portion’d realms on high;\n", + "No vassal god, nor of his train, am I.\n", + "Three brother deities from Saturn came,\n", + "And ancient Rhea, earth’s immortal dame:\n", + "Assign’d by lot, our triple rule we know;\n", + "Infernal Pluto sways the shades below;\n", + "O’er the wide clouds, and o’er the starry plain,\n", + "Ethereal Jove extends his high domain;\n", + "My court beneath the hoary waves I keep,\n", + "And hush the roarings of the sacred deep;\n", + "Olympus, and this earth, in common lie:\n", + "What claim has here the tyrant of the sky?\n", + "Far in the distant clouds let him control,\n", + "And awe the younger brothers of the pole;\n", + "There to his children his commands be given,\n", + "The trembling, servile, second race of heaven.”\n", + "\n", + "“And must I then (said she), O sire of floods!\n", + "Bear this fierce answer to the king of gods?\n", + "Correct it yet, and change thy rash intent;\n", + "A noble mind disdains not to repent.\n", + "To elder brothers guardian fiends are given,\n", + "To scourge the wretch insulting them and heaven.”\n", + "\n", + "“Great is the profit (thus the god rejoin’d)\n", + "When ministers are blest with prudent mind:\n", + "Warn’d by thy words, to powerful Jove I yield,\n", + "And quit, though angry, the contended field:\n", + "Not but his threats with justice I disclaim,\n", + "The same our honours, and our birth the same.\n", + "If yet, forgetful of his promise given\n", + "To Hermes, Pallas, and the queen of heaven,\n", + "To favour Ilion, that perfidious place,\n", + "He breaks his faith with half the ethereal race;\n", + "Give him to know, unless the Grecian train\n", + "Lay yon proud structures level with the plain,\n", + "Howe’er the offence by other gods be pass’d,\n", + "The wrath of Neptune shall for ever last.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus speaking, furious from the field he strode,\n", + "And plunged into the bosom of the flood.\n", + "The lord of thunders, from his lofty height\n", + "Beheld, and thus bespoke the source of light:\n", + "\n", + "“Behold! the god whose liquid arms are hurl’d\n", + "Around the globe, whose earthquakes rock the world,\n", + "Desists at length his rebel-war to wage,\n", + "Seeks his own seas, and trembles at our rage;\n", + "Else had my wrath, heaven’s thrones all shaking round,\n", + "Burn’d to the bottom of his seas profound;\n", + "And all the gods that round old Saturn dwell\n", + "Had heard the thunders to the deeps of hell.\n", + "Well was the crime, and well the vengeance spared;\n", + "Even power immense had found such battle hard.\n", + "Go thou, my son! the trembling Greeks alarm,\n", + "Shake my broad ægis on thy active arm,\n", + "Be godlike Hector thy peculiar care,\n", + "Swell his bold heart, and urge his strength to war:\n", + "Let Ilion conquer, till the Achaian train\n", + "Fly to their ships and Hellespont again:\n", + "Then Greece shall breathe from toils.” The godhead said;\n", + "His will divine the son of Jove obey’d.\n", + "Not half so swift the sailing falcon flies,\n", + "That drives a turtle through the liquid skies,\n", + "As Phœbus, shooting from the Idaean brow,\n", + "Glides down the mountain to the plain below.\n", + "There Hector seated by the stream he sees,\n", + "His sense returning with the coming breeze;\n", + "Again his pulses beat, his spirits rise;\n", + "Again his loved companions meet his eyes;\n", + "Jove thinking of his pains, they pass’d away,\n", + "To whom the god who gives the golden day:\n", + "\n", + "“Why sits great Hector from the field so far?\n", + "What grief, what wound, withholds thee from the war?”\n", + "\n", + "The fainting hero, as the vision bright\n", + "Stood shining o’er him, half unseal’d his sight:\n", + "\n", + "“What blest immortal, with commanding breath,\n", + "Thus wakens Hector from the sleep of death?\n", + "Has fame not told, how, while my trusty sword\n", + "Bathed Greece in slaughter, and her battle gored,\n", + "The mighty Ajax with a deadly blow\n", + "Had almost sunk me to the shades below?\n", + "Even yet, methinks, the gliding ghosts I spy,\n", + "And hell’s black horrors swim before my eye.”\n", + "\n", + "To him Apollo: “Be no more dismay’d;\n", + "See, and be strong! the Thunderer sends thee aid.\n", + "Behold! thy Phœbus shall his arms employ,\n", + "Phœbus, propitious still to thee and Troy.\n", + "Inspire thy warriors then with manly force,\n", + "And to the ships impel thy rapid horse:\n", + "Even I will make thy fiery coursers way,\n", + "And drive the Grecians headlong to the sea.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus to bold Hector spoke the son of Jove,\n", + "And breathed immortal ardour from above.\n", + "As when the pamper’d steed, with reins unbound,\n", + "Breaks from his stall, and pours along the ground;\n", + "With ample strokes he rushes to the flood,\n", + "To bathe his sides, and cool his fiery blood;\n", + "His head, now freed, he tosses to the skies;\n", + "His mane dishevell’d o’er his shoulders flies:\n", + "He snuffs the females in the well-known plain,\n", + "And springs, exulting, to his fields again:\n", + "Urged by the voice divine, thus Hector flew,\n", + "Full of the god; and all his hosts pursue.\n", + "As when the force of men and dogs combined\n", + "Invade the mountain goat, or branching hind;\n", + "Far from the hunter’s rage secure they lie\n", + "Close in the rock, (not fated yet to die)\n", + "When lo! a lion shoots across the way!\n", + "They fly: at once the chasers and the prey.\n", + "So Greece, that late in conquering troops pursued,\n", + "And mark’d their progress through the ranks in blood,\n", + "Soon as they see the furious chief appear,\n", + "Forget to vanquish, and consent to fear.\n", + "\n", + "Thoas with grief observed his dreadful course,\n", + "Thoas, the bravest of the Ætolian force;\n", + "Skill’d to direct the javelin’s distant flight,\n", + "And bold to combat in the standing fight,\n", + "Not more in councils famed for solid sense,\n", + "Than winning words and heavenly eloquence.\n", + "“Gods! what portent (he cried) these eyes invades?\n", + "Lo! Hector rises from the Stygian shades!\n", + "We saw him, late, by thundering Ajax kill’d:\n", + "What god restores him to the frighted field;\n", + "And not content that half of Greece lie slain,\n", + "Pours new destruction on her sons again?\n", + "He comes not, Jove! without thy powerful will;\n", + "Lo! still he lives, pursues, and conquers still!\n", + "Yet hear my counsel, and his worst withstand:\n", + "The Greeks’ main body to the fleet command;\n", + "But let the few whom brisker spirits warm,\n", + "Stand the first onset, and provoke the storm.\n", + "Thus point your arms; and when such foes appear,\n", + "Fierce as he is, let Hector learn to fear.”\n", + "\n", + "The warrior spoke; the listening Greeks obey,\n", + "Thickening their ranks, and form a deep array.\n", + "\n", + "Each Ajax, Teucer, Merion gave command,\n", + "The valiant leader of the Cretan band;\n", + "And Mars-like Meges: these the chiefs excite,\n", + "Approach the foe, and meet the coming fight.\n", + "Behind, unnumber’d multitudes attend,\n", + "To flank the navy, and the shores defend.\n", + "Full on the front the pressing Trojans bear,\n", + "And Hector first came towering to the war.\n", + "Phœbus himself the rushing battle led;\n", + "A veil of clouds involved his radiant head:\n", + "High held before him, Jove’s enormous shield\n", + "Portentous shone, and shaded all the field;\n", + "Vulcan to Jove the immortal gift consign’d,\n", + "To scatter hosts and terrify mankind,\n", + "The Greeks expect the shock, the clamours rise\n", + "From different parts, and mingle in the skies.\n", + "Dire was the hiss of darts, by heroes flung,\n", + "And arrows leaping from the bow-string sung;\n", + "These drink the life of generous warriors slain:\n", + "Those guiltless fall, and thirst for blood in vain.\n", + "As long as Phœbus bore unmoved the shield,\n", + "Sat doubtful conquest hovering o’er the field;\n", + "But when aloft he shakes it in the skies,\n", + "Shouts in their ears, and lightens in their eyes,\n", + "Deep horror seizes every Grecian breast,\n", + "Their force is humbled, and their fear confess’d.\n", + "So flies a herd of oxen, scatter’d wide,\n", + "No swain to guard them, and no day to guide,\n", + "When two fell lions from the mountain come,\n", + "And spread the carnage through the shady gloom.\n", + "Impending Phœbus pours around them fear,\n", + "And Troy and Hector thunder in the rear.\n", + "Heaps fall on heaps: the slaughter Hector leads,\n", + "First great Arcesilas, then Stichius bleeds;\n", + "One to the bold Bœotians ever dear,\n", + "And one Menestheus’ friend and famed compeer.\n", + "Medon and Iasus, Æneas sped;\n", + "This sprang from Phelus, and the Athenians led;\n", + "But hapless Medon from Oïleus came;\n", + "Him Ajax honour’d with a brother’s name,\n", + "Though born of lawless love: from home expell’d,\n", + "A banish’d man, in Phylacè he dwell’d,\n", + "Press’d by the vengeance of an angry wife;\n", + "Troy ends at last his labours and his life.\n", + "Mecystes next Polydamas o’erthrew;\n", + "And thee, brave Clonius, great Agenor slew.\n", + "By Paris, Deiochus inglorious dies,\n", + "Pierced through the shoulder as he basely flies.\n", + "Polites’ arm laid Echius on the plain;\n", + "Stretch’d on one heap, the victors spoil the slain.\n", + "The Greeks dismay’d, confused, disperse or fall,\n", + "Some seek the trench, some skulk behind the wall.\n", + "While these fly trembling, others pant for breath,\n", + "And o’er the slaughter stalks gigantic death.\n", + "On rush’d bold Hector, gloomy as the night;\n", + "Forbids to plunder, animates the fight,\n", + "Points to the fleet: “For, by the gods! who flies,[240]\n", + "Who dares but linger, by this hand he dies;\n", + "No weeping sister his cold eye shall close,\n", + "No friendly hand his funeral pyre compose.\n", + "Who stops to plunder at this signal hour,\n", + "The birds shall tear him, and the dogs devour.”\n", + "Furious he said; the smarting scourge resounds;\n", + "The coursers fly; the smoking chariot bounds;\n", + "The hosts rush on; loud clamours shake the shore;\n", + "The horses thunder, earth and ocean roar!\n", + "Apollo, planted at the trench’s bound,\n", + "Push’d at the bank: down sank the enormous mound:\n", + "Roll’d in the ditch the heapy ruin lay;\n", + "A sudden road! a long and ample way.\n", + "O’er the dread fosse (a late impervious space)\n", + "Now steeds, and men, and cars tumultuous pass.\n", + "The wondering crowds the downward level trod;\n", + "Before them flamed the shield, and march’d the god.\n", + "Then with his hand he shook the mighty wall;\n", + "And lo! the turrets nod, the bulwarks fall:\n", + "Easy as when ashore an infant stands,\n", + "And draws imagined houses in the sands;\n", + "The sportive wanton, pleased with some new play,\n", + "Sweeps the slight works and fashion’d domes away:\n", + "Thus vanish’d at thy touch, the towers and walls;\n", + "The toil of thousands in a moment falls.\n", + "\n", + "The Grecians gaze around with wild despair,\n", + "Confused, and weary all the powers with prayer:\n", + "Exhort their men, with praises, threats, commands;\n", + "And urge the gods, with voices, eyes, and hands.\n", + "Experienced Nestor chief obtests the skies,\n", + "And weeps his country with a father’s eyes.\n", + "\n", + "“O Jove! if ever, on his native shore,\n", + "One Greek enrich’d thy shrine with offer’d gore;\n", + "If e’er, in hope our country to behold,\n", + "We paid the fattest firstlings of the fold;\n", + "If e’er thou sign’st our wishes with thy nod:\n", + "Perform the promise of a gracious god!\n", + "This day preserve our navies from the flame,\n", + "And save the relics of the Grecian name.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus prayed the sage: the eternal gave consent,\n", + "And peals of thunder shook the firmament.\n", + "Presumptuous Troy mistook the accepting sign,\n", + "And catch’d new fury at the voice divine.\n", + "As, when black tempests mix the seas and skies,\n", + "The roaring deeps in watery mountains rise,\n", + "Above the sides of some tall ship ascend,\n", + "Its womb they deluge, and its ribs they rend:\n", + "Thus loudly roaring, and o’erpowering all,\n", + "Mount the thick Trojans up the Grecian wall;\n", + "Legions on legions from each side arise:\n", + "Thick sound the keels; the storm of arrows flies.\n", + "Fierce on the ships above, the cars below,\n", + "These wield the mace, and those the javelin throw.\n", + "\n", + "While thus the thunder of the battle raged,\n", + "And labouring armies round the works engaged,\n", + "Still in the tent Patroclus sat to tend\n", + "The good Eurypylus, his wounded friend.\n", + "He sprinkles healing balms, to anguish kind,\n", + "And adds discourse, the medicine of the mind.\n", + "But when he saw, ascending up the fleet,\n", + "Victorious Troy; then, starting from his seat,\n", + "With bitter groans his sorrows he express’d,\n", + "He wrings his hands, he beats his manly breast.\n", + "“Though yet thy state require redress (he cries)\n", + "Depart I must: what horrors strike my eyes!\n", + "Charged with Achilles’ high command I go,\n", + "A mournful witness of this scene of woe;\n", + "I haste to urge him by his country’s care\n", + "To rise in arms, and shine again in war.\n", + "Perhaps some favouring god his soul may bend;\n", + "The voice is powerful of a faithful friend.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke; and, speaking, swifter than the wind\n", + "Sprung from the tent, and left the war behind.\n", + "The embodied Greeks the fierce attack sustain,\n", + "But strive, though numerous, to repulse in vain:\n", + "Nor could the Trojans, through that firm array,\n", + "Force to the fleet and tents the impervious way.\n", + "As when a shipwright, with Palladian art,\n", + "Smooths the rough wood, and levels every part;\n", + "With equal hand he guides his whole design,\n", + "By the just rule, and the directing line:\n", + "The martial leaders, with like skill and care,\n", + "Preserved their line, and equal kept the war.\n", + "Brave deeds of arms through all the ranks were tried,\n", + "And every ship sustained an equal tide.\n", + "At one proud bark, high-towering o’er the fleet,\n", + "Ajax the great, and godlike Hector meet;\n", + "For one bright prize the matchless chiefs contend,\n", + "Nor this the ships can fire, nor that defend:\n", + "One kept the shore, and one the vessel trod;\n", + "That fix’d as fate, this acted by a god.\n", + "The son of Clytius in his daring hand,\n", + "The deck approaching, shakes a flaming brand;\n", + "But, pierced by Telamon’s huge lance, expires:\n", + "Thundering he falls, and drops the extinguish’d fires.\n", + "Great Hector view’d him with a sad survey,\n", + "As stretch’d in dust before the stern he lay.\n", + "“Oh! all of Trojan, all of Lycian race!\n", + "Stand to your arms, maintain this arduous space:\n", + "Lo! where the son of royal Clytius lies;\n", + "Ah, save his arms, secure his obsequies!”\n", + "\n", + "This said, his eager javelin sought the foe:\n", + "But Ajax shunn’d the meditated blow.\n", + "Not vainly yet the forceful lance was thrown;\n", + "It stretch’d in dust unhappy Lycophron:\n", + "An exile long, sustain’d at Ajax’ board,\n", + "A faithful servant to a foreign lord;\n", + "In peace, and war, for ever at his side,\n", + "Near his loved master, as he lived, he died.\n", + "From the high poop he tumbles on the sand,\n", + "And lies a lifeless load along the land.\n", + "With anguish Ajax views the piercing sight,\n", + "And thus inflames his brother to the fight:\n", + "\n", + "“Teucer, behold! extended on the shore\n", + "Our friend, our loved companion! now no more!\n", + "Dear as a parent, with a parent’s care\n", + "To fight our wars he left his native air.\n", + "This death deplored, to Hector’s rage we owe;\n", + "Revenge, revenge it on the cruel foe.\n", + "Where are those darts on which the fates attend?\n", + "And where the bow which Phœbus taught to bend?”\n", + "\n", + "Impatient Teucer, hastening to his aid,\n", + "Before the chief his ample bow display’d;\n", + "The well-stored quiver on his shoulders hung:\n", + "Then hiss’d his arrow, and the bowstring sung.\n", + "Clytus, Pisenor’s son, renown’d in fame,\n", + "(To thee, Polydamas! an honour’d name)\n", + "Drove through the thickest of the embattled plains\n", + "The startling steeds, and shook his eager reins.\n", + "As all on glory ran his ardent mind,\n", + "The pointed death arrests him from behind:\n", + "Through his fair neck the thrilling arrow flies;\n", + "In youth’s first bloom reluctantly he dies.\n", + "Hurl’d from the lofty seat, at distance far,\n", + "The headlong coursers spurn his empty car;\n", + "Till sad Polydamas the steeds restrain’d,\n", + "And gave, Astynous, to thy careful hand;\n", + "Then, fired to vengeance, rush’d amidst the foe:\n", + "Rage edged his sword, and strengthen’d every blow.\n", + "\n", + "Once more bold Teucer, in his country’s cause,\n", + "At Hector’s breast a chosen arrow draws:\n", + "And had the weapon found the destined way,\n", + "Thy fall, great Trojan! had renown’d that day.\n", + "But Hector was not doom’d to perish then:\n", + "The all-wise disposer of the fates of men\n", + "(Imperial Jove) his present death withstands;\n", + "Nor was such glory due to Teucer’s hands.\n", + "At its full stretch as the tough string he drew,\n", + "Struck by an arm unseen, it burst in two;\n", + "Down dropp’d the bow: the shaft with brazen head\n", + "Fell innocent, and on the dust lay dead.\n", + "The astonish’d archer to great Ajax cries;\n", + "“Some god prevents our destined enterprise:\n", + "Some god, propitious to the Trojan foe,\n", + "Has, from my arm unfailing, struck the bow,\n", + "And broke the nerve my hands had twined with art,\n", + "Strong to impel the flight of many a dart.”\n", + "\n", + "“Since heaven commands it (Ajax made reply)\n", + "Dismiss the bow, and lay thy arrows by:\n", + "Thy arms no less suffice the lance to wield,\n", + "And quit the quiver for the ponderous shield.\n", + "In the first ranks indulge thy thirst of fame,\n", + "Thy brave example shall the rest inflame.\n", + "Fierce as they are, by long successes vain;\n", + "To force our fleet, or even a ship to gain,\n", + "Asks toil, and sweat, and blood: their utmost might\n", + "Shall find its match—No more: ’tis ours to fight.”\n", + "\n", + "Then Teucer laid his faithless bow aside;\n", + "The fourfold buckler o’er his shoulder tied;\n", + "On his brave head a crested helm he placed,\n", + "With nodding horse-hair formidably graced;\n", + "A dart, whose point with brass refulgent shines,\n", + "The warrior wields; and his great brother joins.\n", + "\n", + "This Hector saw, and thus express’d his joy:\n", + "“Ye troops of Lycia, Dardanus, and Troy!\n", + "Be mindful of yourselves, your ancient fame,\n", + "And spread your glory with the navy’s flame.\n", + "Jove is with us; I saw his hand, but now,\n", + "From the proud archer strike his vaunted bow:\n", + "Indulgent Jove! how plain thy favours shine,\n", + "When happy nations bear the marks divine!\n", + "How easy then, to see the sinking state\n", + "Of realms accursed, deserted, reprobate!\n", + "Such is the fate of Greece, and such is ours:\n", + "Behold, ye warriors, and exert your powers.\n", + "Death is the worst; a fate which all must try;\n", + "And for our country, ’tis a bliss to die.\n", + "The gallant man, though slain in fight he be,\n", + "Yet leaves his nation safe, his children free;\n", + "Entails a debt on all the grateful state;\n", + "His own brave friends shall glory in his fate;\n", + "His wife live honour’d, all his race succeed,\n", + "And late posterity enjoy the deed!”\n", + "\n", + "This roused the soul in every Trojan breast:\n", + "The godlike Ajax next his Greeks address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“How long, ye warriors of the Argive race,\n", + "(To generous Argos what a dire disgrace!)\n", + "How long on these cursed confines will ye lie,\n", + "Yet undetermined, or to live or die?\n", + "What hopes remain, what methods to retire,\n", + "If once your vessels catch the Trojan fire?\n", + "Mark how the flames approach, how near they fall,\n", + "How Hector calls, and Troy obeys his call!\n", + "Not to the dance that dreadful voice invites,\n", + "It calls to death, and all the rage of fights.\n", + "’Tis now no time for wisdom or debates;\n", + "To your own hands are trusted all your fates;\n", + "And better far in one decisive strife,\n", + "One day should end our labour or our life,\n", + "Than keep this hard-got inch of barren sands,\n", + "Still press’d, and press’d by such inglorious hands.”\n", + "\n", + "The listening Grecians feel their leader’s flame,\n", + "And every kindling bosom pants for fame.\n", + "Then mutual slaughters spread on either side;\n", + "By Hector here the Phocian Schedius died;\n", + "There, pierced by Ajax, sunk Laodamas,\n", + "Chief of the foot, of old Antenor’s race.\n", + "Polydamas laid Otus on the sand,\n", + "The fierce commander of the Epeian band.\n", + "His lance bold Meges at the victor threw;\n", + "The victor, stooping, from the death withdrew;\n", + "(That valued life, O Phœbus! was thy care)\n", + "But Croesmus’ bosom took the flying spear:\n", + "His corpse fell bleeding on the slippery shore;\n", + "His radiant arms triumphant Meges bore.\n", + "Dolops, the son of Lampus, rushes on,\n", + "Sprung from the race of old Laomedon,\n", + "And famed for prowess in a well-fought field,\n", + "He pierced the centre of his sounding shield:\n", + "But Meges, Phyleus’ ample breastplate wore,\n", + "(Well-known in fight on Sellè’s winding shore;\n", + "For king Euphetes gave the golden mail,\n", + "Compact, and firm with many a jointed scale)\n", + "Which oft, in cities storm’d, and battles won,\n", + "Had saved the father, and now saves the son.\n", + "Full at the Trojan’s head he urged his lance,\n", + "Where the high plumes above the helmet dance,\n", + "New ting’d with Tyrian dye: in dust below,\n", + "Shorn from the crest, the purple honours glow.\n", + "Meantime their fight the Spartan king survey’d,\n", + "And stood by Meges’ side a sudden aid.\n", + "Through Dolops’ shoulder urged his forceful dart,\n", + "Which held its passage through the panting heart,\n", + "And issued at his breast. With thundering sound\n", + "The warrior falls, extended on the ground.\n", + "In rush the conquering Greeks to spoil the slain:\n", + "But Hector’s voice excites his kindred train;\n", + "The hero most, from Hicetaon sprung,\n", + "Fierce Melanippus, gallant, brave, and young.\n", + "He (ere to Troy the Grecians cross’d the main)\n", + "Fed his large oxen on Percotè’s plain;\n", + "But when oppress’d, his country claim’d his care,\n", + "Return’d to Ilion, and excell’d in war;\n", + "For this, in Priam’s court, he held his place,\n", + "Beloved no less than Priam’s royal race.\n", + "Him Hector singled, as his troops he led,\n", + "And thus inflamed him, pointing to the dead.\n", + "\n", + "“Lo, Melanippus! lo, where Dolops lies;\n", + "And is it thus our royal kinsman dies?\n", + "O’ermatch’d he falls; to two at once a prey,\n", + "And lo! they bear the bloody arms away!\n", + "Come on—a distant war no longer wage,\n", + "But hand to hand thy country’s foes engage:\n", + "Till Greece at once, and all her glory end;\n", + "Or Ilion from her towery height descend,\n", + "Heaved from the lowest stone; and bury all\n", + "In one sad sepulchre, one common fall.”\n", + "\n", + "Hector (this said) rush’d forward on the foes:\n", + "With equal ardour Melanippus glows:\n", + "Then Ajax thus—“O Greeks! respect your fame,\n", + "Respect yourselves, and learn an honest shame:\n", + "Let mutual reverence mutual warmth inspire,\n", + "And catch from breast to breast the noble fire,\n", + "On valour’s side the odds of combat lie;\n", + "The brave live glorious, or lamented die;\n", + "The wretch that trembles in the field of fame,\n", + "Meets death, and worse than death, eternal shame.”\n", + "\n", + "His generous sense he not in vain imparts;\n", + "It sunk, and rooted in the Grecian hearts:\n", + "They join, they throng, they thicken at his call,\n", + "And flank the navy with a brazen wall;\n", + "Shields touching shields, in order blaze above,\n", + "And stop the Trojans, though impell’d by Jove.\n", + "The fiery Spartan first, with loud applause.\n", + "Warms the bold son of Nestor in his cause.\n", + "“Is there (he said) in arms a youth like you,\n", + "So strong to fight, so active to pursue?\n", + "Why stand you distant, nor attempt a deed?\n", + "Lift the bold lance, and make some Trojan bleed.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and backward to the lines retired;\n", + "Forth rush’d the youth with martial fury fired,\n", + "Beyond the foremost ranks; his lance he threw,\n", + "And round the black battalions cast his view.\n", + "The troops of Troy recede with sudden fear,\n", + "While the swift javelin hiss’d along in air.\n", + "Advancing Melanippus met the dart\n", + "With his bold breast, and felt it in his heart:\n", + "Thundering he falls; his falling arms resound,\n", + "And his broad buckler rings against the ground.\n", + "The victor leaps upon his prostrate prize:\n", + "Thus on a roe the well-breath’d beagle flies,\n", + "And rends his side, fresh-bleeding with the dart\n", + "The distant hunter sent into his heart.\n", + "Observing Hector to the rescue flew;\n", + "Bold as he was, Antilochus withdrew.\n", + "So when a savage, ranging o’er the plain,\n", + "Has torn the shepherd’s dog, or shepherd’s swain,\n", + "While conscious of the deed, he glares around,\n", + "And hears the gathering multitude resound,\n", + "Timely he flies the yet-untasted food,\n", + "And gains the friendly shelter of the wood:\n", + "So fears the youth; all Troy with shouts pursue,\n", + "While stones and darts in mingled tempest flew;\n", + "But enter’d in the Grecian ranks, he turns\n", + "His manly breast, and with new fury burns.\n", + "\n", + "Now on the fleet the tides of Trojans drove,\n", + "Fierce to fulfil the stern decrees of Jove:\n", + "The sire of gods, confirming Thetis’ prayer,\n", + "The Grecian ardour quench’d in deep despair;\n", + "But lifts to glory Troy’s prevailing bands,\n", + "Swells all their hearts, and strengthens all their hands.\n", + "On Ida’s top he waits with longing eyes,\n", + "To view the navy blazing to the skies;\n", + "Then, nor till then, the scale of war shall turn,\n", + "The Trojans fly, and conquer’d Ilion burn.\n", + "These fates revolved in his almighty mind,\n", + "He raises Hector to the work design’d,\n", + "Bids him with more than mortal fury glow,\n", + "And drives him, like a lightning, on the foe.\n", + "So Mars, when human crimes for vengeance call,\n", + "Shakes his huge javelin, and whole armies fall.\n", + "Not with more rage a conflagration rolls,\n", + "Wraps the vast mountains, and involves the poles.\n", + "He foams with wrath; beneath his gloomy brow\n", + "Like fiery meteors his red eye-balls glow:\n", + "The radiant helmet on his temple burns,\n", + "Waves when he nods, and lightens as he turns:\n", + "For Jove his splendour round the chief had thrown,\n", + "And cast the blaze of both the hosts on one.\n", + "Unhappy glories! for his fate was near,\n", + "Due to stern Pallas, and Pelides’ spear:\n", + "Yet Jove deferr’d the death he was to pay,\n", + "And gave what fate allow’d, the honours of a day!\n", + "\n", + "Now all on fire for fame, his breast, his eyes\n", + "Burn at each foe, and single every prize;\n", + "Still at the closest ranks, the thickest fight,\n", + "He points his ardour, and exerts his might.\n", + "The Grecian phalanx, moveless as a tower,\n", + "On all sides batter’d, yet resists his power:\n", + "So some tall rock o’erhangs the hoary main,[241]\n", + "By winds assail’d, by billows beat in vain,\n", + "Unmoved it hears, above, the tempest blow,\n", + "And sees the watery mountains break below.\n", + "Girt in surrounding flames, he seems to fall\n", + "Like fire from Jove, and bursts upon them all:\n", + "Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends,\n", + "And, swell’d with tempests, on the ship descends;\n", + "White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud\n", + "Howl o’er the masts, and sing through every shroud:\n", + "Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears;\n", + "And instant death on every wave appears.\n", + "So pale the Greeks the eyes of Hector meet,\n", + "The chief so thunders, and so shakes the fleet.\n", + "\n", + "As when a lion, rushing from his den,\n", + "Amidst the plain of some wide-water’d fen,\n", + "(Where numerous oxen, as at ease they feed,\n", + "At large expatiate o’er the ranker mead)\n", + "Leaps on the herds before the herdsman’s eyes;\n", + "The trembling herdsman far to distance flies;\n", + "Some lordly bull (the rest dispersed and fled)\n", + "He singles out; arrests, and lays him dead.\n", + "Thus from the rage of Jove-like Hector flew\n", + "All Greece in heaps; but one he seized, and slew:\n", + "Mycenian Periphes, a mighty name,\n", + "In wisdom great, in arms well known to fame;\n", + "The minister of stern Eurystheus’ ire\n", + "Against Alcides, Copreus was his sire:\n", + "The son redeem’d the honours of the race,\n", + "A son as generous as the sire was base;\n", + "O’er all his country’s youth conspicuous far\n", + "In every virtue, or of peace or war:\n", + "But doom’d to Hector’s stronger force to yield!\n", + "Against the margin of his ample shield\n", + "He struck his hasty foot: his heels up-sprung;\n", + "Supine he fell; his brazen helmet rung.\n", + "On the fallen chief the invading Trojan press’d,\n", + "And plunged the pointed javelin in his breast.\n", + "His circling friends, who strove to guard too late\n", + "The unhappy hero, fled, or shared his fate.\n", + "\n", + "Chased from the foremost line, the Grecian train\n", + "Now man the next, receding toward the main:\n", + "Wedged in one body at the tents they stand,\n", + "Wall’d round with sterns, a gloomy, desperate band.\n", + "Now manly shame forbids the inglorious flight;\n", + "Now fear itself confines them to the fight:\n", + "Man courage breathes in man; but Nestor most\n", + "(The sage preserver of the Grecian host)\n", + "Exhorts, adjures, to guard these utmost shores;\n", + "And by their parents, by themselves implores.\n", + "\n", + "“Oh friends! be men: your generous breasts inflame\n", + "With mutual honour, and with mutual shame!\n", + "Think of your hopes, your fortunes; all the care\n", + "Your wives, your infants, and your parents share:\n", + "Think of each living father’s reverend head;\n", + "Think of each ancestor with glory dead;\n", + "Absent, by me they speak, by me they sue,\n", + "They ask their safety, and their fame, from you:\n", + "The gods their fates on this one action lay,\n", + "And all are lost, if you desert the day.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and round him breathed heroic fires;\n", + "Minerva seconds what the sage inspires.\n", + "The mist of darkness Jove around them threw\n", + "She clear’d, restoring all the war to view;\n", + "A sudden ray shot beaming o’er the plain,\n", + "And show’d the shores, the navy, and the main:\n", + "Hector they saw, and all who fly, or fight,\n", + "The scene wide-opening to the blaze of light,\n", + "First of the field great Ajax strikes their eyes,\n", + "His port majestic, and his ample size:\n", + "A ponderous mace with studs of iron crown’d,\n", + "Full twenty cubits long, he swings around;\n", + "Nor fights, like others, fix’d to certain stands\n", + "But looks a moving tower above the bands;\n", + "High on the decks with vast gigantic stride,\n", + "The godlike hero stalks from side to side.\n", + "So when a horseman from the watery mead\n", + "(Skill’d in the manage of the bounding steed)\n", + "Drives four fair coursers, practised to obey,\n", + "To some great city through the public way;\n", + "Safe in his art, as side by side they run,\n", + "He shifts his seat, and vaults from one to one;\n", + "And now to this, and now to that he flies;\n", + "Admiring numbers follow with their eyes.\n", + "\n", + "From ship to ship thus Ajax swiftly flew,\n", + "No less the wonder of the warring crew.\n", + "As furious, Hector thunder’d threats aloud,\n", + "And rush’d enraged before the Trojan crowd;\n", + "Then swift invades the ships, whose beaky prores\n", + "Lay rank’d contiguous on the bending shores;\n", + "So the strong eagle from his airy height,\n", + "Who marks the swans’ or cranes’ embodied flight,\n", + "Stoops down impetuous, while they light for food,\n", + "And, stooping, darkens with his wings the flood.\n", + "Jove leads him on with his almighty hand,\n", + "And breathes fierce spirits in his following band.\n", + "The warring nations meet, the battle roars,\n", + "Thick beats the combat on the sounding prores.\n", + "Thou wouldst have thought, so furious was their fire,\n", + "No force could tame them, and no toil could tire;\n", + "As if new vigour from new fights they won,\n", + "And the long battle was but then begun.\n", + "Greece, yet unconquer’d, kept alive the war,\n", + "Secure of death, confiding in despair:\n", + "Troy in proud hopes already view’d the main\n", + "Bright with the blaze, and red with heroes slain:\n", + "Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair,\n", + "And each contends, as his were all the war.\n", + "\n", + "’Twas thou, bold Hector! whose resistless hand\n", + "First seized a ship on that contested strand;\n", + "The same which dead Protesilaüs bore,[242]\n", + "The first that touch’d the unhappy Trojan shore:\n", + "For this in arms the warring nations stood,\n", + "And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood.\n", + "No room to poise the lance or bend the bow;\n", + "But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow:\n", + "Wounded, they wound; and seek each other’s hearts\n", + "With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten’d darts.\n", + "The falchions ring, shields rattle, axes sound,\n", + "Swords flash in air, or glitter on the ground;\n", + "With streaming blood the slippery shores are dyed,\n", + "And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.\n", + "\n", + "Still raging, Hector with his ample hand\n", + "Grasps the high stern, and gives this loud command:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Haste, bring the flames! that toil of ten long years\n", + "Is finished; and the day desired appears!\n", + "This happy day with acclamations greet,\n", + "Bright with destruction of yon hostile fleet.\n", + "The coward-counsels of a timorous throng\n", + "Of reverend dotards check’d our glory long:\n", + "Too long Jove lull’d us with lethargic charms,\n", + "But now in peals of thunder calls to arms:\n", + "In this great day he crowns our full desires,\n", + "Wakes all our force, and seconds all our fires.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke—the warriors at his fierce command\n", + "Pour a new deluge on the Grecian band.\n", + "Even Ajax paused, (so thick the javelins fly,)\n", + "Stepp’d back, and doubted or to live or die.\n", + "Yet, where the oars are placed, he stands to wait\n", + "What chief approaching dares attempt his fate:\n", + "Even to the last his naval charge defends,\n", + "Now shakes his spear, now lifts, and now protends;\n", + "Even yet, the Greeks with piercing shouts inspires,\n", + "Amidst attacks, and deaths, and darts, and fires.\n", + "\n", + "“O friends! O heroes! names for ever dear,\n", + "Once sons of Mars, and thunderbolts of war!\n", + "Ah! yet be mindful of your old renown,\n", + "Your great forefathers’ virtues and your own.\n", + "What aids expect you in this utmost strait?\n", + "What bulwarks rising between you and fate?\n", + "No aids, no bulwarks your retreat attend,\n", + "No friends to help, no city to defend.\n", + "This spot is all you have, to lose or keep;\n", + "There stand the Trojans, and here rolls the deep.\n", + "’Tis hostile ground you tread; your native lands\n", + "Far, far from hence: your fates are in your hands.”\n", + "\n", + "Raging he spoke; nor further wastes his breath,\n", + "But turns his javelin to the work of death.\n", + "Whate’er bold Trojan arm’d his daring hands,\n", + "Against the sable ships, with flaming brands,\n", + "So well the chief his naval weapon sped,\n", + "The luckless warrior at his stern lay dead:\n", + "Full twelve, the boldest, in a moment fell,\n", + "Sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] CASTOR AND POLLUX\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XVI.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE SIXTH BATTLE, THE ACTS AND DEATH OF PATROCLUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Patroclus (in pursuance of the request of Nestor in the eleventh book)\n", + "entreats Achilles to suffer him to go to the assistance of the Greeks\n", + "with Achilles’ troops and armour. He agrees to it, but at the same time\n", + "charges him to content himself with rescuing the fleet, without further\n", + "pursuit of the enemy. The armour, horses, soldiers, and officers are\n", + "described. Achilles offers a libation for the success of his friend,\n", + "after which Patroclus leads the Myrmidons to battle. The Trojans, at\n", + "the sight of Patroclus in Achilles’ armour, taking him for that hero,\n", + "are cast into the uttermost consternation; he beats them off from the\n", + "vessels, Hector himself flies, Sarpedon is killed, though Jupiter was\n", + "averse to his fate. Several other particulars of the battle are\n", + "described; in the heat of which, Patroclus, neglecting the orders of\n", + "Achilles, pursues the foe to the walls of Troy, where Apollo repulses\n", + "and disarms him, Euphorbus wounds him, and Hector kills him, which\n", + "concludes the book.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "So warr’d both armies on the ensanguined shore,\n", + "While the black vessels smoked with human gore.\n", + "Meantime Patroclus to Achilles flies;\n", + "The streaming tears fall copious from his eyes.\n", + "Not faster, trickling to the plains below,\n", + "From the tall rock the sable waters flow.\n", + "Divine Pelides, with compassion moved.\n", + "Thus spoke, indulgent, to his best beloved:[243]\n", + "\n", + "“Patroclus, say, what grief thy bosom bears,\n", + "That flows so fast in these unmanly tears?\n", + "No girl, no infant whom the mother keeps\n", + "From her loved breast, with fonder passion weeps;\n", + "Not more the mother’s soul, that infant warms,\n", + "Clung to her knees, and reaching at her arms,\n", + "Than thou hast mine! Oh tell me, to what end\n", + "Thy melting sorrows thus pursue thy friend?\n", + "\n", + "“Griev’st thou for me, or for my martial band?\n", + "Or come sad tidings from our native land?\n", + "Our fathers live (our first, most tender care),\n", + "Thy good Menoetius breathes the vital air,\n", + "And hoary Peleus yet extends his days;\n", + "Pleased in their age to hear their children’s praise.\n", + "Or may some meaner cause thy pity claim?\n", + "Perhaps yon relics of the Grecian name,\n", + "Doom’d in their ships to sink by fire and sword,\n", + "And pay the forfeit of their haughty lord?\n", + "Whate’er the cause, reveal thy secret care,\n", + "And speak those sorrows which a friend would share.”\n", + "A sigh that instant from his bosom broke,\n", + "Another follow’d, and Patroclus spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Let Greece at length with pity touch thy breast,\n", + "Thyself a Greek; and, once, of Greeks the best!\n", + "Lo! every chief that might her fate prevent,\n", + "Lies pierced with wounds, and bleeding in his tent:\n", + "Eurypylus, Tydides, Atreus’ son,\n", + "And wise Ulysses, at the navy groan,\n", + "More for their country’s wounds than for their own.\n", + "Their pain soft arts of pharmacy can ease,\n", + "Thy breast alone no lenitives appease.\n", + "May never rage like thine my soul enslave,\n", + "O great in vain! unprofitably brave!\n", + "Thy country slighted in her last distress,\n", + "What friend, what man, from thee shall hope redress?\n", + "No—men unborn, and ages yet behind,\n", + "Shall curse that fierce, that unforgiving mind.\n", + "\n", + "“O man unpitying! if of man thy race;\n", + "But sure thou spring’st not from a soft embrace,\n", + "Nor ever amorous hero caused thy birth,\n", + "Nor ever tender goddess brought thee forth:\n", + "Some rugged rock’s hard entrails gave thee form,\n", + "And raging seas produced thee in a storm,\n", + "A soul well suiting that tempestuous kind,\n", + "So rough thy manners, so untamed thy mind.\n", + "\n", + "“If some dire oracle thy breast alarm,\n", + "If aught from Jove, or Thetis, stop thy arm,\n", + "Some beam of comfort yet on Greece may shine,\n", + "If I but lead the Myrmidonian line:\n", + "Clad in thy dreadful arms if I appear,\n", + "Proud Troy shall tremble, and desert the war;\n", + "Without thy person Greece shall win the day,\n", + "And thy mere image chase her foes away.\n", + "Press’d by fresh forces, her o’erlabour’d train\n", + "Shall quit the ships, and Greece respire again.”\n", + "Thus, blind to fate! with supplicating breath,\n", + "Thou begg’st his arms, and in his arms thy death.\n", + "Unfortunately good! a boding sigh\n", + "Thy friend return’d; and with it, this reply:\n", + "“Patroclus! thy Achilles knows no fears;\n", + "Nor words from Jove nor oracles he hears;\n", + "Nor aught a mother’s caution can suggest;\n", + "The tyrant’s pride lies rooted in my breast.\n", + "My wrongs, my wrongs, my constant thought engage,\n", + "Those, my sole oracles, inspire my rage:\n", + "I made him tyrant: gave him power to wrong\n", + "Even me: I felt it; and shall feel it long.\n", + "The maid, my black-eyed maid, he forced away,\n", + "Due to the toils of many a well-fought day;\n", + "Due to my conquest of her father’s reign;\n", + "Due to the votes of all the Grecian train.\n", + "From me he forced her; me, the bold and brave,\n", + "Disgraced, dishonour’d, like the meanest slave.\n", + "But bear we this—the wrongs I grieve are past;\n", + "’Tis time our fury should relent at last:\n", + "I fix’d its date; the day I wish’d appears:\n", + "How Hector to my ships his battle bears,\n", + "The flames my eyes, the shouts invade my ears.\n", + "Go then, Patroclus! court fair honour’s charms\n", + "In Troy’s famed fields, and in Achilles’ arms:\n", + "Lead forth my martial Myrmidons to fight,\n", + "Go save the fleets, and conquer in my right.\n", + "See the thin relics of their baffled band\n", + "At the last edge of yon deserted land!\n", + "Behold all Ilion on their ships descends;\n", + "How the cloud blackens, how the storm impends!\n", + "It was not thus, when, at my sight amazed,\n", + "Troy saw and trembled, as this helmet blazed:\n", + "Had not the injurious king our friendship lost,\n", + "Yon ample trench had buried half her host.\n", + "No camps, no bulwarks now the Trojans fear,\n", + "Those are not dreadful, no Achilles there;\n", + "No longer flames the lance of Tydeus’ son;\n", + "No more your general calls his heroes on:\n", + "Hector, alone, I hear; his dreadful breath\n", + "Commands your slaughter, or proclaims your death.\n", + "Yet now, Patroclus, issue to the plain:\n", + "Now save the ships, the rising fires restrain,\n", + "And give the Greeks to visit Greece again.\n", + "But heed my words, and mark a friend’s command,\n", + "Who trusts his fame and honours in thy hand,\n", + "And from thy deeds expects the Achaian host\n", + "Shall render back the beauteous maid he lost:\n", + "Rage uncontroll’d through all the hostile crew,\n", + "But touch not Hector, Hector is my due.\n", + "Though Jove in thunder should command the war,\n", + "Be just, consult my glory, and forbear.\n", + "The fleet once saved, desist from further chase,\n", + "Nor lead to Ilion’s walls the Grecian race;\n", + "Some adverse god thy rashness may destroy;\n", + "Some god, like Phœbus, ever kind to Troy.\n", + "Let Greece, redeem’d from this destructive strait,\n", + "Do her own work; and leave the rest to fate.\n", + "O! would to all the immortal powers above,\n", + "Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!\n", + "That not one Trojan might be left alive,\n", + "And not a Greek of all the race survive:\n", + "Might only we the vast destruction shun,\n", + "And only we destroy the accursed town!”\n", + "Such conference held the chiefs; while on the strand\n", + "Great Jove with conquest crown’d the Trojan band.\n", + "Ajax no more the sounding storm sustain’d,\n", + "So thick the darts an iron tempest rain’d:\n", + "On his tired arm the weighty buckler hung;\n", + "His hollow helm with falling javelins rung;\n", + "His breath, in quick short pantings, comes and goes;\n", + "And painful sweat from all his members flows.\n", + "Spent and o’erpower’d, he barely breathes at most;\n", + "Yet scarce an army stirs him from his post;\n", + "Dangers on dangers all around him glow,\n", + "And toil to toil, and woe succeeds to woe.\n", + "\n", + "Say, Muses, throned above the starry frame,\n", + "How first the navy blazed with Trojan flame?\n", + "\n", + "Stern Hector waved his sword, and standing near,\n", + "Where furious Ajax plied his ashen spear,\n", + "Full on the lance a stroke so justly sped,\n", + "That the broad falchion lopp’d its brazen head;\n", + "His pointless spear the warrior shakes in vain;\n", + "The brazen head falls sounding on the plain.\n", + "Great Ajax saw, and own’d the hand divine;\n", + "Confessing Jove, and trembling at the sign,\n", + "Warn’d he retreats. Then swift from all sides pour\n", + "The hissing brands; thick streams the fiery shower;\n", + "O’er the high stern the curling volumes rise,\n", + "And sheets of rolling smoke involve the skies.\n", + "\n", + "Divine Achilles view’d the rising flames,\n", + "And smote his thigh, and thus aloud exclaims:\n", + "“Arm, arm, Patroclus! Lo, the blaze aspires!\n", + "The glowing ocean reddens with the fires.\n", + "Arm, ere our vessels catch the spreading flame;\n", + "Arm, ere the Grecians be no more a name;\n", + "I haste to bring the troops.”—The hero said;\n", + "The friend with ardour and with joy obey’d.\n", + "\n", + "He cased his limbs in brass; and first around\n", + "His manly legs, with silver buckles bound\n", + "The clasping greaves; then to his breast applies\n", + "The flaming cuirass of a thousand dyes;\n", + "Emblazed with studs of gold his falchion shone\n", + "In the rich belt, as in a starry zone:\n", + "Achilles’ shield his ample shoulders spread,\n", + "Achilles’ helmet nodded o’er his head:\n", + "Adorn’d in all his terrible array,\n", + "He flash’d around intolerable day.\n", + "Alone untouch’d, Pelides’ javelin stands,\n", + "Not to be poised but by Pelides’ hands:\n", + "From Pelion’s shady brow the plant entire\n", + "Old Chiron rent, and shaped it for his sire;\n", + "Whose son’s great arm alone the weapon wields,\n", + "The death of heroes, and the dread of fields.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] Buckles\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The brave Automedon (an honour’d name,\n", + "The second to his lord in love and fame,\n", + "In peace his friend, and partner of the war)\n", + "The winged coursers harness’d to the car;\n", + "Xanthus and Balius, of immortal breed,\n", + "Sprung from the wind, and like the wind in speed.\n", + "Whom the wing’d harpy, swift Podarge, bore,\n", + "By Zephyr pregnant on the breezy shore:\n", + "Swift Pedasus was added to their side,\n", + "(Once great Aëtion’s, now Achilles’ pride)\n", + "Who, like in strength, in swiftness, and in grace,\n", + "A mortal courser match’d the immortal race.\n", + "\n", + "Achilles speeds from tent to tent, and warms\n", + "His hardy Myrmidons to blood and arms.\n", + "All breathing death, around the chief they stand,\n", + "A grim, terrific, formidable band:\n", + "Grim as voracious wolves, that seek the springs[244]\n", + "When scalding thirst their burning bowels wrings;\n", + "When some tall stag, fresh-slaughtered in the wood,\n", + "Has drench’d their wide insatiate throats with blood,\n", + "To the black fount they rush, a hideous throng,\n", + "With paunch distended, and with lolling tongue,\n", + "Fire fills their eye, their black jaws belch the gore,\n", + "And gorged with slaughter still they thirst for more.\n", + "Like furious, rush’d the Myrmidonian crew,\n", + "Such their dread strength, and such their deathful view.\n", + "\n", + "High in the midst the great Achilles stands,\n", + "Directs their order, and the war commands.\n", + "He, loved of Jove, had launch’d for Ilion’s shores\n", + "Full fifty vessels, mann’d with fifty oars:\n", + "Five chosen leaders the fierce bands obey,\n", + "Himself supreme in valour, as in sway.\n", + "\n", + "First march’d Menestheus, of celestial birth,\n", + "Derived from thee, whose waters wash the earth,\n", + "Divine Sperchius! Jove-descended flood!\n", + "A mortal mother mixing with a god.\n", + "Such was Menestheus, but miscall’d by fame\n", + "The son of Borus, that espoused the dame.\n", + "\n", + "Eudorus next; whom Polymele the gay,\n", + "Famed in the graceful dance, produced to-day.\n", + "Her, sly Cellenius loved: on her would gaze,\n", + "As with swift step she form’d the running maze:\n", + "To her high chamber from Diana’s quire,\n", + "The god pursued her, urged, and crown’d his fire.\n", + "The son confess’d his father’s heavenly race,\n", + "And heir’d his mother’s swiftness in the chase.\n", + "Strong Echecleus, bless’d in all those charms\n", + "That pleased a god, succeeded to her arms;\n", + "Not conscious of those loves, long hid from fame,\n", + "With gifts of price he sought and won the dame;\n", + "Her secret offspring to her sire she bare;\n", + "Her sire caress’d him with a parent’s care.\n", + "\n", + "Pisander follow’d; matchless in his art\n", + "To wing the spear, or aim the distant dart;\n", + "No hand so sure of all the Emathian line,\n", + "Or if a surer, great Patroclus! thine.\n", + "\n", + "The fourth by Phœnix’ grave command was graced,\n", + "Laerces’ valiant offspring led the last.\n", + "\n", + "Soon as Achilles with superior care\n", + "Had call’d the chiefs, and order’d all the war,\n", + "This stern remembrance to his troops he gave:\n", + "“Ye far-famed Myrmidons, ye fierce and brave!\n", + "Think with what threats you dared the Trojan throng,\n", + "Think what reproach these ears endured so long;\n", + "‘Stern son of Peleus, (thus ye used to say,\n", + "While restless, raging, in your ships you lay)\n", + "Oh nursed with gall, unknowing how to yield;\n", + "Whose rage defrauds us of so famed a field:\n", + "If that dire fury must for ever burn,\n", + "What make we here? Return, ye chiefs, return!’\n", + "Such were your words—Now, warriors! grieve no more,\n", + "Lo there the Trojans; bathe your swords in gore!\n", + "This day shall give you all your soul demands,\n", + "Glut all your hearts, and weary all your hands!”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] DIANA\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus while he roused the fire in every breast,\n", + "Close and more close the listening cohorts press’d;\n", + "Ranks wedged in ranks; of arms a steely ring\n", + "Still grows, and spreads, and thickens round the king.\n", + "As when a circling wall the builder forms,\n", + "Of strength defensive against wind and storms,\n", + "Compacted stones the thickening work compose,\n", + "And round him wide the rising structure grows:\n", + "So helm to helm, and crest to crest they throng,\n", + "Shield urged on shield, and man drove man along;\n", + "Thick, undistinguish’d plumes, together join’d,\n", + "Float in one sea, and wave before the wind.\n", + "\n", + "Far o’er the rest in glittering pomp appear,\n", + "There bold Automedon, Patroclus here;\n", + "Brothers in arms, with equal fury fired;\n", + "Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspired.\n", + "\n", + "But mindful of the gods, Achilles went\n", + "To the rich coffer in his shady tent;\n", + "There lay on heaps his various garments roll’d,\n", + "And costly furs, and carpets stiff with gold,\n", + "(The presents of the silver-footed dame)\n", + "From thence he took a bowl, of antique frame,\n", + "Which never man had stained with ruddy wine,\n", + "Nor raised in offerings to the power divine,\n", + "But Peleus’ son; and Peleus’ son to none\n", + "Had raised in offerings, but to Jove alone.\n", + "This tinged with sulphur, sacred first to flame,\n", + "He purged; and wash’d it in the running stream.\n", + "Then cleansed his hands; and fixing for a space\n", + "His eyes on heaven, his feet upon the place\n", + "Of sacrifice, the purple draught he pour’d\n", + "Forth in the midst; and thus the god implored:\n", + "\n", + "“O thou supreme! high-throned all height above!\n", + "O great Pelasgic, Dodonaean Jove!\n", + "Who ’midst surrounding frosts, and vapours chill,\n", + "Presid’st on bleak Dodona’s vocal hill:\n", + "(Whose groves the Selli, race austere! surround,\n", + "Their feet unwash’d, their slumbers on the ground;\n", + "Who hear, from rustling oaks, thy dark decrees;\n", + "And catch the fates, low-whispered in the breeze;)\n", + "Hear, as of old! Thou gav’st, at Thetis’ prayer,\n", + "Glory to me, and to the Greeks despair.\n", + "Lo, to the dangers of the fighting field\n", + "The best, the dearest of my friends, I yield,\n", + "Though still determined, to my ships confined;\n", + "Patroclus gone, I stay but half behind.\n", + "Oh! be his guard thy providential care,\n", + "Confirm his heart, and string his arm to war:\n", + "Press’d by his single force let Hector see\n", + "His fame in arms not owing all to me.\n", + "But when the fleets are saved from foes and fire,\n", + "Let him with conquest and renown retire;\n", + "Preserve his arms, preserve his social train,\n", + "And safe return him to these eyes again!”\n", + "\n", + "Great Jove consents to half the chief’s request,\n", + "But heaven’s eternal doom denies the rest;\n", + "To free the fleet was granted to his prayer;\n", + "His safe return, the winds dispersed in air.\n", + "Back to his tent the stern Achilles flies,\n", + "And waits the combat with impatient eyes.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile the troops beneath Patroclus’ care,\n", + "Invade the Trojans, and commence the war.\n", + "As wasps, provoked by children in their play,\n", + "Pour from their mansions by the broad highway,\n", + "In swarms the guiltless traveller engage,\n", + "Whet all their stings, and call forth all their rage:\n", + "All rise in arms, and, with a general cry,\n", + "Assert their waxen domes, and buzzing progeny.\n", + "Thus from the tents the fervent legion swarms,\n", + "So loud their clamours, and so keen their arms:\n", + "Their rising rage Patroclus’ breath inspires,\n", + "Who thus inflames them with heroic fires:\n", + "\n", + "“O warriors, partners of Achilles’ praise!\n", + "Be mindful of your deeds in ancient days;\n", + "Your godlike master let your acts proclaim,\n", + "And add new glories to his mighty name.\n", + "Think your Achilles sees you fight: be brave,\n", + "And humble the proud monarch whom you save.”\n", + "\n", + "Joyful they heard, and kindling as he spoke,\n", + "Flew to the fleet, involved in fire and smoke.\n", + "From shore to shore the doubling shouts resound,\n", + "The hollow ships return a deeper sound.\n", + "The war stood still, and all around them gazed,\n", + "When great Achilles’ shining armour blazed:\n", + "Troy saw, and thought the dread Achilles nigh,\n", + "At once they see, they tremble, and they fly.\n", + "\n", + "Then first thy spear, divine Patroclus! flew,\n", + "Where the war raged, and where the tumult grew.\n", + "Close to the stern of that famed ship which bore\n", + "Unbless’d Protesilaus to Ilion’s shore,\n", + "The great Pæonian, bold Pyrechmes stood;\n", + "(Who led his bands from Axius’ winding flood;)\n", + "His shoulder-blade receives the fatal wound;\n", + "The groaning warrior pants upon the ground.\n", + "His troops, that see their country’s glory slain,\n", + "Fly diverse, scatter’d o’er the distant plain.\n", + "Patroclus’ arm forbids the spreading fires,\n", + "And from the half-burn’d ship proud Troy retires;\n", + "Clear’d from the smoke the joyful navy lies;\n", + "In heaps on heaps the foe tumultuous flies;\n", + "Triumphant Greece her rescued decks ascends,\n", + "And loud acclaim the starry region rends.\n", + "So when thick clouds enwrap the mountain’s head,\n", + "O’er heaven’s expanse like one black ceiling spread;\n", + "Sudden the Thunderer, with a flashing ray,\n", + "Bursts through the darkness, and lets down the day:\n", + "The hills shine out, the rocks in prospect rise,\n", + "And streams, and vales, and forests, strike the eyes;\n", + "The smiling scene wide opens to the sight,\n", + "And all the unmeasured ether flames with light.\n", + "\n", + "But Troy repulsed, and scatter’d o’er the plains,\n", + "Forced from the navy, yet the fight maintains.\n", + "Now every Greek some hostile hero slew,\n", + "But still the foremost, bold Patroclus flew:\n", + "As Areilycus had turn’d him round,\n", + "Sharp in his thigh he felt the piercing wound;\n", + "The brazen-pointed spear, with vigour thrown,\n", + "The thigh transfix’d, and broke the brittle bone:\n", + "Headlong he fell. Next, Thoas was thy chance;\n", + "Thy breast, unarm’d, received the Spartan lance.\n", + "Phylides’ dart (as Amphidus drew nigh)\n", + "His blow prevented, and transpierced his thigh,\n", + "Tore all the brawn, and rent the nerves away;\n", + "In darkness, and in death, the warrior lay.\n", + "\n", + "In equal arms two sons of Nestor stand,\n", + "And two bold brothers of the Lycian band:\n", + "By great Antilochus, Atymnius dies,\n", + "Pierced in the flank, lamented youth! he lies,\n", + "Kind Maris, bleeding in his brother’s wound,\n", + "Defends the breathless carcase on the ground;\n", + "Furious he flies, his murderer to engage:\n", + "But godlike Thrasimed prevents his rage,\n", + "Between his arm and shoulder aims a blow;\n", + "His arm falls spouting on the dust below:\n", + "He sinks, with endless darkness cover’d o’er:\n", + "And vents his soul, effused with gushing gore.\n", + "\n", + "Slain by two brothers, thus two brothers bleed,\n", + "Sarpedon’s friends, Amisodarus’ seed;\n", + "Amisodarus, who, by Furies led,\n", + "The bane of men, abhorr’d Chimaera bred;\n", + "Skill’d in the dart in vain, his sons expire,\n", + "And pay the forfeit of their guilty sire.\n", + "\n", + "Stopp’d in the tumult Cleobulus lies,\n", + "Beneath Oïleus’ arm, a living prize;\n", + "A living prize not long the Trojan stood;\n", + "The thirsty falchion drank his reeking blood:\n", + "Plunged in his throat the smoking weapon lies;\n", + "Black death, and fate unpitying, seal his eyes.\n", + "\n", + "Amid the ranks, with mutual thirst of fame,\n", + "Lycon the brave, and fierce Peneleus came;\n", + "In vain their javelins at each other flew,\n", + "Now, met in arms, their eager swords they drew.\n", + "On the plumed crest of his Bœotian foe\n", + "The daring Lycon aim’d a noble blow;\n", + "The sword broke short; but his, Peneleus sped\n", + "Full on the juncture of the neck and head:\n", + "The head, divided by a stroke so just,\n", + "Hung by the skin; the body sunk to dust.\n", + "\n", + "O’ertaken Neamas by Merion bleeds,\n", + "Pierced through the shoulder as he mounts his steeds;\n", + "Back from the car he tumbles to the ground:\n", + "His swimming eyes eternal shades surround.\n", + "\n", + "Next Erymas was doom’d his fate to feel,\n", + "His open’d mouth received the Cretan steel:\n", + "Beneath the brain the point a passage tore,\n", + "Crash’d the thin bones, and drown’d the teeth in gore:\n", + "His mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, pour a flood;\n", + "He sobs his soul out in the gush of blood.\n", + "\n", + "As when the flocks neglected by the swain,\n", + "Or kids, or lambs, lie scatter’d o’er the plain,\n", + "A troop of wolves the unguarded charge survey,\n", + "And rend the trembling, unresisting prey:\n", + "Thus on the foe the Greeks impetuous came;\n", + "Troy fled, unmindful of her former fame.\n", + "\n", + "But still at Hector godlike Ajax aim’d,\n", + "Still, pointed at his breast, his javelin flamed.\n", + "The Trojan chief, experienced in the field,\n", + "O’er his broad shoulders spread the massy shield,\n", + "Observed the storm of darts the Grecians pour,\n", + "And on his buckler caught the ringing shower:\n", + "He sees for Greece the scale of conquest rise,\n", + "Yet stops, and turns, and saves his loved allies.\n", + "\n", + "As when the hand of Jove a tempest forms,\n", + "And rolls the cloud to blacken heaven with storms,\n", + "Dark o’er the fields the ascending vapour flies,\n", + "And shades the sun, and blots the golden skies:\n", + "So from the ships, along the dusky plain,\n", + "Dire Flight and Terror drove the Trojan train.\n", + "Even Hector fled; through heads of disarray\n", + "The fiery coursers forced their lord away:\n", + "While far behind his Trojans fall confused;\n", + "Wedged in the trench, in one vast carnage bruised:\n", + "Chariots on chariots roll: the clashing spokes\n", + "Shock; while the madding steeds break short their yokes.\n", + "In vain they labour up the steepy mound;\n", + "Their charioteers lie foaming on the ground.\n", + "Fierce on the rear, with shouts Patroclus flies;\n", + "Tumultuous clamour fills the fields and skies;\n", + "Thick drifts of dust involve their rapid flight;\n", + "Clouds rise on clouds, and heaven is snatch’d from sight.\n", + "The affrighted steeds their dying lords cast down,\n", + "Scour o’er the fields, and stretch to reach the town.\n", + "Loud o’er the rout was heard the victor’s cry,\n", + "Where the war bleeds, and where the thickest die,\n", + "Where horse and arms, and chariots lie o’erthrown,\n", + "And bleeding heroes under axles groan.\n", + "No stop, no check, the steeds of Peleus knew:\n", + "From bank to bank the immortal coursers flew.\n", + "High-bounding o’er the fosse, the whirling car\n", + "Smokes through the ranks, o’ertakes the flying war,\n", + "And thunders after Hector; Hector flies,\n", + "Patroclus shakes his lance; but fate denies.\n", + "Not with less noise, with less impetuous force,\n", + "The tide of Trojans urge their desperate course,\n", + "Than when in autumn Jove his fury pours,\n", + "And earth is loaden with incessant showers;\n", + "(When guilty mortals break the eternal laws,\n", + "Or judges, bribed, betray the righteous cause;)\n", + "From their deep beds he bids the rivers rise,\n", + "And opens all the flood-gates of the skies:\n", + "The impetuous torrents from their hills obey,\n", + "Whole fields are drown’d, and mountains swept away;\n", + "Loud roars the deluge till it meets the main;\n", + "And trembling man sees all his labours vain!\n", + "\n", + "And now the chief (the foremost troops repell’d)\n", + "Back to the ships his destined progress held,\n", + "Bore down half Troy in his resistless way,\n", + "And forced the routed ranks to stand the day.\n", + "Between the space where silver Simois flows,\n", + "Where lay the fleets, and where the rampires rose,\n", + "All grim in dust and blood Patroclus stands,\n", + "And turns the slaughter on the conquering bands.\n", + "First Pronous died beneath his fiery dart,\n", + "Which pierced below the shield his valiant heart.\n", + "Thestor was next, who saw the chief appear,\n", + "And fell the victim of his coward fear;\n", + "Shrunk up he sat, with wild and haggard eye,\n", + "Nor stood to combat, nor had force to fly;\n", + "Patroclus mark’d him as he shunn’d the war,\n", + "And with unmanly tremblings shook the car,\n", + "And dropp’d the flowing reins. Him ’twixt the jaws,\n", + "The javelin sticks, and from the chariot draws.\n", + "As on a rock that overhangs the main,\n", + "An angler, studious of the line and cane,\n", + "Some mighty fish draws panting to the shore:\n", + "Not with less ease the barbed javelin bore\n", + "The gaping dastard; as the spear was shook,\n", + "He fell, and life his heartless breast forsook.\n", + "\n", + "Next on Eryalus he flies; a stone,\n", + "Large as a rock, was by his fury thrown:\n", + "Full on his crown the ponderous fragment flew,\n", + "And burst the helm, and cleft the head in two:\n", + "Prone to the ground the breathless warrior fell,\n", + "And death involved him with the shades of hell.\n", + "Then low in dust Epaltes, Echius, lie;\n", + "Ipheas, Evippus, Polymelus, die;\n", + "Amphoterus and Erymas succeed;\n", + "And last Tlepolemus and Pyres bleed.\n", + "Where’er he moves, the growing slaughters spread\n", + "In heaps on heaps a monument of dead.\n", + "\n", + "When now Sarpedon his brave friends beheld\n", + "Grovelling in dust, and gasping on the field,\n", + "With this reproach his flying host he warms:\n", + "“Oh stain to honour! oh disgrace to arms!\n", + "Forsake, inglorious, the contended plain;\n", + "This hand unaided shall the war sustain:\n", + "The task be mine this hero’s strength to try,\n", + "Who mows whole troops, and makes an army fly.”\n", + "\n", + "He spake: and, speaking, leaps from off the car:\n", + "Patroclus lights, and sternly waits the war.\n", + "As when two vultures on the mountain’s height\n", + "Stoop with resounding pinions to the fight;\n", + "They cuff, they tear, they raise a screaming cry;\n", + "The desert echoes, and the rocks reply:\n", + "The warriors thus opposed in arms, engage\n", + "With equal clamours, and with equal rage.\n", + "\n", + "Jove view’d the combat: whose event foreseen,\n", + "He thus bespoke his sister and his queen:\n", + "“The hour draws on; the destinies ordain,[245]\n", + "My godlike son shall press the Phrygian plain:\n", + "Already on the verge of death he stands,\n", + "His life is owed to fierce Patroclus’ hands,\n", + "What passions in a parent’s breast debate!\n", + "Say, shall I snatch him from impending fate,\n", + "And send him safe to Lycia, distant far\n", + "From all the dangers and the toils of war;\n", + "Or to his doom my bravest offspring yield,\n", + "And fatten, with celestial blood, the field?”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the goddess with the radiant eyes:\n", + "“What words are these, O sovereign of the skies!\n", + "Short is the date prescribed to mortal man;\n", + "Shall Jove for one extend the narrow span,\n", + "Whose bounds were fix’d before his race began?\n", + "How many sons of gods, foredoom’d to death,\n", + "Before proud Ilion must resign their breath!\n", + "Were thine exempt, debate would rise above,\n", + "And murmuring powers condemn their partial Jove.\n", + "Give the bold chief a glorious fate in fight;\n", + "And when the ascending soul has wing’d her flight,\n", + "Let Sleep and Death convey, by thy command,\n", + "The breathless body to his native land.\n", + "His friends and people, to his future praise,\n", + "A marble tomb and pyramid shall raise,\n", + "And lasting honours to his ashes give;\n", + "His fame (’tis all the dead can have) shall live.”\n", + "\n", + "She said: the cloud-compeller, overcome,\n", + "Assents to fate, and ratifies the doom.\n", + "Then touch’d with grief, the weeping heavens distill’d\n", + "A shower of blood o’er all the fatal field:\n", + "The god, his eyes averting from the plain,\n", + "Laments his son, predestined to be slain,\n", + "Far from the Lycian shores, his happy native reign.\n", + "Now met in arms, the combatants appear;\n", + "Each heaved the shield, and poised the lifted spear;\n", + "From strong Patroclus’ hand the javelin fled,\n", + "And pass’d the groin of valiant Thrasymed;\n", + "The nerves unbraced no more his bulk sustain,\n", + "He falls, and falling bites the bloody plain.\n", + "Two sounding darts the Lycian leader threw:\n", + "The first aloof with erring fury flew,\n", + "The next transpierced Achilles’ mortal steed,\n", + "The generous Pedasus of Theban breed:\n", + "Fix’d in the shoulder’s joint, he reel’d around,\n", + "Roll’d in the bloody dust, and paw’d the slippery ground.