^: 
 

 
THE 
 
 LIAD- OF HOMER. 
 
 • So? >-/ € >-■ • 
 
 WITH NOTES. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. G. T. BARTER, 
 
 LONDON; 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGIVIANS. 
 
 1854 
 
'H^B 
 
 IvONDON : 
 
 A, and G. A. Spottiswooue, 
 New-street- .Squ.ire. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 PA 
 
 Ho ^5 
 
 In adding another to the existing versions of the Iliad 
 of Homer, already before the public, the Translator doubted 
 whether or not to oiFer it at once without preface, as an 
 undertaking which, if approved of, would commend itself, 
 and to which, if disapproved, no prefatory preparation or 
 apology could reconcile the reader. With the usual result, 
 however, of such debate, he has resolved on venturing 
 somewhat by way of introduction, if only to set forth 
 what is aimed at in the present work, and to remove, if 
 possible, certain prejudices that might operate on the 
 minds of some against his method of treatment. But 
 how far he has been successful, it is, of course, for the 
 reader alone, after unbiassed perusal, to determine. The 
 following, then, is offered as the most literal metrical 
 EngHsh version of the Iliad hitherto published, and cer- 
 tainly the most literal in rhyme. And in it the translator 
 has aimed at giving all that is in the original, without 
 regard to supposed redundancy or repetition, and from it 
 as rigidly excluding every thought and expression which 
 is not there to be found. That he has always succeeded 
 it would be vain to assert ; but he can conscientiously de- 
 clare that he has never swerved without a feeling of dis- 
 comfort proportioned to the strenuous efforts he has 
 always made to avoid the necessity. And this constant 
 endeavour, he ventures to flatter himself, has been at- 
 tended with, at least, this result, that a closer version has 
 been produced than the reader would, perhaps, at hearing 
 of a rhymed translation, have expected. 
 
 A 3 
 
 S05561 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 In prosecution of his design of giving Homer exactly, 
 as far as he was able, the proper names are given as in 
 the original. The propriety of so doing in any transla- 
 tion from the Greek will now scarcely be questioned, after 
 the tendency that prevails even in original works, as 
 in Bishop ThirlwalFs History of Greece, and in Mr. 
 Grote's, of employing them instead of their Latin equi- 
 valents. As a general rule, this has been done here, ex- 
 cept, 1st, in those books which the Translator had com- 
 pleted before resolving on this plan, and which he has been 
 unable entirely to alter ; instances of which may be found 
 in Books II. to VIII. inclusive (the first book having 
 been remodelled). 2ndly, Where the proper names have 
 adequate equivalents in English, as Dream, Sleep, Death, 
 and some others, which would have gained nothing, he 
 thought, by substituting the original Oneiros, Hypnos^ and 
 Thanatos. But when the Greek name was resolved on, a 
 difficulty still remained. Should the Latin form be given 
 or the Greek? Should we, for instance, have Hephaestus 
 or Hephaistos ? He has preferred the latter, though not 
 without a twinge at the occasional consequences of car- 
 rying out the rule. And if the reader withhold his ap- 
 proval, it is hoped that he will consider the difficulty and 
 extend his indulgence. There is no rule for courage, 
 whether physical or moral. Yery fire-eaters have shaken 
 at a trifling matter. And the writer may be somewhat 
 in the same predicament. He has not flinched from what 
 the reader may consider rougher changes, and yet has 
 fairly turned tail and fled when asked to charge upon a 
 Roman C, and plant the colours of a Greek K in its stead. 
 
 There is one feature in connection with this subject, to 
 which the reader's attention is invited ; viz., that not only 
 has it been endeavoured to give the Greek name, but the 
 one used then and there by Homer ; and rarely, for in- 
 stance, has Phoebus been substituted for Apollo, or Pallas 
 
PKEFACE. VI I 
 
 for Athen^. The proper names, moreover, where several 
 occur together, are uniformly given in the order of the 
 original. And this has been especially a matter of scruple 
 with the Translator in the Catalogue of the Ships, where 
 the order in which the places occur is an element of value 
 in the geography of the description, and accordingly 
 mentioned with praise by Macrobius. 
 
 But although the propriety of literal translation is very 
 generally admitted, yet some, whose approbation the 
 Translator would not willingly forego, are against it, for- 
 tified by a prejudice which is of some standing, and had 
 found plausible expression, at least, as far back as Denham's 
 Lines to Fanshawe on the latter's translation of the 
 Pastor Fido. This notion has been worked up into a 
 notable recipe for translation, which, while it alters the 
 expression of the problem, adds nothing to its solution. 
 Applied to our subject, it would run thus: — A perfect 
 translation would present the poem as Homer would have 
 written it in English. This is often uttered with the 
 confidence of an axiom, and yet it recommends an im- 
 possibility, and takes for granted what never did nor ever 
 could occur, for no great epic, true and genuine, can be 
 repeated. Every true poem, of like compass, is so en- 
 woven with the then and there of the people and language 
 to which it belongs, as to be inapplicable to any other. 
 This seemingly plausible recommendation, therefore, opens 
 a large field of doubt and difficulty. To ungreek Homer 
 were not enough, — we must Anglicize him. But to what 
 period of our history ? Is he to be the Englishman of 
 to-day ? But how then could he have addressed such a 
 poem to the men of the nineteenth century ? What war- 
 rant in our manners would he have found for three- 
 fourths of it ? And take away these, in what condition 
 would the poem be left? Or, if this were admissible, 
 how could such truncation of the original fall within the 
 
 A 4 
 
Vlll rREFACE. 
 
 province of a translator ? Whether for diction, for ma- 
 chinery, for incidents, there is no period of our history to 
 "which an English Homer could have applied an Iliad, or 
 made with those materials other than an exotic compo- 
 sition, and, therefore, not' an Iliad, not a poem embalmed 
 in the hearts and sympathies, the customs, language, and 
 faith of his countrymen. The Argonauts might, per- 
 haps, with little change, have been written anywhere ; 
 but the Iliad in Hellas only, and among the Greeks of the 
 heroic age, even as the Cid is linked inseparably with 
 Spain, and the chivalrous Spaniards that battled with the 
 Moor, and as the Nibelungen-Lied belongs to the Teutons 
 of the time. Homer then could not have reproduced his 
 poem ; at most he would have achieved another and 
 original work embodying what was applicable in the first. 
 And in this direction the translator is travelling, who is 
 too ambitious of rendering his author by equivalents. He 
 may make another, and if stronger than his original, a 
 better poem, but not a translation. 
 
 A translator's office the writer conceives to be of a much 
 humbler cast. Great diligence, respect for his author, and 
 obhvion of self, so as never voluntarily to import the latter 
 into the former, — these, with the commoner qualities in 
 the lower walks of Parnassus, will go further than the 
 highest poetic powers without them. Indeed it is possible 
 for high poetic power to be a hindrance even, when, like 
 a wayward river, it would rather wander at its own sweet 
 will, than be canalled and cooped in dykes and locks, for 
 all the precious freight it may be thereby made to convey. 
 And Homer, of all poets, is so suggestive as to offer con- 
 tinual temptations of this kind^ and so furnishes the sole 
 excuse for translators like Chapman, who is repeatedly 
 breaking off from his author upon some little original 
 poesy on his own account, \%Jiich, however good in itself, 
 is too often out of keeping with the poem, which it conse- 
 
PREFACE, IX 
 
 quently mars. Lack of such poetic facility, or, as he would 
 flatter himself, respect for his author, has kept the present 
 Translator from any voluntary transgressions of this nature. 
 For the majesty of the original would have effectually re- 
 buked all inclination to trespass; For the right thing in 
 the right place, enough_and no more, so characterises it 
 throughou t, that he felt every change to be for the worse, 
 every addition redundance, and every suppression defect. 
 
 If then, it will be urged by another and opposite class 
 of objectors, the parts of a good epic and its concomitants 
 be, so to speak, inseparable, this must be especially so of 
 the verse itself. Undoubtedly. But the verse is not 
 linked with the subject only, but with the language also ; 
 and this latter link is less easily broken than the other. 
 In any given tongue, whatever your subject, you have 
 comparatively a range of choice among the rhythms of 
 that tongue, but nothing beyond. Now the rhythms 
 that depend on quantity are not more exclusively ger- 
 mane to the tongues of ancient Greece and Rome, whose 
 prosody was based on quantity, than are the accentual 
 rhythms to the accentual tongues of modern Europe, and 
 to none more than English. Hexameters, pentameters, et id 
 geiius omne^ evince great skill and ingenuity on the part 
 of the English poet who employs them, but, in the writer's 
 opinion, equally evince the indomitable reluctance of the 
 material to be moulded into those forms. Whatever his 
 command of language, the choicest words will desert him 
 by the score when he comes to drill them in these foreign 
 forms, which not all the power of all the poets united 
 could ever render vernacular. And as for the supposed 
 necessity of keeping to the measure of the original, what 
 would be thought of a translation of the Faery Queen 
 into Greek which should preserve the rhyme and the 
 stanza ? An English translator therefore, it is conceived, 
 should eschew hexameter for the very reason that Homer 
 
X THEFACE. 
 
 chose it, viz. regard to the requirements of the language 
 in which he wrote. 
 
 The verse then must be accentual ; and, for the number 
 of feet, the five accent, or heroic verse, appeared the best. 
 That of six accents, which had charms for Drayton, and 
 still more the lengthy line of seven, in which the soul of 
 Chapman delighted, would, if more popular, have been 
 convenient for translation on the score of room. And it 
 is surprising that Chapman had not made his illustrious 
 guest more at home when he had provided so spacious a 
 mansion for his reception. But these are all but obsolete, 
 and not to be greatly regretted. The former, for long 
 together, is monotonous, and the latter cumbersome ; and, 
 except for the bare quality of length, they are not to be 
 compared to the noble instrument which Chaucer's genius 
 first bestowed upon us, and which has been tuned to 
 music too varied and exquisite, from his time to the pre- 
 sent, for the English minstrel to the latest generation to 
 allow of its falling from his hands. 
 
 The verse of fiwe accents, therefore, being determined 
 on, the question of grouping it remained. Should it be 
 blank verse or rhyme ? From the former the translator 
 confesses that he should shrink, as from the most difficult 
 form of verse, and one to which, even if his hands were 
 free, he could not hope to do justice, and manage it as it 
 should be managed for poetry of this high order even in 
 original composition, and much less therefore when he is 
 tied down to the necessities of a literal translation. Turn- 
 ing then to rhyme, it may be matter of surprise that the 
 Spenserian stanza is adopted instead of the seemingly 
 easier vehicle of the couplet. The choice of this stanza, 
 as noticed in publishing the first book of the Iliad, by 
 way of experiment, some three years ago, was accidental. 
 But the Translator has found no reason to repent it on the 
 score of difficulty. For whatever trouble the frequent 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 rhymes occasioned him at first, until he had gained some 
 mastery over the material, has been more then compen- 
 sated by their alternate recurrence, affording him time 
 and room for their reception, in a way that would have 
 been utterly impossible in the close following of the 
 couple fc. There are some however who object to the 
 Spenserian stanza as a translating medium. But the 
 writer confesses to being unable to concur in that judg- 
 ment. For if it be on the score of difiiculty, he thinks that, 
 weighing the advantages and drawbacks, the balance will 
 on the whole be found in its favour. But if it be con- 
 sidered wanting in epic fitness, he thinks it would be 
 difficult to substantiate the objection. For the addition 
 of the ninth line, so exquisite an enhancement of its 
 capabilities will hardly be reckoned a disadvantage as 
 compared with the ottava rima of the Italians in this re- 
 spect. And surely the latter form of verse is no detri- 
 ment to the epic qualities of the Morgante Maggiore, nor 
 of the Orlando Innamorato, whether in its original form 
 or in the rifacimenio of Berni, nor of the Orlando Furioso, 
 nor of the Gerusalemme Liberata. And if not, then it is 
 the language and not the verse which is to blame, but 
 how, it is difficult to understand. For what mood of 
 poetic feeling occurs in the epic that has not found ex- 
 quisite expression in the Spenserian stanza at the hands 
 of the great masters of song in our own noble tongue ? 
 There are-battles enough, and narrative enough, and de- 
 scription of every kind, and reflection, and sentiment, 
 and philosophy^ in the Faery Queen and Childe Harold, 
 to instance no other, making between them a wide enough 
 compass of poesy in all conscience ; and yet where do we 
 find the utterances of the poet marred or hampered by 
 the form of verse ? Is it not, on the contrary, a noble 
 instrument, complete and expressive beyond all others, 
 the godlike builded verse of Milton alone excepted ? If 
 
XI 1 PliEFACE. 
 
 the reader, then, be dissatisfied with the present specimen, 
 he must, it is feared, blame the performer, and not the 
 instrument, which, touched by a master, would yield its 
 choicest tones, though unskilled hands, and fettered into 
 the bargain, fail to wake the music within it. 
 
 Another advantage of this form of verse is its compass 
 of vocabulary, giving one the whole range of the language, 
 receiving the oldest gray-worn words side by side with 
 those of the newest mint with equal grace. An unspeak- 
 able advantage this to a literal translation and in rhyme, 
 by giving a choice of sound and of syllables to a degree 
 that is denied to the more fastidious and modernising 
 requirements of the couplet. The Translator, however, has 
 been sparing in the exercise of the privilege, and has never 
 employed an old word but from necessity, and to better 
 the translation ; from which, when really compelled to 
 admit them, he has not felt that an occasional archaism 
 was any derogation, as the original itself is nofc without 
 instances of the like nature. For there are words in it — 
 few indeed, but words there are — which had grown obsolete 
 to a later age of the Greeks themselves, and to the meaning 
 of w^iich the Greek commentators, in the absence of any 
 definite knowledge, had no other guide than the extremely 
 vague one of the etymology of the word itself.* The words 
 I have used are, however, in a better predicament, for al- 
 though not of the current coin of the day, from which 
 indeed words quickly fall that still circulate freely in the 
 realms of poesy, yet their meaning is known ; and never, I 
 
 * To the scholar examples will readily occur, such as fiiOv, II. vii. 
 471., which the scholiasts mark as an ancient word, for what was, in 
 their time, expressed by olrog only. So aupXau), II. xiv. 142,, an an- 
 tiquated word, which the scholiasts guessed at, partly from the context, 
 and partly from the etymology, with but little success according to 
 Heyne. Other examples are afforded by rpiyXriva /lopoevra, II. xrv. 
 1. 183. ; a(/»\ot<T/ioc, II. XV. 607. ; and KXoToireveiVf II. xix. 149. (see 
 Heyne ad locos) ; and K-XirDs, II. xvi. 390. (see Eustathius ad loc). 
 
PREFACE. XIU 
 
 trust, will the poetic feeling in this country sink so low as 
 to deem a word absolutely inadmissible which has the 
 sanction of Spenser, or the ancient but regal stamp of the 
 father of English poets, the noble Chaucer himself. And 
 this so far as the use of words comparatively obsolete is 
 concerned, which, however, are only used on occasion, and 
 very sparingly. But objection may perhaps be made to 
 the diction generally on an opposite ground, for admitting 
 words, not disused, but rather too much in use, and so 
 giving the version a familiar air, detracting from the dig- 
 nity of the original. On this, as on other points, the 
 writer is in his reader's hands. But he may be permitted 
 to state that on the subject of poetic diction his creed is 
 this. Many words, though fewer than some suppose, are 
 fit for poetry without being suitable to prose ; but he knows 
 of few words, not scientific, that fit prose, and may not 
 find a place in poetry. The poetic character of the latter 
 class lies in their value in the place they appear in. And, 
 apart from that value, where is the poetry of the best ? 
 The separation of prose and poetry is rather in the phrase- 
 ology, than the single words ; though, as regards phrases, 
 he Avould have a miserable notion of the grounds of poetry 
 who should go about to exclude idiomatic expression from 
 its diction. That was the great fault of a school that once 
 had its admirers in this country. They had a notion of 
 the elevation of language apart from its indissoluble con- 
 nection with thought. Remoteness from common speech, 
 and shee r_grandiloquencey with such are very apt to pass 
 for elevation. There is, however, the right expression for 
 the right thought. If they meet they must not be parted ; 
 it is a blessed union, be it prose or poetry ; if separate it 
 is a make-shift, whether you get the thought without the 
 expression, if indeed such a thing be possible of the whole 
 thought, or, which is too possible and too common, you 
 get the expression denuded of the thought. 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 And Homer, himself, with all the resources of his mar- 
 vellous language at command, was any thing but a lover of 
 grandiloquence. Far from thinking that sublimity lay in 
 avoiding common speech, he was much of our Shakspeare's 
 mind, and uttered the highest things with familiar simpli- 
 city. Little did he think that the dignity of the Epic 
 might be compromised by his not uttering common things 
 in an uncommon out-of-the-way dialect. And his negli- 
 gence in this way has troubled the Daciers and others 
 considerably, who are for giving him a lift on these occa- 
 sions. As for eschewing common words that aptly ex- 
 pressed his meaning, nothing could be farther from our 
 poet's manner. The very familiarity of these words, and 
 their at-homeness in the minds of the hearers, would have 
 been their greatest recommendation to him as to our own 
 sweet idiomatic Shakspeare. The Translator, therefore, 
 confesses to having made no attempt at this species of epic 
 dignity in the following version, although there are not 
 wanting high names on its side. Clarke, for instance, 
 whose appreciation of our poet is in general very just, yet, 
 in a note on Iliad XIII. 707., gravely repudiates the word 
 TS[j.vsi as too familiar for epic elevation ! The remark would, 
 of course, not apply to so ripe a scholar ; but, from Greek 
 being a dead language, and consequently all its words on 
 an equal footing as to familiarity, i. e. equally unfami- 
 liar to most readers of the original, they are apt to lose 
 sight of a very important fact in judging of the elevation 
 of the diction, viz., that there was no distinction between 
 Avritten and unwritten language as with us. The lan- 
 guage of books, as a separate body of words, could not 
 have existed, for there were no readers. Homer indeed, I 
 am persuaded, himself wrote and carried his written com- 
 positions about with him for recitation ; but the audience 
 he addressed was of necessity, in an age when manuscripts 
 were rare and costly , ^unable to read. So that in the mea- 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 sure that his poem should recede from the spoken language 
 it would cease to be intelligible. In fact, his poems, like 
 our old ballads, must perforce have been written in the 
 common language of the country, and only more graceful 
 because that language had attained to a higher pitch, and 
 the people were, perhaps, of higher aesthetic capacity. Poetic 
 diction, as distinguished from common speech, there was 
 none. 
 
 But, to return to the subject of the more obsolete words, 
 with which the following version may be garnished, it 
 should be noticed, that for the sake of making the book so 
 far, what every book ought to be, complete in itself, and 
 to save the trouble of reference in these busy times, the 
 word will usually be found explained in a note to the pas- 
 sage where it occurs, and authority added for its use. 
 This may be considered a work of supererogation by some, 
 but not, it is trusted, by the many for whom, and for whom 
 alone, the notes have been written at all. For it is not for 
 the learned or the studious, who would not require them, 
 that the notes are written, but for those of my readers — 
 and would they were many ! — who, loving poetry for its own 
 sake, are fain to have some acquaintance with a poem of 
 such world-wide reputation, but who have not had leisure 
 or opportunity to acquire that preliminary knowledge 
 which is indispensable to relish, or even understand a great 
 deal that will be found in a writer so removed in time and 
 manners from our own. With this view many more pas- 
 sages had been marked for annotation, but subsequently 
 struck out. For as it is, there is reason to fear the notes 
 will be considered too many, and some of them too long. 
 Their sole object has been to facilitate the understanding 
 and relish for Homer to the unclassic reader. How far 
 they will answer that purpose, the writer is unable to anti- 
 cipate. It is difficult for one as little experienced as the 
 Translator in such matters to cater for the public taste. 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 In other kinds of writing an author may often please him- 
 self, and in so doing he will please those, at least, of similar 
 tastes. But in anticipating the wants of others on a sub- 
 ject of this nature he has no such guide to go by. His 
 own wants can be no measure at all in the matter; for if 
 he need the notes, he wdll be unable to write them. 
 