\n", + "His sudden fall the entangled harness broke;\n", + "Each axle crackled, and the chariot shook:\n", + "When bold Automedon, to disengage\n", + "The starting coursers, and restrain their rage,\n", + "Divides the traces with his sword, and freed\n", + "The encumbered chariot from the dying steed:\n", + "The rest move on, obedient to the rein:\n", + "The car rolls slowly o’er the dusty plain.\n", + "\n", + "The towering chiefs to fiercer fight advance:\n", + "And first Sarpedon whirl’d his weighty lance,\n", + "Which o’er the warrior’s shoulder took its course,\n", + "And spent in empty air its dying force.\n", + "Not so Patroclus’ never-erring dart;\n", + "Aim’d at his breast it pierced a mortal part,\n", + "Where the strong fibres bind the solid heart.\n", + "Then as the mountain oak, or poplar tall,\n", + "Or pine (fit mast for some great admiral)\n", + "Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound\n", + "It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,\n", + "Thus fell the king; and laid on earth supine,\n", + "Before his chariot stretch’d his form divine:\n", + "He grasp’d the dust distain’d with streaming gore,\n", + "And, pale in death, lay groaning on the shore.\n", + "So lies a bull beneath the lion’s paws,\n", + "While the grim savage grinds with foamy jaws\n", + "The trembling limbs, and sucks the smoking blood;\n", + "Deep groans, and hollow roars, rebellow through the wood.\n", + "\n", + "Then to the leader of the Lycian band\n", + "The dying chief address’d his last command;\n", + "“Glaucus, be bold; thy task be first to dare\n", + "The glorious dangers of destructive war,\n", + "To lead my troops, to combat at their head,\n", + "Incite the living, and supply the dead.\n", + "Tell them, I charged them with my latest breath\n", + "Not unrevenged to bear Sarpedon’s death.\n", + "What grief, what shame, must Glaucus undergo,\n", + "If these spoil’d arms adorn a Grecian foe!\n", + "Then as a friend, and as a warrior fight;\n", + "Defend my body, conquer in my right:\n", + "That, taught by great examples, all may try\n", + "Like thee to vanquish, or like me to die.”\n", + "He ceased; the Fates suppress’d his labouring breath,\n", + "And his eyes darken’d with the shades of death.\n", + "The insulting victor with disdain bestrode\n", + "The prostrate prince, and on his bosom trod;\n", + "Then drew the weapon from his panting heart,\n", + "The reeking fibres clinging to the dart;\n", + "From the wide wound gush’d out a stream of blood,\n", + "And the soul issued in the purple flood.\n", + "His flying steeds the Myrmidons detain,\n", + "Unguided now, their mighty master slain.\n", + "All-impotent of aid, transfix’d with grief,\n", + "Unhappy Glaucus heard the dying chief:\n", + "His painful arm, yet useless with the smart\n", + "Inflicted late by Teucer’s deadly dart,\n", + "Supported on his better hand he stay’d:\n", + "To Phœbus then (’twas all he could) he pray’d:\n", + "\n", + "“All-seeing monarch! whether Lycia’s coast,\n", + "Or sacred Ilion, thy bright presence boast,\n", + "Powerful alike to ease the wretch’s smart;\n", + "O hear me! god of every healing art!\n", + "Lo! stiff with clotted blood, and pierced with pain,\n", + "That thrills my arm, and shoots through every vein,\n", + "I stand unable to sustain the spear,\n", + "And sigh, at distance from the glorious war.\n", + "Low in the dust is great Sarpedon laid,\n", + "Nor Jove vouchsafed his hapless offspring aid;\n", + "But thou, O god of health! thy succour lend,\n", + "To guard the relics of my slaughter’d friend:\n", + "For thou, though distant, canst restore my might,\n", + "To head my Lycians, and support the fight.”\n", + "\n", + "Apollo heard; and, suppliant as he stood,\n", + "His heavenly hand restrain’d the flux of blood;\n", + "He drew the dolours from the wounded part,\n", + "And breathed a spirit in his rising heart.\n", + "Renew’d by art divine, the hero stands,\n", + "And owns the assistance of immortal hands.\n", + "First to the fight his native troops he warms,\n", + "Then loudly calls on Troy’s vindictive arms;\n", + "With ample strides he stalks from place to place;\n", + "Now fires Agenor, now Polydamas:\n", + "Æneas next, and Hector he accosts;\n", + "Inflaming thus the rage of all their hosts.\n", + "\n", + "“What thoughts, regardless chief! thy breast employ?\n", + "Oh too forgetful of the friends of Troy!\n", + "Those generous friends, who, from their country far,\n", + "Breathe their brave souls out in another’s war.\n", + "See! where in dust the great Sarpedon lies,\n", + "In action valiant, and in council wise,\n", + "Who guarded right, and kept his people free;\n", + "To all his Lycians lost, and lost to thee!\n", + "Stretch’d by Patroclus’ arm on yonder plains,\n", + "O save from hostile rage his loved remains!\n", + "Ah let not Greece his conquer’d trophies boast,\n", + "Nor on his corse revenge her heroes lost!”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke: each leader in his grief partook:\n", + "Troy, at the loss, through all her legions shook.\n", + "Transfix’d with deep regret, they view o’erthrown\n", + "At once his country’s pillar, and their own;\n", + "A chief, who led to Troy’s beleaguer’d wall\n", + "A host of heroes, and outshined them all.\n", + "Fired, they rush on; first Hector seeks the foes,\n", + "And with superior vengeance greatly glows.\n", + "\n", + "But o’er the dead the fierce Patroclus stands,\n", + "And rousing Ajax, roused the listening bands:\n", + "\n", + "“Heroes, be men; be what you were before;\n", + "Or weigh the great occasion, and be more.\n", + "The chief who taught our lofty walls to yield,\n", + "Lies pale in death, extended on the field.\n", + "To guard his body Troy in numbers flies;\n", + "’Tis half the glory to maintain our prize.\n", + "Haste, strip his arms, the slaughter round him spread,\n", + "And send the living Lycians to the dead.”\n", + "\n", + "The heroes kindle at his fierce command;\n", + "The martial squadrons close on either hand:\n", + "Here Troy and Lycia charge with loud alarms,\n", + "Thessalia there, and Greece, oppose their arms.\n", + "With horrid shouts they circle round the slain;\n", + "The clash of armour rings o’er all the plain.\n", + "Great Jove, to swell the horrors of the fight,\n", + "O’er the fierce armies pours pernicious night,\n", + "And round his son confounds the warring hosts,\n", + "His fate ennobling with a crowd of ghosts.\n", + "\n", + "Now Greece gives way, and great Epigeus falls;\n", + "Agacleus’ son, from Budium’s lofty walls;\n", + "Who chased for murder thence a suppliant came\n", + "To Peleus, and the silver-footed dame;\n", + "Now sent to Troy, Achilles’ arms to aid,\n", + "He pays due vengeance to his kinsman’s shade.\n", + "Soon as his luckless hand had touch’d the dead,\n", + "A rock’s large fragment thunder’d on his head;\n", + "Hurl’d by Hectorean force it cleft in twain\n", + "His shatter’d helm, and stretch’d him o’er the slain.\n", + "\n", + "Fierce to the van of fight Patroclus came,\n", + "And, like an eagle darting at his game,\n", + "Sprung on the Trojan and the Lycian band.\n", + "What grief thy heart, what fury urged thy hand,\n", + "O generous Greek! when with full vigour thrown,\n", + "At Sthenelaus flew the weighty stone,\n", + "Which sunk him to the dead: when Troy, too near\n", + "That arm, drew back; and Hector learn’d to fear.\n", + "Far as an able hand a lance can throw,\n", + "Or at the lists, or at the fighting foe;\n", + "So far the Trojans from their lines retired;\n", + "Till Glaucus, turning, all the rest inspired.\n", + "Then Bathyclaeus fell beneath his rage,\n", + "The only hope of Chalcon’s trembling age;\n", + "Wide o’er the land was stretch’d his large domain,\n", + "With stately seats, and riches blest in vain:\n", + "Him, bold with youth, and eager to pursue\n", + "The flying Lycians, Glaucus met and slew;\n", + "Pierced through the bosom with a sudden wound,\n", + "He fell, and falling made the fields resound.\n", + "The Achaians sorrow for their heroes slain;\n", + "With conquering shouts the Trojans shake the plain,\n", + "And crowd to spoil the dead: the Greeks oppose;\n", + "An iron circle round the carcase grows.\n", + "\n", + "Then brave Laogonus resign’d his breath,\n", + "Despatch’d by Merion to the shades of death:\n", + "On Ida’s holy hill he made abode,\n", + "The priest of Jove, and honour’d like his god.\n", + "Between the jaw and ear the javelin went;\n", + "The soul, exhaling, issued at the vent.\n", + "His spear Æneas at the victor threw,\n", + "Who stooping forward from the death withdrew;\n", + "The lance hiss’d harmless o’er his covering shield,\n", + "And trembling struck, and rooted in the field;\n", + "There yet scarce spent, it quivers on the plain,\n", + "Sent by the great Æneas’ arm in vain.\n", + "“Swift as thou art (the raging hero cries)\n", + "And skill’d in dancing to dispute the prize,\n", + "My spear, the destined passage had it found,\n", + "Had fix’d thy active vigour to the ground.”\n", + "\n", + "“O valiant leader of the Dardan host!\n", + "(Insulted Merion thus retorts the boast)\n", + "Strong as you are, ’tis mortal force you trust,\n", + "An arm as strong may stretch thee in the dust.\n", + "And if to this my lance thy fate be given,\n", + "Vain are thy vaunts; success is still from heaven:\n", + "This, instant, sends thee down to Pluto’s coast;\n", + "Mine is the glory, his thy parting ghost.”\n", + "\n", + "“O friend (Menoetius’ son this answer gave)\n", + "With words to combat, ill befits the brave;\n", + "Not empty boasts the sons of Troy repel,\n", + "Your swords must plunge them to the shades of hell.\n", + "To speak, beseems the council; but to dare\n", + "In glorious action, is the task of war.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, Patroclus to the battle flies;\n", + "Great Merion follows, and new shouts arise:\n", + "Shields, helmets rattle, as the warriors close;\n", + "And thick and heavy sounds the storm of blows.\n", + "As through the shrilling vale, or mountain ground,\n", + "The labours of the woodman’s axe resound;\n", + "Blows following blows are heard re-echoing wide,\n", + "While crackling forests fall on every side:\n", + "Thus echoed all the fields with loud alarms,\n", + "So fell the warriors, and so rung their arms.\n", + "\n", + "Now great Sarpedon on the sandy shore,\n", + "His heavenly form defaced with dust and gore,\n", + "And stuck with darts by warring heroes shed,\n", + "Lies undistinguish’d from the vulgar dead.\n", + "His long-disputed corse the chiefs enclose,\n", + "On every side the busy combat grows;\n", + "Thick as beneath some shepherd’s thatch’d abode\n", + "(The pails high foaming with a milky flood)\n", + "The buzzing flies, a persevering train,\n", + "Incessant swarm, and chased return again.\n", + "\n", + "Jove view’d the combat with a stern survey,\n", + "And eyes that flash’d intolerable day.\n", + "Fix’d on the field his sight, his breast debates\n", + "The vengeance due, and meditates the fates:\n", + "Whether to urge their prompt effect, and call\n", + "The force of Hector to Patroclus’ fall,\n", + "This instant see his short-lived trophies won,\n", + "And stretch him breathless on his slaughter’d son;\n", + "Or yet, with many a soul’s untimely flight,\n", + "Augment the fame and horror of the fight.\n", + "To crown Achilles’ valiant friend with praise\n", + "At length he dooms; and, that his last of days\n", + "Shall set in glory, bids him drive the foe;\n", + "Nor unattended see the shades below.\n", + "Then Hector’s mind he fills with dire dismay;\n", + "He mounts his car, and calls his hosts away;\n", + "Sunk with Troy’s heavy fates, he sees decline\n", + "The scales of Jove, and pants with awe divine.\n", + "\n", + "Then, nor before, the hardy Lycians fled,\n", + "And left their monarch with the common dead:\n", + "Around, in heaps on heaps, a dreadful wall\n", + "Of carnage rises, as the heroes fall.\n", + "(So Jove decreed!) At length the Greeks obtain\n", + "The prize contested, and despoil the slain.\n", + "The radiant arms are by Patroclus borne;\n", + "Patroclus’ ships the glorious spoils adorn.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus to Phœbus, in the realms above,\n", + "Spoke from his throne the cloud-compelling Jove:\n", + "“Descend, my Phœbus! on the Phrygian plain,\n", + "And from the fight convey Sarpedon slain;\n", + "Then bathe his body in the crystal flood,\n", + "With dust dishonour’d, and deform’d with blood;\n", + "O’er all his limbs ambrosial odours shed,\n", + "And with celestial robes adorn the dead.\n", + "Those rites discharged, his sacred corse bequeath\n", + "To the soft arms of silent Sleep and Death.\n", + "They to his friends the immortal charge shall bear;\n", + "His friends a tomb and pyramid shall rear:\n", + "What honour mortals after death receive,\n", + "Those unavailing honours we may give!”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] SLEEP AND DEATH CONVEYING THE BODY OF SARPEDON TO\n", + "LYCIA\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Apollo bows, and from mount Ida’s height,\n", + "Swift to the field precipitates his flight;\n", + "Thence from the war the breathless hero bore,\n", + "Veil’d in a cloud, to silver Simois’ shore;\n", + "There bathed his honourable wounds, and dress’d\n", + "His manly members in the immortal vest;\n", + "And with perfumes of sweet ambrosial dews\n", + "Restores his freshness, and his form renews.\n", + "Then Sleep and Death, two twins of winged race,\n", + "Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace,\n", + "Received Sarpedon, at the god’s command,\n", + "And in a moment reach’d the Lycian land;\n", + "The corse amidst his weeping friends they laid,\n", + "Where endless honours wait the sacred shade.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile Patroclus pours along the plains,\n", + "With foaming coursers, and with loosen’d reins.\n", + "Fierce on the Trojan and the Lycian crew,\n", + "Ah blind to fate! thy headlong fury flew:\n", + "Against what fate and powerful Jove ordain,\n", + "Vain was thy friend’s command, thy courage vain.\n", + "For he, the god, whose counsels uncontroll’d\n", + "Dismay the mighty, and confound the bold;\n", + "The god who gives, resumes, and orders all,\n", + "He urged thee on, and urged thee on to fall.\n", + "\n", + "Who first, brave hero! by that arm was slain,\n", + "Who last beneath thy vengeance press’d the plain;\n", + "When heaven itself thy fatal fury led,\n", + "And call’d to fill the number of the dead?\n", + "Adrestus first; Autonous then succeeds;\n", + "Echeclus follows; next young Megas bleeds,\n", + "Epistor, Melanippus, bite the ground;\n", + "The slaughter, Elasus and Mulius crown’d:\n", + "Then sunk Pylartes to eternal night;\n", + "The rest, dispersing, trust their fates to flight.\n", + "\n", + "Now Troy had stoop’d beneath his matchless power,\n", + "But flaming Phœbus kept the sacred tower.\n", + "Thrice at the battlements Patroclus strook;[246]\n", + "His blazing ægis thrice Apollo shook;\n", + "He tried the fourth; when, bursting from the cloud,\n", + "A more than mortal voice was heard aloud.\n", + "\n", + "“Patroclus! cease; this heaven-defended wall\n", + "Defies thy lance; not fated yet to fall;\n", + "Thy friend, thy greater far, it shall withstand,\n", + "Troy shall not stoop even to Achilles’ hand.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the god who darts celestial fires;\n", + "The Greek obeys him, and with awe retires.\n", + "While Hector, checking at the Scæan gates\n", + "His panting coursers, in his breast debates,\n", + "Or in the field his forces to employ,\n", + "Or draw the troops within the walls of Troy.\n", + "Thus while he thought, beside him Phœbus stood,\n", + "In Asius’ shape, who reigned by Sangar’s flood;\n", + "(Thy brother, Hecuba! from Dymas sprung,\n", + "A valiant warrior, haughty, bold, and young;)\n", + "Thus he accosts him. “What a shameful sight!\n", + "God! is it Hector that forbears the fight?\n", + "Were thine my vigour this successful spear\n", + "Should soon convince thee of so false a fear.\n", + "Turn thee, ah turn thee to the field of fame,\n", + "And in Patroclus’ blood efface thy shame.\n", + "Perhaps Apollo shall thy arms succeed,\n", + "And heaven ordains him by thy lance to bleed.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the inspiring god; then took his flight,\n", + "And plunged amidst the tumult of the fight.\n", + "He bids Cebrion drive the rapid car;\n", + "The lash resounds, the coursers rush to war.\n", + "The god the Grecians’ sinking souls depress’d,\n", + "And pour’d swift spirits through each Trojan breast.\n", + "Patroclus lights, impatient for the fight;\n", + "A spear his left, a stone employs his right:\n", + "With all his nerves he drives it at the foe.\n", + "Pointed above, and rough and gross below:\n", + "The falling ruin crush’d Cebrion’s head,\n", + "The lawless offspring of king Priam’s bed;\n", + "His front, brows, eyes, one undistinguish’d wound:\n", + "The bursting balls drop sightless to the ground.\n", + "The charioteer, while yet he held the rein,\n", + "Struck from the car, falls headlong on the plain.\n", + "To the dark shades the soul unwilling glides,\n", + "While the proud victor thus his fall derides.\n", + "\n", + "“Good heaven! what active feats yon artist shows!\n", + "What skilful divers are our Phrygian foes!\n", + "Mark with what ease they sink into the sand!\n", + "Pity that all their practice is by land!”\n", + "\n", + "Then rushing sudden on his prostrate prize,\n", + "To spoil the carcase fierce Patroclus flies:\n", + "Swift as a lion, terrible and bold,\n", + "That sweeps the field, depopulates the fold;\n", + "Pierced through the dauntless heart, then tumbles slain,\n", + "And from his fatal courage finds his bane.\n", + "At once bold Hector leaping from his car,\n", + "Defends the body, and provokes the war.\n", + "Thus for some slaughter’d hind, with equal rage,\n", + "Two lordly rulers of the wood engage;\n", + "Stung with fierce hunger, each the prey invades,\n", + "And echoing roars rebellow through the shades.\n", + "Stern Hector fastens on the warrior’s head,\n", + "And by the foot Patroclus drags the dead:\n", + "While all around, confusion, rage, and fright,\n", + "Mix the contending hosts in mortal fight.\n", + "So pent by hills, the wild winds roar aloud\n", + "In the deep bosom of some gloomy wood;\n", + "Leaves, arms, and trees, aloft in air are blown,\n", + "The broad oaks crackle, and the Sylvans groan;\n", + "This way and that, the rattling thicket bends,\n", + "And the whole forest in one crash descends.\n", + "Not with less noise, with less tumultuous rage,\n", + "In dreadful shock the mingled hosts engage.\n", + "Darts shower’d on darts, now round the carcase ring;\n", + "Now flights of arrows bounding from the string:\n", + "Stones follow stones; some clatter on the fields,\n", + "Some hard, and heavy, shake the sounding shields.\n", + "But where the rising whirlwind clouds the plains,\n", + "Sunk in soft dust the mighty chief remains,\n", + "And, stretch’d in death, forgets the guiding reins!\n", + "\n", + "Now flaming from the zenith, Sol had driven\n", + "His fervid orb through half the vault of heaven;\n", + "While on each host with equal tempests fell\n", + "The showering darts, and numbers sank to hell.\n", + "But when his evening wheels o’erhung the main,\n", + "Glad conquest rested on the Grecian train.\n", + "Then from amidst the tumult and alarms,\n", + "They draw the conquer’d corse and radiant arms.\n", + "Then rash Patroclus with new fury glows,\n", + "And breathing slaughter, pours amid the foes.\n", + "Thrice on the press like Mars himself he flew,\n", + "And thrice three heroes at each onset slew.\n", + "There ends thy glory! there the Fates untwine\n", + "The last, black remnant of so bright a line:\n", + "Apollo dreadful stops thy middle way;\n", + "Death calls, and heaven allows no longer day!\n", + "\n", + "For lo! the god in dusky clouds enshrined,\n", + "Approaching dealt a staggering blow behind.\n", + "The weighty shock his neck and shoulders feel;\n", + "His eyes flash sparkles, his stunn’d senses reel\n", + "In giddy darkness; far to distance flung,\n", + "His bounding helmet on the champaign rung.\n", + "Achilles’ plume is stain’d with dust and gore;\n", + "That plume which never stoop’d to earth before;\n", + "Long used, untouch’d, in fighting fields to shine,\n", + "And shade the temples of the mad divine.\n", + "Jove dooms it now on Hector’s helm to nod;\n", + "Not long—for fate pursues him, and the god.\n", + "\n", + "His spear in shivers falls; his ample shield\n", + "Drops from his arm: his baldric strows the field:\n", + "The corslet his astonish’d breast forsakes:\n", + "Loose is each joint; each nerve with horror shakes;\n", + "Stupid he stares, and all-assistless stands:\n", + "Such is the force of more than mortal hands!\n", + "\n", + "A Dardan youth there was, well known to fame,\n", + "From Panthus sprung, Euphorbus was his name;\n", + "Famed for the manage of the foaming horse,\n", + "Skill’d in the dart, and matchless in the course:\n", + "Full twenty knights he tumbled from the car,\n", + "While yet he learn’d his rudiments of war.\n", + "His venturous spear first drew the hero’s gore;\n", + "He struck, he wounded, but he durst no more.\n", + "Nor, though disarm’d, Patroclus’ fury stood:\n", + "But swift withdrew the long-protended wood.\n", + "And turn’d him short, and herded in the crowd.\n", + "Thus, by an arm divine, and mortal spear,\n", + "Wounded, at once, Patroclus yields to fear,\n", + "Retires for succour to his social train,\n", + "And flies the fate, which heaven decreed, in vain.\n", + "Stern Hector, as the bleeding chief he views,\n", + "Breaks through the ranks, and his retreat pursues:\n", + "The lance arrests him with a mortal wound;\n", + "He falls, earth thunders, and his arms resound.\n", + "With him all Greece was sunk; that moment all\n", + "Her yet-surviving heroes seem’d to fall.\n", + "So, scorch’d with heat, along the desert score,\n", + "The roaming lion meets a bristly boar,\n", + "Fast by the spring; they both dispute the flood,\n", + "With flaming eyes, and jaws besmear’d with blood;\n", + "At length the sovereign savage wins the strife;\n", + "And the torn boar resigns his thirst and life.\n", + "Patroclus thus, so many chiefs o’erthrown,\n", + "So many lives effused, expires his own.\n", + "As dying now at Hector’s feet he lies,\n", + "He sternly views him, and triumphant cries:\n", + "\n", + "“Lie there, Patroclus! and with thee, the joy\n", + "Thy pride once promised, of subverting Troy;\n", + "The fancied scenes of Ilion wrapt in flames,\n", + "And thy soft pleasures served with captive dames.\n", + "Unthinking man! I fought those towers to free,\n", + "And guard that beauteous race from lords like thee:\n", + "But thou a prey to vultures shalt be made;\n", + "Thy own Achilles cannot lend thee aid;\n", + "Though much at parting that great chief might say,\n", + "And much enjoin thee, this important day.\n", + "\n", + "‘Return not, my brave friend (perhaps he said),\n", + "Without the bloody arms of Hector dead.’\n", + "He spoke, Patroclus march’d, and thus he sped.”\n", + "\n", + "Supine, and wildly gazing on the skies,\n", + "With faint, expiring breath, the chief replies:\n", + "\n", + "“Vain boaster! cease, and know the powers divine!\n", + "Jove’s and Apollo’s is this deed, not thine;\n", + "To heaven is owed whate’er your own you call,\n", + "And heaven itself disarm’d me ere my fall.\n", + "Had twenty mortals, each thy match in might,\n", + "Opposed me fairly, they had sunk in fight:\n", + "By fate and Phœbus was I first o’erthrown,\n", + "Euphorbus next; the third mean part thy own.\n", + "But thou, imperious! hear my latest breath;\n", + "The gods inspire it, and it sounds thy death:\n", + "Insulting man, thou shalt be soon as I;\n", + "Black fate o’erhangs thee, and thy hour draws nigh;\n", + "Even now on life’s last verge I see thee stand,\n", + "I see thee fall, and by Achilles’ hand.”\n", + "\n", + "He faints: the soul unwilling wings her way,\n", + "(The beauteous body left a load of clay)\n", + "Flits to the lone, uncomfortable coast;\n", + "A naked, wandering, melancholy ghost!\n", + "\n", + "Then Hector pausing, as his eyes he fed\n", + "On the pale carcase, thus address’d the dead:\n", + "\n", + "“From whence this boding speech, the stern decree\n", + "Of death denounced, or why denounced to me?\n", + "Why not as well Achilles’ fate be given\n", + "To Hector’s lance? Who knows the will of heaven?”\n", + "\n", + "Pensive he said; then pressing as he lay\n", + "His breathless bosom, tore the lance away;\n", + "And upwards cast the corse: the reeking spear\n", + "He shakes, and charges the bold charioteer.\n", + "But swift Automedon with loosen’d reins\n", + "Rapt in the chariot o’er the distant plains,\n", + "Far from his rage the immortal coursers drove;\n", + "The immortal coursers were the gift of Jove.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] ÆSCULAPIUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XVII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE SEVENTH BATTLE, FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS.—THE ACTS OF MENELAUS.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Menelaus, upon the death of Patroclus, defends his body from the enemy:\n", + "Euphorbus, who attempts it, is slain. Hector advancing, Menelaus\n", + "retires; but soon returns with Ajax, and drives him off. This, Glaucus\n", + "objects to Hector as a flight, who thereupon puts on the armour he had\n", + "won from Patroclus, and renews the battle. The Greeks give way, till\n", + "Ajax rallies them: Æneas sustains the Trojans. Æneas and Hector attempt\n", + "the chariot of Achilles, which is borne off by Automedon. The horses of\n", + "Achilles deplore the loss of Patroclus: Jupiter covers his body with a\n", + "thick darkness: the noble prayer of Ajax on that occasion. Menelaus\n", + "sends Antilochus to Achilles, with the news of Patroclus’ death: then\n", + "returns to the fight, where, though attacked with the utmost fury, he\n", + "and Meriones, assisted by the Ajaces, bear off the body to the ships.\n", + " The time is the evening of the eight-and-twentieth day. The scene\n", + " lies in the fields before Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "On the cold earth divine Patroclus spread,\n", + "Lies pierced with wounds among the vulgar dead.\n", + "Great Menelaus, touch’d with generous woe,\n", + "Springs to the front, and guards him from the foe.\n", + "Thus round her new-fallen young the heifer moves,\n", + "Fruit of her throes, and first-born of her loves;\n", + "And anxious (helpless as he lies, and bare)\n", + "Turns, and re-turns her, with a mother’s care,\n", + "Opposed to each that near the carcase came,\n", + "His broad shield glimmers, and his lances flame.\n", + "\n", + "The son of Panthus, skill’d the dart to send,\n", + "Eyes the dead hero, and insults the friend.\n", + "“This hand, Atrides, laid Patroclus low;\n", + "Warrior! desist, nor tempt an equal blow:\n", + "To me the spoils my prowess won, resign:\n", + "Depart with life, and leave the glory mine.”\n", + "\n", + "The Trojan thus: the Spartan monarch burn’d\n", + "With generous anguish, and in scorn return’d:\n", + "“Laugh’st thou not, Jove! from thy superior throne,\n", + "When mortals boast of prowess not their own?\n", + "Not thus the lion glories in his might,\n", + "Nor panther braves his spotted foe in fight,\n", + "Nor thus the boar (those terrors of the plain;)\n", + "Man only vaunts his force, and vaunts in vain.\n", + "But far the vainest of the boastful kind,\n", + "These sons of Panthus vent their haughty mind.\n", + "Yet ’twas but late, beneath my conquering steel\n", + "This boaster’s brother, Hyperenor, fell;\n", + "Against our arm which rashly he defied,\n", + "Vain was his vigour, and as vain his pride.\n", + "These eyes beheld him on the dust expire,\n", + "No more to cheer his spouse, or glad his sire.\n", + "Presumptuous youth! like his shall be thy doom,\n", + "Go, wait thy brother to the Stygian gloom;\n", + "Or, while thou may’st, avoid the threaten’d fate;\n", + "Fools stay to feel it, and are wise too late.”\n", + "\n", + "Unmoved, Euphorbus thus: “That action known,\n", + "Come, for my brother’s blood repay thy own.\n", + "His weeping father claims thy destined head,\n", + "And spouse, a widow in her bridal bed.\n", + "On these thy conquer’d spoils I shall bestow,\n", + "To soothe a consort’s and a parent’s woe.\n", + "No longer then defer the glorious strife,\n", + "Let heaven decide our fortune, fame, and life.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift as the word the missile lance he flings;\n", + "The well-aim’d weapon on the buckler rings,\n", + "But blunted by the brass, innoxious falls.\n", + "On Jove the father great Atrides calls,\n", + "Nor flies the javelin from his arm in vain,\n", + "It pierced his throat, and bent him to the plain;\n", + "Wide through the neck appears the grisly wound,\n", + "Prone sinks the warrior, and his arms resound.\n", + "The shining circlets of his golden hair,\n", + "Which even the Graces might be proud to wear,\n", + "Instarr’d with gems and gold, bestrow the shore,\n", + "With dust dishonour’d, and deform’d with gore.\n", + "\n", + "As the young olive, in some sylvan scene,\n", + "Crown’d by fresh fountains with eternal green,\n", + "Lifts the gay head, in snowy flowerets fair,\n", + "And plays and dances to the gentle air;\n", + "When lo! a whirlwind from high heaven invades\n", + "The tender plant, and withers all its shades;\n", + "It lies uprooted from its genial bed,\n", + "A lovely ruin now defaced and dead:\n", + "Thus young, thus beautiful, Euphorbus lay,\n", + "While the fierce Spartan tore his arms away.\n", + "Proud of his deed, and glorious in the prize,\n", + "Affrighted Troy the towering victor flies:\n", + "Flies, as before some mountain lion’s ire\n", + "The village curs and trembling swains retire,\n", + "When o’er the slaughter’d bull they hear him roar,\n", + "And see his jaws distil with smoking gore:\n", + "All pale with fear, at distance scatter’d round,\n", + "They shout incessant, and the vales resound.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile Apollo view’d with envious eyes,\n", + "And urged great Hector to dispute the prize;\n", + "(In Mentes’ shape, beneath whose martial care\n", + "The rough Ciconians learn’d the trade of war;)[247]\n", + "“Forbear (he cried) with fruitless speed to chase\n", + "Achilles’ coursers, of ethereal race;\n", + "They stoop not, these, to mortal man’s command,\n", + "Or stoop to none but great Achilles’ hand.\n", + "Too long amused with a pursuit so vain,\n", + "Turn, and behold the brave Euphorbus slain;\n", + "By Sparta slain! for ever now suppress’d\n", + "The fire which burn’d in that undaunted breast!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having spoke, Apollo wing’d his flight,\n", + "And mix’d with mortals in the toils of fight:\n", + "His words infix’d unutterable care\n", + "Deep in great Hector’s soul: through all the war\n", + "He darts his anxious eye; and, instant, view’d\n", + "The breathless hero in his blood imbued,\n", + "(Forth welling from the wound, as prone he lay)\n", + "And in the victor’s hands the shining prey.\n", + "Sheath’d in bright arms, through cleaving ranks he flies,\n", + "And sends his voice in thunder to the skies:\n", + "Fierce as a flood of flame by Vulcan sent,\n", + "It flew, and fired the nations as it went.\n", + "Atrides from the voice the storm divined,\n", + "And thus explored his own unconquer’d mind:\n", + "\n", + "“Then shall I quit Patroclus on the plain,\n", + "Slain in my cause, and for my honour slain!\n", + "Desert the arms, the relics, of my friend?\n", + "Or singly, Hector and his troops attend?\n", + "Sure where such partial favour heaven bestow’d,\n", + "To brave the hero were to brave the god:\n", + "Forgive me, Greece, if once I quit the field;\n", + "’Tis not to Hector, but to heaven I yield.\n", + "Yet, nor the god, nor heaven, should give me fear,\n", + "Did but the voice of Ajax reach my ear:\n", + "Still would we turn, still battle on the plains,\n", + "And give Achilles all that yet remains\n", + "Of his and our Patroclus—” This, no more\n", + "The time allow’d: Troy thicken’d on the shore.\n", + "A sable scene! The terrors Hector led.\n", + "Slow he recedes, and sighing quits the dead.\n", + "\n", + "So from the fold the unwilling lion parts,\n", + "Forced by loud clamours, and a storm of darts;\n", + "He flies indeed, but threatens as he flies,\n", + "With heart indignant and retorted eyes.\n", + "Now enter’d in the Spartan ranks, he turn’d\n", + "His manly breast, and with new fury burn’d;\n", + "O’er all the black battalions sent his view,\n", + "And through the cloud the godlike Ajax knew;\n", + "Where labouring on the left the warrior stood,\n", + "All grim in arms, and cover’d o’er with blood;\n", + "There breathing courage, where the god of day\n", + "Had sunk each heart with terror and dismay.\n", + "\n", + "To him the king: “Oh Ajax, oh my friend!\n", + "Haste, and Patroclus’ loved remains defend:\n", + "The body to Achilles to restore\n", + "Demands our care; alas, we can no more!\n", + "For naked now, despoiled of arms, he lies;\n", + "And Hector glories in the dazzling prize.”\n", + "He said, and touch’d his heart. The raging pair\n", + "Pierced the thick battle, and provoke the war.\n", + "Already had stern Hector seized his head,\n", + "And doom’d to Trojan gods the unhappy dead;\n", + "But soon as Ajax rear’d his tower-like shield,\n", + "Sprung to his car, and measured back the field,\n", + "His train to Troy the radiant armour bear,\n", + "To stand a trophy of his fame in war.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile great Ajax (his broad shield display’d)\n", + "Guards the dead hero with the dreadful shade;\n", + "And now before, and now behind he stood:\n", + "Thus in the centre of some gloomy wood,\n", + "With many a step, the lioness surrounds\n", + "Her tawny young, beset by men and hounds;\n", + "Elate her heart, and rousing all her powers,\n", + "Dark o’er the fiery balls each hanging eyebrow lours.\n", + "Fast by his side the generous Spartan glows\n", + "With great revenge, and feeds his inward woes.\n", + "\n", + "But Glaucus, leader of the Lycian aids,\n", + "On Hector frowning, thus his flight upbraids:\n", + "\n", + "“Where now in Hector shall we Hector find?\n", + "A manly form, without a manly mind.\n", + "Is this, O chief! a hero’s boasted fame?\n", + "How vain, without the merit, is the name!\n", + "Since battle is renounced, thy thoughts employ\n", + "What other methods may preserve thy Troy:\n", + "’Tis time to try if Ilion’s state can stand\n", + "By thee alone, nor ask a foreign hand:\n", + "Mean, empty boast! but shall the Lycians stake\n", + "Their lives for you? those Lycians you forsake?\n", + "What from thy thankless arms can we expect?\n", + "Thy friend Sarpedon proves thy base neglect;\n", + "Say, shall our slaughter’d bodies guard your walls,\n", + "While unreveng’d the great Sarpedon falls?\n", + "Even where he died for Troy, you left him there,\n", + "A feast for dogs, and all the fowls of air.\n", + "On my command if any Lycian wait,\n", + "Hence let him march, and give up Troy to fate.\n", + "Did such a spirit as the gods impart\n", + "Impel one Trojan hand or Trojan heart,\n", + "(Such as should burn in every soul that draws\n", + "The sword for glory, and his country’s cause)\n", + "Even yet our mutual arms we might employ,\n", + "And drag yon carcase to the walls of Troy.\n", + "Oh! were Patroclus ours, we might obtain\n", + "Sarpedon’s arms and honour’d corse again!\n", + "Greece with Achilles’ friend should be repaid,\n", + "And thus due honours purchased to his shade.\n", + "But words are vain—Let Ajax once appear,\n", + "And Hector trembles and recedes with fear;\n", + "Thou dar’st not meet the terrors of his eye;\n", + "And lo! already thou prepar’st to fly.”\n", + "\n", + "The Trojan chief with fix’d resentment eyed\n", + "The Lycian leader, and sedate replied:\n", + "\n", + "“Say, is it just, my friend, that Hector’s ear\n", + "From such a warrior such a speech should hear?\n", + "I deem’d thee once the wisest of thy kind,\n", + "But ill this insult suits a prudent mind.\n", + "I shun great Ajax? I desert my train?\n", + "’Tis mine to prove the rash assertion vain;\n", + "I joy to mingle where the battle bleeds,\n", + "And hear the thunder of the sounding steeds.\n", + "But Jove’s high will is ever uncontroll’d,\n", + "The strong he withers, and confounds the bold;\n", + "Now crowns with fame the mighty man, and now\n", + "Strikes the fresh garland from the victor’s brow!\n", + "Come, through yon squadrons let us hew the way,\n", + "And thou be witness, if I fear to-day;\n", + "If yet a Greek the sight of Hector dread,\n", + "Or yet their hero dare defend the dead.”\n", + "\n", + "Then turning to the martial hosts, he cries:\n", + "“Ye Trojans, Dardans, Lycians, and allies!\n", + "Be men, my friends, in action as in name,\n", + "And yet be mindful of your ancient fame.\n", + "Hector in proud Achilles’ arms shall shine,\n", + "Torn from his friend, by right of conquest mine.”\n", + "\n", + "He strode along the field, as thus he said:\n", + "(The sable plumage nodded o’er his head:)\n", + "Swift through the spacious plain he sent a look;\n", + "One instant saw, one instant overtook\n", + "The distant band, that on the sandy shore\n", + "The radiant spoils to sacred Ilion bore.\n", + "There his own mail unbraced the field bestrow’d;\n", + "His train to Troy convey’d the massy load.\n", + "Now blazing in the immortal arms he stands;\n", + "The work and present of celestial hands;\n", + "By aged Peleus to Achilles given,\n", + "As first to Peleus by the court of heaven:\n", + "His father’s arms not long Achilles wears,\n", + "Forbid by fate to reach his father’s years.\n", + "\n", + "Him, proud in triumph, glittering from afar,\n", + "The god whose thunder rends the troubled air\n", + "Beheld with pity; as apart he sat,\n", + "And, conscious, look’d through all the scene of fate.\n", + "He shook the sacred honours of his head;\n", + "Olympus trembled, and the godhead said;\n", + "“Ah, wretched man! unmindful of thy end!\n", + "A moment’s glory; and what fates attend!\n", + "In heavenly panoply divinely bright\n", + "Thou stand’st, and armies tremble at thy sight,\n", + "As at Achilles’ self! beneath thy dart\n", + "Lies slain the great Achilles’ dearer part.\n", + "Thou from the mighty dead those arms hast torn,\n", + "Which once the greatest of mankind had worn.\n", + "Yet live! I give thee one illustrious day,\n", + "A blaze of glory ere thou fad’st away.\n", + "For ah! no more Andromache shall come\n", + "With joyful tears to welcome Hector home;\n", + "No more officious, with endearing charms,\n", + "From thy tired limbs unbrace Pelides’ arms!”\n", + "\n", + "Then with his sable brow he gave the nod\n", + "That seals his word; the sanction of the god.\n", + "The stubborn arms (by Jove’s command disposed)\n", + "Conform’d spontaneous, and around him closed:\n", + "Fill’d with the god, enlarged his members grew,\n", + "Through all his veins a sudden vigour flew,\n", + "The blood in brisker tides began to roll,\n", + "And Mars himself came rushing on his soul.\n", + "Exhorting loud through all the field he strode,\n", + "And look’d, and moved, Achilles, or a god.\n", + "Now Mesthles, Glaucus, Medon, he inspires,\n", + "Now Phorcys, Chromius, and Hippothous fires;\n", + "The great Thersilochus like fury found,\n", + "Asteropaeus kindled at the sound,\n", + "And Ennomus, in augury renown’d.\n", + "\n", + "“Hear, all ye hosts, and hear, unnumber’d bands\n", + "Of neighbouring nations, or of distant lands!\n", + "’Twas not for state we summon’d you so far,\n", + "To boast our numbers, and the pomp of war:\n", + "Ye came to fight; a valiant foe to chase,\n", + "To save our present, and our future race.\n", + "For this, our wealth, our products, you enjoy,\n", + "And glean the relics of exhausted Troy.\n", + "Now then, to conquer or to die prepare;\n", + "To die or conquer are the terms of war.\n", + "Whatever hand shall win Patroclus slain,\n", + "Whoe’er shall drag him to the Trojan train,\n", + "With Hector’s self shall equal honours claim;\n", + "With Hector part the spoil, and share the fame.”\n", + "\n", + "Fired by his words, the troops dismiss their fears,\n", + "They join, they thicken, they protend their spears;\n", + "Full on the Greeks they drive in firm array,\n", + "And each from Ajax hopes the glorious prey:\n", + "Vain hope! what numbers shall the field o’erspread,\n", + "What victims perish round the mighty dead!\n", + "\n", + "Great Ajax mark’d the growing storm from far,\n", + "And thus bespoke his brother of the war:\n", + "“Our fatal day, alas! is come, my friend;\n", + "And all our wars and glories at an end!\n", + "’Tis not this corse alone we guard in vain,\n", + "Condemn’d to vultures on the Trojan plain;\n", + "We too must yield: the same sad fate must fall\n", + "On thee, on me, perhaps, my friend, on all.\n", + "See what a tempest direful Hector spreads,\n", + "And lo! it bursts, it thunders on our heads!\n", + "Call on our Greeks, if any hear the call,\n", + "The bravest Greeks: this hour demands them all.”\n", + "\n", + "The warrior raised his voice, and wide around\n", + "The field re-echoed the distressful sound.\n", + "“O chiefs! O princes, to whose hand is given\n", + "The rule of men; whose glory is from heaven!\n", + "Whom with due honours both Atrides grace:\n", + "Ye guides and guardians of our Argive race!\n", + "All, whom this well-known voice shall reach from far,\n", + "All, whom I see not through this cloud of war;\n", + "Come all! let generous rage your arms employ,\n", + "And save Patroclus from the dogs of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Oilean Ajax first the voice obey’d,\n", + "Swift was his pace, and ready was his aid:\n", + "Next him Idomeneus, more slow with age,\n", + "And Merion, burning with a hero’s rage.\n", + "The long-succeeding numbers who can name?\n", + "But all were Greeks, and eager all for fame.\n", + "Fierce to the charge great Hector led the throng;\n", + "Whole Troy embodied rush’d with shouts along.\n", + "Thus, when a mountain billow foams and raves,\n", + "Where some swoln river disembogues his waves,\n", + "Full in the mouth is stopp’d the rushing tide,\n", + "The boiling ocean works from side to side,\n", + "The river trembles to his utmost shore,\n", + "And distant rocks re-bellow to the roar.\n", + "\n", + "Nor less resolved, the firm Achaian band\n", + "With brazen shields in horrid circle stand.\n", + "Jove, pouring darkness o’er the mingled fight,\n", + "Conceals the warriors’ shining helms in night:\n", + "To him, the chief for whom the hosts contend\n", + "Had lived not hateful, for he lived a friend:\n", + "Dead he protects him with superior care.\n", + "Nor dooms his carcase to the birds of air.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] FIGHT FOR THE BODY OF PATROCLUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The first attack the Grecians scarce sustain,\n", + "Repulsed, they yield; the Trojans seize the slain.\n", + "Then fierce they rally, to revenge led on\n", + "By the swift rage of Ajax Telamon.\n", + "(Ajax to Peleus’ son the second name,\n", + "In graceful stature next, and next in fame.)\n", + "With headlong force the foremost ranks he tore;\n", + "So through the thicket bursts the mountain boar,\n", + "And rudely scatters, for a distance round,\n", + "The frighted hunter and the baying hound.\n", + "The son of Lethus, brave Pelasgus’ heir,\n", + "Hippothous, dragg’d the carcase through the war;\n", + "The sinewy ankles bored, the feet he bound\n", + "With thongs inserted through the double wound:\n", + "Inevitable fate o’ertakes the deed;\n", + "Doom’d by great Ajax’ vengeful lance to bleed:\n", + "It cleft the helmet’s brazen cheeks in twain;\n", + "The shatter’d crest and horse-hair strow the plain:\n", + "With nerves relax’d he tumbles to the ground:\n", + "The brain comes gushing through the ghastly wound:\n", + "He drops Patroclus’ foot, and o’er him spread,\n", + "Now lies a sad companion of the dead:\n", + "Far from Larissa lies, his native air,\n", + "And ill requites his parents’ tender care.\n", + "Lamented youth! in life’s first bloom he fell,\n", + "Sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell.\n", + "\n", + "Once more at Ajax Hector’s javelin flies;\n", + "The Grecian marking, as it cut the skies,\n", + "Shunn’d the descending death; which hissing on,\n", + "Stretch’d in the dust the great Iphytus’ son,\n", + "Schedius the brave, of all the Phocian kind\n", + "The boldest warrior and the noblest mind:\n", + "In little Panope, for strength renown’d,\n", + "He held his seat, and ruled the realms around.\n", + "Plunged in his throat, the weapon drank his blood,\n", + "And deep transpiercing through the shoulder stood;\n", + "In clanging arms the hero fell and all\n", + "The fields resounded with his weighty fall.\n", + "\n", + "Phorcys, as slain Hippothous he defends,\n", + "The Telamonian lance his belly rends;\n", + "The hollow armour burst before the stroke,\n", + "And through the wound the rushing entrails broke:\n", + "In strong convulsions panting on the sands\n", + "He lies, and grasps the dust with dying hands.\n", + "\n", + "Struck at the sight, recede the Trojan train:\n", + "The shouting Argives strip the heroes slain.\n", + "And now had Troy, by Greece compell’d to yield,\n", + "Fled to her ramparts, and resign’d the field;\n", + "Greece, in her native fortitude elate,\n", + "With Jove averse, had turn’d the scale of fate:\n", + "But Phœbus urged Æneas to the fight;\n", + "He seem’d like aged Periphas to sight:\n", + "(A herald in Anchises’ love grown old,\n", + "Revered for prudence, and with prudence bold.)\n", + "\n", + "Thus he—“What methods yet, O chief! remain,\n", + "To save your Troy, though heaven its fall ordain?\n", + "There have been heroes, who, by virtuous care,\n", + "By valour, numbers, and by arts of war,\n", + "Have forced the powers to spare a sinking state,\n", + "And gain’d at length the glorious odds of fate:\n", + "But you, when fortune smiles, when Jove declares\n", + "His partial favour, and assists your wars,\n", + "Your shameful efforts ’gainst yourselves employ,\n", + "And force the unwilling god to ruin Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Æneas through the form assumed descries\n", + "The power conceal’d, and thus to Hector cries:\n", + "“Oh lasting shame! to our own fears a prey,\n", + "We seek our ramparts, and desert the day.\n", + "A god, nor is he less, my bosom warms,\n", + "And tells me, Jove asserts the Trojan arms.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and foremost to the combat flew:\n", + "The bold example all his hosts pursue.\n", + "Then, first, Leocritus beneath him bled,\n", + "In vain beloved by valiant Lycomede;\n", + "Who view’d his fall, and, grieving at the chance,\n", + "Swift to revenge it sent his angry lance;\n", + "The whirling lance, with vigorous force address’d,\n", + "Descends, and pants in Apisaon’s breast;\n", + "From rich Paeonia’s vales the warrior came,\n", + "Next thee, Asteropeus! in place and fame.\n", + "Asteropeus with grief beheld the slain,\n", + "And rush’d to combat, but he rush’d in vain:\n", + "Indissolubly firm, around the dead,\n", + "Rank within rank, on buckler buckler spread,\n", + "And hemm’d with bristled spears, the Grecians stood,\n", + "A brazen bulwark, and an iron wood.\n", + "Great Ajax eyes them with incessant care,\n", + "And in an orb contracts the crowded war,\n", + "Close in their ranks commands to fight or fall,\n", + "And stands the centre and the soul of all:\n", + "Fix’d on the spot they war, and wounded, wound;\n", + "A sanguine torrent steeps the reeking ground:\n", + "On heaps the Greeks, on heaps the Trojans bled,\n", + "And, thickening round them, rise the hills of dead.\n", + "\n", + "Greece, in close order, and collected might,\n", + "Yet suffers least, and sways the wavering fight;\n", + "Fierce as conflicting fires the combat burns,\n", + "And now it rises, now it sinks by turns.\n", + "In one thick darkness all the fight was lost;\n", + "The sun, the moon, and all the ethereal host\n", + "Seem’d as extinct: day ravish’d from their eyes,\n", + "And all heaven’s splendours blotted from the skies.\n", + "Such o’er Patroclus’ body hung the night,\n", + "The rest in sunshine fought, and open light;\n", + "Unclouded there, the aerial azure spread,\n", + "No vapour rested on the mountain’s head,\n", + "The golden sun pour’d forth a stronger ray,\n", + "And all the broad expansion flamed with day.\n", + "Dispersed around the plain, by fits they fight,\n", + "And here and there their scatter’d arrows light:\n", + "But death and darkness o’er the carcase spread,\n", + "There burn’d the war, and there the mighty bled.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile the sons of Nestor, in the rear,\n", + "(Their fellows routed,) toss the distant spear,\n", + "And skirmish wide: so Nestor gave command,\n", + "When from the ships he sent the Pylian band.\n", + "The youthful brothers thus for fame contend,\n", + "Nor knew the fortune of Achilles’ friend;\n", + "In thought they view’d him still, with martial joy,\n", + "Glorious in arms, and dealing death to Troy.\n", + "\n", + "But round the corse the heroes pant for breath,\n", + "And thick and heavy grows the work of death:\n", + "O’erlabour’d now, with dust, and sweat, and gore,\n", + "Their knees, their legs, their feet, are covered o’er;\n", + "Drops follow drops, the clouds on clouds arise,\n", + "And carnage clogs their hands, and darkness fills their eyes.\n", + "As when a slaughter’d bull’s yet reeking hide,\n", + "Strain’d with full force, and tugg’d from side to side,\n", + "The brawny curriers stretch; and labour o’er\n", + "The extended surface, drunk with fat and gore:\n", + "So tugging round the corse both armies stood;\n", + "The mangled body bathed in sweat and blood;\n", + "While Greeks and Ilians equal strength employ,\n", + "Now to the ships to force it, now to Troy.\n", + "Not Pallas’ self, her breast when fury warms,\n", + "Nor he whose anger sets the world in arms,\n", + "Could blame this scene; such rage, such horror reign’d;\n", + "Such, Jove to honour the great dead ordain’d.\n", + "\n", + "Achilles in his ships at distance lay,\n", + "Nor knew the fatal fortune of the day;\n", + "He, yet unconscious of Patroclus’ fall,\n", + "In dust extended under Ilion’s wall,\n", + "Expects him glorious from the conquered plain,\n", + "And for his wish’d return prepares in vain;\n", + "Though well he knew, to make proud Ilion bend\n", + "Was more than heaven had destined to his friend.\n", + "Perhaps to him: this Thetis had reveal’d;\n", + "The rest, in pity to her son, conceal’d.\n", + "\n", + "Still raged the conflict round the hero dead,\n", + "And heaps on heaps by mutual wounds they bled.\n", + "“Cursed be the man (even private Greeks would say)\n", + "Who dares desert this well-disputed day!\n", + "First may the cleaving earth before our eyes\n", + "Gape wide, and drink our blood for sacrifice;\n", + "First perish all, ere haughty Troy shall boast\n", + "We lost Patroclus, and our glory lost!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus they: while with one voice the Trojans said,\n", + "“Grant this day, Jove! or heap us on the dead!”\n", + "\n", + "Then clash their sounding arms; the clangours rise,\n", + "And shake the brazen concave of the skies.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime, at distance from the scene of blood,\n", + "The pensive steeds of great Achilles stood:\n", + "Their godlike master slain before their eyes,\n", + "They wept, and shared in human miseries.[248]\n", + "In vain Automedon now shakes the rein,\n", + "Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain;\n", + "Nor to the fight nor Hellespont they go,\n", + "Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe:\n", + "Still as a tombstone, never to be moved,\n", + "On some good man or woman unreproved\n", + "Lays its eternal weight; or fix’d, as stands\n", + "A marble courser by the sculptor’s hands,\n", + "Placed on the hero’s grave. Along their face\n", + "The big round drops coursed down with silent pace,\n", + "Conglobing on the dust. Their manes, that late\n", + "Circled their arched necks, and waved in state,\n", + "Trail’d on the dust beneath the yoke were spread,\n", + "And prone to earth was hung their languid head:\n", + "Nor Jove disdain’d to cast a pitying look,\n", + "While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Unhappy coursers of immortal strain,\n", + "Exempt from age, and deathless, now in vain;\n", + "Did we your race on mortal man bestow,\n", + "Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?\n", + "For ah! what is there of inferior birth,\n", + "That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth;\n", + "What wretched creature of what wretched kind,\n", + "Than man more weak, calamitous, and blind?\n", + "A miserable race! but cease to mourn:\n", + "For not by you shall Priam’s son be borne\n", + "High on the splendid car: one glorious prize\n", + "He rashly boasts: the rest our will denies.\n", + "Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart,\n", + "Ourself with rising spirits swell your heart.\n", + "Automedon your rapid flight shall bear\n", + "Safe to the navy through the storm of war.\n", + "For yet ’tis given to Troy to ravage o’er\n", + "The field, and spread her slaughters to the shore;\n", + "The sun shall see her conquer, till his fall\n", + "With sacred darkness shades the face of all.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and breathing in the immortal horse\n", + "Excessive spirit, urged them to the course;\n", + "From their high manes they shake the dust, and bear\n", + "The kindling chariot through the parted war:\n", + "So flies a vulture through the clamorous train\n", + "Of geese, that scream, and scatter round the plain.\n", + "From danger now with swiftest speed they flew,\n", + "And now to conquest with like speed pursue;\n", + "Sole in the seat the charioteer remains,\n", + "Now plies the javelin, now directs the reins:\n", + "Him brave Alcimedon beheld distress’d,\n", + "Approach’d the chariot, and the chief address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“What god provokes thee rashly thus to dare,\n", + "Alone, unaided, in the thickest war?\n", + "Alas! thy friend is slain, and Hector wields\n", + "Achilles’ arms triumphant in the fields.”\n", + "\n", + "“In happy time (the charioteer replies)\n", + "The bold Alcimedon now greets my eyes;\n", + "No Greek like him the heavenly steeds restrains,\n", + "Or holds their fury in suspended reins:\n", + "Patroclus, while he lived, their rage could tame,\n", + "But now Patroclus is an empty name!\n", + "To thee I yield the seat, to thee resign\n", + "The ruling charge: the task of fight be mine.”\n", + "\n", + "He said. Alcimedon, with active heat,\n", + "Snatches the reins, and vaults into the seat.\n", + "His friend descends. The chief of Troy descried,\n", + "And call’d Æneas fighting near his side.\n", + "\n", + "“Lo, to my sight, beyond our hope restored,\n", + "Achilles’ car, deserted of its lord!\n", + "The glorious steeds our ready arms invite,\n", + "Scarce their weak drivers guide them through the fight.\n", + "Can such opponents stand when we assail?\n", + "Unite thy force, my friend, and we prevail.”\n", + "\n", + "The son of Venus to the counsel yields;\n", + "Then o’er their backs they spread their solid shields:\n", + "With brass refulgent the broad surface shined,\n", + "And thick bull-hides the spacious concave lined.\n", + "Them Chromius follows, Aretus succeeds;\n", + "Each hopes the conquest of the lofty steeds:\n", + "In vain, brave youths, with glorious hopes ye burn,\n", + "In vain advance! not fated to return.\n", + "\n", + "Unmov’d, Automedon attends the fight,\n", + "Implores the Eternal, and collects his might.\n", + "Then turning to his friend, with dauntless mind:\n", + "“Oh keep the foaming coursers close behind!\n", + "Full on my shoulders let their nostrils blow,\n", + "For hard the fight, determined is the foe;\n", + "’Tis Hector comes: and when he seeks the prize,\n", + "War knows no mean; he wins it or he dies.”\n", + "\n", + "Then through the field he sends his voice aloud,\n", + "And calls the Ajaces from the warring crowd,\n", + "With great Atrides. “Hither turn, (he said,)\n", + "Turn where distress demands immediate aid;\n", + "The dead, encircled by his friends, forego,\n", + "And save the living from a fiercer foe.\n", + "Unhelp’d we stand, unequal to engage\n", + "The force of Hector, and Æneas’ rage:\n", + "Yet mighty as they are, my force to prove\n", + "Is only mine: the event belongs to Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and high the sounding javelin flung,\n", + "Which pass’d the shield of Aretus the young:\n", + "It pierced his belt, emboss’d with curious art,\n", + "Then in the lower belly struck the dart.\n", + "As when a ponderous axe, descending full,\n", + "Cleaves the broad forehead of some brawny bull:[249]\n", + "Struck ’twixt the horns, he springs with many a bound,\n", + "Then tumbling rolls enormous on the ground:\n", + "Thus fell the youth; the air his soul received,\n", + "And the spear trembled as his entrails heaved.\n", + "\n", + "Now at Automedon the Trojan foe\n", + "Discharged his lance; the meditated blow,\n", + "Stooping, he shunn’d; the javelin idly fled,\n", + "And hiss’d innoxious o’er the hero’s head;\n", + "Deep rooted in the ground, the forceful spear\n", + "In long vibrations spent its fury there.\n", + "With clashing falchions now the chiefs had closed,\n", + "But each brave Ajax heard, and interposed;\n", + "Nor longer Hector with his Trojans stood,\n", + "But left their slain companion in his blood:\n", + "His arms Automedon divests, and cries,\n", + "“Accept, Patroclus, this mean sacrifice:\n", + "Thus have I soothed my griefs, and thus have paid,\n", + "Poor as it is, some offering to thy shade.”\n", + "\n", + "So looks the lion o’er a mangled boar,\n", + "All grim with rage, and horrible with gore;\n", + "High on the chariot at one bound he sprung,\n", + "And o’er his seat the bloody trophies hung.\n", + "\n", + "And now Minerva from the realms of air\n", + "Descends impetuous, and renews the war;\n", + "For, pleased at length the Grecian arms to aid,\n", + "The lord of thunders sent the blue-eyed maid.\n", + "As when high Jove denouncing future woe,\n", + "O’er the dark clouds extends his purple bow,\n", + "(In sign of tempests from the troubled air,\n", + "Or from the rage of man, destructive war,)\n", + "The drooping cattle dread the impending skies,\n", + "And from his half-till’d field the labourer flies:\n", + "In such a form the goddess round her drew\n", + "A livid cloud, and to the battle flew.\n", + "Assuming Phœnix’ shape on earth she falls,\n", + "And in his well-known voice to Sparta calls:\n", + "“And lies Achilles’ friend, beloved by all,\n", + "A prey to dogs beneath the Trojan wall?\n", + "What shame 'o Greece for future times to tell,\n", + "To thee the greatest in whose cause he fell!”\n", + "“O chief, O father! (Atreus’ son replies)\n", + "O full of days! by long experience wise!\n", + "What more desires my soul, than here unmoved\n", + "To guard the body of the man I loved?\n", + "Ah, would Minerva send me strength to rear\n", + "This wearied arm, and ward the storm of war!\n", + "But Hector, like the rage of fire, we dread,\n", + "And Jove’s own glories blaze around his head!”\n", + "\n", + "Pleased to be first of all the powers address’d,\n", + "She breathes new vigour in her hero’s breast,\n", + "And fills with keen revenge, with fell despite,\n", + "Desire of blood, and rage, and lust of fight.\n", + "So burns the vengeful hornet (soul all o’er),\n", + "Repulsed in vain, and thirsty still of gore;\n", + "(Bold son of air and heat) on angry wings\n", + "Untamed, untired, he turns, attacks, and stings.\n", + "Fired with like ardour fierce Atrides flew,\n", + "And sent his soul with every lance he threw.\n", + "\n", + "There stood a Trojan, not unknown to fame,\n", + "Aëtion’s son, and Podes was his name:\n", + "With riches honour’d, and with courage bless’d,\n", + "By Hector loved, his comrade, and his guest;\n", + "Through his broad belt the spear a passage found,\n", + "And, ponderous as he falls, his arms resound.\n", + "Sudden at Hector’s side Apollo stood,\n", + "Like Phaenops, Asius’ son, appear’d the god;\n", + "(Asius the great, who held his wealthy reign\n", + "In fair Abydos, by the rolling main.)\n", + "\n", + "“Oh prince! (he cried) Oh foremost once in fame!\n", + "What Grecian now shall tremble at thy name?\n", + "Dost thou at length to Menelaus yield,\n", + "A chief once thought no terror of the field?\n", + "Yet singly, now, the long-disputed prize\n", + "He bears victorious, while our army flies:\n", + "By the same arm illustrious Podes bled;\n", + "The friend of Hector, unrevenged, is dead!”\n", + "This heard, o’er Hector spreads a cloud of woe,\n", + "Rage lifts his lance, and drives him on the foe.\n", + "\n", + "But now the Eternal shook his sable shield,\n", + "That shaded Ide and all the subject field\n", + "Beneath its ample verge. A rolling cloud\n", + "Involved the mount; the thunder roar’d aloud;\n", + "The affrighted hills from their foundations nod,\n", + "And blaze beneath the lightnings of the god:\n", + "At one regard of his all-seeing eye\n", + "The vanquish’d triumph, and the victors fly.\n", + "\n", + "Then trembled Greece: the flight Peneleus led;\n", + "For as the brave Bœotian turn’d his head\n", + "To face the foe, Polydamas drew near,\n", + "And razed his shoulder with a shorten’d spear:\n", + "By Hector wounded, Leitus quits the plain,\n", + "Pierced through the wrist; and raging with the pain,\n", + "Grasps his once formidable lance in vain.\n", + "\n", + "As Hector follow’d, Idomen address’d\n", + "The flaming javelin to his manly breast;\n", + "The brittle point before his corslet yields;\n", + "Exulting Troy with clamour fills the fields:\n", + "High on his chariots the Cretan stood,\n", + "The son of Priam whirl’d the massive wood.\n", + "But erring from its aim, the impetuous spear\n", + "Struck to the dust the squire and charioteer\n", + "Of martial Merion: Coeranus his name,\n", + "Who left fair Lyctus for the fields of fame.\n", + "On foot bold Merion fought; and now laid low,\n", + "Had graced the triumphs of his Trojan foe,\n", + "But the brave squire the ready coursers brought,\n", + "And with his life his master’s safety bought.\n", + "Between his cheek and ear the weapon went,\n", + "The teeth it shatter’d, and the tongue it rent.\n", + "Prone from the seat he tumbles to the plain;\n", + "His dying hand forgets the falling rein:\n", + "This Merion reaches, bending from the car,\n", + "And urges to desert the hopeless war:\n", + "Idomeneus consents; the lash applies;\n", + "And the swift chariot to the navy flies.\n", + "\n", + "Not Ajax less the will of heaven descried,\n", + "And conquest shifting to the Trojan side,\n", + "Turn’d by the hand of Jove. Then thus begun,\n", + "To Atreus’s seed, the godlike Telamon:\n", + "\n", + "“Alas! who sees not Jove’s almighty hand\n", + "Transfers the glory to the Trojan band?\n", + "Whether the weak or strong discharge the dart,\n", + "He guides each arrow to a Grecian heart:\n", + "Not so our spears; incessant though they rain,\n", + "He suffers every lance to fall in vain.\n", + "Deserted of the god, yet let us try\n", + "What human strength and prudence can supply;\n", + "If yet this honour’d corse, in triumph borne,\n", + "May glad the fleets that hope not our return,\n", + "Who tremble yet, scarce rescued from their fates,\n", + "And still hear Hector thundering at their gates.\n", + "Some hero too must be despatch’d to bear\n", + "The mournful message to Pelides’ ear;\n", + "For sure he knows not, distant on the shore,\n", + "His friend, his loved Patroclus, is no more.\n", + "But such a chief I spy not through the host:\n", + "The men, the steeds, the armies, all are lost\n", + "In general darkness—Lord of earth and air!\n", + "Oh king! Oh father! hear my humble prayer:\n", + "Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore;\n", + "Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more:\n", + "If Greece must perish, we thy will obey,\n", + "But let us perish in the face of day!”\n", + "\n", + "With tears the hero spoke, and at his prayer\n", + "The god relenting clear’d the clouded air;\n", + "Forth burst the sun with all-enlightening ray;\n", + "The blaze of armour flash’d against the day.\n", + "“Now, now, Atrides! cast around thy sight;\n", + "If yet Antilochus survives the fight,\n", + "Let him to great Achilles’ ear convey\n", + "The fatal news”—Atrides hastes away.\n", + "\n", + "So turns the lion from the nightly fold,\n", + "Though high in courage, and with hunger bold,\n", + "Long gall’d by herdsmen, and long vex’d by hounds,\n", + "Stiff with fatigue, and fretted sore with wounds;\n", + "The darts fly round him from a hundred hands,\n", + "And the red terrors of the blazing brands:\n", + "Till late, reluctant, at the dawn of day\n", + "Sour he departs, and quits the untasted prey,\n", + "So moved Atrides from his dangerous place\n", + "With weary limbs, but with unwilling pace;\n", + "The foe, he fear’d, might yet Patroclus gain,\n", + "And much admonish’d, much adjured his train:\n", + "\n", + "“O guard these relics to your charge consign’d,\n", + "And bear the merits of the dead in mind;\n", + "How skill’d he was in each obliging art;\n", + "The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart:\n", + "He was, alas! but fate decreed his end,\n", + "In death a hero, as in life a friend!”\n", + "\n", + "So parts the chief; from rank to rank he flew,\n", + "And round on all sides sent his piercing view.\n", + "As the bold bird, endued with sharpest eye\n", + "Of all that wings the mid aërial sky,\n", + "The sacred eagle, from his walks above\n", + "Looks down, and sees the distant thicket move;\n", + "Then stoops, and sousing on the quivering hare,\n", + "Snatches his life amid the clouds of air.\n", + "Not with less quickness, his exerted sight\n", + "Pass’d this and that way, through the ranks of fight:\n", + "Till on the left the chief he sought, he found,\n", + "Cheering his men, and spreading deaths around:\n", + "\n", + "To him the king: “Beloved of Jove! draw near,\n", + "For sadder tidings never touch’d thy ear;\n", + "Thy eyes have witness’d what a fatal turn!\n", + "How Ilion triumphs, and the Achaians mourn.\n", + "This is not all: Patroclus, on the shore\n", + "Now pale and dead, shall succour Greece no more.\n", + "Fly to the fleet, this instant fly, and tell\n", + "The sad Achilles, how his loved-one fell:\n", + "He too may haste the naked corse to gain:\n", + "The arms are Hector’s, who despoil’d the slain.”\n", + "\n", + "The youthful warrior heard with silent woe,\n", + "From his fair eyes the tears began to flow:\n", + "Big with the mighty grief, he strove to say\n", + "What sorrow dictates, but no word found way.\n", + "To brave Laodocus his arms he flung,\n", + "Who, near him wheeling, drove his steeds along;\n", + "Then ran the mournful message to impart,\n", + "With tearful eyes, and with dejected heart.\n", + "\n", + "Swift fled the youth: nor Menelaus stands\n", + "(Though sore distress’d) to aid the Pylian bands;\n", + "But bids bold Thrasymede those troops sustain;\n", + "Himself returns to his Patroclus slain.\n", + "“Gone is Antilochus (the hero said);\n", + "But hope not, warriors, for Achilles’ aid:\n", + "Though fierce his rage, unbounded be his woe,\n", + "Unarm’d, he fights not with the Trojan foe.\n", + "’Tis in our hands alone our hopes remain,\n", + "’Tis our own vigour must the dead regain,\n", + "And save ourselves, while with impetuous hate\n", + "Troy pours along, and this way rolls our fate.”