 The same motive which prompted the notes has induced 
 the Translator, with the same uncertainty of its answering 
 the purpose, to venture here some observations on the 
 poem itself, and the light in which, as he conceives, it 
 should be regarded. The reader, however, need be under 
 no apprehension of encountering a learned discourse, for 
 w^hich the writer is neither inclined nor qualified. What 
 he has to say will be but the impressions — so to speak, in- 
 voluntary — which he has received, from the poem itself 
 during the task, he was going to say, but rather the 
 pleasure and delight, of translating it has lasted. And 
 whatever may be thought of the scope and correctness of 
 the writer's views, they have at least been suggested by 
 the work itself, and honestly represent what he has felt 
 and thought. In this spirit he would have the reader go 
 along with him to inspect a country, which though the 
 writer may have visited before him, and brought back im- 
 pressions of the landscape as seen by the glorious sunlight 
 of the original, yet its broader features will always remain 
 to enable his companion on this his second journey to 
 form an independent judgment for himself. With this 
 understanding, it is trusted that they will get on very 
 amicably together, and the writer, without binding him- 
 self to any order, will take leave to say what the occasion 
 suggests, without further fear of misconstruction. 
 ^ The first thing then, which can scarcely fail to strike 
 every attentive reader of the poem in the original, is its 
 unborrowe d and se lf-origina_ting. character. All is Greek; 
 and, roundly speaking, it never travels out of the cycle of 
 
PREFACE. XVU 
 
 Greek thought and experience, or touches on anything 
 unfamiliar to the Greek people. Homer's similes, for 
 example, are mostly drawn from objects, as it were, im- 
 beddedLinrthe landscape, and customs of his own land and 
 people, their feelings and experience, and are therefore 
 such that common observers in that age and country 
 could attest their truth. Matters of remote or recondite 
 observation, or the result of mere individual contemplation, 
 do not seem to have been the subject of comparison with 
 him. And very properly, for comparisons behig at 
 foundation to strike the imagination more forcibly, and 
 illustrate the matter in hand, from matter in the minds or 
 experience of the auditors, should be drawn from materials 
 not less but rather more familiar than the thing they 
 illustrate. If this be correct, then will the comparisons of 
 our poet be found to possess a value independent of their 
 mere poetic significance, because, appealing to the ex- 
 perience of the people, they reveal to that extent what that 
 people experienced and knew, and afford data so far for 
 appreciating their knowledge and condition. This the 
 historic value of the simile, would be lost or impaired in a 
 translation that altered or materially affected it, even 
 though something more poetically significant (no easy 
 task) were substituted. Accordingly, in dealing with this 
 valuable historic record, as all ancient genuine poems are, 
 the writer has scrupulously, to the best of his power, 
 adhered to the substance and manner of the original in 
 these points, never willingly altering even a metaphor, and 
 above all carefully abstaining from intruding figurative 
 language not warranted by the Greek. He has endea- 
 voured, in fact, to secure the advantages of a literal 
 translation, as far as he was able, in verse. 
 
 This preference of familiar objects, however, was not, the 
 writer thinks, so much the result of choice in the poet, as 
 of necessity in the minds of his audience. In all early 
 
 a 
 
XVlll PREFACE. 
 
 poetry it will probably be found that the illustrations of 
 the poet are drawn from objects familiar to his audience, 
 and never borrowed from sources beyond their experience. 
 For the early poetry of all nations, and especially of the 
 nations of antiquity, would be prior to much knowledge 
 on their part beyond what their own country and manners 
 afforded them. Their minds, accustomed therefore to 
 pictures that reflected their own deeds, and sentiments, 
 and experience, would reject any foreign and non-ver- 
 nacular element with a repugnance, of which we in modern 
 Europe, who, from a mixed literature of various ages and 
 countries, have come to tolerate, and even admire and 
 revere, much that we neither feel nor understand, can 
 scarcely form an adequate conception.* Our extended 
 knowledge, literary and geographical, favours the im- 
 portation of exotic notions and allusions, which the few 
 understand, and which the many, without understanding, 
 
 * Two instances will suffice to show tlie general acceptance of 
 imageiy that has no foundation with us. The one, the loves of the 
 Nightingale and the Rose. A pretty connection of bird and flower, 
 which the generality of readers receive readily enough, but for which 
 they would as easily substitute the Linnet and Lily, or any other bird 
 or flow^er ; the relation between any of them indeed being, in these 
 parts, vague and arbitrary. But in Persia it appears (see Sir W. Jones, 
 Poeseos, Asiat. Comment, p. 143.) that the nightingale is excessively 
 fond of the scent of roses, which gro7/ there in great abundance, and of 
 intense fragrance, which the bird will inhale with greediness and de- 
 light, until he often falls intoxicated to the ground. Here we have an 
 appropriateness in the choice of bird and flower, and the Persian poet 
 in employing this image appeals but to the knowledge of the people he 
 addresses. The other instance is the Scriptural expression, " Put my 
 tears into thy bottle," which is without foundation in our manners. 
 But it would seem to be familiar enough in the East, from the account 
 Mr. Morier gives of the mourning assemblies in Persia, where the priest 
 goes about to each mourner in the height of his grief with a piece of 
 cotton, with which he collects the falling tears, and squeezing them into 
 a bottle, puts them by very carefully, as they are supposed to be of high 
 efficacy in case of sickness. 
 
PREFACE. Xix 
 
 yet treat with a respect which might be withheld were 
 there but one uniform tone of culture prevailing, as in 
 those days. Otherwise, the instinct of modern times 
 would equally insist on the vernacular in poetry ; and 
 rightly insist. For what is poetry that comes not home to 
 men's bosoms ? And how can it touch their hearts, and 
 house in their breasts, but by mixing in all their doings, 
 going where they go, and dwelling where they dwell, in 
 court, and camp, in senate and forum, the palace and the 
 cottage, the temple and the market-place, and talking still 
 in their own familiar tongue ? And not by scouring 
 foreign lands and literatures for quaint and alien images 
 in which we have neither part nor lot. For a people's 
 speech is not more indispensable to the vitality of their 
 poetry, than is preserving the vernacular in tone and 
 treatment. The poet may travel foreign lands, and 
 foreign tongues, and other times, into all departments of 
 human mind, and grow familiar with every phase, if pos- 
 sible, of human genius, — the more the better, so long as his 
 soul is strengthened by such food, and, growing stronger 
 and stronger, he is not a whit the less in every point the 
 man of his own age and country. His poetry then and 
 then only may hope to command the suffrages of his own 
 and of after- time. 
 
 In all original pieces, therefore, the poet should write 
 for his own age and country, both as to subject for the 
 most part, and always in the handling. For translating, 
 on the other hand, he should as sedulously avoid importing 
 the ideas of his own age into a piece which belongs to 
 another, or he may endanger the characteristic feature 
 of his author. But with regard to original composition, 
 instinct and necessity have fixed a vernacular character 
 on the early poets in all countries ; and tli^_pai-ly pof^try 
 accordingly has a fr eshness, a nd bea uty^ and vitality ., tbft^i 
 seenTtoTir defiance to ever y change , because it was 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 once the living production of the poet's mind in the 
 totality of his being as a man and a citizen of that age 
 and country, and it is given to the immortal mind that 
 no genuine offspring thereof can ever die. Nothing, on 
 the other hand, is so fatal to the vitality of a poem as the 
 serious and real anachronism of not embodying the poef s 
 personality, which by a thousand invisible links is bound 
 to his own time and country, but embodying only a 
 feeble attempt to step out of the atmosphere of his own 
 existence, and realise that of a people and age of which 
 he knows only by hearsay, and history, which for the 
 most part yield up but the dry bones of the past without 
 fleshy ^nd blo od, and warmth, and life. This is the fault 
 of Virgil's ^neid. Its dead parts are from this cause, 
 its vital parts are from himself. A consciousness of this 
 it was probably that made him feel his poem lacked the 
 reality of Homer's, and so wish to have it destroyed, and 
 not, as the rumour runs, because of a few short lines here 
 and there. 
 
 Genius of the highest order has always steered clear of 
 this shoal, which would else have wrecked the reputation 
 of the brightest. Dante was conspicuously Italian, and 
 the contemporary element in him so strong as to render 
 him obscure to the reader of the present day, even in his 
 own countr}^, and notwithstanding a style marvellously 
 pure and transparent. And Shakspeare, again, how emi- 
 nently vernacular! His treatment even of Greek and 
 Roman subjects is English, and the result has been, that 
 in making sure of his own nationality, and causing his 
 characters to speak and act as his own countrymen so 
 circumstanced would have done, he has secured a dramatic 
 reality which renders his the best, the most vital classic 
 plays ever written in modern times, and most true to 
 much that prevailed in the period they represent, because 
 true to human nature, which in substance is at all times 
 
PEEFACE. XXi 
 
 and everywhere the same. An antiquarian anxiety to 
 exclude everything English would have resulted in a 
 vapidity applicable to no period whatever, like the grand 
 monarque classic abstractions of the French school. Cer- 
 vantes was before all things Spanish, and he remains 
 accordingly the delight, not of Spain only, but the world, 
 without a rival. Spain has now no literature, nor will 
 she have so long as the fashion prevails 'of following 
 French models instead of opening up the resources of 
 native mind, which, in its worst state, is always far before 
 the exotic, though drawn from higher sources than she 
 has fixed on. Impatience of foreign element may be 
 regarded as a mark of health and vigour in the poetry of 
 a nation ; and if not among the causes, it is a usual 
 concomitant of that condition, and poetry that has main- 
 tained its hold on national favour will be rarely found 
 without it. 
 