\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis well (said Ajax), be it then thy care,\n", + "With Merion’s aid, the weighty corse to rear;\n", + "Myself, and my bold brother will sustain\n", + "The shock of Hector and his charging train:\n", + "Nor fear we armies, fighting side by side;\n", + "What Troy can dare, we have already tried,\n", + "Have tried it, and have stood.” The hero said.\n", + "High from the ground the warriors heave the dead.\n", + "A general clamour rises at the sight:\n", + "Loud shout the Trojans, and renew the fight.\n", + "Not fiercer rush along the gloomy wood,\n", + "With rage insatiate, and with thirst of blood,\n", + "Voracious hounds, that many a length before\n", + "Their furious hunters, drive the wounded boar;\n", + "But if the savage turns his glaring eye,\n", + "They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.\n", + "Thus on retreating Greece the Trojans pour,\n", + "Wave their thick falchions, and their javelins shower:\n", + "But Ajax turning, to their fears they yield,\n", + "All pale they tremble and forsake the field.\n", + "\n", + "While thus aloft the hero’s corse they bear,\n", + "Behind them rages all the storm of war:\n", + "Confusion, tumult, horror, o’er the throng\n", + "Of men, steeds, chariots, urged the rout along:\n", + "Less fierce the winds with rising flames conspire\n", + "To whelm some city under waves of fire;\n", + "Now sink in gloomy clouds the proud abodes,\n", + "Now crack the blazing temples of the gods;\n", + "The rumbling torrent through the ruin rolls,\n", + "And sheets of smoke mount heavy to the poles.\n", + "The heroes sweat beneath their honour’d load:\n", + "As when two mules, along the rugged road,\n", + "From the steep mountain with exerted strength\n", + "Drag some vast beam, or mast’s unwieldy length;\n", + "Inly they groan, big drops of sweat distil,\n", + "The enormous timber lumbering down the hill:\n", + "So these—Behind, the bulk of Ajax stands,\n", + "And breaks the torrent of the rushing bands.\n", + "Thus when a river swell’d with sudden rains\n", + "Spreads his broad waters o’er the level plains,\n", + "Some interposing hill the stream divides,\n", + "And breaks its force, and turns the winding tides.\n", + "Still close they follow, close the rear engage;\n", + "Æneas storms, and Hector foams with rage:\n", + "While Greece a heavy, thick retreat maintains,\n", + "Wedged in one body, like a flight of cranes,\n", + "That shriek incessant, while the falcon, hung\n", + "High on poised pinions, threats their callow young.\n", + "So from the Trojan chiefs the Grecians fly,\n", + "Such the wild terror, and the mingled cry:\n", + "Within, without the trench, and all the way,\n", + "Strow’d in bright heaps, their arms and armour lay;\n", + "Such horror Jove impress’d! yet still proceeds\n", + "The work of death, and still the battle bleeds.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VULCAN FROM AN ANTIQUE GEM\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XVIII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE GRIEF OF ACHILLES, AND NEW ARMOUR MADE HIM BY VULCAN.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The news of the death of Patroclus is brought to Achilles by\n", + "Antilochus. Thetis, hearing his lamentations, comes with all her sea-\n", + "nymphs to comfort him. The speeches of the mother and son on this\n", + "occasion. Iris appears to Achilles by the command of Juno, and orders\n", + "him to show himself at the head of the intrenchments. The sight of him\n", + "turns the fortunes of the day, and the body of Patroclus is carried off\n", + "by the Greeks. The Trojans call a council, where Hector and Polydamas\n", + "disagree in their opinions: but the advice of the former prevails, to\n", + "remain encamped in the field. The grief of Achilles over the body of\n", + "Patroclus.\n", + " Thetis goes to the palace of Vulcan to obtain new arms for her son.\n", + " The description of the wonderful works of Vulcan: and, lastly, that\n", + " noble one of the shield of Achilles.\n", + " The latter part of the nine-and-twentieth day, and the night\n", + " ensuing, take up this book: the scene is at Achilles’ tent on the\n", + " sea-shore, from whence it changes to the palace of Vulcan.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus like the rage of fire the combat burns,[250]\n", + "And now it rises, now it sinks by turns.\n", + "Meanwhile, where Hellespont’s broad waters flow,\n", + "Stood Nestor’s son, the messenger of woe:\n", + "There sat Achilles, shaded by his sails,\n", + "On hoisted yards extended to the gales;\n", + "Pensive he sat; for all that fate design’d\n", + "Rose in sad prospect to his boding mind.\n", + "Thus to his soul he said: “Ah! what constrains\n", + "The Greeks, late victors, now to quit the plains?\n", + "Is this the day, which heaven so long ago\n", + "Ordain’d, to sink me with the weight of woe?\n", + "(So Thetis warn’d;) when by a Trojan hand\n", + "The bravest of the Myrmidonian band\n", + "Should lose the light! Fulfilled is that decree;\n", + "Fallen is the warrior, and Patroclus he!\n", + "In vain I charged him soon to quit the plain,\n", + "And warn’d to shun Hectorean force in vain!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus while he thinks, Antilochus appears,\n", + "And tells the melancholy tale with tears.\n", + "“Sad tidings, son of Peleus! thou must hear;\n", + "And wretched I, the unwilling messenger!\n", + "Dead is Patroclus! For his corse they fight;\n", + "His naked corse: his arms are Hector’s right.”\n", + "\n", + "A sudden horror shot through all the chief,\n", + "And wrapp’d his senses in the cloud of grief;\n", + "Cast on the ground, with furious hands he spread\n", + "The scorching ashes o’er his graceful head;\n", + "His purple garments, and his golden hairs,\n", + "Those he deforms with dust, and these he tears;\n", + "On the hard soil his groaning breast he threw,\n", + "And roll’d and grovell’d, as to earth he grew.\n", + "The virgin captives, with disorder’d charms,\n", + "(Won by his own, or by Patroclus’ arms,)\n", + "Rush’d from their tents with cries; and gathering round,\n", + "Beat their white breasts, and fainted on the ground:\n", + "While Nestor’s son sustains a manlier part,\n", + "And mourns the warrior with a warrior’s heart;\n", + "Hangs on his arms, amidst his frantic woe,\n", + "And oft prevents the meditated blow.\n", + "\n", + "Far in the deep abysses of the main,[251]\n", + "With hoary Nereus, and the watery train,\n", + "The mother-goddess from her crystal throne\n", + "Heard his loud cries, and answer’d groan for groan.\n", + "The circling Nereids with their mistress weep,\n", + "And all the sea-green sisters of the deep.\n", + "Thalia, Glauce (every watery name),\n", + "Nesaea mild, and silver Spio came:\n", + "Cymothoe and Cymodoce were nigh,\n", + "And the blue languish of soft Alia’s eye.\n", + "Their locks Actaea and Limnoria rear,\n", + "Then Proto, Doris, Panope appear,\n", + "Thoa, Pherusa, Doto, Melita;\n", + "Agave gentle, and Amphithoe gay:\n", + "Next Callianira, Callianassa show\n", + "Their sister looks; Dexamene the slow,\n", + "And swift Dynamene, now cut the tides:\n", + "Iaera now the verdant wave divides:\n", + "Nemertes with Apseudes lifts the head,\n", + "Bright Galatea quits her pearly bed;\n", + "These Orythia, Clymene, attend,\n", + "Maera, Amphinome, the train extend;\n", + "And black Janira, and Janassa fair,\n", + "And Amatheia with her amber hair.\n", + "All these, and all that deep in ocean held\n", + "Their sacred seats, the glimmering grotto fill’d;\n", + "Each beat her ivory breast with silent woe,\n", + "Till Thetis’ sorrows thus began to flow:\n", + "\n", + "“Hear me, and judge, ye sisters of the main!\n", + "How just a cause has Thetis to complain!\n", + "How wretched, were I mortal, were my fate!\n", + "How more than wretched in the immortal state!\n", + "Sprung from my bed a godlike hero came,\n", + "The bravest far that ever bore the name;\n", + "Like some fair olive, by my careful hand\n", + "He grew, he flourish’d and adorn’d the land!\n", + "To Troy I sent him: but the fates ordain\n", + "He never, never must return again.\n", + "So short a space the light of heaven to view,\n", + "So short, alas! and fill’d with anguish too!\n", + "Hear how his sorrows echo through the shore!\n", + "I cannot ease them, but I must deplore;\n", + "I go at least to bear a tender part,\n", + "And mourn my loved-one with a mother’s heart.”\n", + "\n", + "She said, and left the caverns of the main,\n", + "All bathed in tears; the melancholy train\n", + "Attend her way. Wide-opening part the tides,\n", + "While the long pomp the silver wave divides.\n", + "Approaching now, they touch’d the Trojan land;\n", + "Then, two by two, ascended up the strand.\n", + "The immortal mother, standing close beside\n", + "Her mournful offspring, to his sighs replied;\n", + "Along the coast their mingled clamours ran,\n", + "And thus the silver-footed dame began:\n", + "\n", + "“Why mourns my son? thy late preferr’d request\n", + "The god has granted, and the Greeks distress’d:\n", + "Why mourns my son? thy anguish let me share,\n", + "Reveal the cause, and trust a parent’s care.”\n", + "\n", + "He, deeply groaning—“To this cureless grief,\n", + "Not even the Thunderer’s favour brings relief.\n", + "Patroclus—Ah!—say, goddess, can I boast\n", + "A pleasure now? revenge itself is lost;\n", + "Patroclus, loved of all my martial train,\n", + "Beyond mankind, beyond myself is slain!\n", + "Lost are those arms the gods themselves bestow’d\n", + "On Peleus; Hector bears the glorious load.\n", + "Cursed be that day, when all the powers above\n", + "Thy charms submitted to a mortal love:\n", + "O hadst thou still, a sister of the main,\n", + "Pursued the pleasures of the watery reign:\n", + "And happier Peleus, less ambitious, led\n", + "A mortal beauty to his equal bed!\n", + "Ere the sad fruit of thy unhappy womb\n", + "Had caused such sorrows past, and woes to come.\n", + "For soon, alas! that wretched offspring slain,\n", + "New woes, new sorrows, shall create again.\n", + "’Tis not in fate the alternate now to give;\n", + "Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.\n", + "Let me revenge it on proud Hector’s heart,\n", + "Let his last spirit smoke upon my dart;\n", + "On these conditions will I breathe: till then,\n", + "I blush to walk among the race of men.”\n", + "\n", + "A flood of tears, at this, the goddess shed:\n", + "“Ah then, I see thee dying, see thee dead!\n", + "When Hector falls, thou diest.”—“Let Hector die,\n", + "And let me fall! (Achilles made reply)\n", + "Far lies Patroclus from his native plain!\n", + "He fell, and falling, wish’d my aid in vain.\n", + "Ah then, since from this miserable day\n", + "I cast all hope of my return away;\n", + "Since, unrevenged, a hundred ghosts demand\n", + "The fate of Hector from Achilles’ hand;\n", + "Since here, for brutal courage far renown’d,\n", + "I live an idle burden to the ground,\n", + "(Others in council famed for nobler skill,\n", + "More useful to preserve, than I to kill,)\n", + "Let me—But oh! ye gracious powers above!\n", + "Wrath and revenge from men and gods remove:\n", + "Far, far too dear to every mortal breast,\n", + "Sweet to the soul, as honey to the taste:\n", + "Gathering like vapours of a noxious kind\n", + "From fiery blood, and darkening all the mind.\n", + "Me Agamemnon urged to deadly hate;\n", + "’Tis past—I quell it; I resign to fate.\n", + "Yes—I will meet the murderer of my friend;\n", + "Or (if the gods ordain it) meet my end.\n", + "The stroke of fate the strongest cannot shun:\n", + "The great Alcides, Jove’s unequall’d son,\n", + "To Juno’s hate, at length resign’d his breath,\n", + "And sunk the victim of all-conquering death.\n", + "So shall Achilles fall! stretch’d pale and dead,\n", + "No more the Grecian hope, or Trojan dread!\n", + "Let me, this instant, rush into the fields,\n", + "And reap what glory life’s short harvest yields.\n", + "Shall I not force some widow’d dame to tear\n", + "With frantic hands her long dishevell’d hair?\n", + "Shall I not force her breast to heave with sighs,\n", + "And the soft tears to trickle from her eyes?\n", + "Yes, I shall give the fair those mournful charms—\n", + "In vain you hold me—Hence! my arms! my arms!—\n", + "Soon shall the sanguine torrent spread so wide,\n", + "That all shall know Achilles swells the tide.”\n", + "\n", + "“My son (coerulean Thetis made reply,\n", + "To fate submitting with a secret sigh,)\n", + "The host to succour, and thy friends to save,\n", + "Is worthy thee; the duty of the brave.\n", + "But canst thou, naked, issue to the plains?\n", + "Thy radiant arms the Trojan foe detains.\n", + "Insulting Hector bears the spoils on high,\n", + "But vainly glories, for his fate is nigh.\n", + "Yet, yet awhile thy generous ardour stay;\n", + "Assured, I meet thee at the dawn of day,\n", + "Charged with refulgent arms (a glorious load),\n", + "Vulcanian arms, the labour of a god.”\n", + "\n", + "Then turning to the daughters of the main,\n", + "The goddess thus dismiss’d her azure train:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye sister Nereids! to your deeps descend;\n", + "Haste, and our father’s sacred seat attend;\n", + "I go to find the architect divine,\n", + "Where vast Olympus’ starry summits shine:\n", + "So tell our hoary sire”—This charge she gave:\n", + "The sea-green sisters plunge beneath the wave:\n", + "Thetis once more ascends the bless’d abodes,\n", + "And treads the brazen threshold of the gods.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND INTO THE SEA\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "And now the Greeks from furious Hector’s force,\n", + "Urge to broad Hellespont their headlong course;\n", + "Nor yet their chiefs Patroclus’ body bore\n", + "Safe through the tempest to the tented shore.\n", + "The horse, the foot, with equal fury join’d,\n", + "Pour’d on the rear, and thunder’d close behind:\n", + "And like a flame through fields of ripen’d corn,\n", + "The rage of Hector o’er the ranks was borne.\n", + "Thrice the slain hero by the foot he drew;\n", + "Thrice to the skies the Trojan clamours flew:\n", + "As oft the Ajaces his assault sustain;\n", + "But check’d, he turns; repuls’d, attacks again.\n", + "With fiercer shouts his lingering troops he fires,\n", + "Nor yields a step, nor from his post retires:\n", + "So watchful shepherds strive to force, in vain,\n", + "The hungry lion from a carcase slain.\n", + "Even yet Patroclus had he borne away,\n", + "And all the glories of the extended day,\n", + "Had not high Juno from the realms of air,\n", + "Secret, despatch’d her trusty messenger.\n", + "The various goddess of the showery bow,\n", + "Shot in a whirlwind to the shore below;\n", + "To great Achilles at his ships she came,\n", + "And thus began the many-colour’d dame:\n", + "\n", + "“Rise, son of Peleus! rise, divinely brave!\n", + "Assist the combat, and Patroclus save:\n", + "For him the slaughter to the fleet they spread,\n", + "And fall by mutual wounds around the dead.\n", + "To drag him back to Troy the foe contends:\n", + "Nor with his death the rage of Hector ends:\n", + "A prey to dogs he dooms the corse to lie,\n", + "And marks the place to fix his head on high.\n", + "Rise, and prevent (if yet you think of fame)\n", + "Thy friend’s disgrace, thy own eternal shame!”\n", + "\n", + "“Who sends thee, goddess, from the ethereal skies?”\n", + "Achilles thus. And Iris thus replies:\n", + "\n", + "“I come, Pelides! from the queen of Jove,\n", + "The immortal empress of the realms above;\n", + "Unknown to him who sits remote on high,\n", + "Unknown to all the synod of the sky.”\n", + "“Thou comest in vain (he cries, with fury warm’d);\n", + "Arms I have none, and can I fight unarm’d?\n", + "Unwilling as I am, of force I stay,\n", + "Till Thetis bring me at the dawn of day\n", + "Vulcanian arms: what other can I wield,\n", + "Except the mighty Telamonian shield?\n", + "That, in my friend’s defence, has Ajax spread,\n", + "While his strong lance around him heaps the dead:\n", + "The gallant chief defends Menoetius’ son,\n", + "And does what his Achilles should have done.”\n", + "\n", + "“Thy want of arms (said Iris) well we know;\n", + "But though unarm’d, yet clad in terrors, go!\n", + "Let but Achilles o’er yon trench appear,\n", + "Proud Troy shall tremble, and consent to fear;\n", + "Greece from one glance of that tremendous eye\n", + "Shall take new courage, and disdain to fly.”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke, and pass’d in air. The hero rose:\n", + "Her ægis Pallas o’er his shoulder throws;\n", + "Around his brows a golden cloud she spread;\n", + "A stream of glory flamed above his head.\n", + "As when from some beleaguer’d town arise\n", + "The smokes, high curling to the shaded skies;\n", + "(Seen from some island, o’er the main afar,\n", + "When men distress’d hang out the sign of war;)\n", + "Soon as the sun in ocean hides his rays,\n", + "Thick on the hills the flaming beacons blaze;\n", + "With long-projected beams the seas are bright,\n", + "And heaven’s high arch reflects the ruddy light:\n", + "So from Achilles’ head the splendours rise,\n", + "Reflecting blaze on blaze against the skies.\n", + "Forth march’d the chief, and distant from the crowd,\n", + "High on the rampart raised his voice aloud;\n", + "With her own shout Minerva swells the sound;\n", + "Troy starts astonish’d, and the shores rebound.\n", + "As the loud trumpet’s brazen mouth from far\n", + "With shrilling clangour sounds the alarm of war,\n", + "Struck from the walls, the echoes float on high,\n", + "And the round bulwarks and thick towers reply;\n", + "So high his brazen voice the hero rear’d:\n", + "Hosts dropp’d their arms, and trembled as they heard:\n", + "And back the chariots roll, and coursers bound,\n", + "And steeds and men lie mingled on the ground.\n", + "Aghast they see the living lightnings play,\n", + "And turn their eyeballs from the flashing ray.\n", + "Thrice from the trench his dreadful voice he raised,\n", + "And thrice they fled, confounded and amazed.\n", + "Twelve in the tumult wedged, untimely rush’d\n", + "On their own spears, by their own chariots crush’d:\n", + "While, shielded from the darts, the Greeks obtain\n", + "The long-contended carcase of the slain.\n", + "\n", + "A lofty bier the breathless warrior bears:\n", + "Around, his sad companions melt in tears.\n", + "But chief Achilles, bending down his head,\n", + "Pours unavailing sorrows o’er the dead,\n", + "Whom late triumphant, with his steeds and car,\n", + "He sent refulgent to the field of war;\n", + "(Unhappy change!) now senseless, pale, he found,\n", + "Stretch’d forth, and gash’d with many a gaping wound.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime, unwearied with his heavenly way,\n", + "In ocean’s waves the unwilling light of day\n", + "Quench’d his red orb, at Juno’s high command,\n", + "And from their labours eased the Achaian band.\n", + "The frighted Trojans (panting from the war,\n", + "Their steeds unharness’d from the weary car)\n", + "A sudden council call’d: each chief appear’d\n", + "In haste, and standing; for to sit they fear’d.\n", + "’Twas now no season for prolong’d debate;\n", + "They saw Achilles, and in him their fate.\n", + "Silent they stood: Polydamas at last,\n", + "Skill’d to discern the future by the past,\n", + "The son of Panthus, thus express’d his fears\n", + "(The friend of Hector, and of equal years;\n", + "The self-same night to both a being gave,\n", + "One wise in council, one in action brave):\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“In free debate, my friends, your sentence speak;\n", + "For me, I move, before the morning break,\n", + "To raise our camp: too dangerous here our post,\n", + "Far from Troy walls, and on a naked coast.\n", + "I deem’d not Greece so dreadful, while engaged\n", + "In mutual feuds her king and hero raged;\n", + "Then, while we hoped our armies might prevail\n", + "We boldly camp’d beside a thousand sail.\n", + "I dread Pelides now: his rage of mind\n", + "Not long continues to the shores confined,\n", + "Nor to the fields, where long in equal fray\n", + "Contending nations won and lost the day;\n", + "For Troy, for Troy, shall henceforth be the strife,\n", + "And the hard contest not for fame, but life.\n", + "Haste then to Ilion, while the favouring night\n", + "Detains these terrors, keeps that arm from fight.\n", + "If but the morrow’s sun behold us here,\n", + "That arm, those terrors, we shall feel, not fear;\n", + "And hearts that now disdain, shall leap with joy,\n", + "If heaven permit them then to enter Troy.\n", + "Let not my fatal prophecy be true,\n", + "Nor what I tremble but to think, ensue.\n", + "Whatever be our fate, yet let us try\n", + "What force of thought and reason can supply;\n", + "Let us on counsel for our guard depend;\n", + "The town her gates and bulwarks shall defend.\n", + "When morning dawns, our well-appointed powers,\n", + "Array’d in arms, shall line the lofty towers.\n", + "Let the fierce hero, then, when fury calls,\n", + "Vent his mad vengeance on our rocky walls,\n", + "Or fetch a thousand circles round the plain,\n", + "Till his spent coursers seek the fleet again:\n", + "So may his rage be tired, and labour’d down!\n", + "And dogs shall tear him ere he sack the town.”\n", + "\n", + "“Return! (said Hector, fired with stern disdain)\n", + "What! coop whole armies in our walls again?\n", + "Was’t not enough, ye valiant warriors, say,\n", + "Nine years imprison’d in those towers ye lay?\n", + "Wide o’er the world was Ilion famed of old\n", + "For brass exhaustless, and for mines of gold:\n", + "But while inglorious in her walls we stay’d,\n", + "Sunk were her treasures, and her stores decay’d;\n", + "The Phrygians now her scatter’d spoils enjoy,\n", + "And proud Mæonia wastes the fruits of Troy.\n", + "Great Jove at length my arms to conquest calls,\n", + "And shuts the Grecians in their wooden walls,\n", + "Darest thou dispirit whom the gods incite?\n", + "Flies any Trojan? I shall stop his flight.\n", + "To better counsel then attention lend;\n", + "Take due refreshment, and the watch attend.\n", + "If there be one whose riches cost him care,\n", + "Forth let him bring them for the troops to share;\n", + "’Tis better generously bestow’d on those,\n", + "Than left the plunder of our country’s foes.\n", + "Soon as the morn the purple orient warms,\n", + "Fierce on yon navy will we pour our arms.\n", + "If great Achilles rise in all his might,\n", + "His be the danger: I shall stand the fight.\n", + "Honour, ye gods! or let me gain or give;\n", + "And live he glorious, whosoe’er shall live!\n", + "Mars is our common lord, alike to all;\n", + "And oft the victor triumphs, but to fall.”\n", + "\n", + "The shouting host in loud applauses join’d;\n", + "So Pallas robb’d the many of their mind;\n", + "To their own sense condemn’d, and left to choose\n", + "The worst advice, the better to refuse.\n", + "\n", + "While the long night extends her sable reign,\n", + "Around Patroclus mourn’d the Grecian train.\n", + "Stern in superior grief Pelides stood;\n", + "Those slaughtering arms, so used to bathe in blood,\n", + "Now clasp his clay-cold limbs: then gushing start\n", + "The tears, and sighs burst from his swelling heart.\n", + "The lion thus, with dreadful anguish stung,\n", + "Roars through the desert, and demands his young;\n", + "When the grim savage, to his rifled den\n", + "Too late returning, snuffs the track of men,\n", + "And o’er the vales and o’er the forest bounds;\n", + "His clamorous grief the bellowing wood resounds.\n", + "So grieves Achilles; and, impetuous, vents\n", + "To all his Myrmidons his loud laments.\n", + "\n", + "“In what vain promise, gods! did I engage,\n", + "When to console Menoetius’ feeble age,\n", + "I vowed his much-loved offspring to restore,\n", + "Charged with rich spoils, to fair Opuntia’s shore?[252]\n", + "But mighty Jove cuts short, with just disdain,\n", + "The long, long views of poor designing man!\n", + "One fate the warrior and the friend shall strike,\n", + "And Troy’s black sands must drink our blood alike:\n", + "Me too a wretched mother shall deplore,\n", + "An aged father never see me more!\n", + "Yet, my Patroclus! yet a space I stay,\n", + "Then swift pursue thee on the darksome way.\n", + "Ere thy dear relics in the grave are laid,\n", + "Shall Hector’s head be offer’d to thy shade;\n", + "That, with his arms, shall hang before thy shrine;\n", + "And twelve, the noblest of the Trojan line,\n", + "Sacred to vengeance, by this hand expire;\n", + "Their lives effused around thy flaming pyre.\n", + "Thus let me lie till then! thus, closely press’d,\n", + "Bathe thy cold face, and sob upon thy breast!\n", + "While Trojan captives here thy mourners stay,\n", + "Weep all the night and murmur all the day:\n", + "Spoils of my arms, and thine; when, wasting wide,\n", + "Our swords kept time, and conquer’d side by side.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and bade the sad attendants round\n", + "Cleanse the pale corse, and wash each honour’d wound.\n", + "A massy caldron of stupendous frame\n", + "They brought, and placed it o’er the rising flame:\n", + "Then heap’d the lighted wood; the flame divides\n", + "Beneath the vase, and climbs around the sides:\n", + "In its wide womb they pour the rushing stream;\n", + "The boiling water bubbles to the brim.\n", + "The body then they bathe with pious toil,\n", + "Embalm the wounds, anoint the limbs with oil,\n", + "High on a bed of state extended laid,\n", + "And decent cover’d with a linen shade;\n", + "Last o’er the dead the milk-white veil they threw;\n", + "That done, their sorrows and their sighs renew.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile to Juno, in the realms above,\n", + "(His wife and sister,) spoke almighty Jove.\n", + "“At last thy will prevails: great Peleus’ son\n", + "Rises in arms: such grace thy Greeks have won.\n", + "Say (for I know not), is their race divine,\n", + "And thou the mother of that martial line?”\n", + "\n", + "“What words are these? (the imperial dame replies,\n", + "While anger flash’d from her majestic eyes)\n", + "Succour like this a mortal arm might lend,\n", + "And such success mere human wit attend:\n", + "And shall not I, the second power above,\n", + "Heaven’s queen, and consort of the thundering Jove,\n", + "Say, shall not I one nation’s fate command,\n", + "Not wreak my vengeance on one guilty land?”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] TRIPOD\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "So they. Meanwhile the silver-footed dame\n", + "Reach’d the Vulcanian dome, eternal frame!\n", + "High-eminent amid the works divine,\n", + "Where heaven’s far-beaming brazen mansions shine.\n", + "There the lame architect the goddess found,\n", + "Obscure in smoke, his forges flaming round,\n", + "While bathed in sweat from fire to fire he flew;\n", + "And puffing loud, the roaring billows blew.\n", + "That day no common task his labour claim’d:\n", + "Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,\n", + "That placed on living wheels of massy gold,\n", + "(Wondrous to tell,) instinct with spirit roll’d\n", + "From place to place, around the bless’d abodes\n", + "Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods:\n", + "For their fair handles now, o’erwrought with flowers,\n", + "In moulds prepared, the glowing ore he pours.\n", + "Just as responsive to his thought the frame\n", + "Stood prompt to move, the azure goddess came:\n", + "Charis, his spouse, a grace divinely fair,\n", + "(With purple fillets round her braided hair,)\n", + "Observed her entering; her soft hand she press’d,\n", + "And, smiling, thus the watery queen address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“What, goddess! this unusual favour draws?\n", + "All hail, and welcome! whatsoe’er the cause;\n", + "Till now a stranger, in a happy hour\n", + "Approach, and taste the dainties of the bower.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT VULCAN\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "High on a throne, with stars of silver graced,\n", + "And various artifice, the queen she placed;\n", + "A footstool at her feet: then calling, said,\n", + "“Vulcan, draw near, ’tis Thetis asks your aid.”\n", + "“Thetis (replied the god) our powers may claim,\n", + "An ever-dear, an ever-honour’d name!\n", + "When my proud mother hurl’d me from the sky,\n", + "(My awkward form, it seems, displeased her eye,)\n", + "She, and Eurynome, my griefs redress’d,\n", + "And soft received me on their silver breast.\n", + "Even then these arts employ’d my infant thought:\n", + "Chains, bracelets, pendants, all their toys, I wrought.\n", + "Nine years kept secret in the dark abode,\n", + "Secure I lay, conceal’d from man and god:\n", + "Deep in a cavern’d rock my days were led;\n", + "The rushing ocean murmur’d o’er my head.\n", + "Now, since her presence glads our mansion, say,\n", + "For such desert what service can I pay?\n", + "Vouchsafe, O Thetis! at our board to share\n", + "The genial rites, and hospitable fare;\n", + "While I the labours of the forge forego,\n", + "And bid the roaring bellows cease to blow.”\n", + "\n", + "Then from his anvil the lame artist rose;\n", + "Wide with distorted legs oblique he goes,\n", + "And stills the bellows, and (in order laid)\n", + "Locks in their chests his instruments of trade.\n", + "Then with a sponge the sooty workman dress’d\n", + "His brawny arms embrown’d, and hairy breast.\n", + "With his huge sceptre graced, and red attire,\n", + "Came halting forth the sovereign of the fire:\n", + "The monarch’s steps two female forms uphold,\n", + "That moved and breathed in animated gold;\n", + "To whom was voice, and sense, and science given\n", + "Of works divine (such wonders are in heaven!)\n", + "On these supported, with unequal gait,\n", + "He reach’d the throne where pensive Thetis sate;\n", + "There placed beside her on the shining frame,\n", + "He thus address’d the silver-footed dame:\n", + "\n", + "“Thee, welcome, goddess! what occasion calls\n", + "(So long a stranger) to these honour’d walls?\n", + "’Tis thine, fair Thetis, the command to lay,\n", + "And Vulcan’s joy and duty to obey.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "To whom the mournful mother thus replies:\n", + "(The crystal drops stood trembling in her eyes:)\n", + "“O Vulcan! say, was ever breast divine\n", + "So pierced with sorrows, so o’erwhelm’d as mine?\n", + "Of all the goddesses, did Jove prepare\n", + "For Thetis only such a weight of care?\n", + "I, only I, of all the watery race\n", + "By force subjected to a man’s embrace,\n", + "Who, sinking now with age and sorrow, pays\n", + "The mighty fine imposed on length of days.\n", + "Sprung from my bed, a godlike hero came,\n", + "The bravest sure that ever bore the name;\n", + "Like some fair plant beneath my careful hand\n", + "He grew, he flourish’d, and adorn’d the land!\n", + "To Troy I sent him! but his native shore\n", + "Never, ah never, shall receive him more;\n", + "(Even while he lives, he wastes with secret woe;)\n", + "Nor I, a goddess, can retard the blow!\n", + "Robb’d of the prize the Grecian suffrage gave,\n", + "The king of nations forced his royal slave:\n", + "For this he grieved; and, till the Greeks oppress’d\n", + "Required his arm, he sorrow’d unredress’d.\n", + "Large gifts they promise, and their elders send;\n", + "In vain—he arms not, but permits his friend\n", + "His arms, his steeds, his forces to employ:\n", + "He marches, combats, almost conquers Troy:\n", + "Then slain by Phœbus (Hector had the name)\n", + "At once resigns his armour, life, and fame.\n", + "But thou, in pity, by my prayer be won:\n", + "Grace with immortal arms this short-lived son,\n", + "And to the field in martial pomp restore,\n", + "To shine with glory, till he shines no more!”\n", + "\n", + "To her the artist-god: “Thy griefs resign,\n", + "Secure, what Vulcan can, is ever thine.\n", + "O could I hide him from the Fates, as well,\n", + "Or with these hands the cruel stroke repel,\n", + "As I shall forge most envied arms, the gaze\n", + "Of wondering ages, and the world’s amaze!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having said, the father of the fires\n", + "To the black labours of his forge retires.\n", + "Soon as he bade them blow, the bellows turn’d\n", + "Their iron mouths; and where the furnace burn’d,\n", + "Resounding breathed: at once the blast expires,\n", + "And twenty forges catch at once the fires;\n", + "Just as the god directs, now loud, now low,\n", + "They raise a tempest, or they gently blow;\n", + "In hissing flames huge silver bars are roll’d,\n", + "And stubborn brass, and tin, and solid gold;\n", + "Before, deep fix’d, the eternal anvils stand;\n", + "The ponderous hammer loads his better hand,\n", + "His left with tongs turns the vex’d metal round,\n", + "And thick, strong strokes, the doubling vaults rebound.\n", + "\n", + "Then first he form’d the immense and solid shield;\n", + "Rich various artifice emblazed the field;\n", + "Its utmost verge a threefold circle bound;[253]\n", + "A silver chain suspends the massy round;\n", + "Five ample plates the broad expanse compose,\n", + "And godlike labours on the surface rose.\n", + "There shone the image of the master-mind:\n", + "There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design’d;\n", + "The unwearied sun, the moon completely round;\n", + "The starry lights that heaven’s high convex crown’d;\n", + "The Pleiads, Hyads, with the northern team;\n", + "And great Orion’s more refulgent beam;\n", + "To which, around the axle of the sky,\n", + "The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye,\n", + "Still shines exalted on the ethereal plain,\n", + "Nor bathes his blazing forehead in the main.\n", + "\n", + "Two cities radiant on the shield appear,\n", + "The image one of peace, and one of war.\n", + "Here sacred pomp and genial feast delight,\n", + "And solemn dance, and hymeneal rite;\n", + "Along the street the new-made brides are led,\n", + "With torches flaming, to the nuptial bed:\n", + "The youthful dancers in a circle bound\n", + "To the soft flute, and cithern’s silver sound:\n", + "Through the fair streets the matrons in a row\n", + "Stand in their porches, and enjoy the show.\n", + "\n", + "There in the forum swarm a numerous train;\n", + "The subject of debate, a townsman slain:\n", + "One pleads the fine discharged, which one denied,\n", + "And bade the public and the laws decide:\n", + "The witness is produced on either hand:\n", + "For this, or that, the partial people stand:\n", + "The appointed heralds still the noisy bands,\n", + "And form a ring, with sceptres in their hands:\n", + "On seats of stone, within the sacred place,[254]\n", + "The reverend elders nodded o’er the case;\n", + "Alternate, each the attesting sceptre took,\n", + "And rising solemn, each his sentence spoke.\n", + "Two golden talents lay amidst, in sight,\n", + "The prize of him who best adjudged the right.\n", + "\n", + "Another part (a prospect differing far)[255]\n", + "Glow’d with refulgent arms, and horrid war.\n", + "Two mighty hosts a leaguer’d town embrace,\n", + "And one would pillage, one would burn the place.\n", + "Meantime the townsmen, arm’d with silent care,\n", + "A secret ambush on the foe prepare:\n", + "Their wives, their children, and the watchful band\n", + "Of trembling parents, on the turrets stand.\n", + "They march; by Pallas and by Mars made bold:\n", + "Gold were the gods, their radiant garments gold,\n", + "And gold their armour: these the squadron led,\n", + "August, divine, superior by the head!\n", + "A place for ambush fit they found, and stood,\n", + "Cover’d with shields, beside a silver flood.\n", + "Two spies at distance lurk, and watchful seem\n", + "If sheep or oxen seek the winding stream.\n", + "Soon the white flocks proceeded o’er the plains,\n", + "And steers slow-moving, and two shepherd swains;\n", + "Behind them piping on their reeds they go,\n", + "Nor fear an ambush, nor suspect a foe.\n", + "In arms the glittering squadron rising round\n", + "Rush sudden; hills of slaughter heap the ground;\n", + "Whole flocks and herds lie bleeding on the plains,\n", + "And, all amidst them, dead, the shepherd swains!\n", + "The bellowing oxen the besiegers hear;\n", + "They rise, take horse, approach, and meet the war,\n", + "They fight, they fall, beside the silver flood;\n", + "The waving silver seem’d to blush with blood.\n", + "There Tumult, there Contention stood confess’d;\n", + "One rear’d a dagger at a captive’s breast;\n", + "One held a living foe, that freshly bled\n", + "With new-made wounds; another dragg’d a dead;\n", + "Now here, now there, the carcases they tore:\n", + "Fate stalk’d amidst them, grim with human gore.\n", + "And the whole war came out, and met the eye;\n", + "And each bold figure seem’d to live or die.\n", + "\n", + "A field deep furrow’d next the god design’d,[256]\n", + "The third time labour’d by the sweating hind;\n", + "The shining shares full many ploughmen guide,\n", + "And turn their crooked yokes on every side.\n", + "Still as at either end they wheel around,\n", + "The master meets them with his goblet crown’d;\n", + "The hearty draught rewards, renews their toil,\n", + "Then back the turning ploughshares cleave the soil:\n", + "Behind, the rising earth in ridges roll’d;\n", + "And sable look’d, though form’d of molten gold.\n", + "\n", + "Another field rose high with waving grain;\n", + "With bended sickles stand the reaper train:\n", + "Here stretched in ranks the levell’d swarths are found,\n", + "Sheaves heap’d on sheaves here thicken up the ground.\n", + "With sweeping stroke the mowers strow the lands;\n", + "The gatherers follow, and collect in bands;\n", + "And last the children, in whose arms are borne\n", + "(Too short to gripe them) the brown sheaves of corn.\n", + "The rustic monarch of the field descries,\n", + "With silent glee, the heaps around him rise.\n", + "A ready banquet on the turf is laid,\n", + "Beneath an ample oak’s expanded shade.\n", + "The victim ox the sturdy youth prepare;\n", + "The reaper’s due repast, the woman’s care.\n", + "\n", + "Next, ripe in yellow gold, a vineyard shines,\n", + "Bent with the ponderous harvest of its vines;\n", + "A deeper dye the dangling clusters show,\n", + "And curl’d on silver props, in order glow:\n", + "A darker metal mix’d intrench’d the place;\n", + "And pales of glittering tin the inclosure grace.\n", + "To this, one pathway gently winding leads,\n", + "Where march a train with baskets on their heads,\n", + "(Fair maids and blooming youths,) that smiling bear\n", + "The purple product of the autumnal year.\n", + "To these a youth awakes the warbling strings,\n", + "Whose tender lay the fate of Linus sings;\n", + "In measured dance behind him move the train,\n", + "Tune soft the voice, and answer to the strain.\n", + "\n", + "Here herds of oxen march, erect and bold,\n", + "Rear high their horns, and seem to low in gold,\n", + "And speed to meadows on whose sounding shores\n", + "A rapid torrent through the rushes roars:\n", + "Four golden herdsmen as their guardians stand,\n", + "And nine sour dogs complete the rustic band.\n", + "Two lions rushing from the wood appear’d;\n", + "And seized a bull, the master of the herd:\n", + "He roar’d: in vain the dogs, the men withstood;\n", + "They tore his flesh, and drank his sable blood.\n", + "The dogs (oft cheer’d in vain) desert the prey,\n", + "Dread the grim terrors, and at distance bay.\n", + "\n", + "Next this, the eye the art of Vulcan leads\n", + "Deep through fair forests, and a length of meads,\n", + "And stalls, and folds, and scatter’d cots between;\n", + "And fleecy flocks, that whiten all the scene.\n", + "\n", + "A figured dance succeeds; such once was seen\n", + "In lofty Gnossus for the Cretan queen,\n", + "Form’d by Daedalean art; a comely band\n", + "Of youths and maidens, bounding hand in hand.\n", + "The maids in soft simars of linen dress’d;\n", + "The youths all graceful in the glossy vest:\n", + "Of those the locks with flowery wreath inroll’d;\n", + "Of these the sides adorn’d with swords of gold,\n", + "That glittering gay, from silver belts depend.\n", + "Now all at once they rise, at once descend,\n", + "With well-taught feet: now shape in oblique ways,\n", + "Confusedly regular, the moving maze:\n", + "Now forth at once, too swift for sight, they spring,\n", + "And undistinguish’d blend the flying ring:\n", + "So whirls a wheel, in giddy circle toss’d,\n", + "And, rapid as it runs, the single spokes are lost.\n", + "The gazing multitudes admire around:\n", + "Two active tumblers in the centre bound;\n", + "Now high, now low, their pliant limbs they bend:\n", + "And general songs the sprightly revel end.\n", + "\n", + "Thus the broad shield complete the artist crown’d\n", + "With his last hand, and pour’d the ocean round:\n", + "In living silver seem’d the waves to roll,\n", + "And beat the buckler’s verge, and bound the whole.\n", + "\n", + "This done, whate’er a warrior’s use requires\n", + "He forged; the cuirass that outshone the fires,\n", + "The greaves of ductile tin, the helm impress’d\n", + "With various sculpture, and the golden crest.\n", + "At Thetis’ feet the finished labour lay:\n", + "She, as a falcon cuts the aerial way,\n", + "Swift from Olympus’ snowy summit flies,\n", + "And bears the blazing present through the skies.[257]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XIX.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE RECONCILIATION OF ACHILLES AND AGAMEMNON.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thetis brings to her son the armour made by Vulcan. She preserves the\n", + "body of his friend from corruption, and commands him to assemble the\n", + "army, to declare his resentment at an end. Agamemnon and Achilles are\n", + "solemnly reconciled: the speeches, presents, and ceremonies on that\n", + "occasion. Achilles is with great difficulty persuaded to refrain from\n", + "the battle till the troops have refreshed themselves by the advice of\n", + "Ulysses. The presents are conveyed to the tent of Achilles, where\n", + "Briseïs laments over the body of Patroclus. The hero obstinately\n", + "refuses all repast, and gives himself up to lamentations for his\n", + "friend. Minerva descends to strengthen him, by the order of Jupiter. He\n", + "arms for the fight: his appearance described. He addresses himself to\n", + "his horses, and reproaches them with the death of Patroclus. One of\n", + "them is miraculously endued with voice, and inspired to prophesy his\n", + "fate: but the hero, not astonished by that prodigy, rushes with fury to\n", + "the combat.\n", + " The thirtieth day. The scene is on the sea-shore.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Soon as Aurora heaved her Orient head\n", + "Above the waves, that blush’d with early red,\n", + "(With new-born day to gladden mortal sight,\n", + "And gild the courts of heaven with sacred light,)\n", + "The immortal arms the goddess-mother bears\n", + "Swift to her son: her son she finds in tears\n", + "Stretch’d o’er Patroclus’ corse; while all the rest\n", + "Their sovereign’s sorrows in their own express’d.\n", + "A ray divine her heavenly presence shed,\n", + "And thus, his hand soft touching, Thetis said:\n", + "\n", + "“Suppress, my son, this rage of grief, and know\n", + "It was not man, but heaven, that gave the blow;\n", + "Behold what arms by Vulcan are bestow’d,\n", + "Arms worthy thee, or fit to grace a god.”\n", + "\n", + "Then drops the radiant burden on the ground;\n", + "Clang the strong arms, and ring the shores around;\n", + "Back shrink the Myrmidons with dread surprise,\n", + "And from the broad effulgence turn their eyes.\n", + "Unmoved the hero kindles at the show,\n", + "And feels with rage divine his bosom glow;\n", + "From his fierce eyeballs living flames expire,\n", + "And flash incessant like a stream of fire:\n", + "He turns the radiant gift: and feeds his mind\n", + "On all the immortal artist had design’d.\n", + "\n", + "“Goddess! (he cried,) these glorious arms, that shine\n", + "With matchless art, confess the hand divine.\n", + "Now to the bloody battle let me bend:\n", + "But ah! the relics of my slaughter’d friend!\n", + "In those wide wounds through which his spirit fled,\n", + "Shall flies, and worms obscene, pollute the dead?”\n", + "\n", + "“That unavailing care be laid aside,\n", + "(The azure goddess to her son replied,)\n", + "Whole years untouch’d, uninjured shall remain,\n", + "Fresh as in life, the carcase of the slain.\n", + "But go, Achilles, as affairs require,\n", + "Before the Grecian peers renounce thine ire:\n", + "Then uncontroll’d in boundless war engage,\n", + "And heaven with strength supply the mighty rage!”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Then in the nostrils of the slain she pour’d\n", + "Nectareous drops, and rich ambrosia shower’d\n", + "O’er all the corse. The flies forbid their prey,\n", + "Untouch’d it rests, and sacred from decay.\n", + "Achilles to the strand obedient went:\n", + "The shores resounded with the voice he sent.\n", + "The heroes heard, and all the naval train\n", + "That tend the ships, or guide them o’er the main,\n", + "Alarm’d, transported, at the well-known sound,\n", + "Frequent and full, the great assembly crown’d;\n", + "Studious to see the terror of the plain,\n", + "Long lost to battle, shine in arms again.\n", + "Tydides and Ulysses first appear,\n", + "Lame with their wounds, and leaning on the spear;\n", + "These on the sacred seats of council placed,\n", + "The king of men, Atrides, came the last:\n", + "He too sore wounded by Agenor’s son.\n", + "Achilles (rising in the midst) begun:\n", + "\n", + "“O monarch! better far had been the fate\n", + "Of thee, of me, of all the Grecian state,\n", + "If (ere the day when by mad passion sway’d,\n", + "Rash we contended for the black-eyed maid)\n", + "Preventing Dian had despatch’d her dart,\n", + "And shot the shining mischief to the heart!\n", + "Then many a hero had not press’d the shore,\n", + "Nor Troy’s glad fields been fatten’d with our gore.\n", + "Long, long shall Greece the woes we caused bewail,\n", + "And sad posterity repeat the tale.\n", + "But this, no more the subject of debate,\n", + "Is past, forgotten, and resign’d to fate.\n", + "Why should, alas, a mortal man, as I,\n", + "Burn with a fury that can never die?\n", + "Here then my anger ends: let war succeed,\n", + "And even as Greece has bled, let Ilion bleed.\n", + "Now call the hosts, and try if in our sight\n", + "Troy yet shall dare to camp a second night!\n", + "I deem, their mightiest, when this arm he knows,\n", + "Shall ’scape with transport, and with joy repose.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: his finish’d wrath with loud acclaim\n", + "The Greeks accept, and shout Pelides’ name.\n", + "When thus, not rising from his lofty throne,\n", + "In state unmoved, the king of men begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Hear me, ye sons of Greece! with silence hear!\n", + "And grant your monarch an impartial ear:\n", + "Awhile your loud, untimely joy suspend,\n", + "And let your rash, injurious clamours end:\n", + "Unruly murmurs, or ill-timed applause,\n", + "Wrong the best speaker, and the justest cause.\n", + "Nor charge on me, ye Greeks, the dire debate:\n", + "Know, angry Jove, and all-compelling Fate,\n", + "With fell Erinnys, urged my wrath that day\n", + "When from Achilles’ arms I forced the prey.\n", + "What then could I against the will of heaven?\n", + "Not by myself, but vengeful Ate driven;\n", + "She, Jove’s dread daughter, fated to infest\n", + "The race of mortals, enter’d in my breast.\n", + "Not on the ground that haughty fury treads,\n", + "But prints her lofty footsteps on the heads\n", + "Of mighty men; inflicting as she goes\n", + "Long-festering wounds, inextricable woes!\n", + "Of old, she stalk’d amid the bright abodes;\n", + "And Jove himself, the sire of men and gods,\n", + "The world’s great ruler, felt her venom’d dart;\n", + "Deceived by Juno’s wiles, and female art:\n", + "For when Alcmena’s nine long months were run,\n", + "And Jove expected his immortal son,\n", + "To gods and goddesses the unruly joy\n", + "He show’d, and vaunted of his matchless boy:\n", + "‘From us, (he said) this day an infant springs,\n", + "Fated to rule, and born a king of kings.’\n", + "Saturnia ask’d an oath, to vouch the truth,\n", + "And fix dominion on the favour’d youth.\n", + "The Thunderer, unsuspicious of the fraud,\n", + "Pronounced those solemn words that bind a god.\n", + "The joyful goddess, from Olympus’ height,\n", + "Swift to Achaian Argos bent her flight:\n", + "Scarce seven moons gone, lay Sthenelus’s wife;\n", + "She push’d her lingering infant into life:\n", + "Her charms Alcmena’s coming labours stay,\n", + "And stop the babe, just issuing to the day.\n", + "Then bids Saturnius bear his oath in mind;\n", + "‘A youth (said she) of Jove’s immortal kind\n", + "Is this day born: from Sthenelus he springs,\n", + "And claims thy promise to be king of kings.’\n", + "Grief seized the Thunderer, by his oath engaged;\n", + "Stung to the soul, he sorrow’d, and he raged.\n", + "From his ambrosial head, where perch’d she sate,\n", + "He snatch’d the fury-goddess of debate,\n", + "The dread, the irrevocable oath he swore,\n", + "The immortal seats should ne’er behold her more;\n", + "And whirl’d her headlong down, for ever driven\n", + "From bright Olympus and the starry heaven:\n", + "Thence on the nether world the fury fell;\n", + "Ordain’d with man’s contentious race to dwell.\n", + "Full oft the god his son’s hard toils bemoan’d,\n", + "Cursed the dire fury, and in secret groan’d.[258]\n", + "Even thus, like Jove himself, was I misled,\n", + "While raging Hector heap’d our camps with dead.\n", + "What can the errors of my rage atone?\n", + "My martial troops, my treasures are thy own:\n", + "This instant from the navy shall be sent\n", + "Whate’er Ulysses promised at thy tent:\n", + "But thou! appeased, propitious to our prayer,\n", + "Resume thy arms, and shine again in war.”\n", + "\n", + "“O king of nations! whose superior sway\n", + "(Returns Achilles) all our hosts obey!\n", + "To keep or send the presents, be thy care;\n", + "To us, ’tis equal: all we ask is war.\n", + "While yet we talk, or but an instant shun\n", + "The fight, our glorious work remains undone.\n", + "Let every Greek, who sees my spear confound\n", + "The Trojan ranks, and deal destruction round,\n", + "With emulation, what I act survey,\n", + "And learn from thence the business of the day.”\n", + "\n", + "The son of Peleus thus; and thus replies\n", + "The great in councils, Ithacus the wise:\n", + "“Though, godlike, thou art by no toils oppress’d,\n", + "At least our armies claim repast and rest:\n", + "Long and laborious must the combat be,\n", + "When by the gods inspired, and led by thee.\n", + "Strength is derived from spirits and from blood,\n", + "And those augment by generous wine and food:\n", + "What boastful son of war, without that stay,\n", + "Can last a hero through a single day?\n", + "Courage may prompt; but, ebbing out his strength,\n", + "Mere unsupported man must yield at length;\n", + "Shrunk with dry famine, and with toils declined,\n", + "The drooping body will desert the mind:\n", + "But built anew with strength-conferring fare,\n", + "With limbs and soul untamed, he tires a war.\n", + "Dismiss the people, then, and give command,\n", + "With strong repast to hearten every band;\n", + "But let the presents to Achilles made,\n", + "In full assembly of all Greece be laid.\n", + "The king of men shall rise in public sight,\n", + "And solemn swear (observant of the rite)\n", + "That, spotless, as she came, the maid removes,\n", + "Pure from his arms, and guiltless of his loves.\n", + "That done, a sumptuous banquet shall be made,\n", + "And the full price of injured honour paid.\n", + "Stretch not henceforth, O prince! thy sovereign might\n", + "Beyond the bounds of reason and of right;\n", + "’Tis the chief praise that e’er to kings belong’d,\n", + "To right with justice whom with power they wrong’d.”\n", + "\n", + "To him the monarch: “Just is thy decree,\n", + "Thy words give joy, and wisdom breathes in thee.\n", + "Each due atonement gladly I prepare;\n", + "And heaven regard me as I justly swear!\n", + "Here then awhile let Greece assembled stay,\n", + "Nor great Achilles grudge this short delay.\n", + "Till from the fleet our presents be convey’d,\n", + "And Jove attesting, the firm compact made.\n", + "A train of noble youths the charge shall bear;\n", + "These to select, Ulysses, be thy care:\n", + "In order rank’d let all our gifts appear,\n", + "And the fair train of captives close the rear:\n", + "Talthybius shall the victim boar convey,\n", + "Sacred to Jove, and yon bright orb of day.”\n", + "\n", + "“For this (the stern Æacides replies)\n", + "Some less important season may suffice,\n", + "When the stern fury of the war is o’er,\n", + "And wrath, extinguish’d, burns my breast no more.\n", + "By Hector slain, their faces to the sky,\n", + "All grim with gaping wounds, our heroes lie:\n", + "Those call to war! and might my voice incite,\n", + "Now, now, this instant, shall commence the fight:\n", + "Then, when the day’s complete, let generous bowls,\n", + "And copious banquets, glad your weary souls.\n", + "Let not my palate know the taste of food,\n", + "Till my insatiate rage be cloy’d with blood:\n", + "Pale lies my friend, with wounds disfigured o’er,\n", + "And his cold feet are pointed to the door.\n", + "Revenge is all my soul! no meaner care,\n", + "Interest, or thought, has room to harbour there;\n", + "Destruction be my feast, and mortal wounds,\n", + "And scenes of blood, and agonizing sounds.”\n", + "\n", + "“O first of Greeks, (Ulysses thus rejoin’d,)\n", + "The best and bravest of the warrior kind!\n", + "Thy praise it is in dreadful camps to shine,\n", + "But old experience and calm wisdom mine.\n", + "Then hear my counsel, and to reason yield,\n", + "The bravest soon are satiate of the field;\n", + "Though vast the heaps that strow the crimson plain,\n", + "The bloody harvest brings but little gain:\n", + "The scale of conquest ever wavering lies,\n", + "Great Jove but turns it, and the victor dies!\n", + "The great, the bold, by thousands daily fall,\n", + "And endless were the grief, to weep for all.\n", + "Eternal sorrows what avails to shed?\n", + "Greece honours not with solemn fasts the dead:\n", + "Enough, when death demands the brave, to pay\n", + "The tribute of a melancholy day.\n", + "One chief with patience to the grave resign’d,\n", + "Our care devolves on others left behind.\n", + "Let generous food supplies of strength produce,\n", + "Let rising spirits flow from sprightly juice,\n", + "Let their warm heads with scenes of battle glow,\n", + "And pour new furies on the feebler foe.\n", + "Yet a short interval, and none shall dare\n", + "Expect a second summons to the war;\n", + "Who waits for that, the dire effects shall find,\n", + "If trembling in the ships he lags behind.\n", + "Embodied, to the battle let us bend,\n", + "And all at once on haughty Troy descend.”\n", + "\n", + "And now the delegates Ulysses sent,\n", + "To bear the presents from the royal tent:\n", + "The sons of Nestor, Phyleus’ valiant heir,\n", + "Thias and Merion, thunderbolts of war,\n", + "With Lycomedes of Creiontian strain,\n", + "And Melanippus, form’d the chosen train.\n", + "Swift as the word was given, the youths obey’d:\n", + "Twice ten bright vases in the midst they laid;\n", + "A row of six fair tripods then succeeds;\n", + "And twice the number of high-bounding steeds:\n", + "Seven captives next a lovely line compose;\n", + "The eighth Briseïs, like the blooming rose,\n", + "Closed the bright band: great Ithacus, before,\n", + "First of the train, the golden talents bore:\n", + "The rest in public view the chiefs dispose,\n", + "A splendid scene! then Agamemnon rose:\n", + "The boar Talthybius held: the Grecian lord\n", + "Drew the broad cutlass sheath’d beside his sword:\n", + "The stubborn bristles from the victim’s brow\n", + "He crops, and offering meditates his vow.\n", + "His hands uplifted to the attesting skies,\n", + "On heaven’s broad marble roof were fixed his eyes.\n", + "The solemn words a deep attention draw,\n", + "And Greece around sat thrill’d with sacred awe.\n", + "\n", + "“Witness thou first! thou greatest power above,\n", + "All-good, all-wise, and all-surveying Jove!\n", + "And mother-earth, and heaven’s revolving light,\n", + "And ye, fell furies of the realms of night,\n", + "Who rule the dead, and horrid woes prepare\n", + "For perjured kings, and all who falsely swear!\n", + "The black-eyed maid inviolate removes,\n", + "Pure and unconscious of my manly loves.\n", + "If this be false, heaven all its vengeance shed,\n", + "And levell’d thunder strike my guilty head!”\n", + "\n", + "With that, his weapon deep inflicts the wound;\n", + "The bleeding savage tumbles to the ground;\n", + "The sacred herald rolls the victim slain\n", + "(A feast for fish) into the foaming main.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus Achilles: “Hear, ye Greeks! and know\n", + "Whate’er we feel, ’tis Jove inflicts the woe;\n", + "Not else Atrides could our rage inflame,\n", + "Nor from my arms, unwilling, force the dame.\n", + "’Twas Jove’s high will alone, o’erruling all,\n", + "That doom’d our strife, and doom’d the Greeks to fall.\n", + "Go then, ye chiefs! indulge the genial rite;\n", + "Achilles waits ye, and expects the fight.”\n", + "\n", + "The speedy council at his word adjourn’d:\n", + "To their black vessels all the Greeks return’d.\n", + "Achilles sought his tent. His train before\n", + "March’d onward, bending with the gifts they bore.\n", + "Those in the tents the squires industrious spread:\n", + "The foaming coursers to the stalls they led;\n", + "To their new seats the female captives move.\n", + "Briseïs, radiant as the queen of love,\n", + "Slow as she pass’d, beheld with sad survey\n", + "Where, gash’d with cruel wounds, Patroclus lay.\n", + "Prone on the body fell the heavenly fair,\n", + "Beat her sad breast, and tore her golden hair;\n", + "All beautiful in grief, her humid eyes\n", + "Shining with tears she lifts, and thus she cries:\n", + "\n", + "“Ah, youth for ever dear, for ever kind,\n", + "Once tender friend of my distracted mind!\n", + "I left thee fresh in life, in beauty gay;\n", + "Now find thee cold, inanimated clay!\n", + "What woes my wretched race of life attend!\n", + "Sorrows on sorrows, never doom’d to end!\n", + "The first loved consort of my virgin bed\n", + "Before these eyes in fatal battle bled:\n", + "My three brave brothers in one mournful day\n", + "All trod the dark, irremeable way:\n", + "Thy friendly hand uprear’d me from the plain,\n", + "And dried my sorrows for a husband slain;\n", + "Achilles’ care you promised I should prove,\n", + "The first, the dearest partner of his love;\n", + "That rites divine should ratify the band,\n", + "And make me empress in his native land.\n", + "Accept these grateful tears! for thee they flow,\n", + "For thee, that ever felt another’s woe!”\n", + "\n", + "Her sister captives echoed groan for groan,\n", + "Nor mourn’d Patroclus’ fortunes, but their own.\n", + "The leaders press’d the chief on every side;\n", + "Unmoved he heard them, and with sighs denied.\n", + "\n", + "“If yet Achilles have a friend, whose care\n", + "Is bent to please him, this request forbear;\n", + "Till yonder sun descend, ah, let me pay\n", + "To grief and anguish one abstemious day.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and from the warriors turn’d his face:\n", + "Yet still the brother-kings of Atreus’ race.\n", + "Nestor, Idomeneus, Ulysses sage,\n", + "And Phœnix, strive to calm his grief and rage:\n", + "His rage they calm not, nor his grief control;\n", + "He groans, he raves, he sorrows from his soul.\n", + "\n", + "“Thou too, Patroclus! (thus his heart he vents)\n", + "Once spread the inviting banquet in our tents:\n", + "Thy sweet society, thy winning care,\n", + "Once stay’d Achilles, rushing to the war.\n", + "But now, alas! to death’s cold arms resign’d,\n", + "What banquet but revenge can glad my mind?\n", + "What greater sorrow could afflict my breast,\n", + "What more if hoary Peleus were deceased?\n", + "Who now, perhaps, in Phthia dreads to hear\n", + "His son’s sad fate, and drops a tender tear.\n", + "What more, should Neoptolemus the brave,\n", + "My only offspring, sink into the grave?\n", + "If yet that offspring lives; (I distant far,\n", + "Of all neglectful, wage a hateful war.)\n", + "I could not this, this cruel stroke attend;\n", + "Fate claim’d Achilles, but might spare his friend.\n", + "I hoped Patroclus might survive, to rear\n", + "My tender orphan with a parent’s care,\n", + "From Scyros’ isle conduct him o’er the main,\n", + "And glad his eyes with his paternal reign,\n", + "The lofty palace, and the large domain.\n", + "For Peleus breathes no more the vital air;\n", + "Or drags a wretched life of age and care,\n", + "But till the news of my sad fate invades\n", + "His hastening soul, and sinks him to the shades.”\n", + "\n", + "Sighing he said: his grief the heroes join’d,\n", + "Each stole a tear for what he left behind.\n", + "Their mingled grief the sire of heaven survey’d,\n", + "And thus with pity to his blue-eyed maid:\n", + "\n", + "“Is then Achilles now no more thy care,\n", + "And dost thou thus desert the great in war?\n", + "Lo, where yon sails their canvas wings extend,\n", + "All comfortless he sits, and wails his friend:\n", + "Ere thirst and want his forces have oppress’d,\n", + "Haste and infuse ambrosia in his breast.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke; and sudden, at the word of Jove,\n", + "Shot the descending goddess from above.\n", + "So swift through ether the shrill harpy springs,\n", + "The wide air floating to her ample wings,\n", + "To great Achilles she her flight address’d,\n", + "And pour’d divine ambrosia in his breast,[259]\n", + "With nectar sweet, (refection of the gods!)\n", + "Then, swift ascending, sought the bright abodes.\n", + "\n", + "Now issued from the ships the warrior-train,\n", + "And like a deluge pour’d upon the plain.\n", + "As when the piercing blasts of Boreas blow,\n", + "And scatter o’er the fields the driving snow;\n", + "From dusky clouds the fleecy winter flies,\n", + "Whose dazzling lustre whitens all the skies:\n", + "So helms succeeding helms, so shields from shields,\n", + "Catch the quick beams, and brighten all the fields;\n", + "Broad glittering breastplates, spears with pointed rays,\n", + "Mix in one stream, reflecting blaze on blaze;\n", + "Thick beats the centre as the coursers bound;\n", + "With splendour flame the skies, and laugh the fields around,\n", + "\n", + "Full in the midst, high-towering o’er the rest,\n", + "His limbs in arms divine Achilles dress’d;\n", + "Arms which the father of the fire bestow’d,\n", + "Forged on the eternal anvils of the god.\n", + "Grief and revenge his furious heart inspire,\n", + "His glowing eyeballs roll with living fire;\n", + "He grinds his teeth, and furious with delay\n", + "O’erlooks the embattled host, and hopes the bloody day.\n", + "\n", + "The silver cuishes first his thighs infold;\n", + "Then o’er his breast was braced the hollow gold;\n", + "The brazen sword a various baldric tied,\n", + "That, starr’d with gems, hung glittering at his side;\n", + "And, like the moon, the broad refulgent shield\n", + "Blazed with long rays, and gleam’d athwart the field.\n", + "\n", + "So to night-wandering sailors, pale with fears,\n", + "Wide o’er the watery waste, a light appears,\n", + "Which on the far-seen mountain blazing high,\n", + "Streams from some lonely watch-tower to the sky:\n", + "With mournful eyes they gaze, and gaze again;\n", + "Loud howls the storm, and drives them o’er the main.\n", + "\n", + "Next, his high head the helmet graced; behind\n", + "The sweepy crest hung floating in the wind:\n", + "Like the red star, that from his flaming hair\n", + "Shakes down diseases, pestilence, and war;\n", + "So stream’d the golden honours from his head,\n", + "Trembled the sparkling plumes, and the loose glories shed.\n", + "The chief beholds himself with wondering eyes;\n", + "His arms he poises, and his motions tries;\n", + "Buoy’d by some inward force, he seems to swim,\n", + "And feels a pinion lifting every limb.\n", + "\n", + "And now he shakes his great paternal spear,\n", + "Ponderous and huge, which not a Greek could rear,\n", + "From Pelion’s cloudy top an ash entire\n", + "Old Chiron fell’d, and shaped it for his sire;\n", + "A spear which stern Achilles only wields,\n", + "The death of heroes, and the dread of fields.\n", + "\n", + "Automedon and Alcimus prepare\n", + "The immortal coursers, and the radiant car;\n", + "(The silver traces sweeping at their side;)\n", + "Their fiery mouths resplendent bridles tied;\n", + "The ivory-studded reins, return’d behind,\n", + "Waved o’er their backs, and to the chariot join’d.\n", + "The charioteer then whirl’d the lash around,\n", + "And swift ascended at one active bound.\n", + "All bright in heavenly arms, above his squire\n", + "Achilles mounts, and sets the field on fire;\n", + "Not brighter Phœbus in the ethereal way\n", + "Flames from his chariot, and restores the day.\n", + "High o’er the host, all terrible he stands,\n", + "And thunders to his steeds these dread commands:\n", + "\n", + "“Xanthus and Balius! of Podarges’ strain,\n", + "(Unless ye boast that heavenly race in vain,)\n", + "Be swift, be mindful of the load ye bear,\n", + "And learn to make your master more your care:\n", + "Through falling squadrons bear my slaughtering sword,\n", + "Nor, as ye left Patroclus, leave your lord.”\n", + "\n", + "The generous Xanthus, as the words he said,\n", + "Seem’d sensible of woe, and droop’d his head:\n", + "Trembling he stood before the golden wain,\n", + "And bow’d to dust the honours of his mane.\n", + "When, strange to tell! (so Juno will’d) he broke\n", + "Eternal silence, and portentous spoke.\n", + "“Achilles! yes! this day at least we bear\n", + "Thy rage in safety through the files of war:\n", + "But come it will, the fatal time must come,\n", + "Not ours the fault, but God decrees thy doom.\n", + "Not through our crime, or slowness in the course,\n", + "Fell thy Patroclus, but by heavenly force;\n", + "The bright far-shooting god who gilds the day\n", + "(Confess’d we saw him) tore his arms away.\n", + "No—could our swiftness o’er the winds prevail,\n", + "Or beat the pinions of the western gale,\n", + "All were in vain—the Fates thy death demand,\n", + "Due to a mortal and immortal hand.”\n", + "\n", + "Then ceased for ever, by the Furies tied,\n", + "His fateful voice. The intrepid chief replied\n", + "With unabated rage—“So let it be!\n", + "Portents and prodigies are lost on me.\n", + "I know my fate: to die, to see no more\n", + "My much-loved parents, and my native shore—\n", + "Enough—when heaven ordains, I sink in night:\n", + "Now perish Troy!” He said, and rush’d to fight.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HERCULES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XX.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE BATTLE OF THE GODS, AND THE ACTS OF ACHILLES.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Jupiter, upon Achilles’ return to the battle, calls a council of the\n", + "gods, and permits them to assist either party. The terrors of the\n", + "combat described, when the deities are engaged. Apollo encourages Æneas\n", + "to meet Achilles. After a long conversation, these two heroes\n", + "encounter; but Æneas is preserved by the assistance of Neptune.\n", + "Achilles falls upon the rest of the Trojans, and is upon the point of\n", + "killing Hector, but Apollo conveys him away in a cloud. Achilles\n", + "pursues the Trojans with a great slaughter.\n", + " The same day continues. The scene is in the field before Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus round Pelides breathing war and blood\n", + "Greece, sheathed in arms, beside her vessels stood;\n", + "While near impending from a neighbouring height,\n", + "Troy’s black battalions wait the shock of fight.