 There is another feature also equally remarkable — the 
 total absence of the arbitrary ; which, although perhaps 
 inseparable from the true epic, being founded on the 
 exigences of the audience, and therefore involuntary on 
 the poet's part, yet, when its requirements are so nobly 
 satisfied, and with such apparent ease, it becomes the 
 surest mark of real transcendent povv^er — a power which 
 stipulates for no preliminary conditions for its exercise, 
 but works its wonders with whatever it may happen to 
 find. This absence of the arbitrary stamps the master* 
 worker, who in thisi respect is in every country and in 
 every age the same ; and, like our Shakspeare, and like 
 Dante also, though at first blush this be less apparent ; 
 forging nothing, but building upon ground firm and solid 
 already existing in the minds and belief of the audience. 
 In Homer we find it throughout, but in nothing more 
 conspicuous than where we might least expect to find it, — 
 in his mana^^rement of what is sometimes called the 
 
XXU PllEFACE. 
 
 machinery of the poem, the supernatural part of it. Here 
 the sterling common sense and regard for the probable in 
 the old Greek in common with his countrymen is apparent; 
 and he that, with large notions of the license of fiction, 
 comes fresh from reading the Fairy Tales, or that be- 
 witching labyrinth of wonders the Arabian Nights, 
 where enchanters on fiery dragons, and genii are seen 
 contending together, or dragging reluctant princesses 
 through the air in sight of multitudes, will be mistaken if 
 he expect the gods in the following poem to appear in 
 propria persond^ in face of all, present and observable by 
 all, as birds would be, flying over their heads. He will 
 meet with nothing of the kind. For nothing occurs to 
 contradict the experience of a Greek auditor of the poem, 
 or lead him to think that the order of things had become 
 changed in his time. Throughout the Iliad, so far as 
 the writer's recollection serves, the presence of the gods 
 is concealed from the many, and vouchsafed only to the 
 few. The inte rposition of the gods in men's affairs, and 
 of contending factions among them, was the common 
 belief of the Greeks; and that some individuals _had 
 privilege, more or less frequent, of intercourse with the 
 invisible world, was their common belief also, and, every- 
 where prevailing, has survived under modified forms as a 
 popular belief to this day. But the gods revealed them- 
 selves not indiscriminately, but, in their intercourse with 
 those they favoured, chose to shroud themselves from the 
 common gaze ; and the speech of Hermes on discovering 
 himself, and taking leave of Priam at the door of Achilles' 
 tent, may. be taken as an authentic expression of the 
 etiquette of Olympus in this respect, when he speaks 
 of the impropriety of a god showing open favour to 
 ^iiortals : — 
 
 'AW ifTOL fxey cyw TraXtv e'lao fiai, ovh* A^iX^oe 
 'O(j)daXfi0VQ elffEi^L' veneatrrjToy he. kep eu), 
 ''A^iavaTOv dear whs ftpoTOvg ayaira^t^EV uvTtjv. 
 
 11. XXIV. 462—4. 
 
PREFACE. XXiii 
 
 The multitude, indeed, never saw Zeus, nor messenger 
 divine from him, but only his eagle in the air or his light- 
 ning in the clouds. Athene, sent to pacify Achilles, was 
 visible to him only ; and on another occasion was to the 
 throng but the herald bespeaking silence to the speech 
 of her favourite Odysseus. And Iris, bringing news of 
 the Achaaans' approach, appeared as Polites to the throng 
 of assembled Trojans, though Hector, whom she chiefly 
 addressed, could recognise the goddess in his brother's 
 garb. 
 
 The aid of the marvellous was thus obtained without 
 violating a pagan's sense of the probable. By this means, 
 also, with the prerogative that genius hath of converting 
 necessity into a power, a high and glorious order was 
 place d_at the poet's disposal, Avdth ^vhich to invest those 
 he would exalt, engaging the imagination far beyond all^. 
 jtitles, orders, ranks of nobility, or what not, at the com- 
 mand of a modern. The epic heroes were as knights of 
 a glorious investiture, no less than the gift of communion 
 with the gods, from whom also they claimed descent. 
 How enhancing to the heroic character of Achilles, that 
 turning, he knew Athene straight, so dread the gaze 
 gleamed from her eyes ; — evidently not the first time he 
 had seen her ! And Odysseus, again, how frequent his 
 interviews with the goddess that he should know her by 
 her voice. (II. II. 182.) Yea, much and deep converse 
 had been vouchsafed that patient man, of much experi- 
 ence, wise, and the accents of the patron deity were fami- 
 liar music to his ears. 
 
 Such, then, is the faculty of a great poet, that he con- 
 verts into a power and a privilege what at first would 
 seem to circumscribe and confine his genius. The re- 
 straint is common to all poets of an early period, for all 
 are obliged to work within the circle described by the 
 exigences of the audience ; a circle which those who have 
 
 a 4 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 found the narrowest have been the least able to fill. But 
 whatever his ability, the circle is one from which no writer 
 of the real epic can escape ; — real epic, for it is important 
 to distinguish between what may be termed the real epic, 
 and the artificial. By real it is intended here to designate 
 the composition of a poet contemporary with the subject 
 and manners he handles ; and by artificial, the work of 
 one remote from these, as when he writes an epic of which 
 the manners belong to another age or nation than his 
 own. The Iliad and Odyssey in ancient, and the Nibe- 
 lungen-Lied and the Cid in modern times, are instances of 
 the genuine epic ; and of the artificial epic examples are 
 furnished in ancient times by the Argonauts of Apollo- 
 nius, the ^Eneid of Virgil, and the Thebais of Statins, and 
 in modern times by the Gerusalemme Liberata, and by 
 poems on such subjects as the Leonidas of Glover, King 
 Alfred, King Arthur, and the like. 
 
 The term artificial, it will be readily perceived, is not 
 meant in disparagement of the poems so designated, but 
 merely as expressive of a distinction between two very 
 different classes of composition ; and to this distinction 
 it was the more necessary to advert, that what is said, both 
 here and in the notes, on the subject of epic poetry, is 
 utterly inapplicable to the latter class. 
 
 The poet in the artificial epic has or assumes a con- 
 trol over the story and conduct of his poem which is 
 utterly denied to the other. He may invent a new story 
 or alter an old one, and keep to the manners of the period 
 he has fixed on, or deviate almost at pleasure, without 
 fear of correction from an audience who know nothing, 
 and care to know nothing more than he chooses to tell 
 them about a story from which, as not appealing to their 
 faith, they expect little beyond the pleasure of the poet's 
 manner of telling it. But with the writer of the genuine 
 epic the case is reversed. He is controlled in the legend. 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 and in the manner of handling it. He is addressing an 
 audience on a subject in which they have a trustful faith, 
 and upon which their knowledge and belief are identical 
 with his own. Upon which, therefore, it is not so much 
 knowledge that they ask at his hands, as the opportunity 
 of having painted out to them in detail, and in lively 
 colours, what they know already, and love full well, and 
 are never weary of hearing about, but wish to dwell on, 
 and linger over in the music of his poetry. 
 
 To trace this principle to the extent of its application 
 would exceed the scope of this preface, which is too long 
 already ; but the writer cannot refrain from calling atten- 
 tion to what he believes to be intimately connected with 
 it, and equally characteristic of the genuine epic. For 
 one prominent feature in epic treatment is, he thinks, 
 that it not merely tells a thing, but shows it in the doing, 
 and so enters into details quite foreign to the modern 
 handling, which, for the most part, omitting the process, 
 gives only the result. To take an instance at random. 
 In the account of Achilles, after the assembly met to cele- 
 brate the funeral games had dispersed, it would have been 
 quite in accordance with modern treatment, in addition 
 to the other particulars there stated of his grief, to have 
 expressed briefly that he passed a restless night. The 
 epic handling, however, required the restless night to be 
 shown. The poet accordingly describes him as lying 
 sometimes on his side, sometimes on his back, and at 
 other times on his face. Similar instances are too numer- 
 ous to need quoting. The principle is patent through- 
 out the poem, and governed, consciously or not, its con- 
 struction as a whole, as well as the arrangement of its 
 parts in detail. To this principle also the obvious dra- 
 matic character of the epic is to be ascribed ; and its 
 influence on the construction of the poem appears, among 
 other features, in this, that all the incidents directly 
 
XXVI PREFACE. 
 
 bearing on the action of the poem are not merely told, 
 but shown, and dramatically played out. For instance, 
 Agamemnon's treatment of Chryses, and the subsequent 
 matter relating to it, down to the restoration of the old 
 priest's daughter, might have been dispatched as briefly at 
 the commencement of the Iliad as it is subsequently dis- 
 posed of in the summary account of it given by Achilles 
 to his mother. But the epic treatment required it other- 
 wise ; and the operation of the principle on the details 
 of the poem has resulted in a minuteness which, contri- 
 buting to its perfection as a work of art, has rendered the 
 Iliad a clear and complete picture of life and manners of 
 the period; — a picture which here at this day interests 
 us almost to the full as much as it did those of the poet's 
 own age and country, but on different grounds. We 
 cherish it as an intelligible and picturesque representa- 
 ^ tion of men and manners in times long gone by. They 
 loved it as a vivid reflection of themselves, and all ^that 
 was familiar and dear to them. 
 