\n", + "Then Jove to Themis gives command, to call\n", + "The gods to council in the starry hall:\n", + "Swift o’er Olympus’ hundred hills she flies,\n", + "And summons all the senate of the skies.\n", + "These shining on, in long procession come\n", + "To Jove’s eternal adamantine dome.\n", + "Not one was absent, not a rural power\n", + "That haunts the verdant gloom, or rosy bower;\n", + "Each fair-hair’d dryad of the shady wood,\n", + "Each azure sister of the silver flood;\n", + "All but old Ocean, hoary sire! who keeps\n", + "His ancient seat beneath the sacred deeps.\n", + "On marble thrones, with lucid columns crown’d,\n", + "(The work of Vulcan,) sat the powers around.\n", + "Even he whose trident sways the watery reign\n", + "Heard the loud summons, and forsook the main,\n", + "Assumed his throne amid the bright abodes,\n", + "And question’d thus the sire of men and gods:\n", + "\n", + "“What moves the god who heaven and earth commands,\n", + "And grasps the thunder in his awful hands,\n", + "Thus to convene the whole ethereal state?\n", + "Is Greece and Troy the subject in debate?\n", + "Already met, the louring hosts appear,\n", + "And death stands ardent on the edge of war.”\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis true (the cloud-compelling power replies)\n", + "This day we call the council of the skies\n", + "In care of human race; even Jove’s own eye\n", + "Sees with regret unhappy mortals die.\n", + "Far on Olympus’ top in secret state\n", + "Ourself will sit, and see the hand of fate\n", + "Work out our will. Celestial powers! descend,\n", + "And as your minds direct, your succour lend\n", + "To either host. Troy soon must lie o’erthrown,\n", + "If uncontroll’d Achilles fights alone:\n", + "Their troops but lately durst not meet his eyes;\n", + "What can they now, if in his rage he rise?\n", + "Assist them, gods! or Ilion’s sacred wall\n", + "May fall this day, though fate forbids the fall.”\n", + "He said, and fired their heavenly breasts with rage.\n", + "\n", + "On adverse parts the warring gods engage:\n", + "Heaven’s awful queen; and he whose azure round\n", + "Girds the vast globe; the maid in arms renown’d;\n", + "Hermes, of profitable arts the sire;\n", + "And Vulcan, the black sovereign of the fire:\n", + "These to the fleet repair with instant flight;\n", + "The vessels tremble as the gods alight.\n", + "In aid of Troy, Latona, Phœbus came,\n", + "Mars fiery-helm’d, the laughter-loving dame,\n", + "Xanthus, whose streams in golden currents flow,\n", + "And the chaste huntress of the silver bow.\n", + "Ere yet the gods their various aid employ,\n", + "Each Argive bosom swell’d with manly joy,\n", + "While great Achilles (terror of the plain),\n", + "Long lost to battle, shone in arms again.\n", + "Dreadful he stood in front of all his host;\n", + "Pale Troy beheld, and seem’d already lost;\n", + "Her bravest heroes pant with inward fear,\n", + "And trembling see another god of war.\n", + "\n", + "But when the powers descending swell’d the fight,\n", + "Then tumult rose: fierce rage and pale affright\n", + "Varied each face: then Discord sounds alarms,\n", + "Earth echoes, and the nations rush to arms.\n", + "Now through the trembling shores Minerva calls,\n", + "And now she thunders from the Grecian walls.\n", + "Mars hovering o’er his Troy, his terror shrouds\n", + "In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds:\n", + "Now through each Trojan heart he fury pours\n", + "With voice divine, from Ilion’s topmost towers:\n", + "Now shouts to Simois, from her beauteous hill;\n", + "The mountain shook, the rapid stream stood still.\n", + "\n", + "Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls,\n", + "And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles.\n", + "Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground;\n", + "The forests wave, the mountains nod around;\n", + "Through all their summits tremble Ida’s woods,\n", + "And from their sources boil her hundred floods.\n", + "Troy’s turrets totter on the rocking plain,\n", + "And the toss’d navies beat the heaving main.\n", + "Deep in the dismal regions of the dead,[260]\n", + "The infernal monarch rear’d his horrid head,\n", + "Leap’d from his throne, lest Neptune’s arm should lay\n", + "His dark dominions open to the day,\n", + "And pour in light on Pluto’s drear abodes,\n", + "Abhorr’d by men, and dreadful even to gods.[261]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Such war the immortals wage; such horrors rend\n", + "The world’s vast concave, when the gods contend.\n", + "First silver-shafted Phœbus took the plain\n", + "Against blue Neptune, monarch of the main.\n", + "The god of arms his giant bulk display’d,\n", + "Opposed to Pallas, war’s triumphant maid.\n", + "Against Latona march’d the son of May.\n", + "The quiver’d Dian, sister of the day,\n", + "(Her golden arrows sounding at her side,)\n", + "Saturnia, majesty of heaven, defied.\n", + "With fiery Vulcan last in battle stands\n", + "The sacred flood that rolls on golden sands;\n", + "Xanthus his name with those of heavenly birth,\n", + "But called Scamander by the sons of earth.\n", + "\n", + "While thus the gods in various league engage,\n", + "Achilles glow’d with more than mortal rage:\n", + "Hector he sought; in search of Hector turn’d\n", + "His eyes around, for Hector only burn’d;\n", + "And burst like lightning through the ranks, and vow’d\n", + "To glut the god of battles with his blood.\n", + "\n", + "Æneas was the first who dared to stay;\n", + "Apollo wedged him in the warrior’s way,\n", + "But swell’d his bosom with undaunted might,\n", + "Half-forced and half-persuaded to the fight.\n", + "Like young Lycaon, of the royal line,\n", + "In voice and aspect, seem’d the power divine;\n", + "And bade the chief reflect, how late with scorn\n", + "In distant threats he braved the goddess-born.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the hero of Anchises’ strain:\n", + "“To meet Pelides you persuade in vain:\n", + "Already have I met, nor void of fear\n", + "Observed the fury of his flying spear;\n", + "From Ida’s woods he chased us to the field,\n", + "Our force he scattered, and our herds he kill’d;\n", + "Lyrnessus, Pedasus in ashes lay;\n", + "But (Jove assisting) I survived the day:\n", + "Else had I sunk oppress’d in fatal fight\n", + "By fierce Achilles and Minerva’s might.\n", + "Where’er he moved, the goddess shone before,\n", + "And bathed his brazen lance in hostile gore.\n", + "What mortal man Achilles can sustain?\n", + "The immortals guard him through the dreadful plain,\n", + "And suffer not his dart to fall in vain.\n", + "Were God my aid, this arm should check his power,\n", + "Though strong in battle as a brazen tower.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the son of Jove: “That god implore,\n", + "And be what great Achilles was before.\n", + "From heavenly Venus thou deriv’st thy strain,\n", + "And he but from a sister of the main;\n", + "An aged sea-god father of his line;\n", + "But Jove himself the sacred source of thine.\n", + "Then lift thy weapon for a noble blow,\n", + "Nor fear the vaunting of a mortal foe.”\n", + "\n", + "This said, and spirit breathed into his breast,\n", + "Through the thick troops the embolden’d hero press’d:\n", + "His venturous act the white-arm’d queen survey’d,\n", + "And thus, assembling all the powers, she said:\n", + "\n", + "“Behold an action, gods! that claims your care,\n", + "Lo great Æneas rushing to the war!\n", + "Against Pelides he directs his course,\n", + "Phœbus impels, and Phœbus gives him force.\n", + "Restrain his bold career; at least, to attend\n", + "Our favour’d hero, let some power descend.\n", + "To guard his life, and add to his renown,\n", + "We, the great armament of heaven, came down.\n", + "Hereafter let him fall, as Fates design,\n", + "That spun so short his life’s illustrious line:[262]\n", + "But lest some adverse god now cross his way,\n", + "Give him to know what powers assist this day:\n", + "For how shall mortal stand the dire alarms,\n", + "When heaven’s refulgent host appear in arms?”[263]\n", + "\n", + "Thus she; and thus the god whose force can make\n", + "The solid globe’s eternal basis shake:\n", + "“Against the might of man, so feeble known,\n", + "Why should celestial powers exert their own?\n", + "Suffice from yonder mount to view the scene,\n", + "And leave to war the fates of mortal men.\n", + "But if the armipotent, or god of light,\n", + "Obstruct Achilles, or commence the fight,\n", + "Thence on the gods of Troy we swift descend:\n", + "Full soon, I doubt not, shall the conflict end;\n", + "And these, in ruin and confusion hurl’d,\n", + "Yield to our conquering arms the lower world.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having said, the tyrant of the sea,\n", + "Coerulean Neptune, rose, and led the way.\n", + "Advanced upon the field there stood a mound\n", + "Of earth congested, wall’d, and trench’d around;\n", + "In elder times to guard Alcides made,\n", + "(The work of Trojans, with Minerva’s aid,)\n", + "What time a vengeful monster of the main\n", + "Swept the wide shore, and drove him to the plain.\n", + "\n", + "Here Neptune and the gods of Greece repair,\n", + "With clouds encompass’d, and a veil of air:\n", + "The adverse powers, around Apollo laid,\n", + "Crown the fair hills that silver Simois shade.\n", + "In circle close each heavenly party sat,\n", + "Intent to form the future scheme of fate;\n", + "But mix not yet in fight, though Jove on high\n", + "Gives the loud signal, and the heavens reply.\n", + "\n", + "Meanwhile the rushing armies hide the ground;\n", + "The trampled centre yields a hollow sound:\n", + "Steeds cased in mail, and chiefs in armour bright,\n", + "The gleaming champaign glows with brazen light.\n", + "Amid both hosts (a dreadful space) appear,\n", + "There great Achilles; bold Æneas, here.\n", + "With towering strides Æneas first advanced;\n", + "The nodding plumage on his helmet danced:\n", + "Spread o’er his breast the fencing shield he bore,\n", + "And, so he moved, his javelin flamed before.\n", + "Not so Pelides; furious to engage,\n", + "He rush’d impetuous. Such the lion’s rage,\n", + "Who viewing first his foes with scornful eyes,\n", + "Though all in arms the peopled city rise,\n", + "Stalks careless on, with unregarding pride;\n", + "Till at the length, by some brave youth defied,\n", + "To his bold spear the savage turns alone,\n", + "He murmurs fury with a hollow groan;\n", + "He grins, he foams, he rolls his eyes around,\n", + "Lash’d by his tail his heaving sides resound;\n", + "He calls up all his rage; he grinds his teeth,\n", + "Resolved on vengeance, or resolved on death.\n", + "So fierce Achilles on Æneas flies;\n", + "So stands Æneas, and his force defies.\n", + "Ere yet the stern encounter join’d, begun\n", + "The seed of Thetis thus to Venus’ son:\n", + "\n", + "“Why comes Æneas through the ranks so far?\n", + "Seeks he to meet Achilles’ arm in war,\n", + "In hope the realms of Priam to enjoy,\n", + "And prove his merits to the throne of Troy?\n", + "Grant that beneath thy lance Achilles dies,\n", + "The partial monarch may refuse the prize;\n", + "Sons he has many; those thy pride may quell:\n", + "And ’tis his fault to love those sons too well,\n", + "Or, in reward of thy victorious hand,\n", + "Has Troy proposed some spacious tract of land,\n", + "An ample forest, or a fair domain,\n", + "Of hills for vines, and arable for grain?\n", + "Even this, perhaps, will hardly prove thy lot.\n", + "But can Achilles be so soon forgot?\n", + "Once (as I think) you saw this brandish’d spear,\n", + "And then the great Æneas seem’d to fear:\n", + "With hearty haste from Ida’s mount he fled,\n", + "Nor, till he reach’d Lyrnessus, turn’d his head.\n", + "Her lofty walls not long our progress stay’d;\n", + "Those, Pallas, Jove, and we, in ruins laid:\n", + "In Grecian chains her captive race were cast;\n", + "’Tis true, the great Æneas fled too fast.\n", + "Defrauded of my conquest once before,\n", + "What then I lost, the gods this day restore.\n", + "Go; while thou may’st, avoid the threaten’d fate;\n", + "Fools stay to feel it, and are wise too late.”\n", + "\n", + "To this Anchises’ son: “Such words employ\n", + "To one that fears thee, some unwarlike boy;\n", + "Such we disdain; the best may be defied\n", + "With mean reproaches, and unmanly pride;\n", + "Unworthy the high race from which we came\n", + "Proclaim’d so loudly by the voice of fame:\n", + "Each from illustrious fathers draws his line;\n", + "Each goddess-born; half human, half divine.\n", + "Thetis’ this day, or Venus’ offspring dies,\n", + "And tears shall trickle from celestial eyes:\n", + "For when two heroes, thus derived, contend,\n", + "’Tis not in words the glorious strife can end.\n", + "If yet thou further seek to learn my birth\n", + "(A tale resounded through the spacious earth)\n", + "Hear how the glorious origin we prove\n", + "From ancient Dardanus, the first from Jove:\n", + "Dardania’s walls he raised; for Ilion, then,\n", + "(The city since of many-languaged men,)\n", + "Was not. The natives were content to till\n", + "The shady foot of Ida’s fountful hill.[264]\n", + "From Dardanus great Erichthonius springs,\n", + "The richest, once, of Asia’s wealthy kings;\n", + "Three thousand mares his spacious pastures bred,\n", + "Three thousand foals beside their mothers fed.\n", + "Boreas, enamour’d of the sprightly train,\n", + "Conceal’d his godhead in a flowing mane,\n", + "With voice dissembled to his loves he neigh’d,\n", + "And coursed the dappled beauties o’er the mead:\n", + "Hence sprung twelve others of unrivall’d kind,\n", + "Swift as their mother mares, and father wind.\n", + "These lightly skimming, when they swept the plain,\n", + "Nor plied the grass, nor bent the tender grain;\n", + "And when along the level seas they flew,[265]\n", + "Scarce on the surface curl’d the briny dew.\n", + "Such Erichthonius was: from him there came\n", + "The sacred Tros, of whom the Trojan name.\n", + "Three sons renown’d adorn’d his nuptial bed,\n", + "Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymed:\n", + "The matchless Ganymed, divinely fair,\n", + "Whom heaven, enamour’d, snatch’d to upper air,\n", + "To bear the cup of Jove (ethereal guest,\n", + "The grace and glory of the ambrosial feast).\n", + "The two remaining sons the line divide:\n", + "First rose Laomedon from Ilus’ side;\n", + "From him Tithonus, now in cares grown old,\n", + "And Priam, bless’d with Hector, brave and bold;\n", + "Clytius and Lampus, ever-honour’d pair;\n", + "And Hicetaon, thunderbolt of war.\n", + "From great Assaracus sprang Capys, he\n", + "Begat Anchises, and Anchises me.\n", + "Such is our race: ’tis fortune gives us birth,\n", + "But Jove alone endues the soul with worth:\n", + "He, source of power and might! with boundless sway,\n", + "All human courage gives, or takes away.\n", + "Long in the field of words we may contend,\n", + "Reproach is infinite, and knows no end,\n", + "Arm’d or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong;\n", + "So voluble a weapon is the tongue;\n", + "Wounded, we wound; and neither side can fail,\n", + "For every man has equal strength to rail:\n", + "Women alone, when in the streets they jar,\n", + "Perhaps excel us in this wordy war;\n", + "Like us they stand, encompass’d with the crowd,\n", + "And vent their anger impotent and loud.\n", + "Cease then—Our business in the field of fight\n", + "Is not to question, but to prove our might.\n", + "To all those insults thou hast offer’d here,\n", + "Receive this answer: ’tis my flying spear.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke. With all his force the javelin flung,\n", + "Fix’d deep, and loudly in the buckler rung.\n", + "Far on his outstretch’d arm, Pelides held\n", + "(To meet the thundering lance) his dreadful shield,\n", + "That trembled as it stuck; nor void of fear\n", + "Saw, ere it fell, the immeasurable spear.\n", + "His fears were vain; impenetrable charms\n", + "Secured the temper of the ethereal arms.\n", + "Through two strong plates the point its passage held,\n", + "But stopp’d, and rested, by the third repell’d.\n", + "Five plates of various metal, various mould,\n", + "Composed the shield; of brass each outward fold,\n", + "Of tin each inward, and the middle gold:\n", + "There stuck the lance. Then rising ere he threw,\n", + "The forceful spear of great Achilles flew,\n", + "And pierced the Dardan shield’s extremest bound,\n", + "Where the shrill brass return’d a sharper sound:\n", + "Through the thin verge the Pelean weapon glides,\n", + "And the slight covering of expanded hides.\n", + "Æneas his contracted body bends,\n", + "And o’er him high the riven targe extends,\n", + "Sees, through its parting plates, the upper air,\n", + "And at his back perceives the quivering spear:\n", + "A fate so near him, chills his soul with fright;\n", + "And swims before his eyes the many-colour’d light.\n", + "Achilles, rushing in with dreadful cries,\n", + "Draws his broad blade, and at Æneas flies:\n", + "Æneas rousing as the foe came on,\n", + "With force collected, heaves a mighty stone:\n", + "A mass enormous! which in modern days\n", + "No two of earth’s degenerate sons could raise.\n", + "But ocean’s god, whose earthquakes rock the ground\n", + "Saw the distress, and moved the powers around:\n", + "\n", + "“Lo! on the brink of fate Æneas stands,\n", + "An instant victim to Achilles’ hands;\n", + "By Phœbus urged; but Phœbus has bestow’d\n", + "His aid in vain: the man o’erpowers the god.\n", + "And can ye see this righteous chief atone\n", + "With guiltless blood for vices not his own?\n", + "To all the gods his constant vows were paid;\n", + "Sure, though he wars for Troy, he claims our aid.\n", + "Fate wills not this; nor thus can Jove resign\n", + "The future father of the Dardan line:[266]\n", + "The first great ancestor obtain’d his grace,\n", + "And still his love descends on all the race:\n", + "For Priam now, and Priam’s faithless kind,\n", + "At length are odious to the all-seeing mind;\n", + "On great Æneas shall devolve the reign,\n", + "And sons succeeding sons the lasting line sustain.”\n", + "\n", + "The great earth-shaker thus: to whom replies\n", + "The imperial goddess with the radiant eyes:\n", + "“Good as he is, to immolate or spare\n", + "The Dardan prince, O Neptune! be thy care;\n", + "Pallas and I, by all that gods can bind,\n", + "Have sworn destruction to the Trojan kind;\n", + "Not even an instant to protract their fate,\n", + "Or save one member of the sinking state;\n", + "Till her last flame be quench’d with her last gore,\n", + "And even her crumbling ruins are no more.”\n", + "\n", + "The king of ocean to the fight descends,\n", + "Through all the whistling darts his course he bends,\n", + "Swift interposed between the warrior flies,\n", + "And casts thick darkness o’er Achilles’ eyes.[267]\n", + "From great Æneas’ shield the spear he drew,\n", + "And at his master’s feet the weapon threw.\n", + "That done, with force divine he snatch’d on high\n", + "The Dardan prince, and bore him through the sky,\n", + "Smooth-gliding without step, above the heads\n", + "Of warring heroes, and of bounding steeds:\n", + "Till at the battle’s utmost verge they light,\n", + "Where the slow Caucans close the rear of fight.\n", + "The godhead there (his heavenly form confess’d)\n", + "With words like these the panting chief address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“What power, O prince! with force inferior far,\n", + "Urged thee to meet Achilles’ arm in war?\n", + "Henceforth beware, nor antedate thy doom,\n", + "Defrauding fate of all thy fame to come.\n", + "But when the day decreed (for come it must)\n", + "Shall lay this dreadful hero in the dust,\n", + "Let then the furies of that arm be known,\n", + "Secure no Grecian force transcends thy own.”\n", + "\n", + "With that, he left him wondering as he lay,\n", + "Then from Achilles chased the mist away:\n", + "Sudden, returning with a stream of light,\n", + "The scene of war came rushing on his sight.\n", + "Then thus, amazed; “What wonders strike my mind!\n", + "My spear, that parted on the wings of wind,\n", + "Laid here before me! and the Dardan lord,\n", + "That fell this instant, vanish’d from my sword!\n", + "I thought alone with mortals to contend,\n", + "But powers celestial sure this foe defend.\n", + "Great as he is, our arms he scarce will try,\n", + "Content for once, with all his gods, to fly.\n", + "Now then let others bleed.” This said, aloud\n", + "He vents his fury and inflames the crowd:\n", + "“O Greeks! (he cries, and every rank alarms)\n", + "Join battle, man to man, and arms to arms!\n", + "’Tis not in me, though favour’d by the sky,\n", + "To mow whole troops, and make whole armies fly:\n", + "No god can singly such a host engage,\n", + "Not Mars himself, nor great Minerva’s rage.\n", + "But whatsoe’er Achilles can inspire,\n", + "Whate’er of active force, or acting fire;\n", + "Whate’er this heart can prompt, or hand obey;\n", + "All, all Achilles, Greeks! is yours to-day.\n", + "Through yon wide host this arm shall scatter fear,\n", + "And thin the squadrons with my single spear.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: nor less elate with martial joy,\n", + "The godlike Hector warm’d the troops of Troy:\n", + "“Trojans, to war! Think, Hector leads you on;\n", + "Nor dread the vaunts of Peleus’ haughty son.\n", + "Deeds must decide our fate. E’en these with words\n", + "Insult the brave, who tremble at their swords:\n", + "The weakest atheist-wretch all heaven defies,\n", + "But shrinks and shudders when the thunder flies.\n", + "Nor from yon boaster shall your chief retire,\n", + "Not though his heart were steel, his hands were fire;\n", + "That fire, that steel, your Hector should withstand,\n", + "And brave that vengeful heart, that dreadful hand.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus (breathing rage through all) the hero said;\n", + "A wood of lances rises round his head,\n", + "Clamours on clamours tempest all the air,\n", + "They join, they throng, they thicken to the war.\n", + "But Phœbus warns him from high heaven to shun\n", + "The single fight with Thetis’ godlike son;\n", + "More safe to combat in the mingled band,\n", + "Nor tempt too near the terrors of his hand.\n", + "He hears, obedient to the god of light,\n", + "And, plunged within the ranks, awaits the fight.\n", + "\n", + "Then fierce Achilles, shouting to the skies,\n", + "On Troy’s whole force with boundless fury flies.\n", + "First falls Iphytion, at his army’s head;\n", + "Brave was the chief, and brave the host he led;\n", + "From great Otrynteus he derived his blood,\n", + "His mother was a Nais, of the flood;\n", + "Beneath the shades of Tmolus, crown’d with snow,\n", + "From Hyde’s walls he ruled the lands below.\n", + "Fierce as he springs, the sword his head divides:\n", + "The parted visage falls on equal sides:\n", + "With loud-resounding arms he strikes the plain;\n", + "While thus Achilles glories o’er the slain:\n", + "\n", + "“Lie there, Otryntides! the Trojan earth\n", + "Receives thee dead, though Gygae boast thy birth;\n", + "Those beauteous fields where Hyllus’ waves are roll’d,\n", + "And plenteous Hermus swells with tides of gold,\n", + "Are thine no more.”—The insulting hero said,\n", + "And left him sleeping in eternal shade.\n", + "The rolling wheels of Greece the body tore,\n", + "And dash’d their axles with no vulgar gore.\n", + "\n", + "Demoleon next, Antenor’s offspring, laid\n", + "Breathless in dust, the price of rashness paid.\n", + "The impatient steel with full-descending sway\n", + "Forced through his brazen helm its furious way,\n", + "Resistless drove the batter’d skull before,\n", + "And dash’d and mingled all the brains with gore.\n", + "This sees Hippodamas, and seized with fright,\n", + "Deserts his chariot for a swifter flight:\n", + "The lance arrests him: an ignoble wound\n", + "The panting Trojan rivets to the ground.\n", + "He groans away his soul: not louder roars,\n", + "At Neptune’s shrine on Helicè’s high shores,\n", + "The victim bull; the rocks re-bellow round,\n", + "And ocean listens to the grateful sound.\n", + "Then fell on Polydore his vengeful rage,[268]\n", + "The youngest hope of Priam’s stooping age:\n", + "(Whose feet for swiftness in the race surpass’d:)\n", + "Of all his sons, the dearest, and the last.\n", + "To the forbidden field he takes his flight,\n", + "In the first folly of a youthful knight,\n", + "To vaunt his swiftness wheels around the plain,\n", + "But vaunts not long, with all his swiftness slain:\n", + "Struck where the crossing belts unite behind,\n", + "And golden rings the double back-plate join’d\n", + "Forth through the navel burst the thrilling steel;\n", + "And on his knees with piercing shrieks he fell;\n", + "The rushing entrails pour’d upon the ground\n", + "His hands collect; and darkness wraps him round.\n", + "When Hector view’d, all ghastly in his gore,\n", + "Thus sadly slain the unhappy Polydore,\n", + "A cloud of sorrow overcast his sight,\n", + "His soul no longer brook’d the distant fight:\n", + "Full in Achilles’ dreadful front he came,\n", + "And shook his javelin like a waving flame.\n", + "The son of Peleus sees, with joy possess’d,\n", + "His heart high-bounding in his rising breast.\n", + "“And, lo! the man on whom black fates attend;\n", + "The man, that slew Achilles, is his friend!\n", + "No more shall Hector’s and Pelides’ spear\n", + "Turn from each other in the walks of war.”—\n", + "Then with revengeful eyes he scann’d him o’er:\n", + "“Come, and receive thy fate!” He spake no more.\n", + "\n", + "Hector, undaunted, thus: “Such words employ\n", + "To one that dreads thee, some unwarlike boy:\n", + "Such we could give, defying and defied,\n", + "Mean intercourse of obloquy and pride!\n", + "I know thy force to mine superior far;\n", + "But heaven alone confers success in war:\n", + "Mean as I am, the gods may guide my dart,\n", + "And give it entrance in a braver heart.”\n", + "\n", + "Then parts the lance: but Pallas’ heavenly breath\n", + "Far from Achilles wafts the winged death:\n", + "The bidden dart again to Hector flies,\n", + "And at the feet of its great master lies.\n", + "Achilles closes with his hated foe,\n", + "His heart and eyes with flaming fury glow:\n", + "But present to his aid, Apollo shrouds\n", + "The favour’d hero in a veil of clouds.\n", + "Thrice struck Pelides with indignant heart,\n", + "Thrice in impassive air he plunged the dart;\n", + "The spear a fourth time buried in the cloud.\n", + "He foams with fury, and exclaims aloud:\n", + "\n", + "“Wretch! thou hast ’scaped again; once more thy flight\n", + "Has saved thee, and the partial god of light.\n", + "But long thou shalt not thy just fate withstand,\n", + "If any power assist Achilles’ hand.\n", + "Fly then inglorious! but thy flight this day\n", + "Whole hecatombs of Trojan ghosts shall pay.”\n", + "\n", + "With that, he gluts his rage on numbers slain:\n", + "Then Dryops tumbled to the ensanguined plain,\n", + "Pierced through the neck: he left him panting there,\n", + "And stopp’d Demuchus, great Philetor’s heir.\n", + "Gigantic chief! deep gash’d the enormous blade,\n", + "And for the soul an ample passage made.\n", + "Laoganus and Dardanus expire,\n", + "The valiant sons of an unhappy sire;\n", + "Both in one instant from the chariot hurl’d,\n", + "Sunk in one instant to the nether world:\n", + "This difference only their sad fates afford\n", + "That one the spear destroy’d, and one the sword.\n", + "\n", + "Nor less unpitied, young Alastor bleeds;\n", + "In vain his youth, in vain his beauty pleads;\n", + "In vain he begs thee, with a suppliant’s moan,\n", + "To spare a form, an age so like thy own!\n", + "Unhappy boy! no prayer, no moving art,\n", + "E’er bent that fierce, inexorable heart!\n", + "While yet he trembled at his knees, and cried,\n", + "The ruthless falchion oped his tender side;\n", + "The panting liver pours a flood of gore\n", + "That drowns his bosom till he pants no more.\n", + "\n", + "Through Mulius’ head then drove the impetuous spear:\n", + "The warrior falls, transfix’d from ear to ear.\n", + "Thy life, Echeclus! next the sword bereaves,\n", + "Deep though the front the ponderous falchion cleaves;\n", + "Warm’d in the brain the smoking weapon lies,\n", + "The purple death comes floating o’er his eyes.\n", + "Then brave Deucalion died: the dart was flung\n", + "Where the knit nerves the pliant elbow strung;\n", + "He dropp’d his arm, an unassisting weight,\n", + "And stood all impotent, expecting fate:\n", + "Full on his neck the falling falchion sped,\n", + "From his broad shoulders hew’d his crested head:\n", + "Forth from the bone the spinal marrow flies,\n", + "And, sunk in dust, the corpse extended lies.\n", + "Rhigmas, whose race from fruitful Thracia came,\n", + "(The son of Pierus, an illustrious name,)\n", + "Succeeds to fate: the spear his belly rends;\n", + "Prone from his car the thundering chief descends.\n", + "The squire, who saw expiring on the ground\n", + "His prostrate master, rein’d the steeds around;\n", + "His back, scarce turn’d, the Pelian javelin gored,\n", + "And stretch’d the servant o’er his dying lord.\n", + "As when a flame the winding valley fills,\n", + "And runs on crackling shrubs between the hills;\n", + "Then o’er the stubble up the mountain flies,\n", + "Fires the high woods, and blazes to the skies,\n", + "This way and that, the spreading torrent roars:\n", + "So sweeps the hero through the wasted shores;\n", + "Around him wide, immense destruction pours\n", + "And earth is deluged with the sanguine showers,\n", + "As with autumnal harvests cover’d o’er,\n", + "And thick bestrewn, lies Ceres’ sacred floor;\n", + "When round and round, with never-wearied pain,\n", + "The trampling steers beat out the unnumber’d grain:\n", + "So the fierce coursers, as the chariot rolls,\n", + "Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes’ souls,\n", + "Dash’d from their hoofs while o’er the dead they fly,\n", + "Black, bloody drops the smoking chariot dye:\n", + "The spiky wheels through heaps of carnage tore;\n", + "And thick the groaning axles dropp’d with gore.\n", + "High o’er the scene of death Achilles stood,\n", + "All grim with dust, all horrible in blood:\n", + "Yet still insatiate, still with rage on flame;\n", + "Such is the lust of never-dying fame!\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] CENTAUR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XXI.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE BATTLE IN THE RIVER SCAMANDER.[269]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The Trojans fly before Achilles, some towards the town, others to the\n", + "river Scamander: he falls upon the latter with great slaughter: takes\n", + "twelve captives alive, to sacrifice to the shade of Patroclus; and\n", + "kills Lycaon and Asteropeus. Scamander attacks him with all his waves:\n", + "Neptune and Pallas assist the hero: Simois joins Scamander: at length\n", + "Vulcan, by the instigation of Juno, almost dries up the river. This\n", + "combat ended, the other gods engage each other. Meanwhile Achilles\n", + "continues the slaughter, drives the rest into Troy: Agenor only makes a\n", + "stand, and is conveyed away in a cloud by Apollo; who (to delude\n", + "Achilles) takes upon him Agenor’s shape, and while he pursues him in\n", + "that disguise, gives the Trojans an opportunity of retiring into their\n", + "city.\n", + " The same day continues. The scene is on the banks and in the stream\n", + " of Scamander.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "And now to Xanthus’ gliding stream they drove,\n", + "Xanthus, immortal progeny of Jove.\n", + "The river here divides the flying train,\n", + "Part to the town fly diverse o’er the plain,\n", + "Where late their troops triumphant bore the fight,\n", + "Now chased, and trembling in ignoble flight:\n", + "(These with a gathered mist Saturnia shrouds,\n", + "And rolls behind the rout a heap of clouds:)\n", + "Part plunge into the stream: old Xanthus roars,\n", + "The flashing billows beat the whiten’d shores:\n", + "With cries promiscuous all the banks resound,\n", + "And here, and there, in eddies whirling round,\n", + "The flouncing steeds and shrieking warriors drown’d.\n", + "As the scorch’d locusts from their fields retire,\n", + "While fast behind them runs the blaze of fire;\n", + "Driven from the land before the smoky cloud,\n", + "The clustering legions rush into the flood:\n", + "So, plunged in Xanthus by Achilles’ force,\n", + "Roars the resounding surge with men and horse.\n", + "His bloody lance the hero casts aside,\n", + "(Which spreading tamarisks on the margin hide,)\n", + "Then, like a god, the rapid billows braves,\n", + "Arm’d with his sword, high brandish’d o’er the waves:\n", + "Now down he plunges, now he whirls it round,\n", + "Deep groan’d the waters with the dying sound;\n", + "Repeated wounds the reddening river dyed,\n", + "And the warm purple circled on the tide.\n", + "Swift through the foamy flood the Trojans fly,\n", + "And close in rocks or winding caverns lie:\n", + "So the huge dolphin tempesting the main,\n", + "In shoals before him fly the scaly train,\n", + "Confusedly heap’d they seek their inmost caves,\n", + "Or pant and heave beneath the floating waves.\n", + "Now, tired with slaughter, from the Trojan band\n", + "Twelve chosen youths he drags alive to land;\n", + "With their rich belts their captive arms restrains\n", + "(Late their proud ornaments, but now their chains).\n", + "These his attendants to the ships convey’d,\n", + "Sad victims destined to Patroclus’ shade;\n", + "\n", + "Then, as once more he plunged amid the flood,\n", + "The young Lycaon in his passage stood;\n", + "The son of Priam; whom the hero’s hand\n", + "But late made captive in his father’s land\n", + "(As from a sycamore, his sounding steel\n", + "Lopp’d the green arms to spoke a chariot wheel)\n", + "To Lemnos’ isle he sold the royal slave,\n", + "Where Jason’s son the price demanded gave;\n", + "But kind Eetion, touching on the shore,\n", + "The ransom’d prince to fair Arisbe bore.\n", + "Ten days were past, since in his father’s reign\n", + "He felt the sweets of liberty again;\n", + "The next, that god whom men in vain withstand\n", + "Gives the same youth to the same conquering hand\n", + "Now never to return! and doom’d to go\n", + "A sadder journey to the shades below.\n", + "His well-known face when great Achilles eyed,\n", + "(The helm and visor he had cast aside\n", + "With wild affright, and dropp’d upon the field\n", + "His useless lance and unavailing shield,)\n", + "As trembling, panting, from the stream he fled,\n", + "And knock’d his faltering knees, the hero said:\n", + "“Ye mighty gods! what wonders strike my view!\n", + "Is it in vain our conquering arms subdue?\n", + "Sure I shall see yon heaps of Trojans kill’d\n", + "Rise from the shades, and brave me on the field;\n", + "As now the captive, whom so late I bound\n", + "And sold to Lemnos, stalks on Trojan ground!\n", + "Not him the sea’s unmeasured deeps detain,\n", + "That bar such numbers from their native plain;\n", + "Lo! he returns. Try, then, my flying spear!\n", + "Try, if the grave can hold the wanderer;\n", + "If earth, at length this active prince can seize,\n", + "Earth, whose strong grasp has held down Hercules.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus while he spoke, the Trojan pale with fears\n", + "Approach’d, and sought his knees with suppliant tears\n", + "Loth as he was to yield his youthful breath,\n", + "And his soul shivering at the approach of death.\n", + "Achilles raised the spear, prepared to wound;\n", + "He kiss’d his feet, extended on the ground:\n", + "And while, above, the spear suspended stood,\n", + "Longing to dip its thirsty point in blood,\n", + "One hand embraced them close, one stopp’d the dart,\n", + "While thus these melting words attempt his heart:\n", + "\n", + "“Thy well-known captive, great Achilles! see,\n", + "Once more Lycaon trembles at thy knee.\n", + "Some pity to a suppliant’s name afford,\n", + "Who shared the gifts of Ceres at thy board;\n", + "Whom late thy conquering arm to Lemnos bore,\n", + "Far from his father, friends, and native shore;\n", + "A hundred oxen were his price that day,\n", + "Now sums immense thy mercy shall repay.\n", + "Scarce respited from woes I yet appear,\n", + "And scarce twelve morning suns have seen me here;\n", + "Lo! Jove again submits me to thy hands,\n", + "Again, her victim cruel Fate demands!\n", + "I sprang from Priam, and Laothoe fair,\n", + "(Old Altes’ daughter, and Lelegia’s heir;\n", + "Who held in Pedasus his famed abode,\n", + "And ruled the fields where silver Satnio flow’d,)\n", + "Two sons (alas! unhappy sons) she bore;\n", + "For ah! one spear shall drink each brother’s gore,\n", + "And I succeed to slaughter’d Polydore.\n", + "How from that arm of terror shall I fly?\n", + "Some demon urges! ’tis my doom to die!\n", + "If ever yet soft pity touch’d thy mind,\n", + "Ah! think not me too much of Hector’s kind!\n", + "Not the same mother gave thy suppliant breath,\n", + "With his, who wrought thy loved Patroclus’ death.”\n", + "\n", + "These words, attended with a shower of tears,\n", + "The youth address’d to unrelenting ears:\n", + "“Talk not of life, or ransom (he replies):\n", + "Patroclus dead, whoever meets me, dies:\n", + "In vain a single Trojan sues for grace;\n", + "But least, the sons of Priam’s hateful race.\n", + "Die then, my friend! what boots it to deplore?\n", + "The great, the good Patroclus is no more!\n", + "He, far thy better, was foredoom’d to die,\n", + "And thou, dost thou bewail mortality?\n", + "Seest thou not me, whom nature’s gifts adorn,\n", + "Sprung from a hero, from a goddess born?\n", + "The day shall come (which nothing can avert)\n", + "When by the spear, the arrow, or the dart,\n", + "By night, or day, by force, or by design,\n", + "Impending death and certain fate are mine!\n", + "Die then,”—He said; and as the word he spoke,\n", + "The fainting stripling sank before the stroke:\n", + "His hand forgot its grasp, and left the spear,\n", + "While all his trembling frame confess’d his fear:\n", + "Sudden, Achilles his broad sword display’d,\n", + "And buried in his neck the reeking blade.\n", + "Prone fell the youth; and panting on the land,\n", + "The gushing purple dyed the thirsty sand.\n", + "The victor to the stream the carcase gave,\n", + "And thus insults him, floating on the wave:\n", + "\n", + "“Lie there, Lycaon! let the fish surround\n", + "Thy bloated corpse, and suck thy gory wound:\n", + "There no sad mother shall thy funerals weep,\n", + "But swift Scamander roll thee to the deep,\n", + "Whose every wave some watery monster brings,\n", + "To feast unpunish’d on the fat of kings.\n", + "So perish Troy, and all the Trojan line!\n", + "Such ruin theirs, and such compassion mine.\n", + "What boots ye now Scamander’s worshipp’d stream,\n", + "His earthly honours, and immortal name?\n", + "In vain your immolated bulls are slain,\n", + "Your living coursers glut his gulfs in vain!\n", + "Thus he rewards you, with this bitter fate;\n", + "Thus, till the Grecian vengeance is complete:\n", + "Thus is atoned Patroclus’ honour’d shade,\n", + "And the short absence of Achilles paid.”\n", + "\n", + "These boastful words provoked the raging god;\n", + "With fury swells the violated flood.\n", + "What means divine may yet the power employ\n", + "To check Achilles, and to rescue Troy?\n", + "Meanwhile the hero springs in arms, to dare\n", + "The great Asteropeus to mortal war;\n", + "The son of Pelagon, whose lofty line\n", + "Flows from the source of Axius, stream divine!\n", + "(Fair Peribaea’s love the god had crown’d,\n", + "With all his refluent waters circled round:)\n", + "On him Achilles rush’d; he fearless stood,\n", + "And shook two spears, advancing from the flood;\n", + "The flood impell’d him, on Pelides’ head\n", + "To avenge his waters choked with heaps of dead.\n", + "Near as they drew, Achilles thus began:\n", + "\n", + "“What art thou, boldest of the race of man?\n", + "Who, or from whence? Unhappy is the sire\n", + "Whose son encounters our resistless ire.”\n", + "\n", + "“O son of Peleus! what avails to trace\n", + "(Replied the warrior) our illustrious race?\n", + "From rich Paeonia’s valleys I command,\n", + "Arm’d with protended spears, my native band;\n", + "Now shines the tenth bright morning since I came\n", + "In aid of Ilion to the fields of fame:\n", + "Axius, who swells with all the neighbouring rills,\n", + "And wide around the floated region fills,\n", + "Begot my sire, whose spear much glory won:\n", + "Now lift thy arm, and try that hero’s son!”\n", + "\n", + "Threatening he said: the hostile chiefs advance;\n", + "At once Asteropeus discharged each lance,\n", + "(For both his dexterous hands the lance could wield,)\n", + "One struck, but pierced not, the Vulcanian shield;\n", + "One razed Achilles’ hand; the spouting blood\n", + "Spun forth; in earth the fasten’d weapon stood.\n", + "Like lightning next the Pelean javelin flies:\n", + "Its erring fury hiss’d along the skies;\n", + "Deep in the swelling bank was driven the spear,\n", + "Even to the middle earth; and quiver’d there.\n", + "Then from his side the sword Pelides drew,\n", + "And on his foe with double fury flew.\n", + "The foe thrice tugg’d, and shook the rooted wood;\n", + "Repulsive of his might the weapon stood:\n", + "The fourth, he tries to break the spear in vain;\n", + "Bent as he stands, he tumbles to the plain;\n", + "His belly open’d with a ghastly wound,\n", + "The reeking entrails pour upon the ground.\n", + "Beneath the hero’s feet he panting lies,\n", + "And his eye darkens, and his spirit flies;\n", + "While the proud victor thus triumphing said,\n", + "His radiant armour tearing from the dead:\n", + "\n", + "“So ends thy glory! Such the fate they prove,\n", + "Who strive presumptuous with the sons of Jove!\n", + "Sprung from a river, didst thou boast thy line?\n", + "But great Saturnius is the source of mine.\n", + "How durst thou vaunt thy watery progeny?\n", + "Of Peleus, Æacus, and Jove, am I.\n", + "The race of these superior far to those,\n", + "As he that thunders to the stream that flows.\n", + "What rivers can, Scamander might have shown;\n", + "But Jove he dreads, nor wars against his son.\n", + "Even Achelous might contend in vain,\n", + "And all the roaring billows of the main.\n", + "The eternal ocean, from whose fountains flow\n", + "The seas, the rivers, and the springs below,\n", + "The thundering voice of Jove abhors to hear,\n", + "And in his deep abysses shakes with fear.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: then from the bank his javelin tore,\n", + "And left the breathless warrior in his gore.\n", + "The floating tides the bloody carcase lave,\n", + "And beat against it, wave succeeding wave;\n", + "Till, roll’d between the banks, it lies the food\n", + "Of curling eels, and fishes of the flood.\n", + "All scatter’d round the stream (their mightiest slain)\n", + "The amazed Pæonians scour along the plain;\n", + "He vents his fury on the flying crew,\n", + "Thrasius, Astyplus, and Mnesus slew;\n", + "Mydon, Thersilochus, with Ænius, fell;\n", + "And numbers more his lance had plunged to hell,\n", + "But from the bottom of his gulfs profound\n", + "Scamander spoke; the shores return’d the sound.\n", + "\n", + "“O first of mortals! (for the gods are thine)\n", + "In valour matchless, and in force divine!\n", + "If Jove have given thee every Trojan head,\n", + "’Tis not on me thy rage should heap the dead.\n", + "See! my choked streams no more their course can keep,\n", + "Nor roll their wonted tribute to the deep.\n", + "Turn then, impetuous! from our injured flood;\n", + "Content, thy slaughters could amaze a god.”\n", + "\n", + "In human form, confess’d before his eyes,\n", + "The river thus; and thus the chief replies:\n", + "“O sacred stream! thy word we shall obey;\n", + "But not till Troy the destined vengeance pay,\n", + "Not till within her towers the perjured train\n", + "Shall pant, and tremble at our arms again;\n", + "Not till proud Hector, guardian of her wall,\n", + "Or stain this lance, or see Achilles fall.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and drove with fury on the foe.\n", + "Then to the godhead of the silver bow\n", + "The yellow flood began: “O son of Jove!\n", + "Was not the mandate of the sire above\n", + "Full and express, that Phœbus should employ\n", + "His sacred arrows in defence of Troy,\n", + "And make her conquer, till Hyperion’s fall\n", + "In awful darkness hide the face of all?”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke in vain—The chief without dismay\n", + "Ploughs through the boiling surge his desperate way.\n", + "Then rising in his rage above the shores,\n", + "From all his deep the bellowing river roars,\n", + "Huge heaps of slain disgorges on the coast,\n", + "And round the banks the ghastly dead are toss’d.\n", + "While all before, the billows ranged on high,\n", + "(A watery bulwark,) screen the bands who fly.\n", + "Now bursting on his head with thundering sound,\n", + "The falling deluge whelms the hero round:\n", + "His loaded shield bends to the rushing tide;\n", + "His feet, upborne, scarce the strong flood divide,\n", + "Sliddering, and staggering. On the border stood\n", + "A spreading elm, that overhung the flood;\n", + "He seized a bending bough, his steps to stay;\n", + "The plant uprooted to his weight gave way.[270]\n", + "Heaving the bank, and undermining all;\n", + "Loud flash the waters to the rushing fall\n", + "Of the thick foliage. The large trunk display’d\n", + "Bridged the rough flood across: the hero stay’d\n", + "On this his weight, and raised upon his hand,\n", + "Leap’d from the channel, and regain’d the land.\n", + "Then blacken’d the wild waves: the murmur rose:\n", + "The god pursues, a huger billow throws,\n", + "And bursts the bank, ambitious to destroy\n", + "The man whose fury is the fate of Troy.\n", + "He like the warlike eagle speeds his pace\n", + "(Swiftest and strongest of the aerial race);\n", + "Far as a spear can fly, Achilles springs;\n", + "At every bound his clanging armour rings:\n", + "Now here, now there, he turns on every side,\n", + "And winds his course before the following tide;\n", + "The waves flow after, wheresoe’er he wheels,\n", + "And gather fast, and murmur at his heels.\n", + "So when a peasant to his garden brings\n", + "Soft rills of water from the bubbling springs,\n", + "And calls the floods from high, to bless his bowers,\n", + "And feed with pregnant streams the plants and flowers:\n", + "Soon as he clears whate’er their passage stay’d,\n", + "And marks the future current with his spade,\n", + "Swift o’er the rolling pebbles, down the hills,\n", + "Louder and louder purl the falling rills;\n", + "Before him scattering, they prevent his pains,\n", + "And shine in mazy wanderings o’er the plains.\n", + "\n", + "Still flies Achilles, but before his eyes\n", + "Still swift Scamander rolls where’er he flies:\n", + "Not all his speed escapes the rapid floods;\n", + "The first of men, but not a match for gods.\n", + "Oft as he turn’d the torrent to oppose,\n", + "And bravely try if all the powers were foes;\n", + "So oft the surge, in watery mountains spread,\n", + "Beats on his back, or bursts upon his head.\n", + "Yet dauntless still the adverse flood he braves,\n", + "And still indignant bounds above the waves.\n", + "Tired by the tides, his knees relax with toil;\n", + "Wash’d from beneath him slides the slimy soil;\n", + "When thus (his eyes on heaven’s expansion thrown)\n", + "Forth bursts the hero with an angry groan:\n", + "\n", + "“Is there no god Achilles to befriend,\n", + "No power to avert his miserable end?\n", + "Prevent, O Jove! this ignominious date,[271]\n", + "And make my future life the sport of fate.\n", + "Of all heaven’s oracles believed in vain,\n", + "But most of Thetis must her son complain;\n", + "By Phœbus’ darts she prophesied my fall,\n", + "In glorious arms before the Trojan wall.\n", + "Oh! had I died in fields of battle warm,\n", + "Stretch’d like a hero, by a hero’s arm!\n", + "Might Hector’s spear this dauntless bosom rend,\n", + "And my swift soul o’ertake my slaughter’d friend.\n", + "Ah no! Achilles meets a shameful fate,\n", + "Oh how unworthy of the brave and great!\n", + "Like some vile swain, whom on a rainy day,\n", + "Crossing a ford, the torrent sweeps away,\n", + "An unregarded carcase to the sea.”\n", + "\n", + "Neptune and Pallas haste to his relief,\n", + "And thus in human form address’d the chief:\n", + "The power of ocean first: “Forbear thy fear,\n", + "O son of Peleus! Lo, thy gods appear!\n", + "Behold! from Jove descending to thy aid,\n", + "Propitious Neptune, and the blue-eyed maid.\n", + "Stay, and the furious flood shall cease to rave\n", + "’Tis not thy fate to glut his angry wave.\n", + "But thou, the counsel heaven suggests, attend!\n", + "Nor breathe from combat, nor thy sword suspend,\n", + "Till Troy receive her flying sons, till all\n", + "Her routed squadrons pant behind their wall:\n", + "Hector alone shall stand his fatal chance,\n", + "And Hector’s blood shall smoke upon thy lance.\n", + "Thine is the glory doom’d.” Thus spake the gods:\n", + "Then swift ascended to the bright abodes.\n", + "\n", + "Stung with new ardour, thus by heaven impell’d,\n", + "He springs impetuous, and invades the field:\n", + "O’er all the expanded plain the waters spread;\n", + "Heaved on the bounding billows danced the dead,\n", + "Floating ’midst scatter’d arms; while casques of gold\n", + "And turn’d-up bucklers glitter’d as they roll’d.\n", + "High o’er the surging tide, by leaps and bounds,\n", + "He wades, and mounts; the parted wave resounds.\n", + "Not a whole river stops the hero’s course,\n", + "While Pallas fills him with immortal force.\n", + "With equal rage, indignant Xanthus roars,\n", + "And lifts his billows, and o’erwhelms his shores.\n", + "\n", + "Then thus to Simois! “Haste, my brother flood;\n", + "And check this mortal that controls a god;\n", + "Our bravest heroes else shall quit the fight,\n", + "And Ilion tumble from her towery height.\n", + "Call then thy subject streams, and bid them roar,\n", + "From all thy fountains swell thy watery store,\n", + "With broken rocks, and with a load of dead,\n", + "Charge the black surge, and pour it on his head.\n", + "Mark how resistless through the floods he goes,\n", + "And boldly bids the warring gods be foes!\n", + "But nor that force, nor form divine to sight,\n", + "Shall aught avail him, if our rage unite:\n", + "Whelm’d under our dark gulfs those arms shall lie,\n", + "That blaze so dreadful in each Trojan eye;\n", + "And deep beneath a sandy mountain hurl’d,\n", + "Immersed remain this terror of the world.\n", + "Such ponderous ruin shall confound the place,\n", + "No Greeks shall e’er his perish’d relics grace,\n", + "No hand his bones shall gather, or inhume;\n", + "These his cold rites, and this his watery tomb.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "He said; and on the chief descends amain,\n", + "Increased with gore, and swelling with the slain.\n", + "Then, murmuring from his beds, he boils, he raves,\n", + "And a foam whitens on the purple waves:\n", + "At every step, before Achilles stood\n", + "The crimson surge, and deluged him with blood.\n", + "Fear touch’d the queen of heaven: she saw dismay’d,\n", + "She call’d aloud, and summon’d Vulcan’s aid.\n", + "\n", + "“Rise to the war! the insulting flood requires\n", + "Thy wasteful arm! assemble all thy fires!\n", + "While to their aid, by our command enjoin’d,\n", + "Rush the swift eastern and the western wind:\n", + "These from old ocean at my word shall blow,\n", + "Pour the red torrent on the watery foe,\n", + "Corses and arms to one bright ruin turn,\n", + "And hissing rivers to their bottoms burn.\n", + "Go, mighty in thy rage! display thy power,\n", + "Drink the whole flood, the crackling trees devour.\n", + "Scorch all the banks! and (till our voice reclaim)\n", + "Exert the unwearied furies of the flame!”\n", + "\n", + "The power ignipotent her word obeys:\n", + "Wide o’er the plain he pours the boundless blaze;\n", + "At once consumes the dead, and dries the soil\n", + "And the shrunk waters in their channel boil.\n", + "As when autumnal Boreas sweeps the sky,\n", + "And instant blows the water’d gardens dry:\n", + "So look’d the field, so whiten’d was the ground,\n", + "While Vulcan breathed the fiery blast around.\n", + "Swift on the sedgy reeds the ruin preys;\n", + "Along the margin winds the running blaze:\n", + "The trees in flaming rows to ashes turn,\n", + "The flowering lotos and the tamarisk burn,\n", + "Broad elm, and cypress rising in a spire;\n", + "The watery willows hiss before the fire.\n", + "Now glow the waves, the fishes pant for breath,\n", + "The eels lie twisting in the pangs of death:\n", + "Now flounce aloft, now dive the scaly fry,\n", + "Or, gasping, turn their bellies to the sky.\n", + "At length the river rear’d his languid head,\n", + "And thus, short-panting, to the god he said:\n", + "\n", + "“Oh Vulcan! oh! what power resists thy might?\n", + "I faint, I sink, unequal to the fight—\n", + "I yield—Let Ilion fall; if fate decree—\n", + "Ah—bend no more thy fiery arms on me!”\n", + "\n", + "He ceased; wide conflagration blazing round;\n", + "The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound.\n", + "As when the flames beneath a cauldron rise,[272]\n", + "To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice,\n", + "Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires\n", + "The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires:\n", + "So boils the imprison’d flood, forbid to flow,\n", + "And choked with vapours feels his bottom glow.\n", + "To Juno then, imperial queen of air,\n", + "The burning river sends his earnest prayer:\n", + "\n", + "“Ah why, Saturnia; must thy son engage\n", + "Me, only me, with all his wasteful rage?\n", + "On other gods his dreadful arm employ,\n", + "For mightier gods assert the cause of Troy.\n", + "Submissive I desist, if thou command;\n", + "But ah! withdraw this all-destroying hand.\n", + "Hear then my solemn oath, to yield to fate\n", + "Unaided Ilion, and her destined state,\n", + "Till Greece shall gird her with destructive flame,\n", + "And in one ruin sink the Trojan name.”\n", + "\n", + "His warm entreaty touch’d Saturnia’s ear:\n", + "She bade the ignipotent his rage forbear,\n", + "Recall the flame, nor in a mortal cause\n", + "Infest a god: the obedient flame withdraws:\n", + "Again the branching streams begin to spread,\n", + "And soft remurmur in their wonted bed.\n", + "\n", + "While these by Juno’s will the strife resign,\n", + "The warring gods in fierce contention join:\n", + "Rekindling rage each heavenly breast alarms:\n", + "With horrid clangour shock the ethereal arms:\n", + "Heaven in loud thunder bids the trumpet sound;\n", + "And wide beneath them groans the rending ground.\n", + "Jove, as his sport, the dreadful scene descries,\n", + "And views contending gods with careless eyes.\n", + "The power of battles lifts his brazen spear,\n", + "And first assaults the radiant queen of war:\n", + "\n", + "“What moved thy madness, thus to disunite\n", + "Ethereal minds, and mix all heaven in fight?\n", + "What wonder this, when in thy frantic mood\n", + "Thou drovest a mortal to insult a god?\n", + "Thy impious hand Tydides’ javelin bore,\n", + "And madly bathed it in celestial gore.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and smote the long-resounding shield,\n", + "Which bears Jove’s thunder on its dreadful field:\n", + "The adamantine ægis of her sire,\n", + "That turns the glancing bolt and forked fire.\n", + "\n", + "Then heaved the goddess in her mighty hand\n", + "A stone, the limit of the neighbouring land,\n", + "There fix’d from eldest times; black, craggy, vast;\n", + "This at the heavenly homicide she cast.\n", + "Thundering he falls, a mass of monstrous size:\n", + "And seven broad acres covers as he lies.\n", + "The stunning stroke his stubborn nerves unbound:\n", + "Loud o’er the fields his ringing arms resound:\n", + "The scornful dame her conquest views with smiles,\n", + "And, glorying, thus the prostrate god reviles:\n", + "\n", + "“Hast thou not yet, insatiate fury! known\n", + "How far Minerva’s force transcends thy own?\n", + "Juno, whom thou rebellious darest withstand,\n", + "Corrects thy folly thus by Pallas’ hand;\n", + "Thus meets thy broken faith with just disgrace,\n", + "And partial aid to Troy’s perfidious race.”\n", + "\n", + "The goddess spoke, and turn’d her eyes away,\n", + "That, beaming round, diffused celestial day.\n", + "Jove’s Cyprian daughter, stooping on the land,\n", + "Lent to the wounded god her tender hand:\n", + "Slowly he rises, scarcely breathes with pain,\n", + "And, propp’d on her fair arm, forsakes the plain.\n", + "This the bright empress of the heavens survey’d,\n", + "And, scoffing, thus to war’s victorious maid:\n", + "\n", + "“Lo! what an aid on Mars’s side is seen!\n", + "The smiles’ and loves’ unconquerable queen!\n", + "Mark with what insolence, in open view,\n", + "She moves: let Pallas, if she dares, pursue.”\n", + "\n", + "Minerva smiling heard, the pair o’ertook,\n", + "And slightly on her breast the wanton strook:\n", + "She, unresisting, fell (her spirits fled);\n", + "On earth together lay the lovers spread.\n", + "“And like these heroes be the fate of all\n", + "(Minerva cries) who guard the Trojan wall!\n", + "To Grecian gods such let the Phrygian be,\n", + "So dread, so fierce, as Venus is to me;\n", + "Then from the lowest stone shall Troy be moved.”\n", + "Thus she, and Juno with a smile approved.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime, to mix in more than mortal fight,\n", + "The god of ocean dares the god of light.\n", + "“What sloth has seized us, when the fields around\n", + "Ring with conflicting powers, and heaven returns the sound:\n", + "Shall, ignominious, we with shame retire,\n", + "No deed perform’d, to our Olympian sire?\n", + "Come, prove thy arm! for first the war to wage,\n", + "Suits not my greatness, or superior age:\n", + "Rash as thou art to prop the Trojan throne,\n", + "(Forgetful of my wrongs, and of thy own,)\n", + "And guard the race of proud Laomedon!\n", + "Hast thou forgot, how, at the monarch’s prayer,\n", + "We shared the lengthen’d labours of a year?\n", + "Troy walls I raised (for such were Jove’s commands),\n", + "And yon proud bulwarks grew beneath my hands:\n", + "Thy task it was to feed the bellowing droves\n", + "Along fair Ida’s vales and pendant groves.\n", + "But when the circling seasons in their train\n", + "Brought back the grateful day that crown’d our pain,\n", + "With menace stern the fraudful king defied\n", + "Our latent godhead, and the prize denied:\n", + "Mad as he was, he threaten’d servile bands,\n", + "And doom’d us exiles far in barbarous lands.[273]\n", + "Incensed, we heavenward fled with swiftest wing,\n", + "And destined vengeance on the perjured king.\n", + "Dost thou, for this, afford proud Ilion grace,\n", + "And not, like us, infest the faithless race;\n", + "Like us, their present, future sons destroy,\n", + "And from its deep foundations heave their Troy?”\n", + "\n", + "Apollo thus: “To combat for mankind\n", + "Ill suits the wisdom of celestial mind;\n", + "For what is man? Calamitous by birth,\n", + "They owe their life and nourishment to earth;\n", + "Like yearly leaves, that now, with beauty crown’d,\n", + "Smile on the sun; now, wither on the ground.\n", + "To their own hands commit the frantic scene,\n", + "Nor mix immortals in a cause so mean.”\n", + "\n", + "Then turns his face, far-beaming heavenly fires,\n", + "And from the senior power submiss retires:\n", + "Him thus retreating, Artemis upbraids,\n", + "The quiver’d huntress of the sylvan shades:\n", + "\n", + "“And is it thus the youthful Phœbus flies,\n", + "And yields to ocean’s hoary sire the prize?\n", + "How vain that martial pomp, and dreadful show\n", + "Of pointed arrows and the silver bow!\n", + "Now boast no more in yon celestial bower,\n", + "Thy force can match the great earth-shaking power.”\n", + "\n", + "Silent he heard the queen of woods upbraid:\n", + "Not so Saturnia bore the vaunting maid:\n", + "But furious thus: “What insolence has driven\n", + "Thy pride to face the majesty of heaven?\n", + "What though by Jove the female plague design’d,\n", + "Fierce to the feeble race of womankind,\n", + "The wretched matron feels thy piercing dart;\n", + "Thy sex’s tyrant, with a tiger’s heart?\n", + "What though tremendous in the woodland chase\n", + "Thy certain arrows pierce the savage race?\n", + "How dares thy rashness on the powers divine\n", + "Employ those arms, or match thy force with mine?\n", + "Learn hence, no more unequal war to wage—”\n", + "She said, and seized her wrists with eager rage;\n", + "These in her left hand lock’d, her right untied\n", + "The bow, the quiver, and its plumy pride.\n", + "About her temples flies the busy bow;\n", + "Now here, now there, she winds her from the blow;\n", + "The scattering arrows, rattling from the case,\n", + "Drop round, and idly mark the dusty place.\n", + "Swift from the field the baffled huntress flies,\n", + "And scarce restrains the torrent in her eyes:\n", + "So, when the falcon wings her way above,\n", + "To the cleft cavern speeds the gentle dove;\n", + "(Not fated yet to die;) there safe retreats,\n", + "Yet still her heart against the marble beats.\n", + "\n", + "To her Latona hastes with tender care;\n", + "Whom Hermes viewing, thus declines the war:\n", + "“How shall I face the dame, who gives delight\n", + "To him whose thunders blacken heaven with night?\n", + "Go, matchless goddess! triumph in the skies,\n", + "And boast my conquest, while I yield the prize.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke; and pass’d: Latona, stooping low,\n", + "Collects the scatter’d shafts and fallen bow,\n", + "That, glittering on the dust, lay here and there\n", + "Dishonour’d relics of Diana’s war:\n", + "Then swift pursued her to her blest abode,\n", + "Where, all confused, she sought the sovereign god;\n", + "Weeping, she grasp’d his knees: the ambrosial vest\n", + "Shook with her sighs, and panted on her breast.\n", + "\n", + "The sire superior smiled, and bade her show\n", + "What heavenly hand had caused his daughter’s woe?\n", + "Abash’d, she names his own imperial spouse;\n", + "And the pale crescent fades upon her brows.\n", + "\n", + "Thus they above: while, swiftly gliding down,\n", + "Apollo enters Ilion’s sacred town;\n", + "The guardian-god now trembled for her wall,\n", + "And fear’d the Greeks, though fate forbade her fall.\n", + "Back to Olympus, from the war’s alarms,\n", + "Return the shining bands of gods in arms;\n", + "Some proud in triumph, some with rage on fire;\n", + "And take their thrones around the ethereal sire.\n", + "\n", + "Through blood, through death, Achilles still proceeds,\n", + "O’er slaughter’d heroes, and o’er rolling steeds.\n", + "As when avenging flames with fury driven\n", + "On guilty towns exert the wrath of heaven;\n", + "The pale inhabitants, some fall, some fly;\n", + "And the red vapours purple all the sky:\n", + "So raged Achilles: death and dire dismay,\n", + "And toils, and terrors, fill’d the dreadful day.\n", + "\n", + "High on a turret hoary Priam stands,\n", + "And marks the waste of his destructive hands;\n", + "Views, from his arm, the Trojans’ scatter’d flight,\n", + "And the near hero rising on his sight!\n", + "No stop, no check, no aid! With feeble pace,\n", + "And settled sorrow on his aged face,\n", + "Fast as he could, he sighing quits the walls;\n", + "And thus descending, on the guards he calls:\n", + "\n", + "“You to whose care our city-gates belong,\n", + "Set wide your portals to the flying throng:\n", + "For lo! he comes, with unresisted sway;\n", + "He comes, and desolation marks his way!\n", + "But when within the walls our troops take breath,\n", + "Lock fast the brazen bars, and shut out death.”\n", + "Thus charged the reverend monarch: wide were flung\n", + "The opening folds; the sounding hinges rung.\n", + "Phœbus rush’d forth, the flying bands to meet;\n", + "Struck slaughter back, and cover’d the retreat,\n", + "On heaps the Trojans crowd to gain the gate,\n", + "And gladsome see their last escape from fate.\n", + "Thither, all parch’d with thirst, a heartless train,\n", + "Hoary with dust, they beat the hollow plain:\n", + "And gasping, panting, fainting, labour on\n", + "With heavier strides, that lengthen toward the town.\n", + "Enraged Achilles follows with his spear;\n", + "Wild with revenge, insatiable of war.\n", + "\n", + "Then had the Greeks eternal praise acquired,\n", + "And Troy inglorious to her walls retired;\n", + "But he, the god who darts ethereal flame,\n", + "Shot down to save her, and redeem her fame:\n", + "To young Agenor force divine he gave;\n", + "(Antenor’s offspring, haughty, bold, and brave;)\n", + "In aid of him, beside the beech he sate,\n", + "And wrapt in clouds, restrain’d the hand of fate.\n", + "When now the generous youth Achilles spies,\n", + "Thick beats his heart, the troubled motions rise.\n", + "(So, ere a storm, the waters heave and roll.)\n", + "He stops, and questions thus his mighty soul;\n", + "\n", + "“What, shall I fly this terror of the plain!\n", + "Like others fly, and be like others slain?\n", + "Vain hope! to shun him by the self-same road\n", + "Yon line of slaughter’d Trojans lately trod.\n", + "No: with the common heap I scorn to fall—\n", + "What if they pass’d me to the Trojan wall,\n", + "While I decline to yonder path, that leads\n", + "To Ida’s forests and surrounding shades?\n", + "So may I reach, conceal’d, the cooling flood,\n", + "From my tired body wash the dirt and blood,\n", + "As soon as night her dusky veil extends,\n", + "Return in safety to my Trojan friends.\n", + "What if?—But wherefore all this vain debate?\n", + "Stand I to doubt, within the reach of fate?\n", + "Even now perhaps, ere yet I turn the wall,\n", + "The fierce Achilles sees me, and I fall:\n", + "Such is his swiftness, ’tis in vain to fly,\n", + "And such his valour, that who stands must die.\n", + "Howe’er ’tis better, fighting for the state,\n", + "Here, and in public view, to meet my fate.\n", + "Yet sure he too is mortal; he may feel\n", + "(Like all the sons of earth) the force of steel.\n", + "One only soul informs that dreadful frame:\n", + "And Jove’s sole favour gives him all his fame.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and stood, collected, in his might;\n", + "And all his beating bosom claim’d the fight.\n", + "So from some deep-grown wood a panther starts,\n", + "Roused from his thicket by a storm of darts:\n", + "Untaught to fear or fly, he hears the sounds\n", + "Of shouting hunters, and of clamorous hounds;\n", + "Though struck, though wounded, scarce perceives the pain;\n", + "And the barb’d javelin stings his breast in vain:\n", + "On their whole war, untamed, the savage flies;\n", + "And tears his hunter, or beneath him dies.\n", + "Not less resolved, Antenor’s valiant heir\n", + "Confronts Achilles, and awaits the war,\n", + "Disdainful of retreat: high held before,\n", + "His shield (a broad circumference) he bore;\n", + "Then graceful as he stood, in act to throw\n", + "The lifted javelin, thus bespoke the foe:\n", + "\n", + "“How proud Achilles glories in his fame!\n", + "And hopes this day to sink the Trojan name\n", + "Beneath her ruins! Know, that hope is vain;\n", + "A thousand woes, a thousand toils remain.\n", + "Parents and children our just arms employ,\n", + "And strong and many are the sons of Troy.\n", + "Great as thou art, even thou may’st stain with gore\n", + "These Phrygian fields, and press a foreign shore.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: with matchless force the javelin flung\n", + "Smote on his knee; the hollow cuishes rung\n", + "Beneath the pointed steel; but safe from harms\n", + "He stands impassive in the ethereal arms.\n", + "Then fiercely rushing on the daring foe,\n", + "His lifted arm prepares the fatal blow:\n", + "But, jealous of his fame, Apollo shrouds\n", + "The god-like Trojan in a veil of clouds.