 This difference in the grounds of appreciation by mo- 
 dern readers of the poet, as compared with his contem- 
 poraries, is worth bearing in mind, because it furnishes a 
 key to the different estimates in the minds of the two, as 
 to the requirements of epic poetry. To a modern, this 
 class of poetry presents itself as something disconnected 
 with, at least, all details of modern life and civilisation, 
 which it only approaches in its highest generalisation, 
 where ancient and modern life meet on the common ground 
 of human nature. In so far, therefore, as the poem is to 
 be a model of that kind of writing, the notion, plausible, 
 but miserably false, grows on him, that what is familiar 
 is therefore trivial, and below the dignity of the epic, which 
 should deal more in the stately and remote. And this 
 feeling has operated on more than one translator, who, in 
 his endeavours to escape what he considers the trivial, be- 
 
PREFACE* XXVll 
 
 comes pompous, and disguises plain things in circumlocu- 
 tions that remind one of the Precieuses Ridicules of Mo- 
 liere, and would, if rendered back into Greek, astonish a 
 resuscitated hero of the time. The result has been curious 
 enough, that such modern translator would seek to strip 
 the poem of that which, to a contemporary, was its highest 
 recommendation, — its familiarity. 
 
 And the modern is right in thinking the details of mo- 
 dern life less favourable to the purposes of poetry than the 
 ancient. But it is not from their triviality, their common- 
 ness, but because they are not common enough — not of 
 sufficiently general prevalence. The arts, for example, in 
 ancient times, were few and simple, and, from the kind of 
 life then existing, comparatively familiar to every one. 
 With us the arts are many, and run into subdivisions so 
 numerous and so complex that the knowledge of them is 
 necessarily restricted to those who practise them. And as 
 each trade and profession does, as compared with ancient 
 times, absorb the whole life of the individual, and preclude 
 him from much knowledge of any other, it follows that a 
 picture of modern life, which should be complete enough 
 to show it in all its phases, would meet with no general 
 appreciation but only in parcels, phase by phase, by the 
 particular persons respectively to whom that phase was 
 familiar. In ancient times, on the contrary, every phase 
 of life was, roundly speaking, reproduced in the person or 
 experience of every individual. The arts, being few and 
 little subdivided, were familiar to many. Hence, we have 
 the character of sovereign, priest, lawgiver and judge, 
 warrior and physician, with a knowledge of the mechanical 
 arts, often in the same person ; and the arts were so sim- 
 ple that the details of them, and the characteristics of the 
 professors, were familiar to all. With us the subdivisions 
 are so minute, that in proportion as we grow characteristic 
 in speaking of them, we are withdrawing from the common 
 
XXVlll PREFACE. 
 
 field of appreciation ; because every man's knowledge is 
 limited to his own art, or the branch of it which he cul- 
 tivates. 
 
 The modern poet, therefore, is more restricted than the 
 ancient in the contributions he would levy on the field of 
 everyday life ; not because the phases it presents are com-, 
 mon and trivial, but because they are not common enough, 
 because the knowledge of them is not sufiiciently diffused 
 to render the allusions he would make to them of ready 
 apprehension. Homer's simile of the woman at her loom 
 illustrates this. (Iliad, XXIII. 760.) He employs it to pic- 
 ture the position of two competitors at a foot-race, and 
 touches the leading features enough to call up the image 
 in the minds of a people familiar with the operation of 
 weaving, but not enough to inform those who are not. 
 And to us, accordingly, at this day, it is one of the ob- 
 scurest passages in the whole Iliad. In Homer's time the 
 process of such weaving as he alludes to was familiar to 
 every one, and a common accomplishment of the females; — 
 so common, that the possession of it did not seem to have 
 raised the value of the woman at the funeral games to 
 more than four oxen, a price not equalling that of a tripod 
 or cauldron. (Iliad, XXIII.) A simile that entered into such 
 details at the present day, would be intelligible in Spital- 
 fields, and the like places, but an enigma elsewhere. 
 
 After discussing the above to23ics, it may be expected 
 that something should be said on what is called the Ho- 
 meric controversy ; upon which the writer is free to state 
 that he is against the German view on almost all points. 
 He is no believer in the self-composition of poetry, has 
 little faith in partnership manufacture, of what the in- 
 dividuals were incapable of, and still less in the ability of 
 a sort of corporate succession to produce anything so com- 
 plete, so self- coherent, so marvellously transcending all 
 other poetry of those days as the noble epic before us. 
 
PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 Accordingly, he believes it to be the single and entire com- 
 position of one poet, who lived near the time, and had 
 personal knowledge of the manners of the period to which 
 it refers; — that it was founded, indeed, on previously- 
 existing legends, but no whit less the poet's own in work- 
 ing them up into its present form, than the statue is of the 
 sculptor in bronze, who melts the material that is brought 
 him, and casts it into a form of his own imagining ; the 
 legends, without which he could not have wrought, bearing 
 about the same relation to the poem, in point of invention, 
 that the stories of Lear, and Macbeth, and Porta's tale of 
 Eomeo and Juliet, bore to Shakspeare's immortal dramas 
 on those subjects, or as his historical plays bear to the actual 
 history. And the contrary belief, the Translator ventures 
 to think, will not in the minds of many survive a conse- 
 cutive, unbiassed, and attentive perusal of the poem itself. 
 But the subject has engaged too large an amount of learn- 
 ing and ability on both sides to be done justice to on an 
 occasion like the present. A partial examination would 
 be unfair, and a full one would require a treatise ; and to 
 enter on it is the more unnecessary, that the whole matter 
 has been ably discussed, and the right conclusion triumph- 
 antly established in Colonel Mure's admirable work, the 
 History of the Literature of Greece, in the first vo- 
 lume of which the reader will find, or be referred to, 
 everything he can desire. 
 
 Dismissing the general subject, therefore, the writer will 
 yet crave leave to say a word or two on the coherence of 
 the poem itself, — a point upon which he will have to dis- 
 sent from the view taken by Mr. Grote, whose able, though 
 not indiscriminate support of the heresy, one grudges the 
 more that in him, as in the great Heresiarch Wolff him- 
 self, it is combined with a hearty appreciation of the 
 beauty of the poem. And this is more than can be said 
 of some, whose zeal on that side of the question is hot. 
 
XXX PKEFACE. 
 
 indeed, but who, for poetic feeling, may rank with Ad- 
 dison's geographer, whose enjoyment of the JEneid lay in 
 tracing the hero's voyage upon the map. 
 
 In the writer's opinion the direct and collateral objects 
 of the Iliad equally exhibit the consummate skill of its 
 author. Its direct object is to depict the wrath of Achilles, 
 and the consequences of that wrath. Its collateral object is 
 to produce a picture, as complete as the subject admits, of 
 the manners and life of the Achaeans ; and that epically, 
 ^.^., as the writer understands it, a picture in which 
 everything is shown in the doing. Notice the features of 
 military life, how varied, and how skilfully introduced ! 
 And notice the remarkable omission to exhibit a very pro- 
 minent feature of that military life, viz., a predatory ex- 
 cursion. For predatory expeditions formed so large a 
 part of their military doings that the whole siege of Troy 
 seems to have been made up of them for the nine years 
 preceding the action of the poem. Why are they omitted 
 here ? Because Achilles, the life and soul of those ex- 
 peditions, and whose prowess in that way enriched the 
 host, is not there to conduct them. His absence entails 
 their cessation, and was one cause, perhaps, of the high 
 dudgeon of the Achasans against Agamemnon for having 
 occasioned the loss of this source of profit : a result to 
 which the concluding sentence of a speech of Achilles in 
 the first book would seem to point : — 
 
 ov^i a Old) 
 'Ev0aS' oLTi^og ew^', acpevog kol ttXovtov acpv^eiv. 
 
 II. I. 171, 172. 
 
 This would be one reason of no such expedition being 
 described in the Iliad, though so many are alluded to. 
 But another and artistic reason for its omission would be 
 that a predatory expedition, successfully conducted, would 
 only weaken the efi*ect of the absence of Achilles, and so 
 mar the main scope of the poem. For Achilles, in truth, 
 
PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 fills the Iliad ; and no place is left for even a conjecture 
 that would impair his gigantic dimensions. Everything 
 in the poem moves round him, has reference to him, im- 
 perfec ti}^ supplies his place while he is absent, and points 
 ^o and prepares his re-appearance on the scene ; of his 
 withdraAval from which observe the artistic importance. 
 How else could his incontestable superiority over his own 
 countrymen have been established, but by their being 
 brought into extremities to which they had never been 
 reduced while he was among them ? Despite the autho- 
 rity and military qualities of Agamemnon, and the pru- 
 dence of Nestor and Odysseus, seconded by the prowess of 
 Ajax and Diomed ; despite the united valour and wisdom 
 of the Achgeans, they were brought to the brink of de- 
 struction by Hector and the Trojans, whenever made head 
 before Achilles left the camp. His absence is the measure 
 of their prevalence. Hector and his host are omnipotent 
 up to the very moment of Achilles relenting, and then the 
 scene is changed. His fancied appearance, when they 
 mistake Patroclus for him, is the first check, from which 
 they only recover on the death of Patroclus, to be again 
 " frighted from their propriety " by the bare appearance 
 of the unarmed hero. And his taking the field again is 
 the signal for flight, redeemed but by individual despairing 
 attempts at a stand, which only enhance his irresistible 
 power. There is no doubt of the prevalence of Hector^ 
 and his host in the absence of Achilles, and, as^JIt tlei .Q £.>^ 
 their utter helplessness from the moment of his re -appear- 
 ance. 
 