\n", + "Safe from pursuit, and shut from mortal view,\n", + "Dismiss’d with fame, the favoured youth withdrew.\n", + "Meanwhile the god, to cover their escape,\n", + "Assumes Agenor’s habit, voice and shape,\n", + "Flies from the furious chief in this disguise;\n", + "The furious chief still follows where he flies.\n", + "Now o’er the fields they stretch with lengthen’d strides,\n", + "Now urge the course where swift Scamander glides:\n", + "The god, now distant scarce a stride before,\n", + "Tempts his pursuit, and wheels about the shore;\n", + "While all the flying troops their speed employ,\n", + "And pour on heaps into the walls of Troy:\n", + "No stop, no stay; no thought to ask, or tell,\n", + "Who ’scaped by flight, or who by battle fell.\n", + "’Twas tumult all, and violence of flight;\n", + "And sudden joy confused, and mix’d affright.\n", + "Pale Troy against Achilles shuts her gate:\n", + "And nations breathe, deliver’d from their fate.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XXII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE DEATH OF HECTOR.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The Trojans being safe within the walls, Hector only stays to oppose\n", + "Achilles. Priam is struck at his approach, and tries to persuade his\n", + "son to re-enter the town. Hecuba joins her entreaties, but in vain.\n", + "Hector consults within himself what measures to take; but at the\n", + "advance of Achilles, his resolution fails him, and he flies. Achilles\n", + "pursues him thrice round the walls of Troy. The gods debate concerning\n", + "the fate of Hector; at length Minerva descends to the aid of Achilles.\n", + "She deludes Hector in the shape of Deiphobus; he stands the combat, and\n", + "is slain. Achilles drags the dead body at his chariot in the sight of\n", + "Priam and Hecuba. Their lamentations, tears, and despair. Their cries\n", + "reach the ears of Andromache, who, ignorant of this, was retired into\n", + "the inner part of the palace: she mounts up to the walls, and beholds\n", + "her dead husband. She swoons at the spectacle. Her excess of grief and\n", + "lamentation.\n", + " The thirtieth day still continues. The scene lies under the walls,\n", + " and on the battlements of Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus to their bulwarks, smit with panic fear,\n", + "The herded Ilians rush like driven deer:\n", + "There safe they wipe the briny drops away,\n", + "And drown in bowls the labours of the day.\n", + "Close to the walls, advancing o’er the fields\n", + "Beneath one roof of well-compacted shields,\n", + "March, bending on, the Greeks’ embodied powers,\n", + "Far stretching in the shade of Trojan towers.\n", + "Great Hector singly stay’d: chain’d down by fate\n", + "There fix’d he stood before the Scæan gate;\n", + "Still his bold arms determined to employ,\n", + "The guardian still of long-defended Troy.\n", + "\n", + "Apollo now to tired Achilles turns:\n", + "(The power confess’d in all his glory burns:)\n", + "“And what (he cries) has Peleus’ son in view,\n", + "With mortal speed a godhead to pursue?\n", + "For not to thee to know the gods is given,\n", + "Unskill’d to trace the latent marks of heaven.\n", + "What boots thee now, that Troy forsook the plain?\n", + "Vain thy past labour, and thy present vain:\n", + "Safe in their walls are now her troops bestow’d,\n", + "While here thy frantic rage attacks a god.”\n", + "\n", + "The chief incensed—“Too partial god of day!\n", + "To check my conquests in the middle way:\n", + "How few in Ilion else had refuge found!\n", + "What gasping numbers now had bit the ground!\n", + "Thou robb’st me of a glory justly mine,\n", + "Powerful of godhead, and of fraud divine:\n", + "Mean fame, alas! for one of heavenly strain,\n", + "To cheat a mortal who repines in vain.”\n", + "\n", + "Then to the city, terrible and strong,\n", + "With high and haughty steps he tower’d along,\n", + "So the proud courser, victor of the prize,\n", + "To the near goal with double ardour flies.\n", + "Him, as he blazing shot across the field,\n", + "The careful eyes of Priam first beheld.\n", + "Not half so dreadful rises to the sight,[274]\n", + "Through the thick gloom of some tempestuous night,\n", + "Orion’s dog (the year when autumn weighs),\n", + "And o’er the feebler stars exerts his rays;\n", + "Terrific glory! for his burning breath\n", + "Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death.\n", + "So flamed his fiery mail. Then wept the sage:\n", + "He strikes his reverend head, now white with age;\n", + "He lifts his wither’d arms; obtests the skies;\n", + "He calls his much-loved son with feeble cries:\n", + "The son, resolved Achilles’ force to dare,\n", + "Full at the Scæan gates expects the war;\n", + "While the sad father on the rampart stands,\n", + "And thus adjures him with extended hands:\n", + "\n", + "“Ah stay not, stay not! guardless and alone;\n", + "Hector! my loved, my dearest, bravest son!\n", + "Methinks already I behold thee slain,\n", + "And stretch’d beneath that fury of the plain.\n", + "Implacable Achilles! might’st thou be\n", + "To all the gods no dearer than to me!\n", + "Thee, vultures wild should scatter round the shore,\n", + "And bloody dogs grow fiercer from thy gore.\n", + "How many valiant sons I late enjoy’d,\n", + "Valiant in vain! by thy cursed arm destroy’d:\n", + "Or, worse than slaughtered, sold in distant isles\n", + "To shameful bondage, and unworthy toils.\n", + "Two, while I speak, my eyes in vain explore,\n", + "Two from one mother sprung, my Polydore,\n", + "And loved Lycaon; now perhaps no more!\n", + "Oh! if in yonder hostile camp they live,\n", + "What heaps of gold, what treasures would I give!\n", + "(Their grandsire’s wealth, by right of birth their own,\n", + "Consign’d his daughter with Lelegia’s throne:)\n", + "But if (which Heaven forbid) already lost,\n", + "All pale they wander on the Stygian coast;\n", + "What sorrows then must their sad mother know,\n", + "What anguish I? unutterable woe!\n", + "Yet less that anguish, less to her, to me,\n", + "Less to all Troy, if not deprived of thee.\n", + "Yet shun Achilles! enter yet the wall;\n", + "And spare thyself, thy father, spare us all!\n", + "Save thy dear life; or, if a soul so brave\n", + "Neglect that thought, thy dearer glory save.\n", + "Pity, while yet I live, these silver hairs;\n", + "While yet thy father feels the woes he bears,\n", + "Yet cursed with sense! a wretch, whom in his rage\n", + "(All trembling on the verge of helpless age)\n", + "Great Jove has placed, sad spectacle of pain!\n", + "The bitter dregs of fortune’s cup to drain:\n", + "To fill with scenes of death his closing eyes,\n", + "And number all his days by miseries!\n", + "My heroes slain, my bridal bed o’erturn’d,\n", + "My daughters ravish’d, and my city burn’d,\n", + "My bleeding infants dash’d against the floor;\n", + "These I have yet to see, perhaps yet more!\n", + "Perhaps even I, reserved by angry fate,\n", + "The last sad relic of my ruin’d state,\n", + "(Dire pomp of sovereign wretchedness!) must fall,\n", + "And stain the pavement of my regal hall;\n", + "Where famish’d dogs, late guardians of my door,\n", + "Shall lick their mangled master’s spatter’d gore.\n", + "Yet for my sons I thank ye, gods! ’tis well;\n", + "Well have they perish’d, for in fight they fell.\n", + "Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best,\n", + "Struck through with wounds, all honest on the breast.\n", + "But when the fates, in fulness of their rage,\n", + "Spurn the hoar head of unresisting age,\n", + "In dust the reverend lineaments deform,\n", + "And pour to dogs the life-blood scarcely warm:\n", + "This, this is misery! the last, the worse,\n", + "That man can feel! man, fated to be cursed!”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and acting what no words could say,\n", + "Rent from his head the silver locks away.\n", + "With him the mournful mother bears a part;\n", + "Yet all her sorrows turn not Hector’s heart.\n", + "The zone unbraced, her bosom she display’d;\n", + "And thus, fast-falling the salt tears, she said:\n", + "\n", + "“Have mercy on me, O my son! revere\n", + "The words of age; attend a parent’s prayer!\n", + "If ever thee in these fond arms I press’d,\n", + "Or still’d thy infant clamours at this breast;\n", + "Ah do not thus our helpless years forego,\n", + "But, by our walls secured, repel the foe.\n", + "Against his rage if singly thou proceed,\n", + "Should’st thou, (but Heaven avert it!) should’st thou bleed,\n", + "Nor must thy corse lie honour’d on the bier,\n", + "Nor spouse, nor mother, grace thee with a tear!\n", + "Far from our pious rites those dear remains\n", + "Must feast the vultures on the naked plains.”\n", + "\n", + "So they, while down their cheeks the torrents roll;\n", + "But fix’d remains the purpose of his soul;\n", + "Resolved he stands, and with a fiery glance\n", + "Expects the hero’s terrible advance.\n", + "So, roll’d up in his den, the swelling snake\n", + "Beholds the traveller approach the brake;\n", + "When fed with noxious herbs his turgid veins\n", + "Have gather’d half the poisons of the plains;\n", + "He burns, he stiffens with collected ire,\n", + "And his red eyeballs glare with living fire.\n", + "Beneath a turret, on his shield reclined,\n", + "He stood, and question’d thus his mighty mind:[275]\n", + "\n", + "“Where lies my way? to enter in the wall?\n", + "Honour and shame the ungenerous thought recall:\n", + "Shall proud Polydamas before the gate\n", + "Proclaim, his counsels are obey’d too late,\n", + "Which timely follow’d but the former night,\n", + "What numbers had been saved by Hector’s flight?\n", + "That wise advice rejected with disdain,\n", + "I feel my folly in my people slain.\n", + "Methinks my suffering country’s voice I hear,\n", + "But most her worthless sons insult my ear,\n", + "On my rash courage charge the chance of war,\n", + "And blame those virtues which they cannot share.\n", + "No—if I e’er return, return I must\n", + "Glorious, my country’s terror laid in dust:\n", + "Or if I perish, let her see me fall\n", + "In field at least, and fighting for her wall.\n", + "And yet suppose these measures I forego,\n", + "Approach unarm’d, and parley with the foe,\n", + "The warrior-shield, the helm, and lance, lay down,\n", + "And treat on terms of peace to save the town:\n", + "The wife withheld, the treasure ill-detain’d\n", + "(Cause of the war, and grievance of the land)\n", + "With honourable justice to restore:\n", + "And add half Ilion’s yet remaining store,\n", + "Which Troy shall, sworn, produce; that injured Greece\n", + "May share our wealth, and leave our walls in peace.\n", + "But why this thought? Unarm’d if I should go,\n", + "What hope of mercy from this vengeful foe,\n", + "But woman-like to fall, and fall without a blow?\n", + "We greet not here, as man conversing man,\n", + "Met at an oak, or journeying o’er a plain;\n", + "No season now for calm familiar talk,\n", + "Like youths and maidens in an evening walk:\n", + "War is our business, but to whom is given\n", + "To die, or triumph, that, determine Heaven!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus pondering, like a god the Greek drew nigh;\n", + "His dreadful plumage nodded from on high;\n", + "The Pelian javelin, in his better hand,\n", + "Shot trembling rays that glitter’d o’er the land;\n", + "And on his breast the beamy splendour shone,\n", + "Like Jove’s own lightning, or the rising sun.\n", + "As Hector sees, unusual terrors rise,\n", + "Struck by some god, he fears, recedes, and flies.\n", + "He leaves the gates, he leaves the wall behind:\n", + "Achilles follows like the winged wind.\n", + "Thus at the panting dove a falcon flies\n", + "(The swiftest racer of the liquid skies),\n", + "Just when he holds, or thinks he holds his prey,\n", + "Obliquely wheeling through the aerial way,\n", + "With open beak and shrilling cries he springs,\n", + "And aims his claws, and shoots upon his wings:\n", + "No less fore-right the rapid chase they held,\n", + "One urged by fury, one by fear impell’d:\n", + "Now circling round the walls their course maintain,\n", + "Where the high watch-tower overlooks the plain;\n", + "Now where the fig-trees spread their umbrage broad,\n", + "(A wider compass,) smoke along the road.\n", + "Next by Scamander’s double source they bound,\n", + "Where two famed fountains burst the parted ground;\n", + "This hot through scorching clefts is seen to rise,\n", + "With exhalations steaming to the skies;\n", + "That the green banks in summer’s heat o’erflows,\n", + "Like crystal clear, and cold as winter snows:\n", + "Each gushing fount a marble cistern fills,\n", + "Whose polish’d bed receives the falling rills;\n", + "Where Trojan dames (ere yet alarm’d by Greece)\n", + "Wash’d their fair garments in the days of peace.[276]\n", + "By these they pass’d, one chasing, one in flight:\n", + "(The mighty fled, pursued by stronger might:)\n", + "Swift was the course; no vulgar prize they play,\n", + "No vulgar victim must reward the day:\n", + "(Such as in races crown the speedy strife:)\n", + "The prize contended was great Hector’s life.\n", + "As when some hero’s funerals are decreed\n", + "In grateful honour of the mighty dead;\n", + "Where high rewards the vigorous youth inflame\n", + "(Some golden tripod, or some lovely dame)\n", + "The panting coursers swiftly turn the goal,\n", + "And with them turns the raised spectator’s soul:\n", + "Thus three times round the Trojan wall they fly.\n", + "The gazing gods lean forward from the sky;\n", + "To whom, while eager on the chase they look,\n", + "The sire of mortals and immortals spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Unworthy sight! the man beloved of heaven,\n", + "Behold, inglorious round yon city driven!\n", + "My heart partakes the generous Hector’s pain;\n", + "Hector, whose zeal whole hecatombs has slain,\n", + "Whose grateful fumes the gods received with joy,\n", + "From Ida’s summits, and the towers of Troy:\n", + "Now see him flying; to his fears resign’d,\n", + "And fate, and fierce Achilles, close behind.\n", + "Consult, ye powers! (’tis worthy your debate)\n", + "Whether to snatch him from impending fate,\n", + "Or let him bear, by stern Pelides slain,\n", + "(Good as he is) the lot imposed on man.”\n", + "\n", + "Then Pallas thus: “Shall he whose vengeance forms\n", + "The forky bolt, and blackens heaven with storms,\n", + "Shall he prolong one Trojan’s forfeit breath?\n", + "A man, a mortal, pre-ordain’d to death!\n", + "And will no murmurs fill the courts above?\n", + "No gods indignant blame their partial Jove?”\n", + "\n", + "“Go then (return’d the sire) without delay,\n", + "Exert thy will: I give the Fates their way.”\n", + "Swift at the mandate pleased Tritonia flies,\n", + "And stoops impetuous from the cleaving skies.\n", + "\n", + "As through the forest, o’er the vale and lawn,\n", + "The well-breath’d beagle drives the flying fawn,\n", + "In vain he tries the covert of the brakes,\n", + "Or deep beneath the trembling thicket shakes;\n", + "Sure of the vapour in the tainted dews,\n", + "The certain hound his various maze pursues.\n", + "Thus step by step, where’er the Trojan wheel’d,\n", + "There swift Achilles compass’d round the field.\n", + "Oft as to reach the Dardan gates he bends,\n", + "And hopes the assistance of his pitying friends,\n", + "(Whose showering arrows, as he coursed below,\n", + "From the high turrets might oppress the foe,)\n", + "So oft Achilles turns him to the plain:\n", + "He eyes the city, but he eyes in vain.\n", + "As men in slumbers seem with speedy pace,\n", + "One to pursue, and one to lead the chase,\n", + "Their sinking limbs the fancied course forsake,\n", + "Nor this can fly, nor that can overtake:\n", + "No less the labouring heroes pant and strain:\n", + "While that but flies, and this pursues in vain.\n", + "\n", + "What god, O muse, assisted Hector’s force\n", + "With fate itself so long to hold the course?\n", + "Phœbus it was; who, in his latest hour,\n", + "Endued his knees with strength, his nerves with power:\n", + "And great Achilles, lest some Greek’s advance\n", + "Should snatch the glory from his lifted lance,\n", + "Sign’d to the troops to yield his foe the way,\n", + "And leave untouch’d the honours of the day.\n", + "\n", + "Jove lifts the golden balances, that show\n", + "The fates of mortal men, and things below:\n", + "Here each contending hero’s lot he tries,\n", + "And weighs, with equal hand, their destinies.\n", + "Low sinks the scale surcharged with Hector’s fate;\n", + "Heavy with death it sinks, and hell receives the weight.\n", + "\n", + "Then Phœbus left him. Fierce Minerva flies\n", + "To stern Pelides, and triumphing, cries:\n", + "“O loved of Jove! this day our labours cease,\n", + "And conquest blazes with full beams on Greece.\n", + "Great Hector falls; that Hector famed so far,\n", + "Drunk with renown, insatiable of war,\n", + "Falls by thy hand, and mine! nor force, nor flight,\n", + "Shall more avail him, nor his god of light.\n", + "See, where in vain he supplicates above,\n", + "Roll’d at the feet of unrelenting Jove;\n", + "Rest here: myself will lead the Trojan on,\n", + "And urge to meet the fate he cannot shun.”\n", + "\n", + "Her voice divine the chief with joyful mind\n", + "Obey’d; and rested, on his lance reclined\n", + "While like Deiphobus the martial dame\n", + "(Her face, her gesture, and her arms the same),\n", + "In show an aid, by hapless Hector’s side\n", + "Approach’d, and greets him thus with voice belied:\n", + "\n", + "“Too long, O Hector! have I borne the sight\n", + "Of this distress, and sorrow’d in thy flight:\n", + "It fits us now a noble stand to make,\n", + "And here, as brothers, equal fates partake.”\n", + "\n", + "Then he: “O prince! allied in blood and fame,\n", + "Dearer than all that own a brother’s name;\n", + "Of all that Hecuba to Priam bore,\n", + "Long tried, long loved: much loved, but honoured more!\n", + "Since you, of all our numerous race alone\n", + "Defend my life, regardless of your own.”\n", + "\n", + "Again the goddess: “Much my father’s prayer,\n", + "And much my mother’s, press’d me to forbear:\n", + "My friends embraced my knees, adjured my stay,\n", + "But stronger love impell’d, and I obey.\n", + "Come then, the glorious conflict let us try,\n", + "Let the steel sparkle, and the javelin fly;\n", + "Or let us stretch Achilles on the field,\n", + "Or to his arm our bloody trophies yield.”\n", + "\n", + "Fraudful she said; then swiftly march’d before:\n", + "The Dardan hero shuns his foe no more.\n", + "Sternly they met. The silence Hector broke:\n", + "His dreadful plumage nodded as he spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Enough, O son of Peleus! Troy has view’d\n", + "Her walls thrice circled, and her chief pursued.\n", + "But now some god within me bids me try\n", + "Thine, or my fate: I kill thee, or I die.\n", + "Yet on the verge of battle let us stay,\n", + "And for a moment’s space suspend the day;\n", + "Let Heaven’s high powers be call’d to arbitrate\n", + "The just conditions of this stern debate,\n", + "(Eternal witnesses of all below,\n", + "And faithful guardians of the treasured vow!)\n", + "To them I swear; if, victor in the strife,\n", + "Jove by these hands shall shed thy noble life,\n", + "No vile dishonour shall thy corse pursue;\n", + "Stripp’d of its arms alone (the conqueror’s due)\n", + "The rest to Greece uninjured I’ll restore:\n", + "Now plight thy mutual oath, I ask no more.”\n", + "\n", + "“Talk not of oaths (the dreadful chief replies,\n", + "While anger flash’d from his disdainful eyes),\n", + "Detested as thou art, and ought to be,\n", + "Nor oath nor pact Achilles plights with thee:\n", + "Such pacts as lambs and rabid wolves combine,\n", + "Such leagues as men and furious lions join,\n", + "To such I call the gods! one constant state\n", + "Of lasting rancour and eternal hate:\n", + "No thought but rage, and never-ceasing strife,\n", + "Till death extinguish rage, and thought, and life.\n", + "Rouse then thy forces this important hour,\n", + "Collect thy soul, and call forth all thy power.\n", + "No further subterfuge, no further chance;\n", + "’Tis Pallas, Pallas gives thee to my lance.\n", + "Each Grecian ghost, by thee deprived of breath,\n", + "Now hovers round, and calls thee to thy death.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and launch’d his javelin at the foe;\n", + "But Hector shunn’d the meditated blow:\n", + "He stoop’d, while o’er his head the flying spear\n", + "Sang innocent, and spent its force in air.\n", + "Minerva watch’d it falling on the land,\n", + "Then drew, and gave to great Achilles’ hand,\n", + "Unseen of Hector, who, elate with joy,\n", + "Now shakes his lance, and braves the dread of Troy.\n", + "\n", + "“The life you boasted to that javelin given,\n", + "Prince! you have miss’d. My fate depends on Heaven,\n", + "To thee, presumptuous as thou art, unknown,\n", + "Or what must prove my fortune, or thy own.\n", + "Boasting is but an art, our fears to blind,\n", + "And with false terrors sink another’s mind.\n", + "But know, whatever fate I am to try,\n", + "By no dishonest wound shall Hector die.\n", + "I shall not fall a fugitive at least,\n", + "My soul shall bravely issue from my breast.\n", + "But first, try thou my arm; and may this dart\n", + "End all my country’s woes, deep buried in thy heart.”\n", + "\n", + "The weapon flew, its course unerring held,\n", + "Unerring, but the heavenly shield repell’d\n", + "The mortal dart; resulting with a bound\n", + "From off the ringing orb, it struck the ground.\n", + "Hector beheld his javelin fall in vain,\n", + "Nor other lance, nor other hope remain;\n", + "He calls Deiphobus, demands a spear—\n", + "In vain, for no Deiphobus was there.\n", + "All comfortless he stands: then, with a sigh;\n", + "“’Tis so—Heaven wills it, and my hour is nigh!\n", + "I deem’d Deiphobus had heard my call,\n", + "But he secure lies guarded in the wall.\n", + "A god deceived me; Pallas, ’twas thy deed,\n", + "Death and black fate approach! ’tis I must bleed.\n", + "No refuge now, no succour from above,\n", + "Great Jove deserts me, and the son of Jove,\n", + "Propitious once, and kind! Then welcome fate!\n", + "’Tis true I perish, yet I perish great:\n", + "Yet in a mighty deed I shall expire,\n", + "Let future ages hear it, and admire!”\n", + "\n", + "Fierce, at the word, his weighty sword he drew,\n", + "And, all collected, on Achilles flew.\n", + "So Jove’s bold bird, high balanced in the air,\n", + "Stoops from the clouds to truss the quivering hare.\n", + "Nor less Achilles his fierce soul prepares:\n", + "Before his breast the flaming shield he bears,\n", + "Refulgent orb! above his fourfold cone\n", + "The gilded horse-hair sparkled in the sun.\n", + "Nodding at every step: (Vulcanian frame!)\n", + "And as he moved, his figure seem’d on flame.\n", + "As radiant Hesper shines with keener light,[277]\n", + "Far-beaming o’er the silver host of night,\n", + "When all the starry train emblaze the sphere:\n", + "So shone the point of great Achilles’ spear.\n", + "In his right hand he waves the weapon round,\n", + "Eyes the whole man, and meditates the wound;\n", + "But the rich mail Patroclus lately wore\n", + "Securely cased the warrior’s body o’er.\n", + "One space at length he spies, to let in fate,\n", + "Where ’twixt the neck and throat the jointed plate\n", + "Gave entrance: through that penetrable part\n", + "Furious he drove the well-directed dart:\n", + "Nor pierced the windpipe yet, nor took the power\n", + "Of speech, unhappy! from thy dying hour.\n", + "Prone on the field the bleeding warrior lies,\n", + "While, thus triumphing, stern Achilles cries:\n", + "\n", + "“At last is Hector stretch’d upon the plain,\n", + "Who fear’d no vengeance for Patroclus slain:\n", + "Then, prince! you should have fear’d, what now you feel;\n", + "Achilles absent was Achilles still:\n", + "Yet a short space the great avenger stayed,\n", + "Then low in dust thy strength and glory laid.\n", + "Peaceful he sleeps, with all our rites adorn’d,\n", + "For ever honour’d, and for ever mourn’d:\n", + "While cast to all the rage of hostile power,\n", + "Thee birds shall mangle, and the gods devour.”\n", + "\n", + "Then Hector, fainting at the approach of death:\n", + "“By thy own soul! by those who gave thee breath!\n", + "By all the sacred prevalence of prayer;\n", + "Ah, leave me not for Grecian dogs to tear!\n", + "The common rites of sepulture bestow,\n", + "To soothe a father’s and a mother’s woe:\n", + "Let their large gifts procure an urn at least,\n", + "And Hector’s ashes in his country rest.”\n", + "\n", + "“No, wretch accursed! relentless he replies;\n", + "(Flames, as he spoke, shot flashing from his eyes;)\n", + "Not those who gave me breath should bid me spare,\n", + "Nor all the sacred prevalence of prayer.\n", + "Could I myself the bloody banquet join!\n", + "No—to the dogs that carcase I resign.\n", + "Should Troy, to bribe me, bring forth all her store,\n", + "And giving thousands, offer thousands more;\n", + "Should Dardan Priam, and his weeping dame,\n", + "Drain their whole realm to buy one funeral flame:\n", + "Their Hector on the pile they should not see,\n", + "Nor rob the vultures of one limb of thee.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the chief his dying accents drew:\n", + "“Thy rage, implacable! too well I knew:\n", + "The Furies that relentless breast have steel’d,\n", + "And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.\n", + "Yet think, a day will come, when fate’s decree\n", + "And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee;\n", + "Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate,\n", + "And stretch thee here before the Scæan gate.”[278]\n", + "\n", + "He ceased. The Fates suppress’d his labouring breath,\n", + "And his eyes stiffen’d at the hand of death;\n", + "To the dark realm the spirit wings its way,\n", + "(The manly body left a load of clay,)\n", + "And plaintive glides along the dreary coast,\n", + "A naked, wandering, melancholy ghost!\n", + "\n", + "Achilles, musing as he roll’d his eyes\n", + "O’er the dead hero, thus unheard, replies:\n", + "“Die thou the first! When Jove and heaven ordain,\n", + "I follow thee”—He said, and stripp’d the slain.\n", + "Then forcing backward from the gaping wound\n", + "The reeking javelin, cast it on the ground.\n", + "The thronging Greeks behold with wondering eyes\n", + "His manly beauty and superior size;\n", + "While some, ignobler, the great dead deface\n", + "With wounds ungenerous, or with taunts disgrace:\n", + "\n", + "“How changed that Hector, who like Jove of late\n", + "Sent lightning on our fleets, and scatter’d fate!”\n", + "\n", + "High o’er the slain the great Achilles stands,\n", + "Begirt with heroes and surrounding bands;\n", + "And thus aloud, while all the host attends:\n", + "“Princes and leaders! countrymen and friends!\n", + "Since now at length the powerful will of heaven\n", + "The dire destroyer to our arm has given,\n", + "Is not Troy fallen already? Haste, ye powers!\n", + "See, if already their deserted towers\n", + "Are left unmann’d; or if they yet retain\n", + "The souls of heroes, their great Hector slain.\n", + "But what is Troy, or glory what to me?\n", + "Or why reflects my mind on aught but thee,\n", + "Divine Patroclus! Death hath seal’d his eyes;\n", + "Unwept, unhonour’d, uninterr’d he lies!\n", + "Can his dear image from my soul depart,\n", + "Long as the vital spirit moves my heart?\n", + "If in the melancholy shades below,\n", + "The flames of friends and lovers cease to glow,\n", + "Yet mine shall sacred last; mine, undecay’d,\n", + "Burn on through death, and animate my shade.\n", + "Meanwhile, ye sons of Greece, in triumph bring\n", + "The corpse of Hector, and your pæans sing.\n", + "Be this the song, slow-moving toward the shore,\n", + "“Hector is dead, and Ilion is no more.””\n", + "\n", + "Then his fell soul a thought of vengeance bred;\n", + "(Unworthy of himself, and of the dead;)\n", + "The nervous ancles bored, his feet he bound\n", + "With thongs inserted through the double wound;\n", + "These fix’d up high behind the rolling wain,\n", + "His graceful head was trail’d along the plain.\n", + "Proud on his car the insulting victor stood,\n", + "And bore aloft his arms, distilling blood.\n", + "He smites the steeds; the rapid chariot flies;\n", + "The sudden clouds of circling dust arise.\n", + "Now lost is all that formidable air;\n", + "The face divine, and long-descending hair,\n", + "Purple the ground, and streak the sable sand;\n", + "Deform’d, dishonour’d, in his native land,\n", + "Given to the rage of an insulting throng,\n", + "And, in his parents’ sight, now dragg’d along!\n", + "\n", + "The mother first beheld with sad survey;\n", + "She rent her tresses, venerable grey,\n", + "And cast, far off, the regal veils away.\n", + "With piercing shrieks his bitter fate she moans,\n", + "While the sad father answers groans with groans,\n", + "Tears after tears his mournful cheeks o’erflow,\n", + "And the whole city wears one face of woe:\n", + "No less than if the rage of hostile fires,\n", + "From her foundations curling to her spires,\n", + "O’er the proud citadel at length should rise,\n", + "And the last blaze send Ilion to the skies.\n", + "The wretched monarch of the falling state,\n", + "Distracted, presses to the Dardan gate.\n", + "Scarce the whole people stop his desperate course,\n", + "While strong affliction gives the feeble force:\n", + "Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro,\n", + "In all the raging impotence of woe.\n", + "At length he roll’d in dust, and thus begun,\n", + "Imploring all, and naming one by one:\n", + "“Ah! let me, let me go where sorrow calls;\n", + "I, only I, will issue from your walls\n", + "(Guide or companion, friends! I ask ye none),\n", + "And bow before the murderer of my son.\n", + "My grief perhaps his pity may engage;\n", + "Perhaps at least he may respect my age.\n", + "He has a father too; a man like me;\n", + "One, not exempt from age and misery\n", + "(Vigorous no more, as when his young embrace\n", + "Begot this pest of me, and all my race).\n", + "How many valiant sons, in early bloom,\n", + "Has that cursed hand sent headlong to the tomb!\n", + "Thee, Hector! last: thy loss (divinely brave)\n", + "Sinks my sad soul with sorrow to the grave.\n", + "O had thy gentle spirit pass’d in peace,\n", + "The son expiring in the sire’s embrace,\n", + "While both thy parents wept the fatal hour,\n", + "And, bending o’er thee, mix’d the tender shower!\n", + "Some comfort that had been, some sad relief,\n", + "To melt in full satiety of grief!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus wail’d the father, grovelling on the ground,\n", + "And all the eyes of Ilion stream’d around.\n", + "\n", + "Amidst her matrons Hecuba appears:\n", + "(A mourning princess, and a train in tears;)\n", + "“Ah why has Heaven prolong’d this hated breath,\n", + "Patient of horrors, to behold thy death?\n", + "O Hector! late thy parents’ pride and joy,\n", + "The boast of nations! the defence of Troy!\n", + "To whom her safety and her fame she owed;\n", + "Her chief, her hero, and almost her god!\n", + "O fatal change! become in one sad day\n", + "A senseless corse! inanimated clay!”\n", + "\n", + "But not as yet the fatal news had spread\n", + "To fair Andromache, of Hector dead;\n", + "As yet no messenger had told his fate,\n", + "Not e’en his stay without the Scæan gate.\n", + "Far in the close recesses of the dome,\n", + "Pensive she plied the melancholy loom;\n", + "A growing work employ’d her secret hours,\n", + "Confusedly gay with intermingled flowers.\n", + "Her fair-haired handmaids heat the brazen urn,\n", + "The bath preparing for her lord’s return\n", + "In vain; alas! her lord returns no more;\n", + "Unbathed he lies, and bleeds along the shore!\n", + "Now from the walls the clamours reach her ear,\n", + "And all her members shake with sudden fear:\n", + "Forth from her ivory hand the shuttle falls,\n", + "And thus, astonish’d, to her maids she calls:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE BATH\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Ah follow me! (she cried) what plaintive noise\n", + "Invades my ear? ’Tis sure my mother’s voice.\n", + "My faltering knees their trembling frame desert,\n", + "A pulse unusual flutters at my heart;\n", + "Some strange disaster, some reverse of fate\n", + "(Ye gods avert it!) threats the Trojan state.\n", + "Far be the omen which my thoughts suggest!\n", + "But much I fear my Hector’s dauntless breast\n", + "Confronts Achilles; chased along the plain,\n", + "Shut from our walls! I fear, I fear him slain!\n", + "Safe in the crowd he ever scorn’d to wait,\n", + "And sought for glory in the jaws of fate:\n", + "Perhaps that noble heat has cost his breath,\n", + "Now quench’d for ever in the arms of death.”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke: and furious, with distracted pace,\n", + "Fears in her heart, and anguish in her face,\n", + "Flies through the dome (the maids her steps pursue),\n", + "And mounts the walls, and sends around her view.\n", + "Too soon her eyes the killing object found,\n", + "The godlike Hector dragg’d along the ground.\n", + "A sudden darkness shades her swimming eyes:\n", + "She faints, she falls; her breath, her colour flies.\n", + "Her hair’s fair ornaments, the braids that bound,\n", + "The net that held them, and the wreath that crown’d,\n", + "The veil and diadem flew far away\n", + "(The gift of Venus on her bridal day).\n", + "Around a train of weeping sisters stands,\n", + "To raise her sinking with assistant hands.\n", + "Scarce from the verge of death recall’d, again\n", + "She faints, or but recovers to complain.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“O wretched husband of a wretched wife!\n", + "Born with one fate, to one unhappy life!\n", + "For sure one star its baneful beam display’d\n", + "On Priam’s roof, and Hippoplacia’s shade.\n", + "From different parents, different climes we came.\n", + "At different periods, yet our fate the same!\n", + "Why was my birth to great Aëtion owed,\n", + "And why was all that tender care bestow’d?\n", + "Would I had never been!—O thou, the ghost\n", + "Of my dead husband! miserably lost!\n", + "Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!\n", + "And I abandon’d, desolate, alone!\n", + "An only child, once comfort of my pains,\n", + "Sad product now of hapless love, remains!\n", + "No more to smile upon his sire; no friend\n", + "To help him now! no father to defend!\n", + "For should he ’scape the sword, the common doom,\n", + "What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come!\n", + "Even from his own paternal roof expell’d,\n", + "Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field.\n", + "The day, that to the shades the father sends,\n", + "Robs the sad orphan of his father’s friends:\n", + "He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears\n", + "For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears;\n", + "Amongst the happy, unregarded, he\n", + "Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee,\n", + "While those his father’s former bounty fed\n", + "Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread:\n", + "The kindest but his present wants allay,\n", + "To leave him wretched the succeeding day.\n", + "Frugal compassion! Heedless, they who boast\n", + "Both parents still, nor feel what he has lost,\n", + "Shall cry, ‘Begone! thy father feasts not here:’\n", + "The wretch obeys, retiring with a tear.\n", + "Thus wretched, thus retiring all in tears,\n", + "To my sad soul Astyanax appears!\n", + "Forced by repeated insults to return,\n", + "And to his widow’d mother vainly mourn:\n", + "He, who, with tender delicacy bred,\n", + "With princes sported, and on dainties fed,\n", + "And when still evening gave him up to rest,\n", + "Sunk soft in down upon the nurse’s breast,\n", + "Must—ah what must he not? Whom Ilion calls\n", + "Astyanax, from her well-guarded walls,[279]\n", + "Is now that name no more, unhappy boy!\n", + "Since now no more thy father guards his Troy.\n", + "But thou, my Hector, liest exposed in air,\n", + "Far from thy parents’ and thy consort’s care;\n", + "Whose hand in vain, directed by her love,\n", + "The martial scarf and robe of triumph wove.\n", + "Now to devouring flames be these a prey,\n", + "Useless to thee, from this accursed day!\n", + "Yet let the sacrifice at least be paid,\n", + "An honour to the living, not the dead!”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "So spake the mournful dame: her matrons hear, Sigh back her sighs, and\n", + "answer tear with tear.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XXIII.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "FUNERAL GAMES IN HONOUR OF PATROCLUS.[280]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Achilles and the Myrmidons do honours to the body of Patroclus. After\n", + "the funeral feast he retires to the sea-shore, where, falling asleep,\n", + "the ghost of his friend appears to him, and demands the rites of\n", + "burial; the next morning the soldiers are sent with mules and waggons\n", + "to fetch wood for the pyre. The funeral procession, and the offering\n", + "their hair to the dead. Achilles sacrifices several animals, and lastly\n", + "twelve Trojan captives, at the pile; then sets fire to it. He pays\n", + "libations to the Winds, which (at the instance of Iris) rise, and raise\n", + "the flames. When the pile has burned all night, they gather the bones,\n", + "place them in an urn of gold, and raise the tomb. Achilles institutes\n", + "the funeral games: the chariot-race, the fight of the caestus, the\n", + "wrestling, the foot-race, the single combat, the discus, the shooting\n", + "with arrows, the darting the javelin: the various descriptions of\n", + "which, and the various success of the several antagonists, make the\n", + "greatest part of the book.\n", + " In this book ends the thirtieth day. The night following, the ghost\n", + " of Patroclus appears to Achilles: the one-and-thirtieth day is\n", + " employed in felling the timber for the pile: the two-and-thirtieth\n", + " in burning it; and the three-and-thirtieth in the games. The scene\n", + " is generally on the sea-shore.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Thus humbled in the dust, the pensive train\n", + "Through the sad city mourn’d her hero slain.\n", + "The body soil’d with dust, and black with gore,\n", + "Lies on broad Hellespont’s resounding shore.\n", + "The Grecians seek their ships, and clear the strand,\n", + "All, but the martial Myrmidonian band:\n", + "These yet assembled great Achilles holds,\n", + "And the stern purpose of his mind unfolds:\n", + "\n", + "“Not yet, my brave companions of the war,\n", + "Release your smoking coursers from the car;\n", + "But, with his chariot each in order led,\n", + "Perform due honours to Patroclus dead.\n", + "Ere yet from rest or food we seek relief,\n", + "Some rites remain, to glut our rage of grief.”\n", + "\n", + "The troops obey’d; and thrice in order led[281]\n", + "(Achilles first) their coursers round the dead;\n", + "And thrice their sorrows and laments renew;\n", + "Tears bathe their arms, and tears the sands bedew.\n", + "For such a warrior Thetis aids their woe,\n", + "Melts their strong hearts, and bids their eyes to flow.\n", + "But chief, Pelides: thick-succeeding sighs\n", + "Burst from his heart, and torrents from his eyes:\n", + "His slaughtering hands, yet red with blood, he laid\n", + "On his dead friend’s cold breast, and thus he said:\n", + "\n", + "“All hail, Patroclus! let thy honour’d ghost\n", + "Hear, and rejoice on Pluto’s dreary coast;\n", + "Behold! Achilles’ promise is complete;\n", + "The bloody Hector stretch’d before thy feet.\n", + "Lo! to the dogs his carcase I resign;\n", + "And twelve sad victims, of the Trojan line,\n", + "Sacred to vengeance, instant shall expire;\n", + "Their lives effused around thy funeral pyre.”\n", + "\n", + "Gloomy he said, and (horrible to view)\n", + "Before the bier the bleeding Hector threw,\n", + "Prone on the dust. The Myrmidons around\n", + "Unbraced their armour, and the steeds unbound.\n", + "All to Achilles’ sable ship repair,\n", + "Frequent and full, the genial feast to share.\n", + "Now from the well-fed swine black smokes aspire,\n", + "The bristly victims hissing o’er the fire:\n", + "The huge ox bellowing falls; with feebler cries\n", + "Expires the goat; the sheep in silence dies.\n", + "Around the hero’s prostrate body flow’d,\n", + "In one promiscuous stream, the reeking blood.\n", + "And now a band of Argive monarchs brings\n", + "The glorious victor to the king of kings.\n", + "From his dead friend the pensive warrior went,\n", + "With steps unwilling, to the regal tent.\n", + "The attending heralds, as by office bound,\n", + "With kindled flames the tripod-vase surround:\n", + "To cleanse his conquering hands from hostile gore,\n", + "They urged in vain; the chief refused, and swore:[282]\n", + "\n", + "“No drop shall touch me, by almighty Jove!\n", + "The first and greatest of the gods above!\n", + "Till on the pyre I place thee; till I rear\n", + "The grassy mound, and clip thy sacred hair.\n", + "Some ease at least those pious rites may give,\n", + "And soothe my sorrows, while I bear to live.\n", + "Howe’er, reluctant as I am, I stay\n", + "And share your feast; but with the dawn of day,\n", + "(O king of men!) it claims thy royal care,\n", + "That Greece the warrior’s funeral pile prepare,\n", + "And bid the forests fall: (such rites are paid\n", + "To heroes slumbering in eternal shade:)\n", + "Then, when his earthly part shall mount in fire,\n", + "Let the leagued squadrons to their posts retire.”\n", + "\n", + "He spoke: they hear him, and the word obey;\n", + "The rage of hunger and of thirst allay,\n", + "Then ease in sleep the labours of the day.\n", + "But great Pelides, stretch’d along the shore,\n", + "Where, dash’d on rocks, the broken billows roar,\n", + "Lies inly groaning; while on either hand\n", + "The martial Myrmidons confusedly stand.\n", + "Along the grass his languid members fall,\n", + "Tired with his chase around the Trojan wall;\n", + "Hush’d by the murmurs of the rolling deep,\n", + "At length he sinks in the soft arms of sleep.\n", + "When lo! the shade, before his closing eyes,\n", + "Of sad Patroclus rose, or seem’d to rise:\n", + "In the same robe he living wore, he came:\n", + "In stature, voice, and pleasing look, the same.\n", + "The form familiar hover’d o’er his head,\n", + "“And sleeps Achilles? (thus the phantom said:)\n", + "Sleeps my Achilles, his Patroclus dead?\n", + "Living, I seem’d his dearest, tenderest care,\n", + "But now forgot, I wander in the air.\n", + "Let my pale corse the rites of burial know,\n", + "And give me entrance in the realms below:\n", + "Till then the spirit finds no resting-place,\n", + "But here and there the unbodied spectres chase\n", + "The vagrant dead around the dark abode,\n", + "Forbid to cross the irremeable flood.\n", + "Now give thy hand; for to the farther shore\n", + "When once we pass, the soul returns no more:\n", + "When once the last funereal flames ascend,\n", + "No more shall meet Achilles and his friend;\n", + "No more our thoughts to those we loved make known;\n", + "Or quit the dearest, to converse alone.\n", + "Me fate has sever’d from the sons of earth,\n", + "The fate fore-doom’d that waited from my birth:\n", + "Thee too it waits; before the Trojan wall\n", + "Even great and godlike thou art doom’d to fall.\n", + "Hear then; and as in fate and love we join,\n", + "Ah suffer that my bones may rest with thine!\n", + "Together have we lived; together bred,\n", + "One house received us, and one table fed;\n", + "That golden urn, thy goddess-mother gave,\n", + "May mix our ashes in one common grave.”\n", + "\n", + "“And is it thou? (he answers) To my sight[283]\n", + "Once more return’st thou from the realms of night?\n", + "O more than brother! Think each office paid,\n", + "Whate’er can rest a discontented shade;\n", + "But grant one last embrace, unhappy boy!\n", + "Afford at least that melancholy joy.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and with his longing arms essay’d\n", + "In vain to grasp the visionary shade!\n", + "Like a thin smoke he sees the spirit fly,[284]\n", + "And hears a feeble, lamentable cry.\n", + "Confused he wakes; amazement breaks the bands\n", + "Of golden sleep, and starting from the sands,\n", + "Pensive he muses with uplifted hands:\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis true, ’tis certain; man, though dead, retains\n", + "Part of himself; the immortal mind remains:\n", + "The form subsists without the body’s aid,\n", + "Aerial semblance, and an empty shade!\n", + "This night my friend, so late in battle lost,\n", + "Stood at my side, a pensive, plaintive ghost:\n", + "Even now familiar, as in life, he came;\n", + "Alas! how different! yet how like the same!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus while he spoke, each eye grew big with tears:\n", + "And now the rosy-finger’d morn appears,\n", + "Shows every mournful face with tears o’erspread,\n", + "And glares on the pale visage of the dead.\n", + "But Agamemnon, as the rites demand,\n", + "With mules and waggons sends a chosen band\n", + "To load the timber, and the pile to rear;\n", + "A charge consign’d to Merion’s faithful care.\n", + "With proper instruments they take the road,\n", + "Axes to cut, and ropes to sling the load.\n", + "First march the heavy mules, securely slow,\n", + "O’er hills, o’er dales, o’er crags, o’er rocks they go:[285]\n", + "Jumping, high o’er the shrubs of the rough ground,\n", + "Rattle the clattering cars, and the shock’d axles bound.\n", + "But when arrived at Ida’s spreading woods,[286]\n", + "(Fair Ida, water’d with descending floods,)\n", + "Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes;\n", + "On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks\n", + "Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown;\n", + "Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down.\n", + "The wood the Grecians cleave, prepared to burn;\n", + "And the slow mules the same rough road return.\n", + "The sturdy woodmen equal burdens bore\n", + "(Such charge was given them) to the sandy shore;\n", + "There on the spot which great Achilles show’d,\n", + "They eased their shoulders, and disposed the load;\n", + "Circling around the place, where times to come\n", + "Shall view Patroclus’ and Achilles’ tomb.\n", + "The hero bids his martial troops appear\n", + "High on their cars in all the pomp of war;\n", + "Each in refulgent arms his limbs attires,\n", + "All mount their chariots, combatants and squires.\n", + "The chariots first proceed, a shining train;\n", + "Then clouds of foot that smoke along the plain;\n", + "Next these the melancholy band appear;\n", + "Amidst, lay dead Patroclus on the bier;\n", + "O’er all the corse their scattered locks they throw;\n", + "Achilles next, oppress’d with mighty woe,\n", + "Supporting with his hands the hero’s head,\n", + "Bends o’er the extended body of the dead.\n", + "Patroclus decent on the appointed ground\n", + "They place, and heap the sylvan pile around.\n", + "But great Achilles stands apart in prayer,\n", + "And from his head divides the yellow hair;\n", + "Those curling locks which from his youth he vow’d,[287]\n", + "And sacred grew, to Sperchius’ honour’d flood:\n", + "Then sighing, to the deep his locks he cast,\n", + "And roll’d his eyes around the watery waste:\n", + "\n", + "“Sperchius! whose waves in mazy errors lost\n", + "Delightful roll along my native coast!\n", + "To whom we vainly vow’d, at our return,\n", + "These locks to fall, and hecatombs to burn:\n", + "Full fifty rams to bleed in sacrifice,\n", + "Where to the day thy silver fountains rise,\n", + "And where in shade of consecrated bowers\n", + "Thy altars stand, perfumed with native flowers!\n", + "So vow’d my father, but he vow’d in vain;\n", + "No more Achilles sees his native plain;\n", + "In that vain hope these hairs no longer grow,\n", + "Patroclus bears them to the shades below.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus o’er Patroclus while the hero pray’d,\n", + "On his cold hand the sacred lock he laid.\n", + "Once more afresh the Grecian sorrows flow:\n", + "And now the sun had set upon their woe;\n", + "But to the king of men thus spoke the chief:\n", + "“Enough, Atrides! give the troops relief:\n", + "Permit the mourning legions to retire,\n", + "And let the chiefs alone attend the pyre;\n", + "The pious care be ours, the dead to burn—”\n", + "He said: the people to their ships return:\n", + "While those deputed to inter the slain\n", + "Heap with a rising pyramid the plain.[288]\n", + "A hundred foot in length, a hundred wide,\n", + "The growing structure spreads on every side;\n", + "High on the top the manly corse they lay,\n", + "And well-fed sheep and sable oxen slay:\n", + "Achilles covered with their fat the dead,\n", + "And the piled victims round the body spread;\n", + "Then jars of honey, and of fragrant oil,\n", + "Suspends around, low-bending o’er the pile.\n", + "Four sprightly coursers, with a deadly groan\n", + "Pour forth their lives, and on the pyre are thrown.\n", + "Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board,\n", + "Fall two, selected to attend their lord,\n", + "Then last of all, and horrible to tell,\n", + "Sad sacrifice! twelve Trojan captives fell.[289]\n", + "On these the rage of fire victorious preys,\n", + "Involves and joins them in one common blaze.\n", + "Smear’d with the bloody rites, he stands on high,\n", + "And calls the spirit with a dreadful cry:[290]\n", + "\n", + "“All hail, Patroclus! let thy vengeful ghost\n", + "Hear, and exult, on Pluto’s dreary coast.\n", + "Behold Achilles’ promise fully paid,\n", + "Twelve Trojan heroes offer’d to thy shade;\n", + "But heavier fates on Hector’s corse attend,\n", + "Saved from the flames, for hungry dogs to rend.”\n", + "\n", + "So spake he, threatening: but the gods made vain\n", + "His threat, and guard inviolate the slain:\n", + "Celestial Venus hover’d o’er his head,\n", + "And roseate unguents, heavenly fragrance! shed:\n", + "She watch’d him all the night and all the day,\n", + "And drove the bloodhounds from their destined prey.\n", + "Nor sacred Phœbus less employ’d his care;\n", + "He pour’d around a veil of gather’d air,\n", + "And kept the nerves undried, the flesh entire,\n", + "Against the solar beam and Sirian fire.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Nor yet the pile, where dead Patroclus lies,\n", + "Smokes, nor as yet the sullen flames arise;\n", + "But, fast beside, Achilles stood in prayer,\n", + "Invoked the gods whose spirit moves the air,\n", + "And victims promised, and libations cast,\n", + "To gentle Zephyr and the Boreal blast:\n", + "He call’d the aerial powers, along the skies\n", + "To breathe, and whisper to the fires to rise.\n", + "The winged Iris heard the hero’s call,\n", + "And instant hasten’d to their airy hall,\n", + "Where in old Zephyr’s open courts on high,\n", + "Sat all the blustering brethren of the sky.\n", + "She shone amidst them, on her painted bow;\n", + "The rocky pavement glitter’d with the show.\n", + "All from the banquet rise, and each invites\n", + "The various goddess to partake the rites.\n", + "“Not so (the dame replied), I haste to go\n", + "To sacred Ocean, and the floods below:\n", + "Even now our solemn hecatombs attend,\n", + "And heaven is feasting on the world’s green end\n", + "With righteous Ethiops (uncorrupted train!)\n", + "Far on the extremest limits of the main.\n", + "But Peleus’ son entreats, with sacrifice,\n", + "The western spirit, and the north, to rise!\n", + "Let on Patroclus’ pile your blast be driven,\n", + "And bear the blazing honours high to heaven.”\n", + "\n", + "Swift as the word she vanish’d from their view;\n", + "Swift as the word the winds tumultuous flew;\n", + "Forth burst the stormy band with thundering roar,\n", + "And heaps on heaps the clouds are toss’d before.\n", + "To the wide main then stooping from the skies,\n", + "The heaving deeps in watery mountains rise:\n", + "Troy feels the blast along her shaking walls,\n", + "Till on the pile the gather’d tempest falls.\n", + "The structure crackles in the roaring fires,\n", + "And all the night the plenteous flame aspires.\n", + "All night Achilles hails Patroclus’ soul,\n", + "With large libations from the golden bowl.\n", + "As a poor father, helpless and undone,\n", + "Mourns o’er the ashes of an only son,\n", + "Takes a sad pleasure the last bones to burn,\n", + "And pours in tears, ere yet they close the urn:\n", + "So stay’d Achilles, circling round the shore,\n", + "So watch’d the flames, till now they flame no more.\n", + "’Twas when, emerging through the shades of night,\n", + "The morning planet told the approach of light;\n", + "And, fast behind, Aurora’s warmer ray\n", + "O’er the broad ocean pour’d the golden day:\n", + "Then sank the blaze, the pile no longer burn’d,\n", + "And to their caves the whistling winds return’d:\n", + "Across the Thracian seas their course they bore;\n", + "The ruffled seas beneath their passage roar.\n", + "\n", + "Then parting from the pile he ceased to weep,\n", + "And sank to quiet in the embrace of sleep,\n", + "Exhausted with his grief: meanwhile the crowd\n", + "Of thronging Grecians round Achilles stood;\n", + "The tumult waked him: from his eyes he shook\n", + "Unwilling slumber, and the chiefs bespoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Ye kings and princes of the Achaian name!\n", + "First let us quench the yet remaining flame\n", + "With sable wine; then, as the rites direct,\n", + "The hero’s bones with careful view select:\n", + "(Apart, and easy to be known they lie\n", + "Amidst the heap, and obvious to the eye:\n", + "The rest around the margin will be seen\n", + "Promiscuous, steeds and immolated men:)\n", + "These wrapp’d in double cauls of fat, prepare;\n", + "And in the golden vase dispose with care;\n", + "There let them rest with decent honour laid,\n", + "Till I shall follow to the infernal shade.\n", + "Meantime erect the tomb with pious hands,\n", + "A common structure on the humble sands:\n", + "Hereafter Greece some nobler work may raise,\n", + "And late posterity record our praise!”\n", + "\n", + "The Greeks obey; where yet the embers glow,\n", + "Wide o’er the pile the sable wine they throw,\n", + "And deep subsides the ashy heap below.\n", + "Next the white bones his sad companions place,\n", + "With tears collected, in the golden vase.\n", + "The sacred relics to the tent they bore;\n", + "The urn a veil of linen covered o’er.\n", + "That done, they bid the sepulchre aspire,\n", + "And cast the deep foundations round the pyre;\n", + "High in the midst they heap the swelling bed\n", + "Of rising earth, memorial of the dead.\n", + "\n", + "The swarming populace the chief detains,\n", + "And leads amidst a wide extent of plains;\n", + "There placed them round: then from the ships proceeds\n", + "A train of oxen, mules, and stately steeds,\n", + "Vases and tripods (for the funeral games),\n", + "Resplendent brass, and more resplendent dames.\n", + "First stood the prizes to reward the force\n", + "Of rapid racers in the dusty course:\n", + "A woman for the first, in beauty’s bloom,\n", + "Skill’d in the needle, and the labouring loom;\n", + "And a large vase, where two bright handles rise,\n", + "Of twenty measures its capacious size.\n", + "The second victor claims a mare unbroke,\n", + "Big with a mule, unknowing of the yoke:\n", + "The third, a charger yet untouch’d by flame;\n", + "Four ample measures held the shining frame:\n", + "Two golden talents for the fourth were placed:\n", + "An ample double bowl contents the last.\n", + "These in fair order ranged upon the plain,\n", + "The hero, rising, thus address’d the train:\n", + "\n", + "“Behold the prizes, valiant Greeks! decreed\n", + "To the brave rulers of the racing steed;\n", + "Prizes which none beside ourself could gain,\n", + "Should our immortal coursers take the plain;\n", + "(A race unrivall’d, which from ocean’s god\n", + "Peleus received, and on his son bestow’d.)\n", + "But this no time our vigour to display;\n", + "Nor suit, with them, the games of this sad day:\n", + "Lost is Patroclus now, that wont to deck\n", + "Their flowing manes, and sleek their glossy neck.\n", + "Sad, as they shared in human grief, they stand,\n", + "And trail those graceful honours on the sand!\n", + "Let others for the noble task prepare,\n", + "Who trust the courser and the flying car.”\n", + "\n", + "Fired at his word the rival racers rise;\n", + "But far the first Eumelus hopes the prize,\n", + "Famed though Pieria for the fleetest breed,\n", + "And skill’d to manage the high-bounding steed.\n", + "With equal ardour bold Tydides swell’d,\n", + "The steeds of Tros beneath his yoke compell’d\n", + "(Which late obey’d the Dardan chief’s command,\n", + "When scarce a god redeem’d him from his hand).\n", + "Then Menelaus his Podargus brings,\n", + "And the famed courser of the king of kings:\n", + "Whom rich Echepolus (more rich than brave),\n", + "To ’scape the wars, to Agamemnon gave,\n", + "(Æthe her name) at home to end his days;\n", + "Base wealth preferring to eternal praise.\n", + "Next him Antilochus demands the course\n", + "With beating heart, and cheers his Pylian horse.\n", + "Experienced Nestor gives his son the reins,\n", + "Directs his judgment, and his heat restrains;\n", + "Nor idly warns the hoary sire, nor hears\n", + "The prudent son with unattending ears.\n", + "\n", + "“My son! though youthful ardour fire thy breast,\n", + "The gods have loved thee, and with arts have bless’d;\n", + "Neptune and Jove on thee conferr’d the skill\n", + "Swift round the goal to turn the flying wheel.\n", + "To guide thy conduct little precept needs;\n", + "But slow, and past their vigour, are my steeds.\n", + "Fear not thy rivals, though for swiftness known;\n", + "Compare those rivals’ judgment and thy own:\n", + "It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,\n", + "And to be swift is less than to be wise.\n", + "’Tis more by art than force of numerous strokes\n", + "The dexterous woodman shapes the stubborn oaks;\n", + "By art the pilot, through the boiling deep\n", + "And howling tempest, steers the fearless ship;\n", + "And ’tis the artist wins the glorious course;\n", + "Not those who trust in chariots and in horse.\n", + "In vain, unskilful to the goal they strive,\n", + "And short, or wide, the ungovern’d courser drive:\n", + "While with sure skill, though with inferior steeds,\n", + "The knowing racer to his end proceeds;\n", + "Fix’d on the goal his eye foreruns the course,\n", + "His hand unerring steers the steady horse,\n", + "And now contracts, or now extends the rein,\n", + "Observing still the foremost on the plain.\n", + "Mark then the goal, ’tis easy to be found;\n", + "Yon aged trunk, a cubit from the ground;\n", + "Of some once stately oak the last remains,\n", + "Or hardy fir, unperish’d with the rains:\n", + "Inclosed with stones, conspicuous from afar;\n", + "And round, a circle for the wheeling car.\n", + "(Some tomb perhaps of old, the dead to grace;\n", + "Or then, as now, the limit of a race.)\n", + "Bear close to this, and warily proceed,\n", + "A little bending to the left-hand steed;\n", + "But urge the right, and give him all the reins;\n", + "While thy strict hand his fellow’s head restrains,\n", + "And turns him short; till, doubling as they roll,\n", + "The wheel’s round naves appear to brush the goal.\n", + "Yet (not to break the car, or lame the horse)\n", + "Clear of the stony heap direct the course;\n", + "Lest through incaution failing, thou mayst be\n", + "A joy to others, a reproach to me.\n", + "So shalt thou pass the goal, secure of mind,\n", + "And leave unskilful swiftness far behind:\n", + "Though thy fierce rival drove the matchless steed\n", + "Which bore Adrastus, of celestial breed;\n", + "Or the famed race, through all the regions known,\n", + "That whirl’d the car of proud Laomedon.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus (nought unsaid) the much-advising sage\n", + "Concludes; then sat, stiff with unwieldy age.\n", + "Next bold Meriones was seen to rise,\n", + "The last, but not least ardent for the prize.\n", + "They mount their seats; the lots their place dispose\n", + "(Roll’d in his helmet, these Achilles throws).\n", + "Young Nestor leads the race: Eumelus then;\n", + "And next the brother of the king of men:\n", + "Thy lot, Meriones, the fourth was cast;\n", + "And, far the bravest, Diomed, was last.\n", + "They stand in order, an impatient train:\n", + "Pelides points the barrier on the plain,\n", + "And sends before old Phœnix to the place,\n", + "To mark the racers, and to judge the race.\n", + "At once the coursers from the barrier bound;\n", + "The lifted scourges all at once resound;\n", + "Their heart, their eyes, their voice, they send before;\n", + "And up the champaign thunder from the shore:\n", + "Thick, where they drive, the dusty clouds arise,\n", + "And the lost courser in the whirlwind flies;\n", + "Loose on their shoulders the long manes reclined,\n", + "Float in their speed, and dance upon the wind:\n", + "The smoking chariots, rapid as they bound,\n", + "Now seem to touch the sky, and now the ground.\n", + "While hot for fame, and conquest all their care,\n", + "(Each o’er his flying courser hung in air,)\n", + "Erect with ardour, poised upon the rein,\n", + "They pant, they stretch, they shout along the plain.\n", + "Now (the last compass fetch’d around the goal)\n", + "At the near prize each gathers all his soul,\n", + "Each burns with double hope, with double pain,\n", + "Tears up the shore, and thunders toward the main.\n", + "First flew Eumelus on Pheretian steeds;\n", + "With those of Tros bold Diomed succeeds:\n", + "Close on Eumelus’ back they puff the wind,\n", + "And seem just mounting on his car behind;\n", + "Full on his neck he feels the sultry breeze,\n", + "And, hovering o’er, their stretching shadows sees.\n", + "Then had he lost, or left a doubtful prize;\n", + "But angry Phœbus to Tydides flies,\n", + "Strikes from his hand the scourge, and renders vain\n", + "His matchless horses’ labour on the plain.\n", + "Rage fills his eye with anguish, to survey\n", + "Snatch’d from his hope the glories of the day.\n", + "The fraud celestial Pallas sees with pain,\n", + "Springs to her knight, and gives the scourge again,\n", + "And fills his steeds with vigour. At a stroke\n", + "She breaks his rival’s chariot from the yoke:\n", + "No more their way the startled horses held;\n", + "The car reversed came rattling on the field;\n", + "Shot headlong from his seat, beside the wheel,\n", + "Prone on the dust the unhappy master fell;\n", + "His batter’d face and elbows strike the ground;\n", + "Nose, mouth, and front, one undistinguish’d wound:\n", + "Grief stops his voice, a torrent drowns his eyes:\n", + "Before him far the glad Tydides flies;\n", + "Minerva’s spirit drives his matchless pace,\n", + "And crowns him victor of the labour’d race.\n", + "\n", + "The next, though distant, Menelaus succeeds;\n", + "While thus young Nestor animates his steeds:\n", + "“Now, now, my generous pair, exert your force;\n", + "Not that we hope to match Tydides’ horse,\n", + "Since great Minerva wings their rapid way,\n", + "And gives their lord the honours of the day;\n", + "But reach Atrides! shall his mare outgo\n", + "Your swiftness? vanquish’d by a female foe?\n", + "Through your neglect, if lagging on the plain\n", + "The last ignoble gift be all we gain,\n", + "No more shall Nestor’s hand your food supply,\n", + "The old man’s fury rises, and ye die.\n", + "Haste then: yon narrow road, before our sight,\n", + "Presents the occasion, could we use it right.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he. The coursers at their master’s threat\n", + "With quicker steps the sounding champaign beat.\n", + "And now Antilochus with nice survey\n", + "Observes the compass of the hollow way.\n", + "’Twas where, by force of wintry torrents torn,\n", + "Fast by the road a precipice was worn:\n", + "Here, where but one could pass, to shun the throng\n", + "The Spartan hero’s chariot smoked along.\n", + "Close up the venturous youth resolves to keep,\n", + "Still edging near, and bears him toward the steep.\n", + "Atrides, trembling, casts his eye below,\n", + "And wonders at the rashness of his foe.\n", + "“Hold, stay your steeds—What madness thus to ride\n", + "This narrow way! take larger field (he cried),\n", + "Or both must fall.”—Atrides cried in vain;\n", + "He flies more fast, and throws up all the rein.\n", + "Far as an able arm the disk can send,\n", + "When youthful rivals their full force extend,\n", + "So far, Antilochus! thy chariot flew\n", + "Before the king: he, cautious, backward drew\n", + "His horse compell’d; foreboding in his fears\n", + "The rattling ruin of the clashing cars,\n", + "The floundering coursers rolling on the plain,\n", + "And conquest lost through frantic haste to gain.\n", + "But thus upbraids his rival as he flies:\n", + "“Go, furious youth! ungenerous and unwise!\n", + "Go, but expect not I’ll the prize resign;\n", + "Add perjury to fraud, and make it thine—”\n", + "Then to his steeds with all his force he cries,\n", + "“Be swift, be vigorous, and regain the prize!\n", + "Your rivals, destitute of youthful force,\n", + "With fainting knees shall labour in the course,\n", + "And yield the glory yours.”—The steeds obey;\n", + "Already at their heels they wing their way,\n", + "And seem already to retrieve the day.\n", + "\n", + "Meantime the Grecians in a ring beheld\n", + "The coursers bounding o’er the dusty field.\n", + "The first who mark’d them was the Cretan king;\n", + "High on a rising ground, above the ring,\n", + "The monarch sat: from whence with sure survey\n", + "He well observed the chief who led the way,\n", + "And heard from far his animating cries,\n", + "And saw the foremost steed with sharpen’d eyes;\n", + "On whose broad front a blaze of shining white,\n", + "Like the full moon, stood obvious to the sight.\n", + "He saw; and rising, to the Greeks begun:\n", + "“Are yonder horse discern’d by me alone?\n", + "Or can ye, all, another chief survey,\n", + "And other steeds than lately led the way?\n", + "Those, though the swiftest, by some god withheld,\n", + "Lie sure disabled in the middle field:\n", + "For, since the goal they doubled, round the plain\n", + "I search to find them, but I search in vain.\n", + "Perchance the reins forsook the driver’s hand,\n", + "And, turn’d too short, he tumbled on the strand,\n", + "Shot from the chariot; while his coursers stray\n", + "With frantic fury from the destined way.\n", + "Rise then some other, and inform my sight,\n", + "For these dim eyes, perhaps, discern not right;\n", + "Yet sure he seems, to judge by shape and air,\n", + "The great Ætolian chief, renown’d in war.”\n", + "\n", + "“Old man! (Oïleus rashly thus replies)\n", + "Thy tongue too hastily confers the prize;\n", + "Of those who view the course, nor sharpest eyed,\n", + "Nor youngest, yet the readiest to decide.\n", + "Eumelus’ steeds, high bounding in the chase,\n", + "Still, as at first, unrivall’d lead the race:\n", + "I well discern him, as he shakes the rein,\n", + "And hear his shouts victorious o’er the plain.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus he. Idomeneus, incensed, rejoin’d:\n", + "“Barbarous of words! and arrogant of mind!\n", + "Contentious prince, of all the Greeks beside\n", + "The last in merit, as the first in pride!\n", + "To vile reproach what answer can we make?\n", + "A goblet or a tripod let us stake,\n", + "And be the king the judge. The most unwise\n", + "Will learn their rashness, when they pay the price.