 The Iliad, indeed, is named of Ilium, but it is ^not a . 
 history of the Trojan war, but a tale of Ilium, a "ta lfijoL^ 
 Xl^^ divincj^" presentin g^a noted but manageable i ncident 
 which occurred mlhat war, and has for its subject, what^ 
 the first line of the original announces, the wrath of 
 Peleus' son Achilles. And this in the thin grasp of 
 
XXXU PREFACE. 
 
 an ordinary poet would have embraced no more, but ex- 
 cluded all else with a rigidity to satisfy the most exacting 
 of the German discerptores of the Orphic bard. But the 
 alllueiice of Homer disdained such meager handling, and 
 liis firm and ample grasp pressed collateral materials "on all 
 sides into his service without, however, relaxing a jot of 
 his main design. And his poem is accordingly before us 
 as some great river fed by a thousand tributary streams 
 that swell the volume of its waters without altering its 
 course. Yea, a river which seems destined to flow and 
 flow for ever, delighting each successive race of men as 
 they flock from all parts in pious pilgrimage to drink at 
 its pure stream in all its original freshness. For on its 
 very banks alone can the music of its flowing be heard ^ 
 which breaks but fitfully on the ear, and in far-ofl" echoes, 
 faintly caught through any medium like his who now 
 ofi'ers the result of his honest endeavours to the reader. 
 But those endeavours will not have been in vain if there 
 be any to whom the following pages shall give a juster 
 notion of Homer than he had before. And should there 
 be any whom their perusal determines on qualifying him- 
 self to be as familiar with the Iliad in the original as 
 with the Paradise Lost in his own native tongue, — an 
 achievement not so difficult if he be but earnest in it, — 
 then will the Translator be proud indeed as of the best 
 fruit of his labour that he could have desired. Nor, in 
 putting in for such a result, would he be thought in- 
 sensible to the claims of the metrical translations we have 
 already in English, and which for number and variety 
 should seem to have taken up the ground entirely. But 
 whatever the distinctive feature of excellence in each, 
 according to the point of view from which the original was 
 regarded, the principle of adaptation to English taste and 
 ideas will, he thinks, be found to prevail in them all, with 
 a corresponding control over the original beyond what 
 
PREFACE. XXXIU 
 
 the bare exigence of metre required ; the more scrupulous 
 and undeviating adherence to the letter being relegated 
 to the humbler province of prose translation. It seemed, 
 therefore, that a corner was still open for that which 
 should combine the unambitious fidelity of a prose with 
 the more agreeable medium of a metrical version. How 
 far the present translation may be considered to have 
 supplied the vacancy, it is for the skilled and candid critic 
 to determine. 
 
 London, 
 December 10, 1853. 
 
The subjoined Alphabetical List of Words may be useful to the 
 reader of the following translation ; in which, however, they are not 
 abundant ; none occurring often, and some but once : — 
 
 Arede to charge, exhort. 
 
 Appeach accuse, accusation. 
 
 Auspicate see Note 12. 
 
 Brast to break. 
 
 Brent burnt. 
 
 Del portion^ part. 
 
 DerHng-do bold achievement. 
 
 Dight dressed, clad with. 
 
 Dra*d, y-drad... dread, dreaded. 
 
 Eath easy, easily. 
 
 Forlore lost. See Note 263.^ 
 
 Han ,. for have, 3p.pl. pres. indie, 
 
 Hebt taken,took. SeeNote253. 
 
 Hurst a wood, thicket. 
 
 Ken to know, knowledge. 
 
 Kepe s. heed, care, attention. 
 
 Kest for cast. 
 
 Land-louping... vagrant. See Note 263. 
 
 Lin give over, cease. 
 
 Mote for might, could 
 
 Pight, y-plght. placed, set. 
 
 Plain to lament, commiserate. 
 
 Quite to pay for, discharge. 
 
 Ease to pluck. SeeNotel75. 
 
 Raught pret. of reach. 
 
 Recure attend medically, cure. 
 
 Rede word, advice, counsel. 
 
 Sheen glittering, glitter. 
 
 Shend pret.shent to disgrace, injure. 
 
 Skirr scour, run swiftly. 
 
 Soun for sound. 
 
 Stithy a smith's anvil. 
 
 Stour combat, calamity. 
 
 Swink to toil, labour. 
 
 Sprent, y-sprent sprinkled. 
 
 Teen, tyne woe, sorrow. 
 
 Uneath uneasy, uneasily. 
 
 Weet to know. 
 
 Wexe to grow. 
 
 Ween to think. 
 
 Whilere sotne time ago. 
 
 Yede, pret. yode to go. 
 
 Yare nimble, nimbly. 
 
 Y-fere together, in company. 
 
 Y-wis verily, truly. 
 
 Alphabetical List of Greek Names, some of which differ from the 
 Latin : — 
 
 Aidoneus 
 
 Aphrodite 
 
 Ares 
 
 Argeiphontes > 
 
 Argicide ) 
 
 Artemis 
 
 Athene } 
 
 Athenia i 
 
 Achseans I 
 
 Achives j 
 
 Argives 
 
 Alexander , 
 Asclepios 
 
 Cypris 
 
 Dionysos .., 
 Demeter..., 
 Enyalus .... 
 Enyalius..., 
 
 Enyo 
 
 Eos 
 
 Erinnyes ... 
 Eris 
 
 Pluto. 
 
 Venus. 
 
 Mars. 
 
 Argus-Slayer. 
 
 Hermes, or Mercury. 
 
 Diana. 
 
 Minerva. 
 
 Men of Achaia ; col- 
 lective name for the 
 Grecian Host. 
 
 Men of Argos ; collective 
 name for the Grecian 
 Host, to whom ob- 
 serve, that Homer 
 never applies the term 
 Greeks. 
 
 Paris. 
 
 ^sculapius. 
 
 She of Cyprus, Venus. 
 
 Bacchus. 
 
 Ceres. 
 
 Ares or Mars. 
 
 Bellona. 
 Aurora. 
 The Furies. 
 Strife. 
 
 I 
 
 Kronion .. 
 Kronides , 
 
 Glaucopis The Blue-eyed or clear- 
 
 visioned. ^^pithet of 
 Athene. 
 
 Hades Pluto. 
 
 Helios The Sun. 
 
 Hephaistos Vulcan . 
 
 Herakles Hercules. 
 
 Hermes Mercury. 
 
 Ilium Troy. 
 
 Kronos Saturn. 
 
 r The sou of Krono or 
 Saturn, Saturnius, Ju- 
 
 t piter. 
 
 Leto Latona. 
 
 Okeanos, Ocean, The River Ocean, Father 
 of the Gods, and 
 Source of all Things. 
 
 Olympius He of Olympus, Jupiter. 
 
 Odysseus Ulysses. 
 
 Pallas Athene Minerva. 
 
 Persephoneia... Proserpine. 
 
 Poseidon .... 1 ,, ^ 
 
 Poseidaon....] Neptune. 
 
 P}ipr«> / Centaurs, according to 
 
 ^^®^® \ some. See Note 7. 
 
 Tritogenia Tritonia, Minerva. 
 
 Zeus Jupiter. 
 
 Inferoal Zeus I '";^/-»fJ„^e lower 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 
 
 6. 
 9. 
 
 12. 
 
 15. 
 
 20. 
 
 29. 
 
 77. 
 
 88. 
 165. 
 255. 
 275. 
 338. 
 344. 
 
 500. 
 584. 
 
 stanza 17. line 5. dele comma at *' sacrifice." 
 
 25. „ 4. dele comma at " hand." 
 
 35, „ 2. dele period at '* god." 
 43. „ 5. dele comma at " deign." 
 59. „ 6. dele comma at " believe." 
 14. „ 3. I'ele comma at " king." 
 46. „ 9. for " ov'd " read " lov'd." 
 21. „ 1. for '* who " read " woe." 
 17. „ 4. dele comma at " town" and put full stop. 
 
 9. „ 9. for " rare" read " care." 
 
 70. „ 7. for "ther" read" there." { 
 
 14. „ I. dele apostrophe at " Argos." 
 
 32. „ 1. put comma at " many-rill'd." 
 
 36. „ 9. put comma instead of period at " e'er." 
 43. „ 8. for " pent " read " hent." 
 32. „ 1. dele period at " spear " and put comma. 
 51. „ 9. at beginning of line read '• With " omitted. 
 16. „ 6. dele accent in " Kronides." 
 
 17. from top, for J* e' cielo " read " e '1 cielo." 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 The wrath of Peleus' ^ son Achilles sing, 
 Goddess, wrath destructive, that did on 
 Th' Achaean s woes innumerable bring. 
 And many mighty souls of heroes down 
 To Hades hurl untimely, themselves^ thrown 
 To dogs a prey and all the birds obscene. 
 But so in sooth the will of Zeus was done. 
 Since parted first in strife those chieftains twain. 
 Divine Achilles, and Atrides king of men. 
 
 II. 
 
 What god them set in strife contending high ? 
 'Twas Zeus' and Leto's son. Wroth with the king, 
 A plague through th' host he stirr'd. The people die. 
 For on priest Chryses did Atrides fling 
 Contempt. To th' Achive ships he ransoming 
 His daughter came, and boundless ransom brought. 
 In's hands did far-dart PhcBbus' wreath enring 
 The golden staff. He th' Achives all besought, 
 But did th' Atrides chief, the folk's two rulers, court : — 
 
 B 
 
2 ... ... ^jjj^^ ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 " Ye Atreus' sons, Achseans buskin'd well 
 " That else be here ! Youchsafe it may to you 
 " The gods that in Olympian houses dwell, 
 " Take Priam's town, and home then safe! But do 
 " My child release me, ransom take, and due 
 " Respect to Zeus' son, far-dart Phoebus give." 
 With shouts all Achives else assent thereto, 
 The priest to rev'rence, ransom bright receive, 
 But not t' Atrides Agamemnon's mind 'twas lieve, 
 
 IV. 
 