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: and Ajax, by mad passion borne,\n", + "Stern had replied; fierce scorn enhancing scorn\n", + "To fell extremes. But Thetis’ godlike son\n", + "Awful amidst them rose, and thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Forbear, ye chiefs! reproachful to contend;\n", + "Much would ye blame, should others thus offend:\n", + "And lo! the approaching steeds your contest end.”\n", + "No sooner had he spoke, but thundering near,\n", + "Drives, through a stream of dust, the charioteer.\n", + "High o’er his head the circling lash he wields:\n", + "His bounding horses scarcely touch the fields:\n", + "His car amidst the dusty whirlwind roll’d,\n", + "Bright with the mingled blaze of tin and gold,\n", + "Refulgent through the cloud: no eye could find\n", + "The track his flying wheels had left behind:\n", + "And the fierce coursers urged their rapid pace\n", + "So swift, it seem’d a flight, and not a race.\n", + "Now victor at the goal Tydides stands,\n", + "Quits his bright car, and springs upon the sands;\n", + "From the hot steeds the sweaty torrents stream;\n", + "The well-plied whip is hung athwart the beam:\n", + "With joy brave Sthenelus receives the prize,\n", + "The tripod-vase, and dame with radiant eyes:\n", + "These to the ships his train triumphant leads,\n", + "The chief himself unyokes the panting steeds.\n", + "\n", + "Young Nestor follows (who by art, not force,\n", + "O’erpass’d Atrides) second in the course.\n", + "Behind, Atrides urged the race, more near\n", + "Than to the courser in his swift career\n", + "The following car, just touching with his heel\n", + "And brushing with his tail the whirling wheel:\n", + "Such, and so narrow now the space between\n", + "The rivals, late so distant on the green;\n", + "So soon swift Æthe her lost ground regain’d,\n", + "One length, one moment, had the race obtain’d.\n", + "\n", + "Merion pursued, at greater distance still,\n", + "With tardier coursers, and inferior skill.\n", + "Last came, Admetus! thy unhappy son;\n", + "Slow dragged the steeds his batter’d chariot on:\n", + "Achilles saw, and pitying thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“Behold! the man whose matchless art surpass’d\n", + "The sons of Greece! the ablest, yet the last!\n", + "Fortune denies, but justice bids us pay\n", + "(Since great Tydides bears the first away)\n", + "To him the second honours of the day.”\n", + "\n", + "The Greeks consent with loud-applauding cries,\n", + "And then Eumelus had received the prize,\n", + "But youthful Nestor, jealous of his fame,\n", + "The award opposes, and asserts his claim.\n", + "“Think not (he cries) I tamely will resign,\n", + "O Peleus’ son! the mare so justly mine.\n", + "What if the gods, the skilful to confound,\n", + "Have thrown the horse and horseman to the ground?\n", + "Perhaps he sought not heaven by sacrifice,\n", + "And vows omitted forfeited the prize.\n", + "If yet (distinction to thy friend to show,\n", + "And please a soul desirous to bestow)\n", + "Some gift must grace Eumelus, view thy store\n", + "Of beauteous handmaids, steeds, and shining ore;\n", + "An ample present let him thence receive,\n", + "And Greece shall praise thy generous thirst to give.\n", + "But this my prize I never shall forego;\n", + "This, who but touches, warriors! is my foe.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus spake the youth; nor did his words offend;\n", + "Pleased with the well-turn’d flattery of a friend,\n", + "Achilles smiled: “The gift proposed (he cried),\n", + "Antilochus! we shall ourself provide.\n", + "With plates of brass the corslet cover’d o’er,\n", + "(The same renown’d Asteropaeus wore,)\n", + "Whose glittering margins raised with silver shine,\n", + "(No vulgar gift,) Eumelus! shall be thine.”\n", + "\n", + "He said: Automedon at his command\n", + "The corslet brought, and gave it to his hand.\n", + "Distinguish’d by his friend, his bosom glows\n", + "With generous joy: then Menelaus rose;\n", + "The herald placed the sceptre in his hands,\n", + "And still’d the clamour of the shouting bands.\n", + "Not without cause incensed at Nestor’s son,\n", + "And inly grieving, thus the king begun:\n", + "\n", + "“The praise of wisdom, in thy youth obtain’d,\n", + "An act so rash, Antilochus! has stain’d.\n", + "Robb’d of my glory and my just reward,\n", + "To you, O Grecians! be my wrong declared:\n", + "So not a leader shall our conduct blame,\n", + "Or judge me envious of a rival’s fame.\n", + "But shall not we, ourselves, the truth maintain?\n", + "What needs appealing in a fact so plain?\n", + "What Greek shall blame me, if I bid thee rise,\n", + "And vindicate by oath th’ ill-gotten prize?\n", + "Rise if thou darest, before thy chariot stand,\n", + "The driving scourge high-lifted in thy hand;\n", + "And touch thy steeds, and swear thy whole intent\n", + "Was but to conquer, not to circumvent.\n", + "Swear by that god whose liquid arms surround\n", + "The globe, and whose dread earthquakes heave the ground!”\n", + "\n", + "The prudent chief with calm attention heard;\n", + "Then mildly thus: “Excuse, if youth have err’d;\n", + "Superior as thou art, forgive the offence,\n", + "Nor I thy equal, or in years, or sense.\n", + "Thou know’st the errors of unripen’d age,\n", + "Weak are its counsels, headlong is its rage.\n", + "The prize I quit, if thou thy wrath resign;\n", + "The mare, or aught thou ask’st, be freely thine\n", + "Ere I become (from thy dear friendship torn)\n", + "Hateful to thee, and to the gods forsworn.”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke Antilochus; and at the word\n", + "The mare contested to the king restored.\n", + "Joy swells his soul: as when the vernal grain\n", + "Lifts the green ear above the springing plain,\n", + "The fields their vegetable life renew,\n", + "And laugh and glitter with the morning dew;\n", + "Such joy the Spartan’s shining face o’erspread,\n", + "And lifted his gay heart, while thus he said:\n", + "\n", + "“Still may our souls, O generous youth! agree\n", + "’Tis now Atrides’ turn to yield to thee.\n", + "Rash heat perhaps a moment might control,\n", + "Not break, the settled temper of thy soul.\n", + "Not but (my friend) ’tis still the wiser way\n", + "To waive contention with superior sway;\n", + "For ah! how few, who should like thee offend,\n", + "Like thee, have talents to regain the friend!\n", + "To plead indulgence, and thy fault atone,\n", + "Suffice thy father’s merit and thy own:\n", + "Generous alike, for me, the sire and son\n", + "Have greatly suffer’d, and have greatly done.\n", + "I yield; that all may know, my soul can bend,\n", + "Nor is my pride preferr’d before my friend.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and pleased his passion to command,\n", + "Resign’d the courser to Noemon’s hand,\n", + "Friend of the youthful chief: himself content,\n", + "The shining charger to his vessel sent.\n", + "The golden talents Merion next obtain’d;\n", + "The fifth reward, the double bowl, remain’d.\n", + "Achilles this to reverend Nestor bears.\n", + "And thus the purpose of his gift declares:\n", + "“Accept thou this, O sacred sire! (he said)\n", + "In dear memorial of Patroclus dead;\n", + "Dead and for ever lost Patroclus lies,\n", + "For ever snatch’d from our desiring eyes!\n", + "Take thou this token of a grateful heart,\n", + "Though ’tis not thine to hurl the distant dart,\n", + "The quoit to toss, the ponderous mace to wield,\n", + "Or urge the race, or wrestle on the field:\n", + "Thy pristine vigour age has overthrown,\n", + "But left the glory of the past thy own.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and placed the goblet at his side;\n", + "With joy the venerable king replied:\n", + "\n", + "“Wisely and well, my son, thy words have proved\n", + "A senior honour’d, and a friend beloved!\n", + "Too true it is, deserted of my strength,\n", + "These wither’d arms and limbs have fail’d at length.\n", + "Oh! had I now that force I felt of yore,\n", + "Known through Buprasium and the Pylian shore!\n", + "Victorious then in every solemn game,\n", + "Ordain’d to Amarynces’ mighty name;\n", + "The brave Epeians gave my glory way,\n", + "Ætolians, Pylians, all resign’d the day.\n", + "I quell’d Clytomedes in fights of hand,\n", + "And backward hurl’d Ancæus on the sand,\n", + "Surpass’d Iphyclus in the swift career,\n", + "Phyleus and Polydorus with the spear.\n", + "The sons of Actor won the prize of horse,\n", + "But won by numbers, not by art or force:\n", + "For the famed twins, impatient to survey\n", + "Prize after prize by Nestor borne away,\n", + "Sprung to their car; and with united pains\n", + "One lash’d the coursers, while one ruled the reins.\n", + "Such once I was! Now to these tasks succeeds\n", + "A younger race, that emulate our deeds:\n", + "I yield, alas! (to age who must not yield?)\n", + "Though once the foremost hero of the field.\n", + "Go thou, my son! by generous friendship led,\n", + "With martial honours decorate the dead:\n", + "While pleased I take the gift thy hands present,\n", + "(Pledge of benevolence, and kind intent,)\n", + "Rejoiced, of all the numerous Greeks, to see\n", + "Not one but honours sacred age and me:\n", + "Those due distinctions thou so well canst pay,\n", + "May the just gods return another day!”\n", + "\n", + "Proud of the gift, thus spake the full of days:\n", + "Achilles heard him, prouder of the praise.\n", + "\n", + "The prizes next are order’d to the field,\n", + "For the bold champions who the caestus wield.\n", + "A stately mule, as yet by toils unbroke,\n", + "Of six years’ age, unconscious of the yoke,\n", + "Is to the circus led, and firmly bound;\n", + "Next stands a goblet, massy, large, and round.\n", + "Achilles rising, thus: “Let Greece excite\n", + "Two heroes equal to this hardy fight;\n", + "Who dare the foe with lifted arms provoke,\n", + "And rush beneath the long-descending stroke.\n", + "On whom Apollo shall the palm bestow,\n", + "And whom the Greeks supreme by conquest know,\n", + "This mule his dauntless labours shall repay,\n", + "The vanquish’d bear the massy bowl away.”\n", + "\n", + "This dreadful combat great Epeüs chose;[291]\n", + "High o’er the crowd, enormous bulk! he rose,\n", + "And seized the beast, and thus began to say:\n", + "“Stand forth some man, to bear the bowl away!\n", + "(Price of his ruin: for who dares deny\n", + "This mule my right; the undoubted victor I)\n", + "Others, ’tis own’d, in fields of battle shine,\n", + "But the first honours of this fight are mine;\n", + "For who excels in all? Then let my foe\n", + "Draw near, but first his certain fortune know;\n", + "Secure this hand shall his whole frame confound,\n", + "Mash all his bones, and all his body pound:\n", + "So let his friends be nigh, a needful train,\n", + "To heave the batter’d carcase off the plain.”\n", + "\n", + "The giant spoke; and in a stupid gaze\n", + "The host beheld him, silent with amaze!\n", + "’Twas thou, Euryalus! who durst aspire\n", + "To meet his might, and emulate thy sire,\n", + "The great Mecistheus; who in days of yore\n", + "In Theban games the noblest trophy bore,\n", + "(The games ordain’d dead OEdipus to grace,)\n", + "And singly vanquish the Cadmean race.\n", + "Him great Tydides urges to contend,\n", + "Warm with the hopes of conquest for his friend;\n", + "Officious with the cincture girds him round;\n", + "And to his wrist the gloves of death are bound.\n", + "Amid the circle now each champion stands,\n", + "And poises high in air his iron hands;\n", + "With clashing gauntlets now they fiercely close,\n", + "Their crackling jaws re-echo to the blows,\n", + "And painful sweat from all their members flows.\n", + "At length Epeus dealt a weighty blow\n", + "Full on the cheek of his unwary foe;\n", + "Beneath that ponderous arm’s resistless sway\n", + "Down dropp’d he, nerveless, and extended lay.\n", + "As a large fish, when winds and waters roar,\n", + "By some huge billow dash’d against the shore,\n", + "Lies panting; not less batter’d with his wound,\n", + "The bleeding hero pants upon the ground.\n", + "To rear his fallen foe, the victor lends,\n", + "Scornful, his hand; and gives him to his friends;\n", + "Whose arms support him, reeling through the throng,\n", + "And dragging his disabled legs along;\n", + "Nodding, his head hangs down his shoulder o’er;\n", + "His mouth and nostrils pour the clotted gore;[292]\n", + "Wrapp’d round in mists he lies, and lost to thought;\n", + "His friends receive the bowl, too dearly bought.\n", + "\n", + "The third bold game Achilles next demands,\n", + "And calls the wrestlers to the level sands:\n", + "A massy tripod for the victor lies,\n", + "Of twice six oxen its reputed price;\n", + "And next, the loser’s spirits to restore,\n", + "A female captive, valued but at four.\n", + "Scarce did the chief the vigorous strife propose\n", + "When tower-like Ajax and Ulysses rose.\n", + "Amid the ring each nervous rival stands,\n", + "Embracing rigid with implicit hands.\n", + "Close lock’d above, their heads and arms are mix’d:\n", + "Below, their planted feet at distance fix’d;\n", + "Like two strong rafters which the builder forms,\n", + "Proof to the wintry winds and howling storms,\n", + "Their tops connected, but at wider space\n", + "Fix’d on the centre stands their solid base.\n", + "Now to the grasp each manly body bends;\n", + "The humid sweat from every pore descends;\n", + "Their bones resound with blows: sides, shoulders, thighs\n", + "Swell to each gripe, and bloody tumours rise.\n", + "Nor could Ulysses, for his art renown’d,\n", + "O’erturn the strength of Ajax on the ground;\n", + "Nor could the strength of Ajax overthrow\n", + "The watchful caution of his artful foe.\n", + "While the long strife even tired the lookers on,\n", + "Thus to Ulysses spoke great Telamon:\n", + "“Or let me lift thee, chief, or lift thou me:\n", + "Prove we our force, and Jove the rest decree.”\n", + "\n", + "He said; and, straining, heaved him off the ground\n", + "With matchless strength; that time Ulysses found\n", + "The strength to evade, and where the nerves combine\n", + "His ankle struck: the giant fell supine;\n", + "Ulysses, following, on his bosom lies;\n", + "Shouts of applause run rattling through the skies.\n", + "Ajax to lift Ulysses next essays;\n", + "He barely stirr’d him, but he could not raise:\n", + "His knee lock’d fast, the foe’s attempt denied;\n", + "And grappling close, they tumbled side by side.\n", + "Defiled with honourable dust they roll,\n", + "Still breathing strife, and unsubdued of soul:\n", + "Again they rage, again to combat rise;\n", + "When great Achilles thus divides the prize:\n", + "\n", + "“Your noble vigour, O my friends, restrain;\n", + "Nor weary out your generous strength in vain.\n", + "Ye both have won: let others who excel,\n", + "Now prove that prowess you have proved so well.”\n", + "\n", + "The hero’s words the willing chiefs obey,\n", + "From their tired bodies wipe the dust away,\n", + "And, clothed anew, the following games survey.\n", + "\n", + "And now succeed the gifts ordain’d to grace\n", + "The youths contending in the rapid race:\n", + "A silver urn that full six measures held,\n", + "By none in weight or workmanship excell’d:\n", + "Sidonian artists taught the frame to shine,\n", + "Elaborate, with artifice divine;\n", + "Whence Tyrian sailors did the prize transport,\n", + "And gave to Thoas at the Lemnian port:\n", + "From him descended, good Eunaeus heir’d\n", + "The glorious gift; and, for Lycaon spared,\n", + "To brave Patroclus gave the rich reward:\n", + "Now, the same hero’s funeral rites to grace,\n", + "It stands the prize of swiftness in the race.\n", + "A well-fed ox was for the second placed;\n", + "And half a talent must content the last.\n", + "Achilles rising then bespoke the train:\n", + "“Who hope the palm of swiftness to obtain,\n", + "Stand forth, and bear these prizes from the plain.”\n", + "\n", + "The hero said, and starting from his place,\n", + "Oilean Ajax rises to the race;\n", + "Ulysses next; and he whose speed surpass’d\n", + "His youthful equals, Nestor’s son, the last.\n", + "Ranged in a line the ready racers stand;\n", + "Pelides points the barrier with his hand;\n", + "All start at once; Oïleus led the race;\n", + "The next Ulysses, measuring pace with pace;\n", + "Behind him, diligently close, he sped,\n", + "As closely following as the running thread\n", + "The spindle follows, and displays the charms\n", + "Of the fair spinster’s breast and moving arms:\n", + "Graceful in motion thus, his foe he plies,\n", + "And treads each footstep ere the dust can rise;\n", + "His glowing breath upon his shoulders plays:\n", + "The admiring Greeks loud acclamations raise:\n", + "To him they give their wishes, hearts, and eyes,\n", + "And send their souls before him as he flies.\n", + "Now three times turn’d in prospect of the goal,\n", + "The panting chief to Pallas lifts his soul:\n", + "“Assist, O goddess!” thus in thought he pray’d!\n", + "And present at his thought descends the maid.\n", + "Buoy’d by her heavenly force, he seems to swim,\n", + "And feels a pinion lifting every limb.\n", + "All fierce, and ready now the prize to gain,\n", + "Unhappy Ajax stumbles on the plain\n", + "(O’erturn’d by Pallas), where the slippery shore\n", + "Was clogg’d with slimy dung and mingled gore.\n", + "(The self-same place beside Patroclus’ pyre,\n", + "Where late the slaughter’d victims fed the fire.)\n", + "Besmear’d with filth, and blotted o’er with clay,\n", + "Obscene to sight, the rueful racer lay;\n", + "The well-fed bull (the second prize) he shared,\n", + "And left the urn Ulysses’ rich reward.\n", + "Then, grasping by the horn the mighty beast,\n", + "The baffled hero thus the Greeks address’d:\n", + "\n", + "“Accursed fate! the conquest I forego;\n", + "A mortal I, a goddess was my foe;\n", + "She urged her favourite on the rapid way,\n", + "And Pallas, not Ulysses, won the day.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus sourly wail’d he, sputtering dirt and gore;\n", + "A burst of laughter echoed through the shore.\n", + "Antilochus, more humorous than the rest,\n", + "Takes the last prize, and takes it with a jest:\n", + "\n", + "“Why with our wiser elders should we strive?\n", + "The gods still love them, and they always thrive.\n", + "Ye see, to Ajax I must yield the prize:\n", + "He to Ulysses, still more aged and wise;\n", + "(A green old age unconscious of decays,\n", + "That proves the hero born in better days!)\n", + "Behold his vigour in this active race!\n", + "Achilles only boasts a swifter pace:\n", + "For who can match Achilles? He who can,\n", + "Must yet be more than hero, more than man.”\n", + "\n", + "The effect succeeds the speech. Pelides cries,\n", + "“Thy artful praise deserves a better prize.\n", + "Nor Greece in vain shall hear thy friend extoll’d;\n", + "Receive a talent of the purest gold.”\n", + "The youth departs content. The host admire\n", + "The son of Nestor, worthy of his sire.\n", + "\n", + "Next these a buckler, spear, and helm, he brings;\n", + "Cast on the plain, the brazen burden rings:\n", + "Arms which of late divine Sarpedon wore,\n", + "And great Patroclus in short triumph bore.\n", + "“Stand forth the bravest of our host! (he cries)\n", + "Whoever dares deserve so rich a prize,\n", + "Now grace the lists before our army’s sight,\n", + "And sheathed in steel, provoke his foe to fight.\n", + "Who first the jointed armour shall explore,\n", + "And stain his rival’s mail with issuing gore,\n", + "The sword Asteropaeus possess’d of old,\n", + "(A Thracian blade, distinct with studs of gold,)\n", + "Shall pay the stroke, and grace the striker’s side:\n", + "These arms in common let the chiefs divide:\n", + "For each brave champion, when the combat ends,\n", + "A sumptuous banquet at our tents attends.”\n", + "\n", + "Fierce at the word uprose great Tydeus’ son,\n", + "And the huge bulk of Ajax Telamon.\n", + "Clad in refulgent steel, on either hand,\n", + "The dreadful chiefs amid the circle stand;\n", + "Louring they meet, tremendous to the sight;\n", + "Each Argive bosom beats with fierce delight.\n", + "Opposed in arms not long they idly stood,\n", + "But thrice they closed, and thrice the charge renew’d.\n", + "A furious pass the spear of Ajax made\n", + "Through the broad shield, but at the corslet stay’d.\n", + "Not thus the foe: his javelin aim’d above\n", + "The buckler’s margin, at the neck he drove.\n", + "But Greece, now trembling for her hero’s life,\n", + "Bade share the honours, and surcease the strife.\n", + "Yet still the victor’s due Tydides gains,\n", + "With him the sword and studded belt remains.\n", + "\n", + "Then hurl’d the hero, thundering on the ground,\n", + "A mass of iron (an enormous round),\n", + "Whose weight and size the circling Greeks admire,\n", + "Rude from the furnace, and but shaped by fire.\n", + "This mighty quoit Aëtion wont to rear,\n", + "And from his whirling arm dismiss in air;\n", + "The giant by Achilles slain, he stow’d\n", + "Among his spoils this memorable load.\n", + "For this, he bids those nervous artists vie,\n", + "That teach the disk to sound along the sky.\n", + "“Let him, whose might can hurl this bowl, arise;\n", + "Who farthest hurls it, take it as his prize;\n", + "If he be one enrich’d with large domain\n", + "Of downs for flocks, and arable for grain,\n", + "Small stock of iron needs that man provide;\n", + "His hinds and swains whole years shall be supplied\n", + "From hence; nor ask the neighbouring city’s aid\n", + "For ploughshares, wheels, and all the rural trade.”\n", + "\n", + "Stern Polypœtes stepp’d before the throng,\n", + "And great Leonteus, more than mortal strong;\n", + "Whose force with rival forces to oppose,\n", + "Uprose great Ajax; up Epeus rose.\n", + "Each stood in order: first Epeus threw;\n", + "High o’er the wondering crowds the whirling circle flew.\n", + "Leonteus next a little space surpass’d;\n", + "And third, the strength of godlike Ajax cast.\n", + "O’er both their marks it flew; till fiercely flung\n", + "From Polypœtes’ arm the discus sung:\n", + "Far as a swain his whirling sheephook throws,\n", + "That distant falls among the grazing cows,\n", + "So past them all the rapid circle flies:\n", + "His friends, while loud applauses shake the skies,\n", + "With force conjoin’d heave off the weighty prize.\n", + "\n", + "Those, who in skilful archery contend,\n", + "He next invites the twanging bow to bend;\n", + "And twice ten axes casts amidst the round,\n", + "Ten double-edged, and ten that singly wound\n", + "The mast, which late a first-rate galley bore,\n", + "The hero fixes in the sandy shore;\n", + "To the tall top a milk-white dove they tie,\n", + "The trembling mark at which their arrows fly.\n", + "\n", + "“Whose weapon strikes yon fluttering bird, shall bear\n", + "These two-edged axes, terrible in war;\n", + "The single, he whose shaft divides the cord.”\n", + "He said: experienced Merion took the word;\n", + "And skilful Teucer: in the helm they threw\n", + "Their lots inscribed, and forth the latter flew.\n", + "Swift from the string the sounding arrow flies;\n", + "But flies unbless’d! No grateful sacrifice,\n", + "No firstling lambs, unheedful! didst thou vow\n", + "To Phœbus, patron of the shaft and bow.\n", + "For this, thy well-aim’d arrow turn’d aside,\n", + "Err’d from the dove, yet cut the cord that tied:\n", + "Adown the mainmast fell the parted string,\n", + "And the free bird to heaven displays her wing:\n", + "Sea, shores, and skies, with loud applause resound,\n", + "And Merion eager meditates the wound:\n", + "He takes the bow, directs the shaft above,\n", + "And following with his eye the soaring dove,\n", + "Implores the god to speed it through the skies,\n", + "With vows of firstling lambs, and grateful sacrifice,\n", + "The dove, in airy circles as she wheels,\n", + "Amid the clouds the piercing arrow feels;\n", + "Quite through and through the point its passage found,\n", + "And at his feet fell bloody to the ground.\n", + "The wounded bird, ere yet she breathed her last,\n", + "With flagging wings alighted on the mast,\n", + "A moment hung, and spread her pinions there,\n", + "Then sudden dropp’d, and left her life in air.\n", + "From the pleased crowd new peals of thunder rise,\n", + "And to the ships brave Merion bears the prize.\n", + "\n", + "To close the funeral games, Achilles last\n", + "A massy spear amid the circle placed,\n", + "And ample charger of unsullied frame,\n", + "With flowers high-wrought, not blacken’d yet by flame.\n", + "For these he bids the heroes prove their art,\n", + "Whose dexterous skill directs the flying dart.\n", + "Here too great Merion hopes the noble prize;\n", + "Nor here disdain’d the king of men to rise.\n", + "With joy Pelides saw the honour paid,\n", + "Rose to the monarch, and respectful said:\n", + "\n", + "“Thee first in virtue, as in power supreme,\n", + "O king of nations! all thy Greeks proclaim;\n", + "In every martial game thy worth attest,\n", + "And know thee both their greatest and their best.\n", + "Take then the prize, but let brave Merion bear\n", + "This beamy javelin in thy brother’s war.”\n", + "\n", + "Pleased from the hero’s lips his praise to hear,\n", + "The king to Merion gives the brazen spear:\n", + "But, set apart for sacred use, commands\n", + "The glittering charger to Talthybius’ hands.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] CERES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "BOOK XXIV.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "ARGUMENT.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY OF HECTOR.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "The gods deliberate about the redemption of Hector’s body. Jupiter\n", + "sends Thetis to Achilles, to dispose him for the restoring it, and Iris\n", + "to Priam, to encourage him to go in person and treat for it. The old\n", + "king, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his queen, makes ready for\n", + "the journey, to which he is encouraged by an omen from Jupiter. He sets\n", + "forth in his chariot, with a waggon loaded with presents, under the\n", + "charge of Idæus the herald. Mercury descends in the shape of a young\n", + "man, and conducts him to the pavilion of Achilles. Their conversation\n", + "on the way. Priam finds Achilles at his table, casts himself at his\n", + "feet, and begs for the body of his son: Achilles, moved with\n", + "compassion, grants his request, detains him one night in his tent, and\n", + "the next morning sends him home with the body: the Trojans run out to\n", + "meet him. The lamentations of Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen, with the\n", + "solemnities of the funeral.\n", + " The time of twelve days is employed in this book, while the body of\n", + " Hector lies in the tent of Achilles; and as many more are spent in\n", + " the truce allowed for his interment. The scene is partly in\n", + " Achilles’ camp, and partly in Troy.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Now from the finish’d games the Grecian band\n", + "Seek their black ships, and clear the crowded strand,\n", + "All stretch’d at ease the genial banquet share,\n", + "And pleasing slumbers quiet all their care.\n", + "Not so Achilles: he, to grief resign’d,\n", + "His friend’s dear image present to his mind,\n", + "Takes his sad couch, more unobserved to weep;\n", + "Nor tastes the gifts of all-composing sleep.\n", + "Restless he roll’d around his weary bed,\n", + "And all his soul on his Patroclus fed:\n", + "The form so pleasing, and the heart so kind,\n", + "That youthful vigour, and that manly mind,\n", + "What toils they shared, what martial works they wrought,\n", + "What seas they measured, and what fields they fought;\n", + "All pass’d before him in remembrance dear,\n", + "Thought follows thought, and tear succeeds to tear.\n", + "And now supine, now prone, the hero lay,\n", + "Now shifts his side, impatient for the day:\n", + "Then starting up, disconsolate he goes\n", + "Wide on the lonely beach to vent his woes.\n", + "There as the solitary mourner raves,\n", + "The ruddy morning rises o’er the waves:\n", + "Soon as it rose, his furious steeds he join’d!\n", + "The chariot flies, and Hector trails behind.\n", + "And thrice, Patroclus! round thy monument\n", + "Was Hector dragg’d, then hurried to the tent.\n", + "There sleep at last o’ercomes the hero’s eyes;\n", + "While foul in dust the unhonour’d carcase lies,\n", + "But not deserted by the pitying skies:\n", + "For Phœbus watch’d it with superior care,\n", + "Preserved from gaping wounds and tainting air;\n", + "And, ignominious as it swept the field,\n", + "Spread o’er the sacred corse his golden shield.\n", + "All heaven was moved, and Hermes will’d to go\n", + "By stealth to snatch him from the insulting foe:\n", + "But Neptune this, and Pallas this denies,\n", + "And th’ unrelenting empress of the skies,\n", + "E’er since that day implacable to Troy,\n", + "What time young Paris, simple shepherd boy,\n", + "Won by destructive lust (reward obscene),\n", + "Their charms rejected for the Cyprian queen.\n", + "But when the tenth celestial morning broke,\n", + "To heaven assembled, thus Apollo spoke:\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] HECTOR’S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“Unpitying powers! how oft each holy fane\n", + "Has Hector tinged with blood of victims slain?\n", + "And can ye still his cold remains pursue?\n", + "Still grudge his body to the Trojans’ view?\n", + "Deny to consort, mother, son, and sire,\n", + "The last sad honours of a funeral fire?\n", + "Is then the dire Achilles all your care?\n", + "That iron heart, inflexibly severe;\n", + "A lion, not a man, who slaughters wide,\n", + "In strength of rage, and impotence of pride;\n", + "Who hastes to murder with a savage joy,\n", + "Invades around, and breathes but to destroy!\n", + "Shame is not of his soul; nor understood,\n", + "The greatest evil and the greatest good.\n", + "Still for one loss he rages unresign’d,\n", + "Repugnant to the lot of all mankind;\n", + "To lose a friend, a brother, or a son,\n", + "Heaven dooms each mortal, and its will is done:\n", + "Awhile they sorrow, then dismiss their care;\n", + "Fate gives the wound, and man is born to bear.\n", + "But this insatiate, the commission given\n", + "By fate exceeds, and tempts the wrath of heaven:\n", + "Lo, how his rage dishonest drags along\n", + "Hector’s dead earth, insensible of wrong!\n", + "Brave though he be, yet by no reason awed,\n", + "He violates the laws of man and god.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "“If equal honours by the partial skies\n", + "Are doom’d both heroes, (Juno thus replies,)\n", + "If Thetis’ son must no distinction know,\n", + "Then hear, ye gods! the patron of the bow.\n", + "But Hector only boasts a mortal claim,\n", + "His birth deriving from a mortal dame:\n", + "Achilles, of your own ethereal race,\n", + "Springs from a goddess by a man’s embrace\n", + "(A goddess by ourself to Peleus given,\n", + "A man divine, and chosen friend of heaven)\n", + "To grace those nuptials, from the bright abode\n", + "Yourselves were present; where this minstrel-god,\n", + "Well pleased to share the feast, amid the quire\n", + "Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre.”\n", + "\n", + "Then thus the Thunderer checks the imperial dame:\n", + "“Let not thy wrath the court of heaven inflame;\n", + "Their merits, nor their honours, are the same.\n", + "But mine, and every god’s peculiar grace\n", + "Hector deserves, of all the Trojan race:\n", + "Still on our shrines his grateful offerings lay,\n", + "(The only honours men to gods can pay,)\n", + "Nor ever from our smoking altar ceased\n", + "The pure libation, and the holy feast:\n", + "Howe’er by stealth to snatch the corse away,\n", + "We will not: Thetis guards it night and day.\n", + "But haste, and summon to our courts above\n", + "The azure queen; let her persuasion move\n", + "Her furious son from Priam to receive\n", + "The proffer’d ransom, and the corse to leave.”\n", + "\n", + "He added not: and Iris from the skies,\n", + "Swift as a whirlwind, on the message flies,\n", + "Meteorous the face of ocean sweeps,\n", + "Refulgent gliding o’er the sable deeps.\n", + "Between where Samos wide his forests spreads,\n", + "And rocky Imbrus lifts its pointed heads,\n", + "Down plunged the maid; (the parted waves resound;)\n", + "She plunged and instant shot the dark profound.\n", + "As bearing death in the fallacious bait,\n", + "From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight;\n", + "So pass’d the goddess through the closing wave,\n", + "Where Thetis sorrow’d in her secret cave:\n", + "There placed amidst her melancholy train\n", + "(The blue-hair’d sisters of the sacred main)\n", + "Pensive she sat, revolving fates to come,\n", + "And wept her godlike son’s approaching doom.\n", + "Then thus the goddess of the painted bow:\n", + "“Arise, O Thetis! from thy seats below,\n", + "’Tis Jove that calls.”—“And why (the dame replies)\n", + "Calls Jove his Thetis to the hated skies?\n", + "Sad object as I am for heavenly sight!\n", + "Ah may my sorrows ever shun the light!\n", + "Howe’er, be heaven’s almighty sire obey’d—”\n", + "She spake, and veil’d her head in sable shade,\n", + "Which, flowing long, her graceful person clad;\n", + "And forth she paced, majestically sad.\n", + "\n", + "Then through the world of waters they repair\n", + "(The way fair Iris led) to upper air.\n", + "The deeps dividing, o’er the coast they rise,\n", + "And touch with momentary flight the skies.\n", + "There in the lightning’s blaze the sire they found,\n", + "And all the gods in shining synod round.\n", + "Thetis approach’d with anguish in her face,\n", + "(Minerva rising, gave the mourner place,)\n", + "Even Juno sought her sorrows to console,\n", + "And offer’d from her hand the nectar-bowl:\n", + "She tasted, and resign’d it: then began\n", + "The sacred sire of gods and mortal man:\n", + "\n", + "“Thou comest, fair Thetis, but with grief o’ercast;\n", + "Maternal sorrows; long, ah, long to last!\n", + "Suffice, we know and we partake thy cares;\n", + "But yield to fate, and hear what Jove declares.\n", + "Nine days are past since all the court above\n", + "In Hector’s cause have moved the ear of Jove;\n", + "’Twas voted, Hermes from his godlike foe\n", + "By stealth should bear him, but we will’d not so:\n", + "We will, thy son himself the corse restore,\n", + "And to his conquest add this glory more.\n", + "Then hie thee to him, and our mandate bear:\n", + "Tell him he tempts the wrath of heaven too far;\n", + "Nor let him more (our anger if he dread)\n", + "Vent his mad vengeance on the sacred dead;\n", + "But yield to ransom and the father’s prayer;\n", + "The mournful father, Iris shall prepare\n", + "With gifts to sue; and offer to his hands\n", + "Whate’er his honour asks, or heart demands.”\n", + "\n", + "His word the silver-footed queen attends,\n", + "And from Olympus’ snowy tops descends.\n", + "Arrived, she heard the voice of loud lament,\n", + "And echoing groans that shook the lofty tent:\n", + "His friends prepare the victim, and dispose\n", + "Repast unheeded, while he vents his woes;\n", + "The goddess seats her by her pensive son,\n", + "She press’d his hand, and tender thus begun:\n", + "\n", + "“How long, unhappy! shall thy sorrows flow,\n", + "And thy heart waste with life-consuming woe:\n", + "Mindless of food, or love, whose pleasing reign\n", + "Soothes weary life, and softens human pain?\n", + "O snatch the moments yet within thy power;\n", + "Not long to live, indulge the amorous hour!\n", + "Lo! Jove himself (for Jove’s command I bear)\n", + "Forbids to tempt the wrath of heaven too far.\n", + "No longer then (his fury if thou dread)\n", + "Detain the relics of great Hector dead;\n", + "Nor vent on senseless earth thy vengeance vain,\n", + "But yield to ransom, and restore the slain.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom Achilles: “Be the ransom given,\n", + "And we submit, since such the will of heaven.”\n", + "\n", + "While thus they communed, from the Olympian bowers\n", + "Jove orders Iris to the Trojan towers:\n", + "“Haste, winged goddess! to the sacred town,\n", + "And urge her monarch to redeem his son.\n", + "Alone the Ilian ramparts let him leave,\n", + "And bear what stern Achilles may receive:\n", + "Alone, for so we will; no Trojan near\n", + "Except, to place the dead with decent care,\n", + "Some aged herald, who with gentle hand\n", + "May the slow mules and funeral car command.\n", + "Nor let him death, nor let him danger dread,\n", + "Safe through the foe by our protection led:\n", + "Him Hermes to Achilles shall convey,\n", + "Guard of his life, and partner of his way.\n", + "Fierce as he is, Achilles’ self shall spare\n", + "His age, nor touch one venerable hair:\n", + "Some thought there must be in a soul so brave,\n", + "Some sense of duty, some desire to save.”\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF HECTOR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Then down her bow the winged Iris drives,\n", + "And swift at Priam’s mournful court arrives:\n", + "Where the sad sons beside their father’s throne\n", + "Sat bathed in tears, and answer’d groan with groan.\n", + "And all amidst them lay the hoary sire,\n", + "(Sad scene of woe!) his face his wrapp’d attire\n", + "Conceal’d from sight; with frantic hands he spread\n", + "A shower of ashes o’er his neck and head.\n", + "From room to room his pensive daughters roam;\n", + "Whose shrieks and clamours fill the vaulted dome;\n", + "Mindful of those, who late their pride and joy,\n", + "Lie pale and breathless round the fields of Troy!\n", + "Before the king Jove’s messenger appears,\n", + "And thus in whispers greets his trembling ears:\n", + "\n", + "“Fear not, O father! no ill news I bear;\n", + "From Jove I come, Jove makes thee still his care;\n", + "For Hector’s sake these walls he bids thee leave,\n", + "And bear what stern Achilles may receive;\n", + "Alone, for so he wills; no Trojan near,\n", + "Except, to place the dead with decent care,\n", + "Some aged herald, who with gentle hand\n", + "May the slow mules and funeral car command.\n", + "Nor shalt thou death, nor shalt thou danger dread:\n", + "Safe through the foe by his protection led:\n", + "Thee Hermes to Pelides shall convey,\n", + "Guard of thy life, and partner of thy way.\n", + "Fierce as he is, Achilles’ self shall spare\n", + "Thy age, nor touch one venerable hair;\n", + "Some thought there must be in a soul so brave,\n", + "Some sense of duty, some desire to save.”\n", + "\n", + "She spoke, and vanish’d. Priam bids prepare\n", + "His gentle mules and harness to the car;\n", + "There, for the gifts, a polish’d casket lay:\n", + "His pious sons the king’s command obey.\n", + "Then pass’d the monarch to his bridal-room,\n", + "Where cedar-beams the lofty roofs perfume,\n", + "And where the treasures of his empire lay;\n", + "Then call’d his queen, and thus began to say:\n", + "\n", + "“Unhappy consort of a king distress’d!\n", + "Partake the troubles of thy husband’s breast:\n", + "I saw descend the messenger of Jove,\n", + "Who bids me try Achilles’ mind to move;\n", + "Forsake these ramparts, and with gifts obtain\n", + "The corse of Hector, at yon navy slain.\n", + "Tell me thy thought: my heart impels to go\n", + "Through hostile camps, and bears me to the foe.”\n", + "\n", + "The hoary monarch thus. Her piercing cries\n", + "Sad Hecuba renews, and then replies:\n", + "“Ah! whither wanders thy distemper’d mind?\n", + "And where the prudence now that awed mankind?\n", + "Through Phrygia once and foreign regions known;\n", + "Now all confused, distracted, overthrown!\n", + "Singly to pass through hosts of foes! to face\n", + "(O heart of steel!) the murderer of thy race!\n", + "To view that deathful eye, and wander o’er\n", + "Those hands yet red with Hector’s noble gore!\n", + "Alas! my lord! he knows not how to spare,\n", + "And what his mercy, thy slain sons declare;\n", + "So brave! so many fallen! To claim his rage\n", + "Vain were thy dignity, and vain thy age.\n", + "No—pent in this sad palace, let us give\n", + "To grief the wretched days we have to live.\n", + "Still, still for Hector let our sorrows flow,\n", + "Born to his own, and to his parents’ woe!\n", + "Doom’d from the hour his luckless life begun,\n", + "To dogs, to vultures, and to Peleus’ son!\n", + "Oh! in his dearest blood might I allay\n", + "My rage, and these barbarities repay!\n", + "For ah! could Hector merit thus, whose breath\n", + "Expired not meanly, in unactive death?\n", + "He poured his latest blood in manly fight,\n", + "And fell a hero in his country’s right.”\n", + "\n", + "“Seek not to stay me, nor my soul affright\n", + "With words of omen, like a bird of night,\n", + "(Replied unmoved the venerable man;)\n", + "’Tis heaven commands me, and you urge in vain.\n", + "Had any mortal voice the injunction laid,\n", + "Nor augur, priest, nor seer, had been obey’d.\n", + "A present goddess brought the high command,\n", + "I saw, I heard her, and the word shall stand.\n", + "I go, ye gods! obedient to your call:\n", + "If in yon camp your powers have doom’d my fall,\n", + "Content—By the same hand let me expire!\n", + "Add to the slaughter’d son the wretched sire!\n", + "One cold embrace at least may be allow’d,\n", + "And my last tears flow mingled with his blood!”\n", + "\n", + "From forth his open’d stores, this said, he drew\n", + "Twelve costly carpets of refulgent hue,\n", + "As many vests, as many mantles told,\n", + "And twelve fair veils, and garments stiff with gold,\n", + "Two tripods next, and twice two chargers shine,\n", + "With ten pure talents from the richest mine;\n", + "And last a large well-labour’d bowl had place,\n", + "(The pledge of treaties once with friendly Thrace:)\n", + "Seem’d all too mean the stores he could employ,\n", + "For one last look to buy him back to Troy!\n", + "\n", + "Lo! the sad father, frantic with his pain,\n", + "Around him furious drives his menial train:\n", + "In vain each slave with duteous care attends,\n", + "Each office hurts him, and each face offends.\n", + "“What make ye here, officious crowds! (he cries):\n", + "Hence! nor obtrude your anguish on my eyes.\n", + "Have ye no griefs at home, to fix ye there:\n", + "Am I the only object of despair?\n", + "Am I become my people’s common show,\n", + "Set up by Jove your spectacle of woe?\n", + "No, you must feel him too; yourselves must fall;\n", + "The same stern god to ruin gives you all:\n", + "Nor is great Hector lost by me alone;\n", + "Your sole defence, your guardian power is gone!\n", + "I see your blood the fields of Phrygia drown,\n", + "I see the ruins of your smoking town!\n", + "O send me, gods! ere that sad day shall come,\n", + "A willing ghost to Pluto’s dreary dome!”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and feebly drives his friends away:\n", + "The sorrowing friends his frantic rage obey.\n", + "Next on his sons his erring fury falls,\n", + "Polites, Paris, Agathon, he calls;\n", + "His threats Deiphobus and Dius hear,\n", + "Hippothous, Pammon, Helenes the seer,\n", + "And generous Antiphon: for yet these nine\n", + "Survived, sad relics of his numerous line.\n", + "\n", + "“Inglorious sons of an unhappy sire!\n", + "Why did not all in Hector’s cause expire?\n", + "Wretch that I am! my bravest offspring slain.\n", + "You, the disgrace of Priam’s house, remain!\n", + "Mestor the brave, renown’d in ranks of war,\n", + "With Troilus, dreadful on his rushing car,[293]\n", + "And last great Hector, more than man divine,\n", + "For sure he seem’d not of terrestrial line!\n", + "All those relentless Mars untimely slew,\n", + "And left me these, a soft and servile crew,\n", + "Whose days the feast and wanton dance employ,\n", + "Gluttons and flatterers, the contempt of Troy!\n", + "Why teach ye not my rapid wheels to run,\n", + "And speed my journey to redeem my son?”\n", + "\n", + "The sons their father’s wretched age revere,\n", + "Forgive his anger, and produce the car.\n", + "High on the seat the cabinet they bind:\n", + "The new-made car with solid beauty shined;\n", + "Box was the yoke, emboss’d with costly pains,\n", + "And hung with ringlets to receive the reins;\n", + "Nine cubits long, the traces swept the ground:\n", + "These to the chariot’s polish’d pole they bound.\n", + "Then fix’d a ring the running reins to guide,\n", + "And close beneath the gather’d ends were tied.\n", + "Next with the gifts (the price of Hector slain)\n", + "The sad attendants load the groaning wain:\n", + "Last to the yoke the well-matched mules they bring,\n", + "(The gift of Mysia to the Trojan king.)\n", + "But the fair horses, long his darling care,\n", + "Himself received, and harness’d to his car:\n", + "Grieved as he was, he not this task denied;\n", + "The hoary herald help’d him, at his side.\n", + "While careful these the gentle coursers join’d,\n", + "Sad Hecuba approach’d with anxious mind;\n", + "A golden bowl that foam’d with fragrant wine,\n", + "(Libation destined to the power divine,)\n", + "Held in her right, before the steed she stands,\n", + "And thus consigns it to the monarch’s hands:\n", + "\n", + "“Take this, and pour to Jove; that safe from harms\n", + "His grace restore thee to our roof and arms.\n", + "Since victor of thy fears, and slighting mine,\n", + "Heaven, or thy soul, inspires this bold design;\n", + "Pray to that god, who high on Ida’s brow\n", + "Surveys thy desolated realms below,\n", + "His winged messenger to send from high,\n", + "And lead thy way with heavenly augury:\n", + "Let the strong sovereign of the plumy race\n", + "Tower on the right of yon ethereal space.\n", + "That sign beheld, and strengthen’d from above,\n", + "Boldly pursue the journey mark’d by Jove:\n", + "But if the god his augury denies,\n", + "Suppress thy impulse, nor reject advice.”\n", + "\n", + "“’Tis just (said Priam) to the sire above\n", + "To raise our hands; for who so good as Jove?”\n", + "He spoke, and bade the attendant handmaid bring\n", + "The purest water of the living spring:\n", + "(Her ready hands the ewer and bason held:)\n", + "Then took the golden cup his queen had fill’d;\n", + "On the mid pavement pours the rosy wine,\n", + "Uplifts his eyes, and calls the power divine:\n", + "\n", + "“O first and greatest! heaven’s imperial lord!\n", + "On lofty Ida’s holy hill adored!\n", + "To stern Achilles now direct my ways,\n", + "And teach him mercy when a father prays.\n", + "If such thy will, despatch from yonder sky\n", + "Thy sacred bird, celestial augury!\n", + "Let the strong sovereign of the plumy race\n", + "Tower on the right of yon ethereal space;\n", + "So shall thy suppliant, strengthen’d from above,\n", + "Fearless pursue the journey mark’d by Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "Jove heard his prayer, and from the throne on high,\n", + "Despatch’d his bird, celestial augury!\n", + "The swift-wing’d chaser of the feather’d game,\n", + "And known to gods by Percnos’ lofty name.\n", + "Wide as appears some palace-gate display’d,\n", + "So broad, his pinions stretch’d their ample shade,\n", + "As stooping dexter with resounding wings\n", + "The imperial bird descends in airy rings.\n", + "A dawn of joy in every face appears:\n", + "The mourning matron dries her timorous tears:\n", + "Swift on his car the impatient monarch sprung;\n", + "The brazen portal in his passage rung;\n", + "The mules preceding draw the loaded wain,\n", + "Charged with the gifts: Idæus holds the rein:\n", + "The king himself his gentle steeds controls,\n", + "And through surrounding friends the chariot rolls.\n", + "On his slow wheels the following people wait,\n", + "Mourn at each step, and give him up to fate;\n", + "With hands uplifted eye him as he pass’d,\n", + "And gaze upon him as they gazed their last.\n", + "Now forward fares the father on his way,\n", + "Through the lone fields, and back to Ilion they.\n", + "Great Jove beheld him as he cross’d the plain,\n", + "And felt the woes of miserable man.\n", + "Then thus to Hermes: “Thou whose constant cares\n", + "Still succour mortals, and attend their prayers;\n", + "Behold an object to thy charge consign’d:\n", + "If ever pity touch’d thee for mankind,\n", + "Go, guard the sire: the observing foe prevent,\n", + "And safe conduct him to Achilles’ tent.”\n", + "\n", + "The god obeys, his golden pinions binds,[294]\n", + "And mounts incumbent on the wings of winds,\n", + "That high, through fields of air, his flight sustain,\n", + "O’er the wide earth, and o’er the boundless main;\n", + "Then grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly,\n", + "Or in soft slumbers seals the wakeful eye:\n", + "Thus arm’d, swift Hermes steers his airy way,\n", + "And stoops on Hellespont’s resounding sea.\n", + "A beauteous youth, majestic and divine,\n", + "He seem’d; fair offspring of some princely line!\n", + "Now twilight veil’d the glaring face of day,\n", + "And clad the dusky fields in sober grey;\n", + "What time the herald and the hoary king\n", + "(Their chariots stopping at the silver spring,\n", + "That circling Ilus’ ancient marble flows)\n", + "Allow’d their mules and steeds a short repose,\n", + "Through the dim shade the herald first espies\n", + "A man’s approach, and thus to Priam cries:\n", + "“I mark some foe’s advance: O king! beware;\n", + "This hard adventure claims thy utmost care!\n", + "For much I fear destruction hovers nigh:\n", + "Our state asks counsel; is it best to fly?\n", + "Or old and helpless, at his feet to fall,\n", + "Two wretched suppliants, and for mercy call?”\n", + "\n", + "The afflicted monarch shiver’d with despair;\n", + "Pale grew his face, and upright stood his hair;\n", + "Sunk was his heart; his colour went and came;\n", + "A sudden trembling shook his aged frame:\n", + "When Hermes, greeting, touch’d his royal hand,\n", + "And, gentle, thus accosts with kind demand:\n", + "\n", + "“Say whither, father! when each mortal sight\n", + "Is seal’d in sleep, thou wanderest through the night?\n", + "Why roam thy mules and steeds the plains along,\n", + "Through Grecian foes, so numerous and so strong?\n", + "What couldst thou hope, should these thy treasures view;\n", + "These, who with endless hate thy race pursue?\n", + "For what defence, alas! could’st thou provide;\n", + "Thyself not young, a weak old man thy guide?\n", + "Yet suffer not thy soul to sink with dread;\n", + "From me no harm shall touch thy reverend head;\n", + "From Greece I’ll guard thee too; for in those lines\n", + "The living image of my father shines.”\n", + "\n", + "“Thy words, that speak benevolence of mind,\n", + "Are true, my son! (the godlike sire rejoin’d:)\n", + "Great are my hazards; but the gods survey\n", + "My steps, and send thee, guardian of my way.\n", + "Hail, and be bless’d! For scarce of mortal kind\n", + "Appear thy form, thy feature, and thy mind.”\n", + "\n", + "“Nor true are all thy words, nor erring wide;\n", + "(The sacred messenger of heaven replied;)\n", + "But say, convey’st thou through the lonely plains\n", + "What yet most precious of thy store remains,\n", + "To lodge in safety with some friendly hand:\n", + "Prepared, perchance, to leave thy native land?\n", + "Or fliest thou now?—What hopes can Troy retain,\n", + "Thy matchless son, her guard and glory, slain?”\n", + "\n", + "The king, alarm’d: “Say what, and whence thou art\n", + "Who search the sorrows of a parent’s heart,\n", + "And know so well how godlike Hector died?”\n", + "Thus Priam spoke, and Hermes thus replied:\n", + "\n", + "“You tempt me, father, and with pity touch:\n", + "On this sad subject you inquire too much.\n", + "Oft have these eyes that godlike Hector view’d\n", + "In glorious fight, with Grecian blood embrued:\n", + "I saw him when, like Jove, his flames he toss’d\n", + "On thousand ships, and wither’d half a host:\n", + "I saw, but help’d not: stern Achilles’ ire\n", + "Forbade assistance, and enjoy’d the fire.\n", + "For him I serve, of Myrmidonian race;\n", + "One ship convey’d us from our native place;\n", + "Polyctor is my sire, an honour’d name,\n", + "Old like thyself, and not unknown to fame;\n", + "Of seven his sons, by whom the lot was cast\n", + "To serve our prince, it fell on me, the last.\n", + "To watch this quarter, my adventure falls:\n", + "For with the morn the Greeks attack your walls;\n", + "Sleepless they sit, impatient to engage,\n", + "And scarce their rulers check their martial rage.”\n", + "\n", + "“If then thou art of stern Pelides’ train,\n", + "(The mournful monarch thus rejoin’d again,)\n", + "Ah tell me truly, where, oh! where are laid\n", + "My son’s dear relics? what befalls him dead?\n", + "Have dogs dismember’d (on the naked plains),\n", + "Or yet unmangled rest, his cold remains?”\n", + "\n", + "“O favour’d of the skies! (thus answered then\n", + "The power that mediates between god and men)\n", + "Nor dogs nor vultures have thy Hector rent,\n", + "But whole he lies, neglected in the tent:\n", + "This the twelfth evening since he rested there,\n", + "Untouch’d by worms, untainted by the air.\n", + "Still as Aurora’s ruddy beam is spread,\n", + "Round his friend’s tomb Achilles drags the dead:\n", + "Yet undisfigured, or in limb or face,\n", + "All fresh he lies, with every living grace,\n", + "Majestical in death! No stains are found\n", + "O’er all the corse, and closed is every wound,\n", + "Though many a wound they gave. Some heavenly care,\n", + "Some hand divine, preserves him ever fair:\n", + "Or all the host of heaven, to whom he led\n", + "A life so grateful, still regard him dead.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus spoke to Priam the celestial guide,\n", + "And joyful thus the royal sire replied:\n", + "“Blest is the man who pays the gods above\n", + "The constant tribute of respect and love!\n", + "Those who inhabit the Olympian bower\n", + "My son forgot not, in exalted power;\n", + "And heaven, that every virtue bears in mind,\n", + "Even to the ashes of the just is kind.\n", + "But thou, O generous youth! this goblet take,\n", + "A pledge of gratitude for Hector’s sake;\n", + "And while the favouring gods our steps survey,\n", + "Safe to Pelides’ tent conduct my way.”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the latent god: “O king, forbear\n", + "To tempt my youth, for apt is youth to err.\n", + "But can I, absent from my prince’s sight,\n", + "Take gifts in secret, that must shun the light?\n", + "What from our master’s interest thus we draw,\n", + "Is but a licensed theft that ’scapes the law.\n", + "Respecting him, my soul abjures the offence;\n", + "And as the crime, I dread the consequence.\n", + "Thee, far as Argos, pleased I could convey;\n", + "Guard of thy life, and partner of thy way:\n", + "On thee attend, thy safety to maintain,\n", + "O’er pathless forests, or the roaring main.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, then took the chariot at a bound,\n", + "And snatch’d the reins, and whirl’d the lash around:\n", + "Before the inspiring god that urged them on,\n", + "The coursers fly with spirit not their own.\n", + "And now they reach’d the naval walls, and found\n", + "The guards repasting, while the bowls go round;\n", + "On these the virtue of his wand he tries,\n", + "And pours deep slumber on their watchful eyes:\n", + "Then heaved the massy gates, removed the bars,\n", + "And o’er the trenches led the rolling cars.\n", + "Unseen, through all the hostile camp they went,\n", + "And now approach’d Pelides’ lofty tent.\n", + "On firs the roof was raised, and cover’d o’er\n", + "With reeds collected from the marshy shore;\n", + "And, fenced with palisades, a hall of state,\n", + "(The work of soldiers,) where the hero sat:\n", + "Large was the door, whose well-compacted strength\n", + "A solid pine-tree barr’d of wondrous length:\n", + "Scarce three strong Greeks could lift its mighty weight,\n", + "But great Achilles singly closed the gate.\n", + "This Hermes (such the power of gods) set wide;\n", + "Then swift alighted the celestial guide,\n", + "And thus reveal’d—”Hear, prince! and understand\n", + "Thou ow’st thy guidance to no mortal hand:\n", + "Hermes I am, descended from above,\n", + "The king of arts, the messenger of Jove,\n", + "Farewell: to shun Achilles’ sight I fly;\n", + "Uncommon are such favours of the sky,\n", + "Nor stand confess’d to frail mortality.\n", + "Now fearless enter, and prefer thy prayers;\n", + "Adjure him by his father’s silver hairs,\n", + "His son, his mother! urge him to bestow\n", + "Whatever pity that stern heart can know.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus having said, he vanish’d from his eyes,\n", + "And in a moment shot into the skies:\n", + "The king, confirm’d from heaven, alighted there,\n", + "And left his aged herald on the car,\n", + "With solemn pace through various rooms he went,\n", + "And found Achilles in his inner tent:\n", + "There sat the hero: Alcimus the brave,\n", + "And great Automedon, attendance gave:\n", + "These served his person at the royal feast;\n", + "Around, at awful distance, stood the rest.\n", + "\n", + "Unseen by these, the king his entry made:\n", + "And, prostrate now before Achilles laid,\n", + "Sudden (a venerable sight!) appears;\n", + "Embraced his knees, and bathed his hands in tears;\n", + "Those direful hands his kisses press’d, embrued\n", + "Even with the best, the dearest of his blood!\n", + "\n", + "As when a wretch (who, conscious of his crime,\n", + "Pursued for murder, flies his native clime)\n", + "Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed,\n", + "All gaze, all wonder: thus Achilles gazed:\n", + "Thus stood the attendants stupid with surprise:\n", + "All mute, yet seem’d to question with their eyes:\n", + "Each look’d on other, none the silence broke,\n", + "Till thus at last the kingly suppliant spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Ah think, thou favour’d of the powers divine![295]\n", + "Think of thy father’s age, and pity mine!\n", + "In me that father’s reverend image trace,\n", + "Those silver hairs, that venerable face;\n", + "His trembling limbs, his helpless person, see!\n", + "In all my equal, but in misery!\n", + "Yet now, perhaps, some turn of human fate\n", + "Expels him helpless from his peaceful state;\n", + "Think, from some powerful foe thou seest him fly,\n", + "And beg protection with a feeble cry.\n", + "Yet still one comfort in his soul may rise;\n", + "He hears his son still lives to glad his eyes,\n", + "And, hearing, still may hope a better day\n", + "May send him thee, to chase that foe away.\n", + "No comfort to my griefs, no hopes remain,\n", + "The best, the bravest, of my sons are slain!\n", + "Yet what a race! ere Greece to Ilion came,\n", + "The pledge of many a loved and loving dame:\n", + "Nineteen one mother bore—Dead, all are dead!\n", + "How oft, alas! has wretched Priam bled!\n", + "Still one was left their loss to recompense;\n", + "His father’s hope, his country’s last defence.\n", + "Him too thy rage has slain! beneath thy steel,\n", + "Unhappy in his country’s cause he fell!\n", + "\n", + "“For him through hostile camps I bent my way,\n", + "For him thus prostrate at thy feet I lay;\n", + "Large gifts proportion’d to thy wrath I bear;\n", + "O hear the wretched, and the gods revere!\n", + "\n", + "“Think of thy father, and this face behold!\n", + "See him in me, as helpless and as old!\n", + "Though not so wretched: there he yields to me,\n", + "The first of men in sovereign misery!\n", + "Thus forced to kneel, thus grovelling to embrace\n", + "The scourge and ruin of my realm and race;\n", + "Suppliant my children’s murderer to implore,\n", + "And kiss those hands yet reeking with their gore!”\n", + "\n", + "These words soft pity in the chief inspire,\n", + "Touch’d with the dear remembrance of his sire.\n", + "Then with his hand (as prostrate still he lay)\n", + "The old man’s cheek he gently turn’d away.\n", + "Now each by turns indulged the gush of woe;\n", + "And now the mingled tides together flow:\n", + "This low on earth, that gently bending o’er;\n", + "A father one, and one a son deplore:\n", + "But great Achilles different passions rend,\n", + "And now his sire he mourns, and now his friend.\n", + "The infectious softness through the heroes ran;\n", + "One universal solemn shower began;\n", + "They bore as heroes, but they felt as man.\n", + "\n", + "Satiate at length with unavailing woes,\n", + "From the high throne divine Achilles rose;\n", + "The reverend monarch by the hand he raised;\n", + "On his white beard and form majestic gazed,\n", + "Not unrelenting; then serene began\n", + "With words to soothe the miserable man:\n", + "\n", + "“Alas, what weight of anguish hast thou known,\n", + "Unhappy prince! thus guardless and alone\n", + "To pass through foes, and thus undaunted face\n", + "The man whose fury has destroy’d thy race!\n", + "Heaven sure has arm’d thee with a heart of steel,\n", + "A strength proportion’d to the woes you feel.\n", + "Rise, then: let reason mitigate your care:\n", + "To mourn avails not: man is born to bear.\n", + "Such is, alas! the gods’ severe decree:\n", + "They, only they are blest, and only free.\n", + "Two urns by Jove’s high throne have ever stood,\n", + "The source of evil one, and one of good;\n", + "From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,\n", + "Blessings to these, to those distributes ill;\n", + "To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed\n", + "To taste the bad unmix’d, is cursed indeed;\n", + "Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,\n", + "He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.\n", + "The happiest taste not happiness sincere;\n", + "But find the cordial draught is dash’d with care.\n", + "Who more than Peleus shone in wealth and power\n", + "What stars concurring bless’d his natal hour!\n", + "A realm, a goddess, to his wishes given;\n", + "Graced by the gods with all the gifts of heaven.\n", + "One evil yet o’ertakes his latest day:\n", + "No race succeeding to imperial sway;\n", + "An only son; and he, alas! ordain’d\n", + "To fall untimely in a foreign land.\n", + "See him, in Troy, the pious care decline\n", + "Of his weak age, to live the curse of thine!\n", + "Thou too, old man, hast happier days beheld;\n", + "In riches once, in children once excell’d;\n", + "Extended Phrygia own’d thy ample reign,\n", + "And all fair Lesbos’ blissful seats contain,\n", + "And all wide Hellespont’s unmeasured main.\n", + "But since the god his hand has pleased to turn,\n", + "And fill thy measure from his bitter urn,\n", + "What sees the sun, but hapless heroes’ falls?\n", + "War, and the blood of men, surround thy walls!\n", + "What must be, must be. Bear thy lot, nor shed\n", + "These unavailing sorrows o’er the dead;\n", + "Thou canst not call him from the Stygian shore,\n", + "But thou, alas! may’st live to suffer more!”\n", + "\n", + "To whom the king: “O favour’d of the skies!\n", + "Here let me grow to earth! since Hector lies\n", + "On the bare beach deprived of obsequies.\n", + "O give me Hector! to my eyes restore\n", + "His corse, and take the gifts: I ask no more.\n", + "Thou, as thou may’st, these boundless stores enjoy;\n", + "Safe may’st thou sail, and turn thy wrath from Troy;\n", + "So shall thy pity and forbearance give\n", + "A weak old man to see the light and live!”\n", + "\n", + "“Move me no more, (Achilles thus replies,\n", + "While kindling anger sparkled in his eyes,)\n", + "Nor seek by tears my steady soul to bend:\n", + "To yield thy Hector I myself intend:\n", + "For know, from Jove my goddess-mother came,\n", + "(Old Ocean’s daughter, silver-footed dame,)\n", + "Nor comest thou but by heaven; nor comest alone,\n", + "Some god impels with courage not thy own:\n", + "No human hand the weighty gates unbarr’d,\n", + "Nor could the boldest of our youth have dared\n", + "To pass our outworks, or elude the guard.\n", + "Cease; lest, neglectful of high Jove’s command,\n", + "I show thee, king! thou tread’st on hostile land;\n", + "Release my knees, thy suppliant arts give o’er,\n", + "And shake the purpose of my soul no more.”\n", + "\n", + "The sire obey’d him, trembling and o’eraw’d.\n", + "Achilles, like a lion, rush’d abroad:\n", + "Automedon and Alcimus attend,\n", + "(Whom most he honour’d, since he lost his friend,)\n", + "These to unyoke the mules and horses went,\n", + "And led the hoary herald to the tent;\n", + "Next, heap’d on high, the numerous presents bear,\n", + "(Great Hector’s ransom,) from the polish’d car.\n", + "Two splendid mantles, and a carpet spread,\n", + "They leave: to cover and enwrap the dead.\n", + "Then call the handmaids, with assistant toil\n", + "To wash the body and anoint with oil,\n", + "Apart from Priam: lest the unhappy sire,\n", + "Provoked to passion, once more rouse to ire\n", + "The stern Pelides; and nor sacred age,\n", + "Nor Jove’s command, should check the rising rage.\n", + "This done, the garments o’er the corse they spread;\n", + "Achilles lifts it to the funeral bed:\n", + "Then, while the body on the car they laid,\n", + "He groans, and calls on loved Patroclus’ shade:\n", + "\n", + "“If, in that gloom which never light must know,\n", + "The deeds of mortals touch the ghosts below,\n", + "O friend! forgive me, that I thus fulfil\n", + "(Restoring Hector) heaven’s unquestion’d will.\n", + "The gifts the father gave, be ever thine,\n", + "To grace thy manes, and adorn thy shrine.”[296]\n", + "\n", + "He said, and, entering, took his seat of state;\n", + "Where full before him reverend Priam sate;\n", + "To whom, composed, the godlike chief begun:\n", + "“Lo! to thy prayer restored, thy breathless son;\n", + "Extended on the funeral couch he lies;\n", + "And soon as morning paints the eastern skies,\n", + "The sight is granted to thy longing eyes:\n", + "But now the peaceful hours of sacred night\n", + "Demand reflection, and to rest invite:\n", + "Nor thou, O father! thus consumed with woe,\n", + "The common cares that nourish life forego.\n", + "Not thus did Niobe, of form divine,\n", + "A parent once, whose sorrows equall’d thine:\n", + "Six youthful sons, as many blooming maids,\n", + "In one sad day beheld the Stygian shades;\n", + "Those by Apollo’s silver bow were slain,\n", + "These, Cynthia’s arrows stretch’d upon the plain:\n", + "So was her pride chastised by wrath divine,\n", + "Who match’d her own with bright Latona’s line;\n", + "But two the goddess, twelve the queen enjoy’d;\n", + "Those boasted twelve, the avenging two destroy’d.\n", + "Steep’d in their blood, and in the dust outspread,\n", + "Nine days, neglected, lay exposed the dead;\n", + "None by to weep them, to inhume them none;\n", + "(For Jove had turn’d the nation all to stone.)\n", + "The gods themselves, at length relenting gave\n", + "The unhappy race the honours of a grave.\n", + "Herself a rock (for such was heaven’s high will)\n", + "Through deserts wild now pours a weeping rill;\n", + "Where round the bed whence Achelous springs,\n", + "The watery fairies dance in mazy rings;\n", + "There high on Sipylus’s shaggy brow,\n", + "She stands, her own sad monument of woe;\n", + "The rock for ever lasts, the tears for ever flow.\n", + "\n", + "“Such griefs, O king! have other parents known;\n", + "Remember theirs, and mitigate thy own.\n", + "The care of heaven thy Hector has appear’d,\n", + "Nor shall he lie unwept, and uninterr’d;\n", + "Soon may thy aged cheeks in tears be drown’d,\n", + "And all the eyes of Ilion stream around.”\n", + "\n", + "He said, and, rising, chose the victim ewe\n", + "With silver fleece, which his attendants slew.\n", + "The limbs they sever from the reeking hide,\n", + "With skill prepare them, and in parts divide:\n", + "Each on the coals the separate morsels lays,\n", + "And, hasty, snatches from the rising blaze.\n", + "With bread the glittering canisters they load,\n", + "Which round the board Automedon bestow’d.\n", + "The chief himself to each his portion placed,\n", + "And each indulging shared in sweet repast.\n", + "When now the rage of hunger was repress’d,\n", + "The wondering hero eyes his royal guest:\n", + "No less the royal guest the hero eyes,\n", + "His godlike aspect and majestic size;\n", + "Here, youthful grace and noble fire engage;\n", + "And there, the mild benevolence of age.\n", + "Thus gazing long, the silence neither broke,\n", + "(A solemn scene!) at length the father spoke:\n", + "\n", + "“Permit me now, beloved of Jove! to steep\n", + "My careful temples in the dew of sleep:\n", + "For, since the day that number’d with the dead\n", + "My hapless son, the dust has been my bed;\n", + "Soft sleep a stranger to my weeping eyes;\n", + "My only food, my sorrows and my sighs!\n", + "Till now, encouraged by the grace you give,\n", + "I share thy banquet, and consent to live.”\n", + "\n", + "With that, Achilles bade prepare the bed,\n", + "With purple soft and shaggy carpets spread;\n", + "Forth, by the flaming lights, they bend their way,\n", + "And place the couches, and the coverings lay.\n", + "Then he: “Now, father, sleep, but sleep not here;\n", + "Consult thy safety, and forgive my fear,\n", + "Lest any Argive, at this hour awake,\n", + "To ask our counsel, or our orders take,\n", + "Approaching sudden to our open’d tent,\n", + "Perchance behold thee, and our grace prevent.\n", + "Should such report thy honour’d person here,\n", + "The king of men the ransom might defer;\n", + "But say with speed, if aught of thy desire\n", + "Remains unask’d; what time the rites require\n", + "To inter thy Hector? For, so long we stay\n", + "Our slaughtering arm, and bid the hosts obey.”\n", + "\n", + "“If then thy will permit (the monarch said)\n", + "To finish all due honours to the dead,\n", + "This of thy grace accord: to thee are known\n", + "The fears of Ilion, closed within her town;\n", + "And at what distance from our walls aspire\n", + "The hills of Ide, and forests for the fire.\n", + "Nine days to vent our sorrows I request,\n", + "The tenth shall see the funeral and the feast;\n", + "The next, to raise his monument be given;\n", + "The twelfth we war, if war be doom’d by heaven!”\n", + "\n", + "“This thy request (replied the chief) enjoy:\n", + "Till then our arms suspend the fall of Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Then gave his hand at parting, to prevent\n", + "The old man’s fears, and turn’d within the tent;\n", + "Where fair Briseïs, bright in blooming charms,\n", + "Expects her hero with desiring arms.\n", + "But in the porch the king and herald rest;\n", + "Sad dreams of care yet wandering in their breast.\n", + "Now gods and men the gifts of sleep partake;\n", + "Industrious Hermes only was awake,\n", + "The king’s return revolving in his mind,\n", + "To pass the ramparts, and the watch to blind.\n", + "The power descending hover’d o’er his head:\n", + "“And sleep’st thou, father! (thus the vision said:)\n", + "Now dost thou sleep, when Hector is restored?\n", + "Nor fear the Grecian foes, or Grecian lord?\n", + "Thy presence here should stern Atrides see,\n", + "Thy still surviving sons may sue for thee;\n", + "May offer all thy treasures yet contain,\n", + "To spare thy age; and offer all in vain.”\n", + "\n", + "Waked with the word the trembling sire arose,\n", + "And raised his friend: the god before him goes:\n", + "He joins the mules, directs them with his hand,\n", + "And moves in silence through the hostile land.\n", + "When now to Xanthus’ yellow stream they drove,\n", + "(Xanthus, immortal progeny of Jove,)\n", + "The winged deity forsook their view,\n", + "And in a moment to Olympus flew.\n", + "Now shed Aurora round her saffron ray,\n", + "Sprang through the gates of light, and gave the day:\n", + "Charged with the mournful load, to Ilion go\n", + "The sage and king, majestically slow.\n", + "Cassandra first beholds, from Ilion’s spire,\n", + "The sad procession of her hoary sire;\n", + "Then, as the pensive pomp advanced more near,\n", + "(Her breathless brother stretched upon the bier,)\n", + "A shower of tears o’erflows her beauteous eyes,\n", + "Alarming thus all Ilion with her cries:\n", + "\n", + "“Turn here your steps, and here your eyes employ,\n", + "Ye wretched daughters, and ye sons of Troy!\n", + "If e’er ye rush’d in crowds, with vast delight,\n", + "To hail your hero glorious from the fight,\n", + "Now meet him dead, and let your sorrows flow;\n", + "Your common triumph, and your common woe.”\n", + "\n", + "In thronging crowds they issue to the plains;\n", + "Nor man nor woman in the walls remains;\n", + "In every face the self-same grief is shown;\n", + "And Troy sends forth one universal groan.\n", + "At Scæa’s gates they meet the mourning wain,\n", + "Hang on the wheels, and grovel round the slain.\n", + "The wife and mother, frantic with despair,\n", + "Kiss his pale cheek, and rend their scatter’d hair:\n", + "Thus wildly wailing, at the gates they lay;\n", + "And there had sigh’d and sorrow’d out the day;\n", + "But godlike Priam from the chariot rose:\n", + "“Forbear (he cried) this violence of woes;\n", + "First to the palace let the car proceed,\n", + "Then pour your boundless sorrows o’er the dead.”\n", + "\n", + "The waves of people at his word divide,\n", + "Slow rolls the chariot through the following tide;\n", + "Even to the palace the sad pomp they wait:\n", + "They weep, and place him on the bed of state.\n", + "A melancholy choir attend around,\n", + "With plaintive sighs, and music’s solemn sound:\n", + "Alternately they sing, alternate flow\n", + "The obedient tears, melodious in their woe.\n", + "While deeper sorrows groan from each full heart,\n", + "And nature speaks at every pause of art.\n", + "\n", + "First to the corse the weeping consort flew;\n", + "Around his neck her milk-white arms she threw,\n", + "“And oh, my Hector! Oh, my lord! (she cries)\n", + "Snatch’d in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!\n", + "Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!\n", + "And I abandon’d, desolate, alone!\n", + "An only son, once comfort of our pains,\n", + "Sad product now of hapless love, remains!\n", + "Never to manly age that son shall rise,\n", + "Or with increasing graces glad my eyes:\n", + "For Ilion now (her great defender slain)\n", + "Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.\n", + "Who now protects her wives with guardian care?\n", + "Who saves her infants from the rage of war?\n", + "Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o’er\n", + "(Those wives must wait them) to a foreign shore:\n", + "Thou too, my son, to barbarous climes shall go,\n", + "The sad companion of thy mother’s woe;\n", + "Driven hence a slave before the victor’s sword\n", + "Condemn’d to toil for some inhuman lord:\n", + "Or else some Greek whose father press’d the plain,\n", + "Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,\n", + "In Hector’s blood his vengeance shall enjoy,\n", + "And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy.[297]\n", + "For thy stern father never spared a foe:\n", + "Thence all these tears, and all this scene of woe!\n", + "Thence many evils his sad parents bore,\n", + "His parents many, but his consort more.\n", + "Why gav’st thou not to me thy dying hand?\n", + "And why received not I thy last command?\n", + "Some word thou would’st have spoke, which, sadly dear,\n", + "My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;\n", + "Which never, never could be lost in air,\n", + "Fix’d in my heart, and oft repeated there!”\n", + "\n", + "Thus to her weeping maids she makes her moan,\n", + "Her weeping handmaids echo groan for groan.\n", + "\n", + "The mournful mother next sustains her part:\n", + "“O thou, the best, the dearest to my heart!\n", + "Of all my race thou most by heaven approved,\n", + "And by the immortals even in death beloved!\n", + "While all my other sons in barbarous bands\n", + "Achilles bound, and sold to foreign lands,\n", + "This felt no chains, but went a glorious ghost,\n", + "Free, and a hero, to the Stygian coast.\n", + "Sentenced, ’tis true, by his inhuman doom,\n", + "Thy noble corse was dragg’d around the tomb;\n", + "(The tomb of him thy warlike arm had slain;)\n", + "Ungenerous insult, impotent and vain!\n", + "Yet glow’st thou fresh with every living grace;\n", + "No mark of pain, or violence of face:\n", + "Rosy and fair! as Phœbus’ silver bow\n", + "Dismiss’d thee gently to the shades below.”\n", + "\n", + "Thus spoke the dame, and melted into tears.\n", + "Sad Helen next in pomp of grief appears;\n", + "Fast from the shining sluices of her eyes\n", + "Fall the round crystal drops, while thus she cries.\n", + "\n", + "“Ah, dearest friend! in whom the gods had join’d[298]\n", + "The mildest manners with the bravest mind,\n", + "Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o’er\n", + "Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore,\n", + "(O had I perish’d, ere that form divine\n", + "Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!)\n", + "Yet was it ne’er my fate, from thee to find\n", + "A deed ungentle, or a word unkind.\n", + "When others cursed the authoress of their woe,\n", + "Thy pity check’d my sorrows in their flow.\n", + "If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,\n", + "Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,\n", + "Thy gentle accents soften’d all my pain.\n", + "For thee I mourn, and mourn myself in thee,\n", + "The wretched source of all this misery.\n", + "The fate I caused, for ever I bemoan;\n", + "Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!\n", + "Through Troy’s wide streets abandon’d shall I roam!\n", + "In Troy deserted, as abhorr’d at home!”\n", + "\n", + "So spoke the fair, with sorrow-streaming eye.\n", + "Distressful beauty melts each stander-by.\n", + "On all around the infectious sorrow grows;\n", + "But Priam check’d the torrent as it rose:\n", + "“Perform, ye Trojans! what the rites require,\n", + "And fell the forests for a funeral pyre;\n", + "Twelve days, nor foes nor secret ambush dread;\n", + "Achilles grants these honours to the dead.”[299]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "[Illustration: ] FUNERAL OF HECTOR\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "He spoke, and, at his word, the Trojan train\n", + "Their mules and oxen harness to the wain,\n", + "Pour through the gates, and fell’d from Ida’s crown,\n", + "Roll back the gather’d forests to the town.\n", + "These toils continue nine succeeding days,\n", + "And high in air a sylvan structure raise.\n", + "But when the tenth fair morn began to shine,\n", + "Forth to the pile was borne the man divine,\n", + "And placed aloft; while all, with streaming eyes,\n", + "Beheld the flames and rolling smokes arise.\n", + "Soon as Aurora, daughter of the dawn,\n", + "With rosy lustre streak’d the dewy lawn,\n", + "Again the mournful crowds surround the pyre,\n", + "And quench with wine the yet remaining fire.\n", + "The snowy bones his friends and brothers place\n", + "(With tears collected) in a golden vase;\n", + "The golden vase in purple palls they roll’d,\n", + "Of softest texture, and inwrought with gold.\n", + "Last o’er the urn the sacred earth they spread,\n", + "And raised the tomb, memorial of the dead.\n", + "(Strong guards and spies, till all the rites were done,\n", + "Watch’d from the rising to the setting sun.)\n", + "All Troy then moves to Priam’s court again,\n", + "A solemn, silent, melancholy train:\n", + "Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,\n", + "And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast.\n", + "Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,\n", + "And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.[300]\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "CONCLUDING NOTE.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "We have now passed through the Iliad, and seen the anger of Achilles,\n", + "and the terrible effects of it, at an end: as that only was the subject\n", + "of the poem, and the nature of epic poetry would not permit our author\n", + "to proceed to the event of the war, it perhaps may be acceptable to the\n", + "common reader to give a short account of what happened to Troy and the\n", + "chief actors in this poem after the conclusion of it.\n", + "\n", + "I need not mention that Troy was taken soon after the death of Hector\n", + "by the stratagem of the wooden horse, the particulars of which are\n", + "described by Virgil in the second book of the Æneid.\n", + "\n", + "Achilles fell before Troy, by the hand of Paris, by the shot of an\n", + "arrow in his heel, as Hector had prophesied at his death, lib. xxii.\n", + "\n", + "The unfortunate Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.\n", + "\n", + "Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the\n", + "armour of Vulcan, but being defeated in his aim, he slew himself\n", + "through indignation.\n", + "\n", + "Helen, after the death of Paris, married Deiphobus his brother, and at\n", + "the taking of Troy betrayed him, in order to reconcile herself to\n", + "Menelaus her first husband, who received her again into favour.\n", + "\n", + "Agamemnon at his return was barbarously murdered by Ægysthus, at the\n", + "instigation of Clytemnestra his wife, who in his absence had\n", + "dishonoured his bed with Ægysthus.\n", + "\n", + "Diomed, after the fall of Troy, was expelled his own country, and\n", + "scarce escaped with his life from his adulterous wife Ægialé; but at\n", + "last was received by Daunus in Apulia, and shared his kingdom; it is\n", + "uncertain how he died.\n", + "\n", + "Nestor lived in peace with his children, in Pylos, his native country.\n", + "\n", + "Ulysses also, after innumerable troubles by sea and land, at last\n", + "returned in safety to Ithaca, which is the subject of Homer’s Odyssey.\n", + "\n", + "For what remains, I beg to be excused from the ceremonies of taking\n", + "leave at the end of my work, and from embarrassing myself, or others,\n", + "with any defences or apologies about it. But instead of endeavouring to\n", + "raise a vain monument to myself, of the merits or difficulties of it\n", + "(which must be left to the world, to truth, and to posterity), let me\n", + "leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most\n", + "valuable of men, as well as finest writers, of my age and country, one\n", + "who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking\n", + "it is to do justice to Homer, and one whom (I am sure) sincerely\n", + "rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having\n", + "brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to\n", + "have the honour and satisfaction of placing together, in this manner,\n", + "the names of Mr. CONGREVE, and of\n", + "\n", + "March 25, 1720\n", + "\n", + "A. POPE\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Ton theon de eupoiia—to mae epi pleon me procophai en poiaetiki kai\n", + "allois epitaeoeimasi en ois isos a kateschethaen, ei aesthomaen emautan\n", + "euodos proionta.\n", + "\n", + "M. AUREL ANTON _de Seipso_, lib. i. § 17.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "END OF THE ILIAD\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "Footnotes\n", + "\n", + "\n", + " [1] “What,” says Archdeacon Wilberforce, “is the natural root of\n", + " loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal\n", + " security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that\n", + " consciousness of a natural bond among the families of men which gives\n", + " a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their\n", + " affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their\n", + " ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? Hence\n", + " the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or justice in our\n", + " hereditary princes\n", + "\n", + "“‘Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo,\n", + "Projice tela manu _sanguis meus_’\n", + "\n", + "“So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even\n", + "when history witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it\n", + "and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been rekindled in our\n", + "own days towards the granddaughter of George the Third of Hanover.\n", + " “Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those\n", + " great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given expression, in the\n", + " immortal language of song, to the deeper inspirations of our\n", + " nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal\n", + " inheritance of the human race. In this mutual ground every man\n", + " meets his brother, they have been set forth by the providence of\n", + " God to vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and that,\n", + " in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common\n", + " benefactors.’—_Doctrine of the Incarnation_, pp. 9, 10.\n", + "\n", + " [2] Εἰκος δέ μιν ἦν καὶ μνημόσυνα πάντων γράφεσθαι. Vit. Hom. in\n", + " Schweigh. Herodot. t. iv. p. 299, sq. § 6. I may observe that this\n", + " Life has been paraphrased in English by my learned young friend\n", + " Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, and appended to my prose translation of the\n", + " Odyssey. The present abridgement however, will contain all that is of\n", + " use to the reader, for the biographical value of the treatise is most\n", + " insignificant.\n", + "\n", + " [3] _I.e._ both of composing and reciting verses for as Blair\n", + " observes, “The first poets sang their own verses.” Sextus Empir. adv.\n", + " Mus. p. 360 ed. Fabric. Οὐ ἀμελει γέ τοι καὶ οἰ ποιηταὶ μελοποιοὶ\n", + " λέγονται, καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἕπη τὸ πάλαι πρὸς λύραν ἤδετο.\n", + " “The voice,” observes Heeren, “was always accompanied by some\n", + " instrument. The bard was provided with a harp on which he played a\n", + " prelude, to elevate and inspire his mind, and with which he\n", + " accompanied the song when begun. His voice probably preserved a medium\n", + " between singing and recitation; the words, and not the melody were\n", + " regarded by the listeners, hence it was necessary for him to remain\n", + " intelligible to all. In countries where nothing similar is found, it\n", + " is difficult to represent such scenes to the mind; but whoever has had\n", + " an opportunity of listening to the improvisation of Italy, can easily\n", + " form an idea of Demodocus and Phemius.”—_Ancient Greece_, p. 94.\n", + "\n", + " [4] “Should it not be, since _my_ arrival? asks Mackenzie, observing\n", + " that “poplars can hardly live so long”. But setting aside the fact\n", + " that we must not expect consistency in a mere romance, the ancients\n", + " had a superstitious belief in the great age of trees which grew near\n", + " places consecrated by the presence of gods and great men. See Cicero\n", + " de Legg II I, sub init., where he speaks of the plane tree under which\n", + " Socrates used to walk and of the tree at Delos, where Latona gave\n", + " birth to Apollo. This passage is referred to by Stephanus of\n", + " Byzantium, _s. v._ N. T. p. 490, ed. de Pinedo. I omit quoting any of\n", + " the dull epigrams ascribed to Homer for, as Mr. Justice Talfourd\n", + " rightly observes, “The authenticity of these fragments depends upon\n", + " that of the pseudo Herodotean Life of Homer, from which they are\n", + " taken.” Lit of Greece, pp. 38 in Encycl. Metrop. Cf. Coleridge,\n", + " Classic Poets, p. 317.\n", + "\n", + " [5] It is quoted as the work of Cleobulus, by Diogenes Laert. Vit.\n", + " Cleob. p. 62, ed. Casaub.\n", + "\n", + " [6] I trust I am justified in employing this as an equivalent for the\n", + " Greek λέσχαι.\n", + "\n", + " [7] Ὡς εἰ τοὺς Ὁμήρους δόξει τρέφειν αὐτοῖς, ὅμιλον πολλόν τε και\n", + " ἀχρεοῖν ἕξουσιν. ἐι τεῦθεν δὲ και τοὔνομα Ὁμηρος ἐπεκράτησε τῷ\n", + " Μελησιγενεῖ ἀπὸ τῆς συμφορης. οἱ γὰρ Κυμαῖοι τοὺς τυφλοὺς Ὁμήρους\n", + " λέγουσιν. Vit. Hom. _l. c._ p. 311. The etymology has been condemned\n", + " by recent scholars. See Welcker, Epische Cyclus, p. 127, and\n", + " Mackenzie’s note, p. xiv.\n", + "\n", + " [8] Θεστορίδης, θνητοῖσιν ἀνωἷστων πολεών περ, οὐδὲν ἀφραστότερον\n", + " πέλεται νόου ἀνθρώποισιν. Ibid. p. 315. During his stay at Phocœa,\n", + " Homer is said to have composed the Little Iliad, and the Phocœid. See\n", + " Muller’s Hist. of Lit., vi. § 3. Welcker, _l. c._ pp. 132, 272, 358,\n", + " sqq., and Mure, Gr. Lit. vol. ii. p. 284, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [9] This is so pretty a picture of early manners and hospitality, that\n", + " it is almost a pity to find that it is obviously a copy from the\n", + " Odyssey. See the fourteenth book. In fact, whoever was the author of\n", + " this fictitious biography, he showed some tact in identifying Homer\n", + " with certain events described in his poems, and in eliciting from them\n", + " the germs of something like a personal narrative.\n", + "\n", + " [10] Διὰ λόγων ἐστιῶντο. A common metaphor. So Plato calls the parties\n", + " conversing δαιτύμονες, or ἐστιάτορες, Tim. i. p. 522 A. Cf. Themist.\n", + " Orat. vi. p. 168, and xvi. p. 374, ed. Petav. So διηγήμασι σοφοῖς ὁμοῦ\n", + " καὶ τερπνοῖς ἡδίω τὴν θοινην τοῖς ἑστιωμένοις ἐποίει, Choricius in\n", + " Fabric. Bibl. Gr. T. viii. P. 851. λόγοις γὰρ ἑστίᾳ, Athenæus vii p\n", + " 275, A.\n", + "\n", + " [11] It was at Bolissus, and in the house of this Chian citizen, that\n", + " Homer is said to have written the Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the\n", + " Frogs and Mice, the Epicichlidia, and some other minor works.\n", + "\n", + " [12] Chandler, Travels, vol. i. p. 61, referred to in the Voyage\n", + " Pittoresque dans la Grèce, vol. i. P. 92, where a view of the spot is\n", + " given of which the author candidly says,— “Je ne puis répondre d’une\n", + " exactitude scrupuleuse dans la vue générale que j’en donne, car étant\n", + " allé seul pour l’examiner je perdis mon crayon, et je fus obligé de\n", + " m’en fier à ma mémoire. Je ne crois cependant pas avoir trop à me\n", + " plaindre d’elle en cette occasion.”\n", + "\n", + " [13] A more probable reason for this companionship, and for the\n", + " character of Mentor itself, is given by the allegorists, viz.: the\n", + " assumption of Mentor’s form by the guardian deity of the wise Ulysses,\n", + " Minerva. The classical reader may compare Plutarch, Opp. t. ii. p.\n", + " 880; _Xyland_. Heraclid. Pont. Alleg. Hom. p. 531-5, of Gale’s Opusc.\n", + " Mythol. Dionys. Halic. de Hom. Poes. c. 15; Apul. de Deo Socrat. s. f.\n", + "\n", + " [14] Vit. Hom. § 28.\n", + "\n", + " [15] The riddle is given in Section 35. Compare Mackenzie’s note, p.\n", + " xxx.\n", + "\n", + " [16] Heeren’s Ancient Greece, p. 96.\n", + "\n", + " [17] Compare Sir E. L. Bulwer’s Caxtons v. i. p. 4.\n", + "\n", + " [18] Pericles and Aspasia, Letter lxxxiv., Works, vol ii. p. 387.\n", + "\n", + " [19] Quarterly Review, No. lxxxvii., p. 147.\n", + "\n", + " [20] Viz., the following beautiful passage, for the translation of\n", + " which I am indebted to Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 286.\n", + "\n", + "“Origias, farewell! and oh! remember me\n", + "Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea,\n", + "A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore,\n", + "And ask you, maid, of all the bards you boast,\n", + "Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most\n", + "Oh! answer all,—‘A blind old man and poor\n", + "Sweetest he sings—and dwells on Chios’ rocky shore.’”\n", + "\n", + "_See_ Thucyd. iii, 104.\n", + "\n", + " [21] Longin., de Sublim., ix. § 26. Ὅθεν ἐν τῇ Ὀδυσσείᾳ παρεικάσαι τις\n", + " ἂν καταδυομένῳ τὸν Ὅμηρον ἡλίῳ, οδ δίχα τῆς σφοδρότητος παραμένει το\n", + " μέγεθος.\n", + "\n", + " [22] See Tatian, quoted in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. II t. ii. Mr.\n", + " Mackenzie has given three brief but elaborate papers on the different\n", + " writers on the subject, which deserve to be consulted. See Notes and\n", + " Queries, vol. v. pp. 99, 171, and 221. His own views are moderate, and\n", + " perhaps as satisfactory, on the whole, as any of the hypotheses\n", + " hitherto put forth. In fact, they consist in an attempt to blend those\n", + " hypotheses into something like consistency, rather than in advocating\n", + " any individual theory.\n", + "\n", + " [23] Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.\n", + "\n", + " [24] Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [25] It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the\n", + " memory may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to\n", + " that of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short\n", + " warning, to ‘rhapsodize,’ night after night, parts which when laid\n", + " together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is\n", + " nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a\n", + " gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a\n", + " distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he\n", + " informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a\n", + " man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole\n", + " Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also\n", + " to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either\n", + " forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first,\n", + " alternately the odd and even lines—in short, whatever the passage\n", + " required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more\n", + " than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could\n", + " produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this\n", + " singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same\n", + " manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which\n", + " we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years\n", + " ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can\n", + " have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually\n", + " repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any\n", + " part of the Bible—even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration\n", + " of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as\n", + " touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts\n", + " they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent\n", + " to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of\n", + " multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair\n", + " judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory\n", + " combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded\n", + " people?—Quarterly Review, _l. c._, p. 143, sqq.\n", + " Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, “The\n", + " Dschungariade of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer\n", + " in length, as much as it stands beneath them in merit, and yet it\n", + " exists only in the memory of a people which is not unacquainted\n", + " with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably the last\n", + " things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that\n", + " they are remembered.”— _Ancient Greece_. p. 100.\n", + "\n", + " [26] Vol. II p. 198, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [27] Quarterly Review, _l. c._, p. 131 sq.\n", + "\n", + " [28] Betrachtungen über die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204.\n", + " Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 221.\n", + "\n", + " [29] Prolegg. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., &c.\n", + "\n", + " [30] Vol. ii. p. 214 sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [31] “Who,” says Cicero, de Orat. iii. 34, “was more learned in that\n", + " age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been more perfected by\n", + " literature than that of Peisistratus, who is said first to have\n", + " disposed the books of Homer in the order in which we now have them?”\n", + " Compare Wolf’s Prolegomena 33, §.\n", + "\n", + " [32] “The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the\n", + " eleventh to the twenty-second inclusive, seems to form the primary\n", + " organization of the poem, then properly an Achilleïs.”—Grote, vol. ii.\n", + " p. 235\n", + "\n", + " [33] K. R. H. Mackenzie, Notes and Queries, p. 222 sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [34] See his Epistle to Raphelingius, in Schroeder’s edition, 4to.,\n", + " Delphis, 1728.\n", + "\n", + " [35] Ancient Greece, p. 101.\n", + "\n", + " [36] The best description of this monument will be found in Vaux’s\n", + " “Antiquities of the British Museum,” p. 198 sq. The monument itself\n", + " (Towneley Sculptures, No. 123) is well known.\n", + "\n", + " [37] Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 276.\n", + "\n", + " [38] Preface to her Homer.\n", + "\n", + " [39] Hesiod. Opp. et Dier. Lib. I. vers. 155, &c.\n", + "\n", + " [40] The following argument of the Iliad, corrected in a few\n", + " particulars, is translated from Bitaubé, and is, perhaps, the neatest\n", + " summary that has ever been drawn up:—“A hero, injured by his general,\n", + " and animated with a noble resentment, retires to his tent; and for a\n", + " season withdraws himself and his troops from the war. During this\n", + " interval, victory abandons the army, which for nine years has been\n", + " occupied in a great enterprise, upon the successful termination of\n", + " which the honour of their country depends. The general, at length\n", + " opening his eyes to the fault which he had committed, deputes the\n", + " principal officers of his army to the incensed hero, with commission\n", + " to make compensation for the injury, and to tender magnificent\n", + " presents. The hero, according to the proud obstinacy of his character,\n", + " persists in his animosity; the army is again defeated, and is on the\n", + " verge of entire destruction. This inexorable man has a friend; this\n", + " friend weeps before him, and asks for the hero’s arms, and for\n", + " permission to go to the war in his stead. The eloquence of friendship\n", + " prevails more than the intercession of the ambassadors or the gifts of\n", + " the general. He lends his armour to his friend, but commands him not\n", + " to engage with the chief of the enemy’s army, because he reserves to\n", + " himself the honour of that combat, and because he also fears for his\n", + " friend’s life. The prohibition is forgotten; the friend listens to\n", + " nothing but his courage; his corpse is brought back to the hero, and\n", + " the hero’s arms become the prize of the conqueror. Then the hero,\n", + " given up to the most lively despair, prepares to fight; he receives\n", + " from a divinity new armour, is reconciled with his general and,\n", + " thirsting for glory and revenge, enacts prodigies of valour, recovers\n", + " the victory, slays the enemy’s chief, honours his friend with superb\n", + " funeral rites, and exercises a cruel vengeance on the body of his\n", + " destroyer; but finally appeased by the tears and prayers of the father\n", + " of the slain warrior, restores to the old man the corpse of his son,\n", + " which he buries with due solemnities.’—Coleridge, p. 177, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [41] Vultures: Pope is more accurate than the poet he translates, for\n", + " Homer writes “a prey to dogs and to _all_ kinds of birds. But all\n", + " kinds of birds are not carnivorous.\n", + "\n", + " [42] _i.e._ during the whole time of their striving the will of Jove\n", + " was being gradually accomplished.\n", + "\n", + " [43] Compare Milton’s “Paradise Lost” i. 6\n", + "\n", + "“Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top\n", + "Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire\n", + "That shepherd.”\n", + "\n", + " [44] _Latona’s son: i.e._ Apollo.\n", + "\n", + " [45] _King of men:_ Agamemnon.\n", + "\n", + " [46] _Brother kings:_ Menelaus and Agamemnon.\n", + "\n", + " [47] _Smintheus_ an epithet taken from sminthos, the Phrygian name\n", + " for a _mouse_, was applied to Apollo for having put an end to a plague\n", + " of mice which had harassed that territory. Strabo, however, says, that\n", + " when the Teucri were migrating from Crete, they were told by an oracle\n", + " to settle in that place, where they should not be attacked by the\n", + " original inhabitants of the land, and that, having halted for the\n", + " night, a number of field-mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps\n", + " of their baggage, and thongs of their armour. In fulfilment of the\n", + " oracle, they settled on the spot, and raised a temple to Sminthean\n", + " Apollo. Grote, “History of Greece,” i. p. 68, remarks that the\n", + " “worship of Sminthean Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its\n", + " neighboring territory, dates before the earliest period of Æolian\n", + " colonization.”\n", + "\n", + " [48] _Cilla_, a town of Troas near Thebe, so called from Cillus, a\n", + " sister of Hippodamia, slain by Œnomaus.\n", + "\n", + " [49] A mistake. It should be,\n", + "\n", + "“If e’er I roofed thy graceful fane,”\n", + "\n", + "for the custom of decorating temples with garlands was of later date.\n", + "\n", + " [50] _Bent was his bow_ “The Apollo of Homer, it must be borne in\n", + " mind, is a different character from the deity of the same name in the\n", + " later classical pantheon. Throughout both poems, all deaths from\n", + " unforeseen or invisible causes, the ravages of pestilence, the fate of\n", + " the young child or promising adult, cut off in the germ of infancy or\n", + " flower of youth, of the old man dropping peacefully into the grave, or\n", + " of the reckless sinner suddenly checked in his career of crime, are\n", + " ascribed to the arrows of Apollo or Diana. The oracular functions of\n", + " the god rose naturally out of the above fundamental attributes, for\n", + " who could more appropriately impart to mortals what little\n", + " foreknowledge Fate permitted of her decrees than the agent of her most\n", + " awful dispensations? The close union of the arts of prophecy and song\n", + " explains his additional office of god of music, while the arrows with\n", + " which he and his sister were armed, symbols of sudden death in every\n", + " age, no less naturally procured him that of god of archery. Of any\n", + " connection between Apollo and the Sun, whatever may have existed in\n", + " the more esoteric doctrine of the Greek sanctuaries, there is no trace\n", + " in either Iliad or Odyssey.”—Mure, “History of Greek Literature,” vol.\n", + " i. p. 478, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [51] It has frequently been observed, that most pestilences begin with\n", + " animals, and that Homer had this fact in mind.\n", + "\n", + " [52] _Convened to council_. The public assembly in the heroic times is\n", + " well characterized by Grote, vol. ii. p 92. “It is an assembly for\n", + " talk. Communication and discussion to a certain extent by the chiefs\n", + " in person, of the people as listeners and sympathizers—often for\n", + " eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel—but here its ostensible purposes\n", + " end.”\n", + "\n", + " [53] Old Jacob Duport, whose “Gnomologia Homerica” is full of curious\n", + " and useful things, quotes several passages of the ancients, in which\n", + " reference is made to these words of Homer, in maintenance of the\n", + " belief that dreams had a divine origin and an import in which men were\n", + " interested.\n", + "\n", + " [54] Rather, “bright-eyed.” See the German critics quoted by Arnold.\n", + "\n", + " [55] The prize given to Ajax was Tecmessa, while Ulysses received\n", + " Laodice, the daughter of Cycnus.\n", + "\n", + " [56] The Myrmidons dwelt on the southern borders of Thessaly, and took\n", + " their origin from Myrmido, son of Jupiter and Eurymedusa. It is\n", + " fancifully supposed that the name was derived from myrmaex, an _ant_,\n", + " “because they imitated the diligence of the ants, and like them were\n", + " indefatigable, continually employed in cultivating the earth; the\n", + " change from ants to men is founded merely on the equivocation of their\n", + " name, which resembles that of the ant: they bore a further resemblance\n", + " to these little animals, in that instead of inhabiting towns or\n", + " villages, at first they commonly resided in the open fields, having no\n", + " other retreats but dens and the cavities of trees, until Ithacus\n", + " brought them together, and settled them in more secure and comfortable\n", + " habitations.”—Anthon’s “Lempriere.”\n", + "\n", + " [57] Eustathius, after Heraclides Ponticus and others, allegorizes\n", + " this apparition, as if the appearance of Minerva to Achilles, unseen\n", + " by the rest, was intended to point out the sudden recollection that he\n", + " would gain nothing by intemperate wrath, and that it were best to\n", + " restrain his anger, and only gratify it by withdrawing his services.\n", + " The same idea is rather cleverly worked out by Apuleius, “De Deo\n", + " Socratis.”\n", + "\n", + " [58] Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost,” bk. ii:\n", + "\n", + "“Though his tongue\n", + "Dropp’d manna.”\n", + "\n", + "So Proverbs v. 3, “For the lips of a strange woman drop as an\n", + "honey-comb.”\n", + "\n", + " [59] Salt water was chiefly used in lustrations, from its being\n", + " supposed to possess certain fiery particles. Hence, if sea-water could\n", + " not be obtained, salt was thrown into the fresh water to be used for\n", + " the lustration. Menander, in Clem. Alex. vii. p.713, hydati\n", + " perriranai, embalon alas, phakois.\n", + "\n", + " [60] The persons of heralds were held inviolable, and they were at\n", + " liberty to travel whither they would without fear of molestation.\n", + " Pollux, Onom. viii. p. 159. The office was generally given to old men,\n", + " and they were believed to be under the especial protection of Jove and\n", + " Mercury.\n", + "\n", + " [61] His mother, Thetis, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, who was\n", + " courted by Neptune and Jupiter. When, however, it was known that the\n", + " son to whom she would give birth must prove greater than his father,\n", + " it was determined to wed her to a mortal, and Peleus, with great\n", + " difficulty, succeeded in obtaining her hand, as she eluded him by\n", + " assuming various forms. Her children were all destroyed by fire\n", + " through her attempts to see whether they were immortal, and Achilles\n", + " would have shared the same fate had not his father rescued him. She\n", + " afterwards rendered him invulnerable by plunging him into the waters\n", + " of the Styx, with the exception of that part of the heel by which she\n", + " held him. Hygin. Fab. 54\n", + "\n", + " [62] Thebé was a city of Mysia, north of Adramyttium.\n", + "\n", + " [63] That is, defrauds me of the prize allotted me by their votes.\n", + "\n", + " [64] Quintus Calaber goes still further in his account of the service\n", + " rendered to Jove by Thetis:\n", + "\n", + "“Nay more, the fetters of Almighty Jove\n", + "She loosed”—Dyce’s “Calaber,” s. 58.\n", + "\n", + " [65] _To Fates averse_. Of the gloomy destiny reigning throughout the\n", + " Homeric poems, and from which even the gods are not exempt, Schlegel\n", + " well observes, “This power extends also to the world of gods— for the\n", + " Grecian gods are mere powers of nature—and although immeasurably\n", + " higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they are on an\n", + " equal footing with himself.”—‘Lectures on the Drama’ v. p. 67.\n", + "\n", + " [66] It has been observed that the annual procession of the sacred\n", + " ship so often represented on Egyptian monuments, and the return of the\n", + " deity from Ethiopia after some days’ absence, serves to show the\n", + " Ethiopian origin of Thebes, and of the worship of Jupiter Ammon. “I\n", + " think,” says Heeren, after quoting a passage from Diodorus about the\n", + " holy ship, “that this procession is represented in one of the great\n", + " sculptured reliefs on the temple of Karnak. The sacred ship of Ammon\n", + " is on the shore with its whole equipment, and is towed along by\n", + " another boat. It is therefore on its voyage. This must have been one\n", + " of the most celebrated festivals, since, even according to the\n", + " interpretation of antiquity, Homer alludes to it when he speaks of\n", + " Jupiter’s visit to the Ethiopians, and his twelve days’\n", + " absence.”—Long, “Egyptian Antiquities” vol. 1 p. 96. Eustathius, vol.\n", + " 1 p. 98, sq. (ed. Basil) gives this interpretation, and likewise an\n", + " allegorical one, which we will spare the reader.\n", + "\n", + " [67] _Atoned_, i.e. reconciled. This is the proper and most natural\n", + " meaning of the word, as may be seen from Taylor’s remarks in Calmet’s\n", + " Dictionary, p.110, of my edition.\n", + "\n", + " [68] That is, drawing back their necks while they cut their throats.\n", + " “If the sacrifice was in honour of the celestial gods, the throat was\n", + " bent upwards towards heaven; but if made to the heroes, or infernal\n", + " deities, it was killed with its throat toward the ground.”— “Elgin\n", + " Marbles,” vol i. p.81.\n", + "\n", + "“The jolly crew, unmindful of the past,\n", + "The quarry share, their plenteous dinner haste,\n", + "Some strip the skin; some portion out the spoil;\n", + "The limbs yet trembling, in the caldrons boil;\n", + "Some on the fire the reeking entrails broil.\n", + "Stretch’d on the grassy turf, at ease they dine,\n", + "Restore their strength with meat, and cheer their souls with wine.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s “Virgil,” i. 293.\n", + "\n", + " [69] _Crown’d, i.e._ filled to the brim. The custom of adorning\n", + " goblets with flowers was of later date.\n", + "\n", + " [70] _He spoke_, &c. “When a friend inquired of Phidias what pattern\n", + " he had formed his Olympian Jupiter, he is said to have answered by\n", + " repeating the lines of the first Iliad in which the poet represents\n", + " the majesty of the god in the most sublime terms; thereby signifying\n", + " that the genius of Homer had inspired him with it. Those who beheld\n", + " this statue are said to have been so struck with it as to have asked\n", + " whether Jupiter had descended from heaven to show himself to Phidias,\n", + " or whether Phidias had been carried thither to contemplate the god.”—\n", + " “Elgin Marbles,” vol. xii p.124.\n", + "\n", + " [71] “So was his will\n", + "Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath,\n", + "That shook heav’n’s whole circumference, confirm’d.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost” ii. 351.\n", + "\n", + " [72] _A double bowl, i.e._ a vessel with a cup at both ends, something\n", + " like the measures by which a halfpenny or pennyworth of nuts is sold.\n", + " See Buttmann, Lexic. p. 93 sq.\n", + "\n", + " [73] “Paradise Lost,” i. 44.\n", + "\n", + "“Him th’ Almighty power\n", + "Hurl’d headlong flaming from th ethereal sky,\n", + "With hideous ruin and combustion”\n", + "\n", + " [74] The occasion on which Vulcan incurred Jove’s displeasure was\n", + " this—After Hercules, had taken and pillaged Troy, Juno raised a storm,\n", + " which drove him to the island of Cos, having previously cast Jove into\n", + " a sleep, to prevent him aiding his son. Jove, in revenge, fastened\n", + " iron anvils to her feet, and hung her from the sky, and Vulcan,\n", + " attempting to relieve her, was kicked down from Olympus in the manner\n", + " described. The allegorists have gone mad in finding deep explanations\n", + " for this amusing fiction. See Heraclides, “Ponticus,” p. 463 sq., ed\n", + " Gale. The story is told by Homer himself in Book xv. The Sinthians\n", + " were a race of robbers, the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos which island\n", + " was ever after sacred to Vulcan.\n", + "\n", + "“Nor was his name unheard or unadored\n", + "In ancient Greece, and in Ausonian land\n", + "Men call’d him Mulciber, and how he fell\n", + "From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove\n", + "Sheer o’er the crystal battlements from morn\n", + "To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,\n", + "A summer’s day and with the setting sun\n", + "Dropp’d from the zenith like a falling star\n", + "On Lemnos, th’ Aegean isle thus they relate.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” i. 738\n", + "\n", + " [75] It is ingeniously observed by Grote, vol i p. 463, that “The gods\n", + " formed a sort of political community of their own which had its\n", + " hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for\n", + " power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of\n", + " Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals.”\n", + "\n", + " [76] Plato, Rep. iii. p. 437, was so scandalized at this deception of\n", + " Jupiter’s, and at his other attacks on the character of the gods, that\n", + " he would fain sentence him to an honourable banishment. (See Minucius\n", + " Felix, Section 22.) Coleridge, Introd. p. 154, well observes, that the\n", + " supreme father of gods and men had a full right to employ a lying\n", + " spirit to work out his ultimate will. Compare “Paradise Lost,” v. 646:\n", + "\n", + "“And roseate dews disposed\n", + "All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest.”\n", + "\n", + " [77] —_Dream_ ought to be spelt with a capital letter, being, I think,\n", + " evidently personified as the god of dreams. See Anthon and others.\n", + "\n", + "“When, by Minerva sent, a _fraudful_ Dream\n", + "Rush’d from the skies, the bane of her and Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Dyce’s “Select Translations from Quintus Calaber,” p.10.\n", + "\n", + " [78] “Sleep’st thou, companion dear, what sleep can close\n", + "Thy eye-lids?”—“Paradise Lost,” v. 673.\n", + "\n", + " [79] This truly military sentiment has been echoed by the approving\n", + " voice of many a general and statesman of antiquity. See Pliny’s\n", + " Panegyric on Trajan. Silius neatly translates it,\n", + "\n", + "“Turpe duci totam somno consumere noctem.”\n", + "\n", + " [80] _The same in habit_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“To whom once more the winged god appears;\n", + "His former youthful mien and shape he wears.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, iv. 803.\n", + "\n", + " [81] “As bees in spring-time, when\n", + "The sun with Taurus rides,\n", + "Pour forth their populous youth about the hive\n", + "In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers\n", + "Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,\n", + "The suburb of this straw-built citadel,\n", + "New-nibb’d with balm, expatiate and confer\n", + "Their state affairs. So thick the very crowd\n", + "Swarm’d and were straiten’d.”—“Paradise Lost” i. 768.\n", + "\n", + " [82] It was the herald’s duty to make the people sit down. “A\n", + " _standing_ agora is a symptom of manifest terror (II. Xviii. 246) an\n", + " evening agora, to which men came elevated by wine, is also the\n", + " forerunner of mischief (‘Odyssey,’ iii. 138).”—Grote, ii. p. 91,\n", + " _note_.\n", + "\n", + " [83] This sceptre, like that of Judah (Genesis xlix. 10), is a type of\n", + " the supreme and far-spread dominion of the house of the Atrides. See\n", + " Thucydides i. 9. “It is traced through the hands of Hermes, he being\n", + " the wealth giving god, whose blessing is most efficacious in\n", + " furthering the process of acquisition.”—Grote, i. p. 212. Compare\n", + " Quintus Calaber (Dyce’s Selections, p. 43).\n", + "\n", + "“Thus the monarch spoke,\n", + "Then pledged the chief in a capacious cup,\n", + "Golden, and framed by art divine (a gift\n", + "Which to Almighty Jove lame Vulcan brought\n", + "Upon his nuptial day, when he espoused\n", + "The Queen of Love), the sire of gods bestow’d\n", + "The cup on Dardanus, who gave it next\n", + "To Ericthonius Tros received it then,\n", + "And left it, with his wealth, to be possess’d\n", + "By Ilus he to great Laomedon\n", + "Gave it, and last to Priam’s lot it fell.”\n", + "\n", + " [84] Grote, i, p. 393, states the number of the Grecian forces at\n", + " upwards of 100,000 men. Nichols makes a total of 135,000.\n", + "\n", + " [85] “As thick as when a field\n", + "Of Ceres, ripe for harvest, waving bends\n", + "His bearded grove of ears, which way the wind\n", + "Sways them.”—Paradise Lost,” iv. 980, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [86] This sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest\n", + " tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of\n", + " power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and,\n", + " in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the\n", + " Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, “Ancient\n", + " Greece,” ch. vi. p. 105.\n", + "\n", + " [87] It may be remarked, that the character of Thersites, revolting\n", + " and contemptible as it is, serves admirably to develop the disposition\n", + " of Ulysses in a new light, in which mere cunning is less prominent. Of\n", + " the gradual and individual development of Homer’s heroes, Schlegel\n", + " well observes, “In bas-relief the figures are usually in profile, and\n", + " in the epos all are characterized in the simplest manner in relief;\n", + " they are not grouped together, but follow one another; so Homer’s\n", + " heroes advance, one by one, in succession before us. It has been\n", + " remarked that the _Iliad_ is not definitively closed, but that we are\n", + " left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it. The\n", + " bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued _ad\n", + " infinitum_, either from before or behind, on which account the\n", + " ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite\n", + " extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants,\n", + " and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as\n", + " vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two\n", + " ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one\n", + " object appears as another disappears. Reading Homer is very much like\n", + " such a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we\n", + " lose sight of what precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what\n", + " is to follow.”—“Dramatic Literature,” p. 75.\n", + "\n", + " [88] “There cannot be a clearer indication than this description —so\n", + " graphic in the original poem—of the true character of the Homeric\n", + " agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not\n", + " often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief. The fate which\n", + " awaits a presumptuous critic, even where his virulent reproaches are\n", + " substantially well-founded, is plainly set forth in the treatment of\n", + " Thersites; while the unpopularity of such a character is attested even\n", + " more by the excessive pains which Homer takes to heap upon him\n", + " repulsive personal deformities, than by the chastisement of Odysseus\n", + " he is lame, bald, crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting\n", + " vision.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 97.\n", + "\n", + " [89] According to Pausanias, both the sprig and the remains of the\n", + " tree were exhibited in his time. The tragedians, Lucretius and others,\n", + " adopted a different fable to account for the stoppage at Aulis, and\n", + " seem to have found the sacrifice of Iphigena better suited to form the\n", + " subject of a tragedy. Compare Dryden’s “Æneid,” vol. iii. sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [90] _Full of his god, i.e._, Apollo, filled with the prophetic\n", + " spirit. “_The_ god” would be more simple and emphatic.\n", + "\n", + " [91] Those critics who have maintained that the “Catalogue of Ships”\n", + " is an interpolation, should have paid more attention to these lines,\n", + " which form a most natural introduction to their enumeration.\n", + "\n", + " [92] The following observation will be useful to Homeric readers:\n", + " “Particular animals were, at a later time, consecrated to particular\n", + " deities. To Jupiter, Ceres, Juno, Apollo, and Bacchus victims of\n", + " advanced age might be offered. An ox of five years old was considered\n", + " especially acceptable to Jupiter. A black bull, a ram, or a boar pig,\n", + " were offerings for Neptune. A heifer, or a sheep, for Minerva. To\n", + " Ceres a sow was sacrificed, as an enemy to corn. The goat to Bacchus,\n", + " because he fed on vines. Diana was propitiated with a stag; and to\n", + " Venus the dove was consecrated. The infernal and evil deities were to\n", + " be appeased with black victims. The most acceptable of all sacrifices\n", + " was the heifer of a year old, which had never borne the yoke. It was\n", + " to be perfect in every limb, healthy, and without blemish.”—“Elgin\n", + " Marbles,” vol. i. p. 78.\n", + "\n", + " [93] _Idomeneus_, son of Deucalion, was king of Crete. Having vowed,\n", + " during a tempest, on his return from Troy, to sacrifice to Neptune the\n", + " first creature that should present itself to his eye on the Cretan\n", + " shore, his son fell a victim to his rash vow.\n", + "\n", + " [94] _Tydeus’ son, i.e._ Diomed.\n", + "\n", + " [95] That is, Ajax, the son of Oïleus, a Locrian. He must be\n", + " distinguished from the other, who was king of Salamis.\n", + "\n", + " [96] A great deal of nonsense has been written to account for the word\n", + " _unbid_, in this line. Even Plato, “Sympos.” p. 315, has found some\n", + " curious meaning in what, to us, appears to need no explanation. Was\n", + " there any _heroic_ rule of etiquette which prevented one brother-king\n", + " visiting another without a formal invitation?\n", + "\n", + " [97] Fresh water fowl, especially swans, were found in great numbers\n", + " about the Asian Marsh, a fenny tract of country in Lydia, formed by\n", + " the river Cayster, near its mouth. See Virgil, “Georgics,” vol. i.\n", + " 383, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [98] _Scamander_, or Scamandros, was a river of Troas, rising,\n", + " according to Strabo, on the highest part of Mount Ida, in the same\n", + " hill with the Granicus and the OEdipus, and falling into the sea at\n", + " Sigaeum; everything tends to identify it with Mendere, as Wood,\n", + " Rennell, and others maintain; the Mendere is 40 miles long, 300 feet\n", + " broad, deep in the time of flood, nearly dry in the summer. Dr. Clarke\n", + " successfully combats the opinion of those who make the Scamander to\n", + " have arisen from the springs of Bounabarshy, and traces the source of\n", + " the river to the highest mountain in the chain of Ida, now Kusdaghy;\n", + " receives the Simois in its course; towards its mouth it is very muddy,\n", + " and flows through marshes. Between the Scamander and Simois, Homer’s\n", + " Troy is supposed to have stood: this river, according to Homer, was\n", + " called Xanthus by the gods, Scamander by men. The waters of the\n", + " Scamander had the singular property of giving a beautiful colour to\n", + " the hair or wool of such animals as bathed in them; hence the three\n", + " goddesses, Minerva, Juno, and Venus, bathed there before they appeared\n", + " before Paris to obtain the golden apple: the name Xanthus, “yellow,”\n", + " was given to the Scamander, from the peculiar colour of its waters,\n", + " still applicable to the Mendere, the yellow colour of whose waters\n", + " attracts the attention of travellers.\n", + "\n", + " [99] It should be “his _chest_ like Neptune.” The torso of Neptune, in\n", + " the “Elgin Marbles,” No. 103, (vol. ii. p. 26,) is remarkable for its\n", + " breadth and massiveness of development.\n", + "\n", + " [100] “Say first, for heav’n hides nothing from thy view.”—“Paradise\n", + " Lost,” i. 27.\n", + "\n", + "“Ma di’ tu, Musa, come i primi danni\n", + "Mandassero à Cristiani, e di quai parti:\n", + "Tu ’l sai; ma di tant’ opra a noi si lunge\n", + "Debil aura di fama appena giunge.”—“Gier. Lib.” iv. 19.\n", + "\n", + " [101] “The Catalogue is, perhaps, the portion of the poem in favour of\n", + " which a claim to separate authorship has been most plausibly urged.\n", + " Although the example of Homer has since rendered some such formal\n", + " enumeration of the forces engaged, a common practice in epic poems\n", + " descriptive of great warlike adventures, still so minute a statistical\n", + " detail can neither be considered as imperatively required, nor perhaps\n", + " such as would, in ordinary cases, suggest itself to the mind of a\n", + " poet. Yet there is scarcely any portion of the Iliad where both\n", + " historical and internal evidence are more clearly in favour of a\n", + " connection from the remotest period, with the remainder of the work.\n", + " The composition of the Catalogue, whensoever it may have taken place,\n", + " necessarily presumes its author’s acquaintance with a previously\n", + " existing Iliad. It were impossible otherwise to account for the\n", + " harmony observable in the recurrence of so vast a number of proper\n", + " names, most of them historically unimportant, and not a few altogether\n", + " fictitious: or of so many geographical and genealogical details as are\n", + " condensed in these few hundred lines, and incidentally scattered over\n", + " the thousands which follow: equally inexplicable were the pointed\n", + " allusions occurring in this episode to events narrated in the previous\n", + " and subsequent text, several of which could hardly be of traditional\n", + " notoriety, but through the medium of the Iliad.”—Mure, “Language and\n", + " Literature of Greece,” vol. i. p. 263.\n", + "\n", + " [102] _Twice Sixty:_ “Thucydides observes that the Bœotian vessels,\n", + " which carried one hundred and twenty men each, were probably meant to\n", + " be the largest in the fleet, and those of Philoctetes, carrying fifty\n", + " each, the smallest. The average would be eighty-five, and Thucydides\n", + " supposes the troops to have rowed and navigated themselves; and that\n", + " very few, besides the chiefs, went as mere passengers or landsmen. In\n", + " short, we have in the Homeric descriptions the complete picture of an\n", + " Indian or African war canoe, many of which are considerably larger\n", + " than the largest scale assigned to those of the Greeks. If the total\n", + " number of the Greek ships be taken at twelve hundred, according to\n", + " Thucydides, although in point of fact there are only eleven hundred\n", + " and eighty-six in the Catalogue, the amount of the army, upon the\n", + " foregoing average, will be about a hundred and two thousand men. The\n", + " historian considers this a small force as representing all Greece.\n", + " Bryant, comparing it with the allied army at Platae, thinks it so\n", + " large as to prove the entire falsehood of the whole story; and his\n", + " reasonings and calculations are, for their curiosity, well worth a\n", + " careful perusal.”—Coleridge, p. 211, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [103] The mention of Corinth is an anachronism, as that city was\n", + " called Ephyre before its capture by the Dorians. But Velleius, vol. i.\n", + " p. 3, well observes, that the poet would naturally speak of various\n", + " towns and cities by the names by which they were known in his own\n", + " time.\n", + "\n", + " [104] “Adam, the goodliest man of men since born, His sons, the\n", + " fairest of her daughters Eve.’—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 323.\n", + "\n", + " [105] _Æsetes’ tomb_. Monuments were often built on the sea-coast, and\n", + " of a considerable height, so as to serve as watch-towers or land\n", + " marks. See my notes to my prose translations of the “Odyssey,” ii. p.\n", + " 21, or on Eur. “Alcest.” vol. i. p. 240.\n", + "\n", + " [106] _Zeleia_, another name for Lycia. The inhabitants were greatly\n", + " devoted to the worship of Apollo. See Muller, “Dorians,” vol. i. p.\n", + " 248.\n", + "\n", + " [107] _Barbarous tongues_. “Various as were the dialects of the\n", + " Greeks—and these differences existed not only between the several\n", + " tribes, but even between neighbouring cities—they yet acknowledged in\n", + " their language that they formed but one nation were but branches of\n", + " the same family. Homer has ‘men of other tongues:’ and yet Homer had\n", + " no general name for the Greek nation.”—Heeren, “Ancient Greece,”\n", + " Section vii. p. 107, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [108] _The cranes_.\n", + "“Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes\n", + "Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried:\n", + "And each with outstretch’d neck his rank maintains,\n", + "In marshall’d order through th’ ethereal void.”\n", + "\n", + "Lorenzo de Medici, in Roscoe’s Life, Appendix.\n", + "\n", + "See Cary’s Dante: “Hell,” canto v.\n", + "\n", + " [109] _Silent, breathing rage._\n", + "“Thus they,\n", + "Breathing united force with fixed thought,\n", + "Moved on in silence.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” book i. 559.\n", + "\n", + " [110] “As when some peasant in a bushy brake\n", + "Has with unwary footing press’d a snake;\n", + "He starts aside, astonish’d, when he spies\n", + "His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 510.\n", + "\n", + " [111] Dysparis, _i.e._ unlucky, ill fated, Paris. This alludes to the\n", + " evils which resulted from his having been brought up, despite the\n", + " omens which attended his birth.\n", + "\n", + " [112] The following scene, in which Homer has contrived to introduce\n", + " so brilliant a sketch of the Grecian warriors, has been imitated by\n", + " Euripides, who in his “Phoenissae” represents Antigone surveying the\n", + " opposing champions from a high tower, while the paedagogus describes\n", + " their insignia and details their histories.\n", + "\n", + " [113] _No wonder_, &c. Zeuxis, the celebrated artist, is said to have\n", + " appended these lines to his picture of Helen, as a motto. Valer Max.\n", + " iii. 7.\n", + "\n", + " [114] The early epic was largely occupied with the exploits and\n", + " sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the\n", + " Grecian heroes. A nation of courageous, hardy, indefatigable women,\n", + " dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary\n", + " intercourse, for the purpose of renovating their numbers, burning out\n", + " their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow\n", + " freely; this was at once a general type, stimulating to the fancy of\n", + " the poet, and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. We find\n", + " these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and\n", + " universally accepted as past realities in the Iliad. When Priam wishes\n", + " to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever\n", + " found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phrygia,\n", + " on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the\n", + " formidable Amazons. When Bellerophon is to be employed in a deadly and\n", + " perilous undertaking, by those who prudently wished to procure his\n", + " death, he is despatched against the Amazons.—Grote, vol. i p. 289.\n", + "\n", + " [115] _Antenor_, like Æneas, had always been favourable to the\n", + " restoration of Helen. Liv 1. 2.\n", + "\n", + " [116]\n", + "“His lab’ring heart with sudden rapture seized\n", + "He paus’d, and on the ground in silence gazed.\n", + "Unskill’d and uninspired he seems to stand,\n", + "Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:\n", + "Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,\n", + "Pours the full tide of eloquence along;\n", + "While from his lips the melting torrent flows,\n", + "Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.\n", + "Now stronger notes engage the listening crowd,\n", + "Louder the accents rise, and yet more loud,\n", + "Like thunders rolling from a distant cloud.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s “Tryphiodorus,” 148, 99.\n", + "\n", + " [117] Duport, “Gnomol. Homer,” p. 20, well observes that this\n", + " comparison may also be sarcastically applied to the _frigid_ style of\n", + " oratory. It, of course, here merely denotes the ready fluency of\n", + " Ulysses.\n", + "\n", + " [118] _Her brothers’ doom_. They perished in combat with Lynceus and\n", + " Idas, whilst besieging Sparta. See Hygin. Poet Astr. 32, 22. Virgil\n", + " and others, however, make them share immortality by turns.\n", + "\n", + " [119] Idreus was the arm-bearer and charioteer of king Priam, slain\n", + " during this war. Cf. Æn, vi. 487.\n", + "\n", + " [120] _Scæa’s gates_, rather _Scæan gates_, _i.e._ the left-hand\n", + " gates.\n", + "\n", + " [121] This was customary in all sacrifices. Hence we find Iras\n", + " descending to cut off the hair of Dido, before which she could not\n", + " expire.\n", + "\n", + " [122] _Nor pierced_.\n", + "\n", + "“This said, his feeble hand a jav’lin threw,\n", + "Which, flutt’ring, seemed to loiter as it flew,\n", + "Just, and but barely, to the mark it held,\n", + "And faintly tinkled on the brazen shield.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 742.\n", + "\n", + " [123] _Reveal’d the queen_.\n", + "\n", + "“Thus having said, she turn’d and made appear\n", + "Her neck refulgent and dishevell’d hair,\n", + "Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach’d the ground,\n", + "And widely spread ambrosial scents around.\n", + "In length of train descends her sweeping gown;\n", + "And, by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, i. 556.\n", + "\n", + " [124] _Cranae’s isle, i.e._ Athens. See the “Schol.” and Alberti’s\n", + " “Hesychius,” vol. ii. p. 338. This name was derived from one of its\n", + " early kings, Cranaus.\n", + "\n", + " [125] _The martial maid_. In the original, “Minerva Alalcomeneis,”\n", + " _i.e. the defender_, so called from her temple at Alalcomene in\n", + " Bœotia.\n", + "\n", + " [126] “Anything for a quiet life!”\n", + "\n", + " [127] —_Argos_. The worship of Juno at Argos was very celebrated in\n", + " ancient times, and she was regarded as the patron deity of that city.\n", + " Apul. Met., vi. p. 453; Servius on Virg. Æn., i. 28.\n", + "\n", + " [128] —_A wife and sister_.\n", + "\n", + "“But I, who walk in awful state above\n", + "The majesty of heav’n, the sister-wife of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s “Virgil,” i. 70.\n", + "\n", + "So Apuleius, _l. c._ speaks of her as “Jovis germana et conjux, and so\n", + "Horace, Od. iii. 3, 64, “conjuge me Jovis et sorore.”\n", + "\n", + " [129]\n", + "“Thither came Uriel, gleaming through the even\n", + "On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star\n", + "In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired\n", + "Impress the air, and shows the mariner\n", + "From what point of his compass to beware\n", + "Impetuous winds.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 555.\n", + "\n", + " [130] _Æsepus’ flood_. A river of Mysia, rising from Mount Cotyius, in\n", + " the southern part of the chain of Ida.\n", + "\n", + " [131] _Zelia_, a town of Troas, at the foot of Ida.\n", + "\n", + " [132] _Podaleirius_ and _Machäon_ are the leeches of the Grecian army,\n", + " highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical\n", + " renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the\n", + " Iliou Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in\n", + " surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and\n", + " appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the\n", + " glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of\n", + " Ajax.\n", + " “Galen appears uncertain whether Asklepius (as well as Dionysus)\n", + " was originally a god, or whether he was first a man and then became\n", + " afterwards a god; but Apollodorus professed to fix the exact date\n", + " of his apotheosis. Throughout all the historical ages the\n", + " descendants of Asklepius were numerous and widely diffused. The\n", + " many families or gentes, called Asklepiads, who devoted themselves\n", + " to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt\n", + " near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering men came\n", + " to obtain relief—all recognized the god not merely as the object of\n", + " their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor.”