 But rough dismiss'd him, adding speech severe : — 
 " By th' ships, old man, that I not catch thee see ! 
 " Or ling'ring now, or back returning here, 
 " Lest not the staff nor god's wreath profit thee. 
 " Her loose not I till age upon her be 
 ''■ In Argos' palace our's, far from her land, 
 " Tending the loom, my couch partaking she. 
 " But go, provoke me not : so safer wend," 
 He said. The sire in fear obey'd the harsh command, 
 
 V. 
 
 And silent pac'd of mickle sounding sea the shore. 
 Much as he went the sire apart did pray. 
 To King Apollo^ fair tress'd Leto bore : — 
 " Hear, Silver-Bow, that Chrysa guardest aye, 
 " And sacred Cilia, Tenedos dost SAvay, 
 " Smintheus ! If ever temple lovely one 
 " I've roof 'd to thee, or fat thighs burnt have I 
 " Of bulls or goats, this wish of mine then croAvn, 
 That with thy darts the Danai my tears atone." 
 
BOOK I. 3 — 8. 
 VI. 
 
 'Twas thus he pray'd. Phoebus Apollo heard, 
 And down Olympus' summits wroth at heart, 
 And should'ring bow and cover'd quiver skirr'd.^ 
 Rattled the shafts on's shoulders at each start 
 As wroth he pac'd. He went like night. Apart 
 From ships then sat, an arrow shot, and high 
 Out-clang'd the silver bow to freeze the heart. 
 Mules first and swift dogs smote, and then let fly 
 Fell shaft on them. Thick burnt the pyres funereal aye. 
 
 , VII. 
 
 Nine days throughout the host his arrows go. 
 The tenth a folk-mote ^^^ did Achilles call. 
 For white-arm'd Here goddess prompted so. 
 Who griev'd for Danai to see them fall. 
 And when together met assembled all. 
 Swift-foot Achilles rose, and thus did say : — 
 " Atrides, roam I ween afresh we shall 
 " And home return, if death so 'scape we may, 
 " Since war and pestilence alike th' Achaeans slay. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Come let's some seer or priest interrogate, 
 " Or dreamer e'en^ (for dream from Zeus doth come), 
 " Who'll tell us why Apollo's thus irate ; 
 *' If he of vow complains or hecatomb ; 
 " And if for lambs' and choicest she-goats' fume 
 " He meet us will, and drive from us this pest." 
 So having said, he sat. And rose to them 
 Calchas Thestorides, of augurs best, 
 Who knew things present, and to come, and what were past. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And he th' Achaeans' ships to Ilium led, 
 For that divining art Apollo gave, 
 Who well-intention'd them harangu'd and said : — 
 " Thou bid'st me tell, Zeus-lov'd Achilles brave, 
 " Far-darting King Apollo's anger grave. 
 " I'll speak : but cov'nant thou, and swear alway 
 " Thou'lt word and deed protect me prompt, and save. 
 " I shall me thinks a man provoke doth sway 
 " The Argives all, and whom th' Achaeans do obey. 
 
 ** Too strong's a king with private man offended. 
 " His wrath that day kept down the grudge he'll hold 
 " In's breast thereafter till in vengeance ended. 
 " But say, wilt me protect ? " Swift-footed bold 
 Achilles answer'd him : — " Be't fearless told 
 " What oracle thou know'st. B' Apollo dear 
 *' To Zeus, whom thou imploring dost unfold 
 " To Danai his oracles, I swear 
 ' None while I live, and on this earth behold, shall e'er 
 
 XI. 
 
 " By th' hollow ships lay heavy hands on thee 
 " Of all the Danai. Not though thou name 
 " King Agamemnon's self, who boasts to be 
 " In th' host far mightiest now." Then sooth o'ercame 
 His fears, and spake the Seer withouten blame : — 
 " For vow nor hecatomb doth he complain, 
 " But priest, whom Agamemnon put to shame, 
 " Nor daughter loos'd nor ransom take would deign, 
 " For this Far-Darter dealeth woes, and will again : 
 
BOOK I. 9—14. 
 XII. 
 
 "Nor he from plague will rough hands stay till home 
 " T' her sire the quick- eyed damsel we restore 
 " Priceless and free, and sacred hecatomb 
 " To Chrysa lead. And then if we implore 
 " Persuade we may." This said, he sat. Before 
 Them did wide-ruling Agamemnon rise. 
 Hero Atrides, mov'd. With wrath brimm'd o'er 
 His gloomy breast, like fire out-flash' d his eyes. 
 First Calchas scowling at address'd he on this wise : — 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Prophet of woes ! nought good e'er told'st me thou. 
 " Thy soul delighteth ills to prophesy. 
 " Good never yet hast said or done, and now 
 " Oracular would'st tell the Danai 
 " For this Far-Darter dealeth woes, that I 
 " Would not bright ransom take for Chryse'is, 
 " But sooner have herself with me abye 
 " 'Fore Clytemnestra virgin-wed y-wis, 
 " Whose peer for form and face, and mind and works she is. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Nathless I'll give her back if best betide. 
 " I'd have the folk be safe not die. But me 
 " Prepare ye guerdon straight, that I not bide 
 " Of Argives prizeless sole. Unfit 'twould be. 
 " My guerdon's elsewhere gone ye all do see." 
 Swift-foot Achilles god-like made reply : — 
 " Eenown'd Atrides, most insatiate, thee 
 " How can then guerdon give th' Achseans high ? 
 " For nought we know of ample stores in common lie. 
 
 B 3 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " The cities' spoils are sliar'd. Nor is it fit 
 " The people bring them back. But her do thou 
 " To the god now send. And we Achaeans it 
 " Will three and fourfold recompense whenso 
 " Zeus grants we Troy's well- walled town o'erthrow." 
 To him did broad-rule Agamemnon say : — 
 " Not so, though brave, god-like Achilles, thou 
 " My sense beguile ; thou'lt cheat me not nor sway. 
 " Would' st thou thy guerdon keep when mine is ta'en away? 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Thou bid'st me send her back? Yea, if a prize 
 " The lofty soul'd Achasans give to please 
 " My mind, whose value with the maiden vies, 
 " Or if they'll not, I'll come myself and seize 
 " Or thine, or Ajax' prize, or Ulysses', 
 " And lead away. He'll chafe to whom I come. 
 " But we'll hereafter think again of these. 
 " Now black ship draw to sea, and must'ring some 
 " Convenient oarsmen place therein, with hecatomb. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Fair-cheek'd Chryseis' self embark thereon, 
 *' Some council-chief be captain, Ajax now, 
 " Idomeneus, Odysseus, godlike one, 
 " Or, awfullest of men, Pelides thou ! 
 *' With sacrifice, Far-Darter soothing so." 
 Him eyeing askance did swift Achilles say. — 
 " sheath'd in insolence, rapacious, how 
 " Shall any Achive prompt thine bests obey, 
 " Or journeying go, or combat warriors valiantly? 
 
BOOK I. 15 — 20. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " For Trojan warriors' sake, I came not here 
 " To fight ; for not in fault to me tliey been, 
 " Nor e'er drave off of mine or steed or steer, 
 " Nor e'er in fertile Phthia, rich in men, 
 " The crops despoil'd; for many lie between, 
 " Umbrageous mountains, and the sounding sea. 
 " Thee shameless ! pleasuring we came to win 
 " For Menelaus vengeance, and for thee 
 *'Dog-fac'd! on Troy. But these uncar'd, unheeded be. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " From me my prize thyself to seize dost threat, 
 " For which I've toil'd, and which th' Achseans gave, 
 " Though guerdon ne'er to equal thine I get, 
 " When sack a Trojan town th'Achgeans brave. 
 " My hands the brunt of toilsome war doth crave; 
 " But when division comes, the largest share 
 " By far is thine ; while I with what I have, 
 " Though small, yet precious, to the ships repair, 
 '' When worn and wearied out I am with toils of war. 
 
 XX. 
 
 ** To Phthia now I go, far best 'twill be 
 " I' th' curved ships return. Nor thou wilt when 
 " Pm here disgrac'd methinks, scrape pelf to thee." 
 Him answer'd Agamemnon, king of men: — 
 " Fly an thou wilt ; not I entreat thee mean 
 " On mine account to stay. Pve others by 
 " Will honour me, and chief wise Zeus I ween. 
 " Thee most of Zeus-fed kings abhor do I, 
 ''' For strife to thee is dear, and wars, and battles aye. 
 
 B 4 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " If great thy strength, vouchsaf 'd it deity. 
 " Home with thy ships, and thy companions get, 
 " And rule thy Myrmidons. I reck not thee 
 " Nor heed thy wrath. But thee on this wise threat, 
 " Since Phoebus takes Chryseis, her I'll straight 
 " Send with my ships and friends. Thy prize, I'll go 
 ^^ Seize in thy tent, Briseis delicate ; 
 " That me how much thy stronger thou mayst know, 
 *^ And match or cope with me, another shrink from so.'* 
 
 XXII. 
 
 He spake, and rose Pelides' anger high. 
 His heart within his hairy breast did weigh, 
 If drawing forth his falchion keen from thigh 
 And thrusting those aside, Atrides slay 
 He should, or calm his wrath, his fury stay. 
 While pond'ring these in mind and soul, he drew 
 His mighty falchion from its sheath some way, 
 From heav'n Athene came, from Here who, 
 White-arm'd goddess, car'd for and lov'd alike the two. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Behind she stood. Pelides' gold hair drew, 
 Seen but by him. The rest beheld her none. 
 Astound Achilles turn'd, and straight he knew 
 Pallas Athene. Dire her eyes outshone. 
 To her he spake, these winged words anon : — 
 '• Why here, ^gis-arm'd Zeus' child ? To see 
 " Th' aiFront of Agamemnon, Atreus' son ? 
 " I tell thee what I think fulfill'd will be, 
 " That for his scorn his life will instant forfeit he." 
 