—Grote\n", + " vol. i. p. 248.\n", + "\n", + " [133]\n", + "“The plant she bruises with a stone, and stands\n", + "Tempering the juice between her ivory hands\n", + "This o’er her breast she sheds with sovereign art\n", + "And bathes with gentle touch the wounded part\n", + "The wound such virtue from the juice derives,\n", + "At once the blood is stanch’d, the youth revives.”\n", + "\n", + "“Orlando Furioso,” book 1.\n", + "\n", + " [134] _Well might I wish._\n", + "\n", + "“Would heav’n (said he) my strength and youth recall,\n", + "Such as I was beneath Praeneste’s wall—\n", + "Then when I made the foremost foes retire,\n", + "And set whole heaps of conquer’d shields on fire;\n", + "When Herilus in single fight I slew,\n", + "Whom with three lives Feronia did endue.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, viii. 742.\n", + "\n", + " [135] _Sthenelus_, a son of Capaneus, one of the Epigoni. He was one\n", + " of the suitors of Helen, and is said to have been one of those who\n", + " entered Troy inside the wooden horse.\n", + "\n", + " [136] _Forwarn’d the horrors_. The same portent has already been\n", + " mentioned. To this day, modern nations are not wholly free from this\n", + " superstition.\n", + "\n", + " [137] _Sevenfold city_, Bœotian Thebes, which had seven gates.\n", + "\n", + " [138] _As when the winds_.\n", + "\n", + "“Thus, when a black-brow’d gust begins to rise,\n", + "White foam at first on the curl’d ocean fries;\n", + "Then roars the main, the billows mount the skies,\n", + "Till, by the fury of the storm full blown,\n", + "The muddy billow o’er the clouds is thrown.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 736.\n", + "\n", + " [139]\n", + "“Stood\n", + "Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved;\n", + "His stature reach’d the sky.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 986.\n", + "\n", + " [140] The Abantes seem to have been of Thracian origin.\n", + "\n", + " [141] I may, once for all, remark that Homer is most anatomically\n", + " correct as to the parts of the body in which a wound would be\n", + " immediately mortal.\n", + "\n", + " [142] _Ænus_, a fountain almost proverbial for its coldness.\n", + "\n", + " [143] Compare Tasso, Gier. Lib., xx. 7:\n", + "\n", + "“Nuovo favor del cielo in lui niluce\n", + "E ’l fa grande, et angusto oltre il costume.\n", + "Gl’ empie d’ honor la faccia, e vi riduce\n", + "Di giovinezza il bel purpureo lume.”\n", + "\n", + " [144]\n", + "“Or deluges, descending on the plains,\n", + "Sweep o’er the yellow year, destroy the pains\n", + "Of lab’ring oxen, and the peasant’s gains;\n", + "Uproot the forest oaks, and bear away\n", + "Flocks, folds, and trees, an undistinguish’d prey.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil ii. 408.\n", + "\n", + " [145] _From mortal mists_.\n", + "\n", + "“But to nobler sights\n", + "Michael from Adam’s eyes the film removed.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” xi. 411.\n", + "\n", + " [146] _The race of those_.\n", + "\n", + "“A pair of coursers, born of heav’nly breed,\n", + "Who from their nostrils breathed ethereal fire;\n", + "Whom Circe stole from her celestial sire,\n", + "By substituting mares produced on earth,\n", + "Whose wombs conceived a more than mortal birth.\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 386, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [147] The belief in the existence of men of larger stature in earlier\n", + " times, is by no means confined to Homer.\n", + "\n", + " [148] _Such stream, i.e._ the _ichor_, or blood of the gods.\n", + "\n", + "“A stream of nect’rous humour issuing flow’d,\n", + "Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” vi. 339.\n", + "\n", + " [149] This was during the wars with the Titans.\n", + "\n", + " [150] _Amphitryon’s son_, Hercules, born to Jove by Alcmena, the wife\n", + " of Amphitryon.\n", + "\n", + " [151] _Ægialé_ daughter of Adrastus. The Cyclic poets (See Anthon’s\n", + " Lempriere, _s. v._) assert Venus incited her to infidelity, in revenge\n", + " for the wound she had received from her husband.\n", + "\n", + " [152] _Pheræ_, a town of Pelasgiotis, in Thessaly.\n", + "\n", + " [153] _Tlepolemus_, son of Hercules and Astyochia. Having left his\n", + " native country, Argos, in consequence of the accidental murder of\n", + " Liscymnius, he was commanded by an oracle to retire to Rhodes. Here he\n", + " was chosen king, and accompanied the Trojan expedition. After his\n", + " death, certain games were instituted at Rhodes in his honour, the\n", + " victors being rewarded with crowns of poplar.\n", + "\n", + " [154] These heroes’ names have since passed into a kind of proverb,\n", + " designating the _oi polloi_ or mob.\n", + "\n", + " [155] _Spontaneous open_.\n", + "\n", + "“Veil’d with his gorgeous wings, upspringing light\n", + "Flew through the midst of heaven; th’ angelic quires,\n", + "On each hand parting, to his speed gave way\n", + "Through all th’ empyreal road; till at the gate\n", + "Of heaven arrived, the gate self-open’d wide,\n", + "On golden hinges turning.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” v. 250.\n", + "\n", + " [156]\n", + "“Till Morn,\n", + "Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand\n", + "Unbarr’d the gates of light.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” vi, 2.\n", + "\n", + " [157] _Far as a shepherd_. “With what majesty and pomp does Homer\n", + " exalt his deities! He here measures the leap of the horses by the\n", + " extent of the world. And who is there, that, considering the exceeding\n", + " greatness of the space would not with reason cry out that ‘If the\n", + " steeds of the deity were to take a second leap, the world would want\n", + " room for it’?”—Longinus, Section 8.\n", + "\n", + " [158] “No trumpets, or any other instruments of sound, are used in the\n", + " Homeric action itself; but the trumpet was known, and is introduced\n", + " for the purpose of illustration as employed in war. Hence arose the\n", + " value of a loud voice in a commander; Stentor was an indispensable\n", + " officer... In the early Saracen campaigns frequent mention is made of\n", + " the service rendered by men of uncommonly strong voices; the battle of\n", + " Honain was restored by the shouts and menaces of Abbas, the uncle of\n", + " Mohammed,” &c.—Coleridge, p. 213.\n", + "\n", + " [159] “Long had the wav’ring god the war delay’d,\n", + "While Greece and Troy alternate own’d his aid.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s “Tryphiodorus,” vi. 761, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [160] _Pæon_ seems to have been to the gods, what Podaleirius and\n", + " Machaon were to the Grecian heroes.\n", + "\n", + " [161] _Arisbe_, a colony of the Mitylenaeans in Troas.\n", + "\n", + " [162] _Pedasus_, a town near Pylos.\n", + "\n", + " [163] _Rich heaps of brass_. “The halls of Alkinous and Menelaus\n", + " glitter with gold, copper, and electrum; while large stocks of yet\n", + " unemployed metal—gold, copper, and iron are stored up in the\n", + " treasure-chamber of Odysseus and other chiefs. Coined money is unknown\n", + " in the Homeric age—the trade carried on being one of barter. In\n", + " reference also to the metals, it deserves to be remarked, that the\n", + " Homeric descriptions universally suppose copper, and not iron, to be\n", + " employed for arms, both offensive and defensive. By what process the\n", + " copper was tempered and hardened, so as to serve the purpose of the\n", + " warrior, we do not know; but the use of iron for these objects belongs\n", + " to a later age.”—Grote, vol. ii. p. 142.\n", + "\n", + " [164] _Oh impotent_, &c. “In battle, quarter seems never to have been\n", + " given, except with a view to the ransom of the prisoner. Agamemnon\n", + " reproaches Menelaus with unmanly softness, when he is on the point of\n", + " sparing a fallen enemy, and himself puts the suppliant to the\n", + " sword.”—Thirlwall, vol. i. p. 181\n", + "\n", + " [165]\n", + "“The ruthless steel, impatient of delay,\n", + "Forbade the sire to linger out the day.\n", + "It struck the bending father to the earth,\n", + "And cropt the wailing infant at the birth.\n", + "Can innocents the rage of parties know,\n", + "And they who ne’er offended find a foe?”\n", + "\n", + "Rowe’s Lucan, bk. ii.\n", + "\n", + " [166]\n", + "“Meantime the Trojan dames, oppress’d with woe,\n", + "To Pallas’ fane in long procession go,\n", + "In hopes to reconcile their heav’nly foe:\n", + "They weep; they beat their breasts; they rend their hair,\n", + "And rich embroider’d vests for presents bear.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, i. 670\n", + "\n", + " [167] The manner in which this episode is introduced, is well\n", + " illustrated by the following remarks of Mure, vol. i. p.298: “The\n", + " poet’s method of introducing his episode, also, illustrates in a\n", + " curious manner his tact in the dramatic department of his art. Where,\n", + " for example, one or more heroes are despatched on some commission, to\n", + " be executed at a certain distance of time or place, the fulfilment of\n", + " this task is not, as a general rule, immediately described. A certain\n", + " interval is allowed them for reaching the appointed scene of action,\n", + " which interval is dramatised, as it were, either by a temporary\n", + " continuation of the previous narrative, or by fixing attention for a\n", + " while on some new transaction, at the close of which the further\n", + " account of the mission is resumed.”\n", + "\n", + " [168] _With tablets sealed_. These probably were only devices of a\n", + " hieroglyphical character. Whether writing was known in the Homeric\n", + " times is utterly uncertain. See Grote, vol ii. p. 192, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [169] _Solymæan crew_, a people of Lycia.\n", + "\n", + " [170] From this “melancholy madness” of Bellerophon, hypochondria\n", + " received the name of “Morbus Bellerophonteus.” See my notes in my\n", + " prose translation, p. 112. The “Aleian field,” _i.e._ “the plain of\n", + " wandering,” was situated between the rivers Pyramus and Pinarus, in\n", + " Cilicia.\n", + "\n", + " [171] _His own, of gold_. This bad bargain has passed into a common\n", + " proverb. See Aulus Gellius, ii, 23.\n", + "\n", + " [172] _Scæan, i e._ left hand.\n", + "\n", + " [173] _In fifty chambers_.\n", + "\n", + "“The fifty nuptial beds, (such hopes had he,\n", + "So large a promise of a progeny,)\n", + "The ports of plated gold, and hung with spoils.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, ii.658\n", + "\n", + " [174] _O would kind earth_, &c. “It is apparently a sudden, irregular\n", + " burst of popular indignation to which Hector alludes, when he regrets\n", + " that the Trojans had not spirit enough to cover Paris with a mantle of\n", + " stones. This, however, was also one of the ordinary formal modes of\n", + " punishment for great public offences. It may have been originally\n", + " connected with the same feeling—the desire of avoiding the pollution\n", + " of bloodshed—which seems to have suggested the practice of burying\n", + " prisoners alive, with a scantling of food by their side. Though Homer\n", + " makes no mention of this horrible usage, the example of the Roman\n", + " Vestals affords reasons for believing that, in ascribing it to the\n", + " heroic ages, Sophocles followed an authentic tradition.”—Thirlwall’s\n", + " Greece, vol. i. p. 171, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [175] _Paris’ lofty dome_. “With respect to the private dwellings,\n", + " which are oftenest described, the poet’s language barely enables us to\n", + " form a general notion of their ordinary plan, and affords no\n", + " conception of the style which prevailed in them or of their effect on\n", + " the eye. It seems indeed probable, from the manner in which he dwells\n", + " on their metallic ornaments that the higher beauty of proportion was\n", + " but little required or understood, and it is, perhaps, strength and\n", + " convenience, rather than elegance, that he means to commend, in\n", + " speaking of the fair house which Paris had built for himself with the\n", + " aid of the most skilful masons of Troy.”—Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i.\n", + " p. 231.\n", + "\n", + " [176] _The wanton courser_.\n", + "\n", + "“Come destrier, che da le regie stalle\n", + " Ove a l’usa de l’arme si riserba,\n", + "Fugge, e libero al fiu per largo calle\n", + " Va tragl’ armenti, o al fiume usato, o a l’herba.”\n", + "\n", + "Gier, Lib. ix. 75.\n", + "\n", + " [177] _Casque_. The original word is stephanae, about the meaning of\n", + " which there is some little doubt. Some take it for a different kind of\n", + " cap or helmet, others for the rim, others for the cone, of the helmet.\n", + "\n", + " [178] _Athenian maid:_ Minerva.\n", + "\n", + " [179] _Celadon_, a river of Elis.\n", + "\n", + " [180] _Oïleus, i.e._ Ajax, the son of Oïleus, in contradistinction to\n", + " Ajax, son of Telamon.\n", + "\n", + " [181] _In the general’s helm_. It was customary to put the lots into a\n", + " helmet, in which they were well shaken up; each man then took his\n", + " choice.\n", + "\n", + " [182] _God of Thrace_. Mars, or Mavors, according to his Thracian\n", + " epithet. Hence “Mavortia Mœnia.”\n", + "\n", + " [183] _Grimly he smiled_.\n", + "\n", + "“And death\n", + "Grinn’d horribly a ghastly smile.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” ii. 845.\n", + "\n", + "“There Mavors stands\n", + "Grinning with ghastly feature.”\n", + "\n", + "—Carey’s Dante: Hell, v.\n", + "\n", + " [184]\n", + "“Sete ò guerrieri, incomincio Pindoro,\n", + "Con pari honor di pari ambo possenti,\n", + "Dunque cessi la pugna, e non sian rotte\n", + "Le ragioni, e ’l riposo, e de la notte.”\n", + "\n", + "—Gier. Lib. vi. 51.\n", + "\n", + " [185] It was an ancient style of compliment to give a larger portion\n", + " of food to the conqueror, or person to whom respect was to be shown.\n", + " See Virg. Æn. viii. 181. Thus Benjamin was honoured with a “double\n", + " portion.” Gen. xliii. 34.\n", + "\n", + " [186] _Embattled walls._ “Another essential basis of mechanical unity\n", + " in the poem is the construction of the rampart. This takes place in\n", + " the seventh book. The reason ascribed for the glaring improbability\n", + " that the Greeks should have left their camp and fleet unfortified\n", + " during nine years, in the midst of a hostile country, is a purely\n", + " poetical one: ‘So long as Achilles fought, the terror of his name\n", + " sufficed to keep every foe at a distance.’ The disasters consequent on\n", + " his secession first led to the necessity of other means of protection.\n", + " Accordingly, in the battles previous to the eighth book, no allusion\n", + " occurs to a rampart; in all those which follow it forms a prominent\n", + " feature. Here, then, in the anomaly as in the propriety of the Iliad,\n", + " the destiny of Achilles, or rather this peculiar crisis of it, forms\n", + " the pervading bond of connexion to the whole poem.”—Mure, vol. i., p.\n", + " 257.\n", + "\n", + " [187] _What cause of fear_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“Seest thou not this? Or do we fear in vain\n", + "Thy boasted thunders, and thy thoughtless reign?”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, iv. 304.\n", + "\n", + " [188] _In exchange_. These lines are referred to by Theophilus, the\n", + " Roman lawyer, iii. tit. xxiii. § 1, as exhibiting the most ancient\n", + " mention of barter.\n", + "\n", + " [189] “A similar bond of connexion, in the military details of the\n", + " narrative, is the decree issued by Jupiter, at the commencement of the\n", + " eighth book, against any further interference of the gods in the\n", + " battles. In the opening of the twentieth book this interdict is\n", + " withdrawn. During the twelve intermediate books it is kept steadily in\n", + " view. No interposition takes place but on the part of the specially\n", + " authorised agents of Jove, or on that of one or two contumacious\n", + " deities, described as boldly setting his commands at defiance, but\n", + " checked and reprimanded for their disobedience; while the other divine\n", + " warriors, who in the previous and subsequent cantos are so active in\n", + " support of their favourite heroes, repeatedly allude to the supreme\n", + " edict as the cause of their present inactivity.”—Mure, vol. i. p 257.\n", + " See however, Muller, “Greek Literature,” ch. v. Section 6, and Grote,\n", + " vol. ii. p. 252.\n", + "\n", + " [190] “As far removed from God and light of heaven,\n", + "As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost.”\n", + "\n", + "“E quanto è da le stelle al basso inferno,\n", + "Tanto è più in sù de la stellata spera”\n", + "\n", + "—Gier. Lib. i. 7.\n", + "\n", + "“Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heavens seem to imply\n", + "that he considered it as a solid vault of metal. But it is not\n", + "necessary to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any such\n", + "inference from his description of Atlas, who holds the lofty pillars\n", + "which keep earth and heaven asunder. Yet it would seem, from the manner\n", + "in which the height of heaven is compared with the depth of Tartarus,\n", + "that the region of light was thought to have certain bounds. The summit\n", + "of the Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the highest point on the\n", + "earth, and it is not always carefully distinguished from the aerian\n", + "regions above The idea of a seat of the gods—perhaps derived from a\n", + "more ancient tradition, in which it was not attached to any\n", + "geographical site—seems to be indistinctly blended in the poet’s mind\n", + "with that of the real mountain.”—Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. p. 217,\n", + "sq.\n", + "\n", + " [191]\n", + "“Now lately heav’n, earth, another world\n", + "Hung e’er my realm, link’d in a golden chain\n", + "To that side heav’n.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” ii. 1004.\n", + "\n", + " [192] _His golden scales_.\n", + "\n", + "“Jove now, sole arbiter of peace and war,\n", + "Held forth the fatal balance from afar:\n", + "Each host he weighs; by turns they both prevail,\n", + "Till Troy descending fix’d the doubtful scale.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, v 687, sqq.\n", + "\n", + "“Oh’ Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,\n", + "Hung forth in heav’n his golden scales,\n", + "Wherein all things created first he weighed;\n", + "The pendulous round earth, with balanced air\n", + "In counterpoise; now ponders all events,\n", + "Battles and realms. In these he puts two weights,\n", + "The sequel each of parting and of fight:\n", + "The latter quick up flew, and kick’d the beam.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” iv. 496.\n", + "\n", + " [193] _And now_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“And now all heaven\n", + "Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread;\n", + "Had not th’ Almighty Father, where he sits\n", + "... foreseen.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” vi. 669.\n", + "\n", + " [194] _Gerenian Nestor_. The epithet _Gerenian_ either refers to the\n", + " name of a place in which Nestor was educated, or merely signifies\n", + " honoured, revered. See Schol. Venet. in II. B. 336; Strabo, viii. p.\n", + " 340.\n", + "\n", + " [195] _Ægae, Helicè_. Both these towns were conspicuous for their\n", + " worship of Neptune.\n", + "\n", + " [196] _As full blown_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“Il suo Lesbia quasi bel fior succiso,\n", + "E in atto si gentil languir tremanti\n", + "Gl’ occhi, e cader siu ’l tergo il collo mira.”\n", + "\n", + "Gier. Lib. ix. 85.\n", + "\n", + " [197] _Ungrateful_, because the cause in which they were engaged was\n", + " unjust.\n", + "\n", + "“Struck by the lab’ring priests’ uplifted hands\n", + "The victims fall: to heav’n they make their pray’r,\n", + "The curling vapours load the ambient air.\n", + "But vain their toil: the pow’rs who rule the skies\n", + "Averse beheld the ungrateful sacrifice.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 527, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [198]\n", + "“As when about the silver moon, when aire is free from winde,\n", + "And stars shine cleare, to whose sweet beams high prospects on the\n", + "brows\n", + "Of all steepe hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows,\n", + "And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight;\n", + "When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,\n", + "And all the signs in heaven are seene, that glad the shepherd’s heart.”\n", + "\n", + "Chapman.\n", + "\n", + " [199] This flight of the Greeks, according to Buttmann, Lexil. p. 358,\n", + " was not a supernatural flight caused by the gods, but “a great and\n", + " general one, caused by Hector and the Trojans, but with the approval\n", + " of Jove.”\n", + "\n", + " [200] Grote, vol. ii. p. 91, after noticing the modest calmness and\n", + " respect with which Nestor addresses Agamemnon, observes, “The Homeric\n", + " Council is a purely consultative body, assembled not with any power of\n", + " peremptorily arresting mischievous resolves of the king, but solely\n", + " for his information and guidance.”\n", + "\n", + " [201] In the heroic times, it is not unfrequent for the king to\n", + " receive presents to purchase freedom from his wrath, or immunity from\n", + " his exactions. Such gifts gradually became regular, and formed the\n", + " income of the German, (Tacit. Germ. Section 15) Persian, (Herodot.\n", + " iii.89), and other kings. So, too, in the middle ages, ‘The feudal\n", + " aids are the beginning of taxation, of which they for a long time\n", + " answered the purpose.’ (Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. x. pt. 1, p. 189)\n", + " This fact frees Achilles from the apparent charge of sordidness.\n", + " Plato, however, (De Rep. vi. 4), says, “We cannot commend Phœnix, the\n", + " tutor of Achilles, as if he spoke correctly, when counselling him to\n", + " accept of presents and assist the Greeks, but, without presents, not\n", + " to desist from his wrath, nor again, should we commend Achilles\n", + " himself, or approve of his being so covetous as to receive presents\n", + " from Agamemnon,” &c.\n", + "\n", + " [202] It may be observed, that, brief as is the mention of Briseïs in\n", + " the Iliad, and small the part she plays—what little is said is\n", + " pre-eminently calculated to enhance her fitness to be the bride of\n", + " Achilles. Purity, and retiring delicacy, are features well contrasted\n", + " with the rough, but tender disposition of the hero.\n", + "\n", + " [203] _Laodice_. Iphianassa, or Iphigenia, is not mentioned by Homer,\n", + " among the daughters of Agamemnon.\n", + "\n", + " [204] “Agamemnon, when he offers to transfer to Achilles seven towns\n", + " inhabited by wealthy husbandmen, who would enrich their lord by\n", + " presents and tribute, seems likewise to assume rather a property in\n", + " them, than an authority over them. And the same thing may be intimated\n", + " when it is said that Peleus bestowed a great people, the Dolopes of\n", + " Phthia, on Phœnix.”—Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i Section 6, p. 162,\n", + " note.\n", + "\n", + " [205] _Pray in deep silence_. Rather: “use well-omened words;” or, as\n", + " Kennedy has explained it, “Abstain from expressions unsuitable to the\n", + " solemnity of the occasion, which, by offending the god, might defeat\n", + " the object of their supplications.”\n", + "\n", + " [206] _Purest hands_. This is one of the most ancient superstitions\n", + " respecting prayer, and one founded as much in nature as in tradition.\n", + "\n", + " [207] It must be recollected, that the war at Troy was not a settled\n", + " siege, and that many of the chieftains busied themselves in piratical\n", + " expeditions about its neighborhood. Such a one was that of which\n", + " Achilles now speaks. From the following verses, it is evident that\n", + " fruits of these maraudings went to the common support of the\n", + " expedition, and not to the successful plunderer.\n", + "\n", + " [208] _Pythia_, the capital of Achilles’ Thessalian domains.\n", + "\n", + " [209] _Orchomenian town_. The topography of Orchomenus, in Bœotia,\n", + " “situated,” as it was, “on the northern bank of the lake Æpais, which\n", + " receives not only the river Cephisus from the valleys of Phocis, but\n", + " also other rivers from Parnassus and Helicon” (Grote, vol. p. 181),\n", + " was a sufficient reason for its prosperity and decay. “As long as the\n", + " channels of these waters were diligently watched and kept clear, a\n", + " large portion of the lake was in the condition of alluvial land,\n", + " pre-eminently rich and fertile. But when the channels came to be\n", + " either neglected, or designedly choked up by an enemy, the water\n", + " accumulated in such a degree as to occupy the soil of more than one\n", + " ancient islet, and to occasion the change of the site of Orchomenus\n", + " itself from the plain to the declivity of Mount Hyphanteion.” (Ibid.)\n", + "\n", + " [210] The phrase “hundred gates,” &c., seems to be merely expressive\n", + " of a great number. See notes to my prose translation, p. 162.\n", + "\n", + " [211] Compare the following pretty lines of Quintus Calaber (Dyce’s\n", + " Select Translations, p 88).—\n", + "\n", + "“Many gifts he gave, and o’er\n", + "Dolopia bade me rule; thee in his arms\n", + "He brought an infant, on my bosom laid\n", + "The precious charge, and anxiously enjoin’d\n", + "That I should rear thee as my own with all\n", + "A parent’s love. I fail’d not in my trust\n", + "And oft, while round my neck thy hands were lock’d,\n", + "From thy sweet lips the half articulate sound\n", + "Of Father came; and oft, as children use,\n", + "Mewling and puking didst thou drench my tunic.”\n", + "\n", + "“This description,” observes my learned friend (notes, p. 121) “is\n", + "taken from the passage of Homer, II ix, in translating which, Pope,\n", + "with that squeamish, artificial taste, which distinguished the age of\n", + "Anne, omits the natural (and, let me add, affecting) circumstance.”\n", + "\n", + "“And the wine\n", + "Held to thy lips, and many a time in fits\n", + "Of infant frowardness the purple juice\n", + "Rejecting thou hast deluged all my vest,\n", + "\n", + "And fill’d my bosom.” —Cowper.\n", + "\n", + " [212] _Where Calydon_. For a good sketch of the story of Meleager, too\n", + " long to be inserted here, see Grote, vol. i. p. 195, sqq.; and for the\n", + " authorities, see my notes to the prose translation, p. 166.\n", + "\n", + " [213] “_Gifts can conquer_”—It is well observed by Bishop Thirlwall,\n", + " “Greece,” vol. i. p, 180, that the law of honour among the Greeks did\n", + " not compel them to treasure up in their memory the offensive language\n", + " which might be addressed to them by a passionate adversary, nor to\n", + " conceive that it left a stain which could only be washed away by\n", + " blood. Even for real and deep injuries they were commonly willing to\n", + " accept a pecuniary compensation.”\n", + "\n", + " [214] “The boon of sleep.”—Milton\n", + "\n", + " [215]\n", + "“All else of nature’s common gift partake:\n", + "Unhappy Dido was alone awake.”\n", + "\n", + "—Dryden’s Virgil, iv. 767.\n", + "\n", + " [216] _The king of Crete:_ Idomeneus.\n", + "\n", + " [217] _Soft wool within, i e._ a kind of woollen stuffing, pressed in\n", + " between the straps, to protect the head, and make the helmet fit\n", + " close.\n", + "\n", + " [218] “All the circumstances of this action—the night, Rhesus buried\n", + " in a profound sleep, and Diomede with the sword in his hand hanging\n", + " over the head of that prince—furnished Homer with the idea of this\n", + " fiction, which represents Rhesus lying fast asleep, and, as it were,\n", + " beholding his enemy in a dream, plunging the sword into his bosom.\n", + " This image is very natural; for a man in his condition awakes no\n", + " farther than to see confusedly what environs him, and to think it not\n", + " a reality but a dream.”—Pope.\n", + "\n", + "“There’s one did laugh in his sleep, and one cry’d murder;\n", + "They wak’d each other.”\n", + "\n", + "—_Macbeth_.\n", + "\n", + " [219]\n", + "“Aurora now had left her saffron bed,\n", + "And beams of early light the heavens o’erspread.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, iv. 639\n", + "\n", + " [220] _Red drops of blood_. “This phenomenon, if a mere fruit of the\n", + " poet’s imagination, might seem arbitrary or far-fetched. It is one,\n", + " however, of ascertained reality, and of no uncommon occurrence in the\n", + " climate of Greece.”—Mure, i p. 493. Cf. Tasso, Gier. Lib. ix. 15:\n", + "\n", + "“La terra in vece del notturno gelo\n", + "Bagnan rugiade tepide, e sanguigne.”\n", + "\n", + " [221]\n", + "“No thought of flight,\n", + "None of retreat, no unbecoming deed\n", + "That argued fear.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” vi. 236.\n", + "\n", + " [222] _One of love_. Although a bastard brother received only a small\n", + " portion of the inheritance, he was commonly very well treated. Priam\n", + " appears to be the only one of whom polygamy is directly asserted in\n", + " the Iliad. Grote, vol. ii. p. 114, note.\n", + "\n", + " [223] “Circled with foes as when a packe of bloodie jackals cling\n", + " About a goodly palmed hart, hurt with a hunter’s bow Whose escape his\n", + " nimble feet insure, whilst his warm blood doth flow, And his light\n", + " knees have power to move: but (maistred by his wound) Embost within a\n", + " shady hill, the jackals charge him round, And teare his flesh—when\n", + " instantly fortune sends in the powers Of some sterne lion, with whose\n", + " sighte they flie and he devours. So they around Ulysses prest.”\n", + "\n", + "—Chapman.\n", + "\n", + " [224] _Simois, railing_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“In those bloody fields\n", + "Where Simois rolls the bodies and the shields\n", + "Of heroes.”\n", + "\n", + "—Dryden’s Virgil, i. 142.\n", + "\n", + " [225]\n", + "“Where yon disorder’d heap of ruin lies,\n", + "Stones rent from stones,—where clouds of dust arise,—\n", + "Amid that smother, Neptune holds his place,\n", + "Below the wall’s foundation drives his mace,\n", + "And heaves the building from the solid base.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 825.\n", + "\n", + " [226] _Why boast we_.\n", + "\n", + "“Wherefore do I assume\n", + "These royalties and not refuse to reign,\n", + "Refusing to accept as great a share\n", + "Of hazard as of honour, due alike to him\n", + "Who reigns, and so much to him due\n", + "Of hazard more, as he above the rest\n", + "High honour’d sits.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” ii. 450.\n", + "\n", + " [227] _Each equal weight_.\n", + "\n", + "“Long time in even scale\n", + "The battle hung.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” vi. 245.\n", + "\n", + " [228]\n", + "“He on his impious foes right onward drove,\n", + "_Gloomy as night_.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” vi. 831\n", + "\n", + " [229] _Renown’d for justice and for length of days_, Arrian. de Exp.\n", + " Alex. iv. p. 239, also speaks of the independence of these people,\n", + " which he regards as the result of their poverty and uprightness. Some\n", + " authors have regarded the phrase “Hippomolgian,” _i.e._ “milking their\n", + " mares,” as an epithet applicable to numerous tribes, since the oldest\n", + " of the Samatian nomads made their mares’ milk one of their chief\n", + " articles of diet. The epithet abion or abion, in this passage, has\n", + " occasioned much discussion. It may mean, according as we read it,\n", + " either “long-lived,” or “bowless,” the latter epithet indicating that\n", + " they did not depend upon archery for subsistence.\n", + "\n", + " [230] Compare Chapman’s quaint, bold verses:—\n", + "\n", + "“And as a round piece of a rocke, which with a winter’s flood\n", + "Is from his top torn, when a shoure poured from a bursten cloud,\n", + "Hath broke the naturall band it had within the roughftey rock,\n", + "Flies jumping all adourne the woods, resounding everie shocke,\n", + "And on, uncheckt, it headlong leaps till in a plaine it stay,\n", + "And then (tho’ never so impelled), it stirs not any way:—\n", + "So Hector,—”\n", + "\n", + " [231] This book forms a most agreeable interruption to the continuous\n", + " round of battles, which occupy the latter part of the Iliad. It is as\n", + " well to observe, that the sameness of these scenes renders many notes\n", + " unnecessary.\n", + "\n", + " [232] _Who to Tydeus owes, i.e._ Diomed.\n", + "\n", + " [233] Compare Tasso:—\n", + "\n", + "Teneri sdegni, e placide, e tranquille\n", + "Repulse, e cari vezzi, e liete paci,\n", + "Sorrisi, parolette, e dolci stille\n", + "Di pianto, e sospir tronchi, e molli baci.”\n", + "\n", + "Gier. Lib. xvi. 25\n", + "\n", + " [234] Compare the description of the dwelling of Sleep in Orlando\n", + " Furioso, bk. vi.\n", + "\n", + " [235]\n", + "“Twice seven, the charming daughters of the main—\n", + "Around my person wait, and bear my train:\n", + "Succeed my wish, and second my design,\n", + "The fairest, Deiopeia, shall be thine.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, Æn. i. 107, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [236] _And Minos_. “By Homer, Minos is described as the son of\n", + " Jupiter, and of the daughter of Phœnix, whom all succeeding authors\n", + " name Europa; and he is thus carried back into the remotest period of\n", + " Cretan antiquity known to the poet, apparently as a native hero,\n", + " Illustrious enough for a divine parentage, and too ancient to allow\n", + " his descent to be traced to any other source. But in a genealogy\n", + " recorded by later writers, he is likewise the adopted son of Asterius,\n", + " as descendant of Dorus, the son of Helen, and is thus connected with a\n", + " colony said to have been led into Creta by Tentamus, or Tectamus, son\n", + " of Dorus, who is related either to have crossed over from Thessaly, or\n", + " to have embarked at Malea after having led his followers by land into\n", + " Laconia.”—Thirlwall, p. 136, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [237] Milton has emulated this passage, in describing the couch of our\n", + " first parents:—\n", + "\n", + "“Underneath the violet,\n", + "Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay,\n", + "’Broider’d the ground.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” iv. 700.\n", + "\n", + " [238] _He lies protected_.\n", + "\n", + "“Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run\n", + "By angels many and strong, who interpos’d\n", + "Defence, while others bore him on their shields\n", + "Back to his chariot, where it stood retir’d\n", + "From off the files of war; there they him laid,\n", + "Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” vi. 335, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [239] _The brazen dome_. See the note on Bk. viii. Page 142.\n", + "\n", + " [240] _For, by the gods! who flies_. Observe the bold ellipsis of “he\n", + " cries,” and the transition from the direct to the oblique\n", + " construction. So in Milton:—\n", + "\n", + "“Thus at their shady lodge arriv’d, both stood,\n", + "Both turn’d, and under open sky ador’d\n", + "The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven,\n", + "Which they beheld, the moon’s resplendent globe,\n", + "And starry pole.—Thou also mad’st the night,\n", + "Maker omnipotent, and thou the day.”\n", + "\n", + "Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book iv.\n", + "\n", + " [241] _So some tall rock_.\n", + "\n", + "“But like a rock unmov’d, a rock that braves\n", + "The raging tempest, and the rising waves—\n", + "Propp’d on himself he stands: his solid sides\n", + "Wash off the sea-weeds, and the sounding tides.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 809.\n", + "\n", + " [242] Protesilaus was the first Greek who fell, slain by Hector, as he\n", + " leaped from the vessel to the Trojan shore. He was buried on the\n", + " Chersonese, near the city of Plagusa. Hygin Fab. ciii. Tzetz. on\n", + " Lycophr. 245, 528. There is a most elegant tribute to his memory in\n", + " the Preface to the Heroica of Philostratus.\n", + "\n", + " [243] _His best beloved_. The following elegant remarks of Thirlwall\n", + " (Greece, vol. i, p. 176 seq.) well illustrate the character of the\n", + " friendship subsisting between these two heroes—\n", + " “One of the noblest and most amiable sides of the Greek character,\n", + " is the readiness with which it lent itself to construct intimate\n", + " and durable friendships, and this is a feature no less prominent in\n", + " the earliest than in later times. It was indeed connected with the\n", + " comparatively low estimation in which female society was held; but\n", + " the devotedness and constancy with which these attachments were\n", + " maintained, was not the less admirable and engaging. The heroic\n", + " companions whom we find celebrated partly by Homer and partly in\n", + " traditions which, if not of equal antiquity, were grounded on the\n", + " same feeling, seem to have but one heart and soul, with scarcely a\n", + " wish or object apart, and only to live as they are always ready to\n", + " die for one another. It is true that the relation between them is\n", + " not always one of perfect equality; but this is a circumstance\n", + " which, while it often adds a peculiar charm to the poetical\n", + " description, detracts little from the dignity of the idea which it\n", + " presents. Such were the friendships of Hercules and Iolaus, of\n", + " Theseus and Pirithous, of Orestes and Pylades; and though These may\n", + " owe the greater part of their fame to the later epic or even\n", + " dramatic poetry, the moral groundwork undoubtedly subsisted in the\n", + " period to which the traditions are referred. The argument of the\n", + " Iliad mainly turns on the affection of Achilles for Patroclus,\n", + " whose love for the greater hero is only tempered by reverence for\n", + " his higher birth and his unequalled prowess. But the mutual regard\n", + " which united Idomeneus and Meriones, Diomedes and Sthenelus,\n", + " though, as the persons themselves are less important, it is kept\n", + " more in the back-ground, is manifestly viewed by the poet in the\n", + " same light. The idea of a Greek hero seems not to have been thought\n", + " complete, without such a brother in arms by his side.”—Thirlwall,\n", + " Greece, vol. i. p. 176, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [244]\n", + "“As hungry wolves with raging appetite,\n", + "Scour through the fields, ne’er fear the stormy night—\n", + "Their whelps at home expect the promised food,\n", + "And long to temper their dry chaps in blood—\n", + "So rush’d we forth at once.”\n", + "\n", + "—Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 479.\n", + "\n", + " [245] _The destinies ordain_.—“In the mythology, also, of the Iliad,\n", + " purely Pagan as it is, we discover one important truth unconsciously\n", + " involved, which was almost entirely lost from view amidst the nearly\n", + " equal scepticism and credulity of subsequent ages. Zeus or Jupiter is\n", + " popularly to be taken as omnipotent. No distinct empire is assigned to\n", + " fate or fortune; the will of the father of gods and men is absolute\n", + " and uncontrollable. This seems to be the true character of the Homeric\n", + " deity, and it is very necessary that the student of Greek literature\n", + " should bear it constantly in mind. A strong instance in the Iliad\n", + " itself to illustrate this position, is the passage where Jupiter\n", + " laments to Juno the approaching death of Sarpedon. ‘Alas me!’ says he\n", + " ‘since it is fated (moira) that Sarpedon, dearest to me of men, should\n", + " be slain by Patroclus, the son of Menoetius! Indeed, my heart is\n", + " divided within me while I ruminate it in my mind, whether having\n", + " snatched him up from out of the lamentable battle, I should not at\n", + " once place him alive in the fertile land of his own Lycia, or whether\n", + " I should now destroy him by the hands of the son of Menoetius!’ To\n", + " which Juno answers—‘Dost thou mean to rescue from death a mortal man,\n", + " long since destined by fate (palai pepromenon)? You may do it—but we,\n", + " the rest of the gods, do not sanction it.’ Here it is clear from both\n", + " speakers, that although Sarpedon is said to be fated to die, Jupiter\n", + " might still, if he pleased, save him, and place him entirely out of\n", + " the reach of any such event, and further, in the alternative, that\n", + " Jupiter himself would destroy him by the hands of another.”—Coleridge,\n", + " p. 156. seq.\n", + "\n", + " [246] _Thrice at the battlements_. “The art military of the Homeric\n", + " age is upon a level with the state of navigation just described,\n", + " personal prowess decided every thing; the night attack and the\n", + " ambuscade, although much esteemed, were never upon a large scale. The\n", + " chiefs fight in advance, and enact almost as much as the knights of\n", + " romance. The siege of Troy was as little like a modern siege as a\n", + " captain in the guards is like Achilles. There is no mention of a ditch\n", + " or any other line or work round the town, and the wall itself was\n", + " accessible without a ladder. It was probably a vast mound of earth\n", + " with a declivity outwards. Patroclus thrice mounts it in armour. The\n", + " Trojans are in no respects blockaded, and receive assistance from\n", + " their allies to the very end.”—Coleridge, p. 212.\n", + "\n", + " [247] _Ciconians_.—A people of Thrace, near the Hebrus.\n", + "\n", + " [248] _They wept_.\n", + "\n", + "“Fast by the manger stands the inactive steed,\n", + "And, sunk in sorrow, hangs his languid head;\n", + "He stands, and careless of his golden grain,\n", + "Weeps his associates and his master slain.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, v. 18-24.\n", + "\n", + "“Nothing is heard upon the mountains now,\n", + "But pensive herds that for their master low,\n", + "Straggling and comfortless about they rove,\n", + "Unmindful of their pasture and their love.”\n", + "\n", + "Moschus, id. 3, parodied, _ibid._\n", + "\n", + "“To close the pomp, Æthon, the steed of state,\n", + "Is led, the funeral of his lord to wait.\n", + "Stripp’d of his trappings, with a sullen pace\n", + "He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his face.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, bk. ii\n", + "\n", + " [249] _Some brawny bull_.\n", + "\n", + "“Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring\n", + "Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow\n", + "Hath struck him, but unable to proceed\n", + "Plunges on either side.”\n", + "\n", + "—Carey’s Dante: Hell, c. xii.\n", + "\n", + " [250] This is connected with the earlier part of last book, the\n", + " regular narrative being interrupted by the message of Antilochus and\n", + " the lamentations of Achilles.\n", + "\n", + " [251] _Far in the deep_. So Oceanus hears the lamentations of\n", + " Prometheus, in the play of Æschylus, and comes from the depths of the\n", + " sea to comfort him.\n", + "\n", + " [252] Opuntia, a city of Locris.\n", + "\n", + " [253] Quintus Calaber, lib. v., has attempted to rival Homer in his\n", + " description of the shield of the same hero. A few extracts from Mr.\n", + " Dyce’s version (Select Translations, p. 104, seq.) may here be\n", + " introduced.\n", + "\n", + "“In the wide circle of the shield were seen\n", + "Refulgent images of various forms,\n", + "The work of Vulcan; who had there described\n", + "The heaven, the ether, and the earth and sea,\n", + "The winds, the clouds, the moon, the sun, apart\n", + "In different stations; and you there might view\n", + "The stars that gem the still-revolving heaven,\n", + "And, under them, the vast expanse of air,\n", + "In which, with outstretch’d wings, the long-beak’d bird\n", + "Winnow’d the gale, as if instinct with life.\n", + "Around the shield the waves of ocean flow’d,\n", + "The realms of Tethys, which unnumber’d streams,\n", + "In azure mazes rolling o’er the earth,\n", + "Seem’d to augment.”\n", + "\n", + " [254] _On seats of stone_. “Several of the old northern Sagas\n", + " represent the old men assembled for the purpose of judging as sitting\n", + " on great stones, in a circle called the Urtheilsring or gerichtsring”—\n", + " Grote, ii. p. 100, note. On the independence of the judicial office in\n", + " The heroic times, see Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. p. 166.\n", + "\n", + " [255] _Another part_, &c.\n", + "\n", + "“And here\n", + "Were horrid wars depicted; grimly pale\n", + "Were heroes lying with their slaughter’d steeds\n", + "Upon the ground incarnadin’d with blood.\n", + "Stern stalked Bellona, smear’d with reeking gore,\n", + "Through charging ranks; beside her Rout was seen,\n", + "And Terror, Discord to the fatal strife\n", + "Inciting men, and Furies breathing flames:\n", + "Nor absent were the Fates, and the tall shape\n", + "Of ghastly Death, round whom did Battles throng,\n", + "Their limbs distilling plenteous blood and sweat;\n", + "And Gorgons, whose long locks were twisting snakes.\n", + "That shot their forky tongues incessant forth.\n", + "Such were the horrors of dire war.”\n", + "\n", + "—Dyce’s Calaber.\n", + "\n", + " [256] _A field deep furrowed_.\n", + "\n", + "“Here was a corn field; reapers in a row,\n", + "Each with a sharp-tooth’d sickle in his hand,\n", + "Work’d busily, and, as the harvest fell,\n", + "Others were ready still to bind the sheaves:\n", + "Yoked to a wain that bore the corn away\n", + "The steers were moving; sturdy bullocks here\n", + "The plough were drawing, and the furrow’d glebe\n", + "Was black behind them, while with goading wand\n", + "The active youths impell’d them. Here a feast\n", + "Was graved: to the shrill pipe and ringing lyre\n", + "A band of blooming virgins led the dance.\n", + "As if endued with life.”\n", + "—Dyce’s Calaber.\n", + "\n", + " [257] Coleridge (Greek Classic Poets, p. 182, seq.) has diligently\n", + " compared this with the description of the shield of Hercules by\n", + " Hesiod. He remarks that, “with two or three exceptions, the imagery\n", + " differs in little more than the names and arrangements; and the\n", + " difference of arrangement in the Shield of Hercules is altogether for\n", + " the worse. The natural consecution of the Homeric images needs no\n", + " exposition: it constitutes in itself one of the beauties of the work.\n", + " The Hesiodic images are huddled together without connection or\n", + " congruity: Mars and Pallas are awkwardly introduced among the Centaurs\n", + " and Lapithae;— but the gap is wide indeed between them and Apollo with\n", + " the Muses, waking the echoes of Olympus to celestial harmonies; whence\n", + " however, we are hurried back to Perseus, the Gorgons, and other images\n", + " of war, over an arm of the sea, in which the sporting dolphins, the\n", + " fugitive fishes, and the fisherman on the shore with his casting net,\n", + " are minutely represented. As to the Hesiodic images themselves, the\n", + " leading remark is, that they catch at beauty by ornament, and at\n", + " sublimity by exaggeration; and upon the untenable supposition of the\n", + " genuineness of this poem, there is this curious peculiarity, that, in\n", + " the description of scenes of rustic peace, the superiority of Homer is\n", + " decisive—while in those of war and tumult it may be thought, perhaps,\n", + " that the Hesiodic poet has more than once the advantage.”\n", + "\n", + " [258] “This legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in\n", + " the Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas\n", + " familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and\n", + " the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned\n", + " subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the\n", + " Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by\n", + " Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the\n", + " commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is\n", + " reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are\n", + " brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives\n", + " in marriage Hebe.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 128.\n", + "\n", + " [259] _Ambrosia_.\n", + "\n", + "“The blue-eyed maid,\n", + "In ev’ry breast new vigour to infuse.\n", + "Brings nectar temper’d with ambrosial dews.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 249.\n", + "\n", + " [260] “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. He\n", + " stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth\n", + " upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the\n", + " cloud is not rent under them.” Job xxvi. 6-8.\n", + "\n", + " [261]\n", + "“Swift from his throne the infernal monarch ran,\n", + "All pale and trembling, lest the race of man,v Slain by Jove’s wrath,\n", + "and led by Hermes’ rod,\n", + "Should fill (a countless throng!) his dark abode.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 769, sqq.\n", + "\n", + " [262] These words seem to imply the old belief, that the Fates might\n", + " be delayed, but never wholly set aside.\n", + "\n", + " [263] It was anciently believed that it was dangerous, if not fatal,\n", + " to behold a deity. See Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judg. xiii. 22.\n", + "\n", + " [264]\n", + "“Ere Ilium and the Trojan tow’rs arose,\n", + "In humble vales they built their soft abodes.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, iii. 150.\n", + "\n", + " [265] _Along the level seas_. Compare Virgil’s description of Camilla,\n", + " who\n", + "\n", + "“Outstripp’d the winds in speed upon the plain,\n", + "Flew o’er the field, nor hurt the bearded grain:\n", + "She swept the seas, and, as she skimm’d along,\n", + "Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden, vii. 1100.\n", + "\n", + " [266] _The future father_. “Æneas and Antenor stand distinguished from\n", + " the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam, and a sympathy with\n", + " the Greeks, which is by Sophocles and others construed as treacherous\n", + " collusion,—a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically\n", + " repelled, in the Æneas of Virgil.”—Grote, i. p. 427.\n", + "\n", + " [267] Neptune thus recounts his services to Æneas:\n", + "\n", + "“When your Æneas fought, but fought with odds\n", + "Of force unequal, and unequal gods:\n", + "I spread a cloud before the victor’s sight,\n", + "Sustain’d the vanquish’d, and secured his flight—\n", + "Even then secured him, when I sought with joy\n", + "The vow’d destruction of ungrateful Troy.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, v. 1058.\n", + "\n", + " [268] _On Polydore_. Euripides, Virgil, and others, relate that\n", + " Polydore was sent into Thrace, to the house of Polymestor, for\n", + " protection, being the youngest of Priam’s sons, and that he was\n", + " treacherously murdered by his host for the sake of the treasure sent\n", + " with him.\n", + "\n", + " [269] “Perhaps the boldest excursion of Homer into this region of\n", + " poetical fancy is the collision into which, in the twenty-first of the\n", + " Iliad, he has brought the river god Scamander, first with Achilles,\n", + " and afterwards with Vulcan, when summoned by Juno to the hero’s aid.\n", + " The overwhelming fury of the stream finds the natural interpretation\n", + " in the character of the mountain torrents of Greece and Asia Minor.\n", + " Their wide, shingly beds are in summer comparatively dry, so as to be\n", + " easily forded by the foot passenger. But a thunder-shower in the\n", + " mountains, unobserved perhaps by the traveller on the plain, may\n", + " suddenly immerse him in the flood of a mighty river. The rescue of\n", + " Achilles by the fiery arms of Vulcan scarcely admits of the same ready\n", + " explanation from physical causes. Yet the subsiding of the flood at\n", + " the critical moment when the hero’s destruction appeared imminent,\n", + " might, by a slight extension of the figurative parallel, be ascribed\n", + " to a god symbolic of the influences opposed to all atmospheric\n", + " moisture.”—Mure, vol. i. p. 480, sq.\n", + "\n", + " [270] Wood has observed, that “the circumstance of a falling tree,\n", + " which is described as reaching from one of its banks to the other,\n", + " affords a very just idea of the breadth of the Scamander.”\n", + "\n", + " [271] _Ignominious_. Drowning, as compared with a death in the field\n", + " of battle, was considered utterly disgraceful.\n", + "\n", + " [272] _Beneath a caldron_.\n", + "\n", + "“So, when with crackling flames a caldron fries,\n", + "The bubbling waters from the bottom rise.\n", + "Above the brims they force their fiery way;\n", + "Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 644.\n", + "\n", + " [273] “This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by\n", + " order of Jove, as a punishment for misbehaviour, recurs not\n", + " unfrequently among the incidents of the Mythical world.”—Grote, vol.\n", + " i. p. 156.\n", + "\n", + " [274] _Not half so dreadful_.\n", + "\n", + "“On the other side,\n", + "Incensed with indignation, Satan stood\n", + "Unterrified, and like a comet burn’d,\n", + "That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge\n", + "In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair\n", + "Shakes pestilence and war.”\n", + "\n", + "—“Paradise Lost,” xi. 708.\n", + "\n", + " [275] “And thus his own undaunted mind explores.”—“Paradise Lost,” vi.\n", + " 113.\n", + "\n", + " [276] The example of Nausicaa, in the Odyssey, proves that the duties\n", + " of the laundry were not thought derogatory, even from the dignity of a\n", + " princess, in the heroic times.\n", + "\n", + " [277] _Hesper shines with keener light_.\n", + "\n", + "“Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,\n", + "If better thou belong not to the dawn.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” v. 166.\n", + "\n", + " [278] Such was his fate. After chasing the Trojans into the town, he\n", + " was slain by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the\n", + " unerring auspices of Apollo. The greatest efforts were made by the\n", + " Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was however rescued\n", + " and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valour of Ajax and Ulysses.\n", + " Thetis stole away the body, just as the Greeks were about to burn it\n", + " with funeral honours, and conveyed it away to a renewed life of\n", + " immortality in the isle of Leuke in the Euxine.\n", + "\n", + " [279] _Astyanax_, i.e. the _city-king_ or guardian. It is amusing that\n", + " Plato, who often finds fault with Homer without reason, should have\n", + " copied this twaddling etymology into his Cratylus.\n", + "\n", + " [280] This book has been closely imitated by Virgil in his fifth book,\n", + " but it is almost useless to attempt a selection of passages for\n", + " comparison.\n", + "\n", + " [281] _Thrice in order led_. This was a frequent rite at funerals. The\n", + " Romans had the same custom, which they called _decursio_. Plutarch\n", + " states that Alexander, in after times, renewed these same honours to\n", + " the memory of Achilles himself.\n", + "\n", + " [282] _And swore_. Literally, and called Orcus, the god of oaths, to\n", + " witness. See Buttmann, Lexilog, p. 436.\n", + "\n", + " [283]\n", + "“O, long expected by thy friends! from whence\n", + "Art thou so late return’d for our defence?\n", + "Do we behold thee, wearied as we are\n", + "With length of labours, and with, toils of war?\n", + "After so many funerals of thy own,\n", + "Art thou restored to thy declining town?\n", + "But say, what wounds are these? what new disgrace\n", + "Deforms the manly features of thy face?”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden, xi. 369.\n", + "\n", + " [284] _Like a thin smoke_. Virgil, Georg. iv. 72.\n", + "\n", + "“In vain I reach my feeble hands to join\n", + "In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine!\n", + "She said, and from his eyes the fleeting fair\n", + "Retired, like subtle smoke dissolved in air.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden.\n", + "\n", + " [285] So Milton:—\n", + "\n", + "“So eagerly the fiend\n", + "O’er bog, o’er steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,\n", + "With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,\n", + "And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”\n", + "\n", + "“Paradise Lost,” ii. 948.\n", + "\n", + " [286]\n", + "“An ancient forest, for the work design’d\n", + "(The shady covert of the savage kind).\n", + "The Trojans found: the sounding axe is placed:\n", + "Firs, pines, and pitch-trees, and the tow’ring pride\n", + "Of forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke,\n", + "And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak.\n", + "High trunks of trees, fell’d from the steepy crown\n", + "Of the bare mountains, roll with ruin down.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, vi. 261.\n", + "\n", + " [287] _He vowed_. This was a very ancient custom.\n", + "\n", + " [288] The height of the tomb or pile was a great proof of the dignity\n", + " of the deceased, and the honour in which he was held.\n", + "\n", + " [289] On the prevalence of this cruel custom amongst the northern\n", + " nations, see Mallet, p. 213.\n", + "\n", + " [290] _And calls the spirit_. Such was the custom anciently, even at\n", + " the Roman funerals.\n", + "\n", + "“Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again,\n", + "Paternal ashes, now revived in vain.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, v. 106.\n", + "\n", + " [291] Virgil, by making the boaster vanquished, has drawn a better\n", + " moral from this episode than Homer. The following lines deserve\n", + " comparison:—\n", + "\n", + "“The haughty Dares in the lists appears:\n", + "Walking he strides, his head erected bears:\n", + "His nervous arms the weighty gauntlet wield,\n", + "And loud applauses echo through the field.\n", + "* * * *\n", + "Such Dares was, and such he strode along,\n", + "And drew the wonder of the gazing throng\n", + "His brawny breast and ample chest he shows;\n", + "His lifted arms around his head he throws,\n", + "And deals in whistling air his empty blows.\n", + "His match is sought, but, through the trembling band,\n", + "No one dares answer to the proud demand.\n", + "Presuming of his force, with sparkling eyes,\n", + "Already he devours the promised prize.\n", + "* * * *\n", + "If none my matchless valour dares oppose,\n", + "How long shall Dares wait his dastard foes?”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, v. 486, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [292]\n", + "“The gauntlet-fight thus ended, from the shore\n", + "His faithful friends unhappy Dares bore:\n", + "His mouth and nostrils pour’d a purple flood,\n", + "And pounded teeth came rushing with his blood.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden’s Virgil, v. 623.\n", + "\n", + " [293] “Troilus is only once named in the Iliad; he was mentioned also\n", + " in the Cypriad but his youth, beauty, and untimely end made him an\n", + " object of great interest with the subsequent poets.”—Grote, i, p. 399.\n", + "\n", + " [294] Milton has rivalled this passage describing the descent of\n", + " Gabriel, “Paradise Lost,” bk. v. 266, seq.\n", + "\n", + "“Down thither prone in flight\n", + "He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky\n", + "Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing,\n", + "Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan\n", + "Winnows the buxom air. * * * *\n", + "* * * *\n", + "At once on th’ eastern cliff of Paradise\n", + "He lights, and to his proper shape returns\n", + "A seraph wing’d. * * * *\n", + "Like Maia’s son he stood,\n", + "And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance fill’d\n", + "The circuit wide.”\n", + "\n", + "Virgil, Æn. iv. 350:—\n", + "\n", + "“Hermes obeys; with golden pinions binds\n", + "His flying feet, and mounts the western winds:\n", + "And whether o’er the seas or earth he flies,\n", + "With rapid force they bear him down the skies\n", + "But first he grasps within his awful hand\n", + "The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand;\n", + "With this he draws the ghost from hollow graves;\n", + "With this he drives them from the Stygian waves:\n", + "* * * *\n", + "Thus arm’d, the god begins his airy race,v And drives the racking\n", + "clouds along the liquid space.”\n", + "\n", + "Dryden.\n", + "\n", + " [295] In reference to the whole scene that follows, the remarks of\n", + " Coleridge are well worth reading:—\n", + " “By a close study of life, and by a true and natural mode of\n", + " expressing everything, Homer was enabled to venture upon the most\n", + " peculiar and difficult situations, and to extricate himself from\n", + " them with the completest success. The whole scene between Achilles\n", + " and Priam, when the latter comes to the Greek camp for the purpose\n", + " of redeeming the body of Hector, is at once the most profoundly\n", + " skilful, and yet the simplest and most affecting passage in the\n", + " Iliad. Quinctilian has taken notice of the following speech of\n", + " Priam, the rhetorical artifice of which is so transcendent, that if\n", + " genius did not often, especially in oratory, unconsciously fulfil\n", + " the most subtle precepts of criticism, we might be induced, on this\n", + " account alone, to consider the last book of the Iliad as what is\n", + " called spurious, in other words, of later date than the rest of the\n", + " poem. Observe the exquisite taste of Priam in occupying the mind of\n", + " Achilles, from the outset, with the image of his father; in\n", + " gradually introducing the parallel of his own situation; and,\n", + " lastly, mentioning Hector’s name when he perceives that the hero is\n", + " softened, and then only in such a manner as to flatter the pride of\n", + " the conqueror. The ego d’eleeinoteros per, and the apusato aecha\n", + " geronta, are not exactly like the tone of the earlier parts of the\n", + " Iliad. They are almost too fine and pathetic. The whole passage\n", + " defies translation, for there is that about the Greek which has no\n", + " name, but which is of so fine and ethereal a subtlety that it can\n", + " only be felt in the original, and is lost in an attempt to\n", + " transfuse it into another language.”—Coleridge, p. 195.\n", + "\n", + " [296] “Achilles’ ferocious treatment of the corpse of Hector cannot\n", + " but offend as referred to the modern standard of humanity. The heroic\n", + " age, however, must be judged by its own moral laws. Retributive\n", + " vengeance on the dead, as well as the living, was a duty inculcated by\n", + " the religion of those barbarous times which not only taught that evil\n", + " inflicted on the author of evil was a solace to the injured man; but\n", + " made the welfare of the soul after death dependent on the fate of the\n", + " body from which it had separated. Hence a denial of the rites\n", + " essential to the soul’s admission into the more favoured regions of\n", + " the lower world was a cruel punishment to the wanderer on the dreary\n", + " shores of the infernal river. The complaint of the ghost of Patroclus\n", + " to Achilles, of but a brief postponement of his own obsequies, shows\n", + " how efficacious their refusal to the remains of his destroyer must\n", + " have been in satiating the thirst of revenge, which, even after death,\n", + " was supposed to torment the dwellers in Hades. Hence before yielding\n", + " up the body of Hector to Priam, Achilles asks pardon of Patroclus for\n", + " even this partial cession of his just rights of retribution.”—Mure,\n", + " vol. i. 289.\n", + "\n", + " [297] Such was the fate of Astyanax, when Troy was taken.\n", + "\n", + "“Here, from the tow’r by stern Ulysses thrown,\n", + "Andromache bewail’d her infant son.”\n", + "\n", + "Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, v. 675.\n", + "\n", + " [298] The following observations of Coleridge furnish a most gallant\n", + " and interesting view of Helen’s character—\n", + " “Few things are more interesting than to observe how the same hand\n", + " that has given us the fury and inconsistency of Achilles, gives us\n", + " also the consummate elegance and tenderness of Helen. She is\n", + " through the Iliad a genuine lady, graceful in motion and speech,\n", + " noble in her associations, full of remorse for a fault for which\n", + " higher powers seem responsible, yet grateful and affectionate\n", + " towards those with whom that fault had committed her. I have always\n", + " thought the following speech in which Helen laments Hector, and\n", + " hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation in Troy, as\n", + " almost the sweetest passage in the poem. It is another striking\n", + " instance of that refinement of feeling and softness of tone which\n", + " so generally distinguish the last book of the Iliad from the\n", + " rest.”—Classic Poets, p. 198, seq.\n", + "\n", + " [299] “And here we part with Achilles at the moment best calculated to\n", + " exalt and purify our impression of his character. We had accompanied\n", + " him through the effervescence, undulations, and final subsidence of\n", + " his stormy passions. We now leave him in repose and under the full\n", + " influence of the more amiable affections, while our admiration of his\n", + " great qualities is chastened by the reflection that, within a few\n", + " short days the mighty being in whom they were united was himself to be\n", + " suddenly cut off in the full vigour of their exercise.\n", + " The frequent and touching allusions, interspersed throughout the\n", + " Iliad, to the speedy termination of its hero’s course, and the\n", + " moral on the vanity of human life which they indicate, are among\n", + " the finest evidences of the spirit of ethic unity by which the\n", + " whole framework of the poem is united.”—Mure, vol. i. p 201.\n", + "\n", + " [300] Cowper says,—“I cannot take my leave of this noble poem without\n", + " expressing how much I am struck with the plain conclusion of it. It is\n", + " like the exit of a great man out of company, whom he has entertained\n", + " magnificently; neither pompous nor familiar; not contemptuous, yet\n", + " without much ceremony.” Coleridge, p. 227, considers the termination\n", + " of “Paradise Lost” somewhat similar.\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ILIAD ***\n", + "\n", + "\n", + " \n", + "\n", + "Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will\n", + "be renamed.\n", + "\n", + "Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright\n", + "law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,\n", + "so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United\n", + "States without permission and without paying copyright\n", + "royalties. 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Great as thou art, and like a god in fight, Such as a king might ask; and let it be Then thus the king: “Shall I my prize resign +At thy demand shall I restore the maid? +A treasure worthy her, and worthy me. +First let the just equivalent be paid; +Think not to rob me of a soldier’s right. +With tame content, and thou possess’d of thine? +Great as thou art, and like a god in fight, +Such as a king might ask; and let it be +Then thus the king: “Shall I my prize resign