BOOK I. 21—26. 9 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Then spake Athene azure eye: — 
 " From heav'n I'm come thy wrath to 'suage, if fain 
 " Thou'lt hearken. Here white-arm'd goddess high 
 " Hath sent, who loves and cares for both. Refrain 
 "From strife, nor with that hand draw sword. Amain 
 " With words vituperate as hap it may. 
 " I tell thee this, fulfilFd twill be I ween, 
 " Thou'lt thrice as many bright gifts have one day 
 " For this affront. But curb thyself, and us obey." 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Swift-foot Achilles answer'd her. — " Obey, 
 
 " Needs must though wroth, goddess, your command. 
 
 " 'Tis best. Who heeds the gods they hear alway," 
 
 He said. On silver hilt his stalwart hand. 
 
 He staid, and thrust t' its sheath his mighty brand. 
 
 Nor slighted Pallas' word. T' Olympus fain 
 
 , She went, where ^^gis-arm'd Zeus' dwellings stand 
 'Mong th' other gods. Pelides did again 
 
 With sharp words twit Atrides, nor from wrath refrain: — 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Wine-drench'd ! with eyes of hound, and heart of deer ! 
 " In war ne'er harness with the folk, nor bide 
 " With Achive chiefs in ambush durst thou e'er. 
 *' This smack'd of death. Far better through the wide 
 " Achaean host rob him who thwarts thy pride, 
 " folk-devouring king, since men of nought 
 " Thou rul'st. This outrage else the last thoud'st tried. 
 " But this I say, and grave oath swear to boot, 
 " Yea, by this sceptre^, that nor leaves nor boughs will 
 shoot. 
 
10 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Since in the mountains first its trunk it left, 
 " Nor buds again put forth, the^ brass hath so 
 " Around it clean of leaves and bark bereft ; 
 " Th' Achasans' sons as judges wield it now, 
 " That guard Zeus' laws. Grave oath to thee I trow. 
 " Miss of Achilles sooth will come on all 
 ^^ Th' Acha3ans' sons one day. Nor them wilt thou, 
 " Though chafing sore, be able aid at all, 
 " When num'rous 'neath man-slaught'ring Hector slain 
 they fall. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " Thou'lt gnaw thy heart with rage t' have slighted one 
 " Th' Achaeans best." This said, Pelides throws 
 The gold-stud sceptre down, and sat. And Atreus' son 
 Eag'd opposite. In haste then Nestor rose, 
 Sweet spoken Pylian orator. For flows, 
 More sweet than honey, language from his tongue. 
 Of part-voice men^ two generations' close 
 He'd seen, that had of yore with him up-sprung, 
 And liv'd in Pylos rare. The third he reign'd among. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Who wise harangu'd them there, and spake. *' How sad 
 " A grief ye gods Achaia's land is nigh ! 
 " How Priam will, and Priam's sons be glad, 
 "And other Trojans joy exceedingly 
 " To learn your wrangling, you of Danai 
 " The first in council, and the first in fight. 
 " But hearken now, ye're younger both than I. 
 " Time was with men, that pass'd e'en you in might, 
 " Have I companion'd, yet they never held me light. 
 
BOOK I. 27—32. 11 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Such men I ne'er did see, nor shall again, 
 " As Peirithous^, Dryas folk-shepherd one, 
 " Cseneus, Exadius, Polypheme divine, 
 " And, like the immortals, Theseus J^geus' son. 
 " The strongest they of men on earth did wone. 
 " The strongest were, and did with strongest fight 
 " The mountain Pherse ^ ; fierce they smote them down. 
 " These join did I from Pylos armour-dight, 
 " From Apian land afar. For they did me invite. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " I fought my best. But fight with those I trow, 
 " Could none of mortals now on earth. Yet they 
 '' My counsel took, my word attended to. 
 " Obey then ye, since better 'tis obey. 
 " Though high take not from him the girl away, 
 " But prize, as th' Achives' sons first gave it, leave. 
 " Nor thou, Pelides, wish in strife t' array 
 " Thee 'gainst the king, for equal honour brave, 
 '' Had sceptred sovereign ne'er, whom Zeus such glory gave. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " If braver thou, and goddess thee begat, 
 " Yet he as ruling more hath greater power. 
 " Atrides cease thine ire, and I'll entreat 
 " Achilles leave his wrath. A mighty tower 
 " To all Ach^ans he in woful stour." 
 King Agamemnon spake, him answering: — 
 " All this, old man, thou'st said aright, but o'er 
 " Us all this man would be, o'er all be king, 
 " Rule all, lead all. He'll not, I ween, persuade the thing. 
 
12 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " If warrior him th' e'erlasting gods did make, 
 " Him do they then in taunting speech allow?" 
 Divine Achilles answ'ring on him brake : — 
 " Hilding and base should I be clep'd I trow, 
 " Yielding to thee in all things speakest thou. 
 " Go others rule, think not my chief to be. 
 " No more I'll heed thee. This I tell thee now. 
 " Remember. I'll not fight for th' girl with thee, 
 '^ Nor any else, since what ye gave ye take from me. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " But of the other things of mine that lie 
 " Within the swift black ship, not take shalt thou 
 " One doit away in my despite. Or try, 
 " If thou'rt inclin'd, that also these may know. 
 " Thy black blood quick about my spear shall flow." 
 Thus they with wrangling words contending rose, 
 And brake by th' Achive ships the gath'ring so, 
 Pelides with Menastius' son, and those 
 His mates t' his tents, and equal-sided vessels goes. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Atrides drew to sea a swift ship down, 
 Chose twenty oarsmen, hecatomb to th 'god, 
 Embark'd, and fair-cheek'd Chryseis thereon 
 He set. As captain, wise Odysseus yode ^^, 
 And they embarking, sail'd the wat'ry road. 
 Bade cleanse ^ the folk Atrides. Purify 
 They did, and cast the filth to ocean broad, 
 And slew full hecatombs t' Apollo high, 
 Of bulls and goats, the shore of barren sea anigh. 
 
BOOK I. 33—38. 13 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 In smoke round rolling rose the scent to th' sky. 
 Thus these. Nor Agamemnon strife did stay, 
 As threat'ned he at first Achilles high. 
 To Talthyb and Eurybates did say : — 
 (His heralds twain and faithful servants they) 
 " To th' tent of Peleus' son Achilles go, 
 " And ta'en by th' hand Briseis bring away. 
 " If he refuse, myself and many mo' 
 " Will come and bear her off. Which will be worse, I trow." 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 He said, and sent, and added harshest speech. 
 Loth went they marge of sea unfruitful by, 
 And tents and vessels Myrmidon they reach. 
 Him seated found, black ship and tent anigh. 
 Nor did w^ith joy Achilles them descry. 
 Abash'd in awe o' th' king they stand and fear 
 To speak or question him. But perfectly 
 He knew in 's mind, and said : — " Hail, heralds here, 
 " Ye messengers of Zeus as well as men ! Draw near. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Not you but Agamemnon 'tis I blame, 
 
 " Who sent you for Briseis.^ Bring her then, 
 
 " Zeus-sprung Patroclus. Let them take the d^^me. 
 
 " Avouch it they 'fore gods and mortal men, 
 
 " And 'fore that ruthless king, if e'er again 
 
 " Come need of me t' avert foul overthrow, 
 
 " Fro' th' rest For raveth he in 's counsel vain, 
 
 " Nor scan at all both past and future how 
 " Fight by their vessels safe th' Achgeans may doth know." 
 
14 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 He said. Patroclus did his friend obey, 
 And lovely-cheek'd Briseis from the tent 
 Brought out, and gave to them to lead away. 
 And these their steps to th' ships Achaean bent, 
 With whom the woman all unwilling went. 
 Achilles from his friends apart did keep, 
 By th' shore of hoary sea^^ lone session hent^^^, 
 Out-gazing there upon the wine-fac'd deep. 
 And did his mother pray with outstretch'd^^ hands, andAveep. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Mother, when thou didst bear me, brief the space 
 " I was to live, but Zeus, that from the skies 
 " Does thunder, me with much renown should grace. 
 " But 'tis not so. Atrides hath my prize 
 " With insult torn away before mine eyes." 
 He spake, and wept. She from the sea-depths hears 
 B' her old sire seated, and doth swift arise 
 From hoary sea like mist, and for his tears 
 She sits by him, and sooths with hand, and calls and cheers: — - 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " My child, why weepest thou ? And what deep dole 
 " Hath lighted on thy spirit ? Come now, speak 
 " Thy grief, nor hide from me what's in thy soul, 
 " That both may know." Then sighing as 'twould break 
 His bosom tough, swift-foot Achilles spake : — 
 " Thou know'st. To thee these things then wherefore say ? 
 " On Thebes Eetion's sacred town we make 
 " Incursion, sack and carry all away, 
 " And 'mong them fair th' Achaeans' sons divide the prey. 
 
BOOK I. 39—44. 15 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " And for Atrides chose the fair-cheek'd dame 
 " Chryseis. Chrjses, though, Apollo's priest, 
 " To th' brazen-clad Achasans' swift ships came 
 " With ransom large to have the girl releas'd. 
 " His hands far-dart Apollo's garland press'd 
 " And golden staff. To th' Achives all his prayer, 
 " But folk's two chiefs th' Atrides 'bove the rest. 
 " The other Achives all applaud it there, 
 " The priest to rev'rence, and accept the ransom fair. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " But not Atrides in his mind concurr'd, 
 " But rough dismiss'd him, adding speech severe. 
 " Enrag'd the sire return'd ; Apollo heard 
 " Him when he pray'd, for him he held full dear. 
 " On th' Argives sent ill bolt. And perish'd drear. 
 " The folk in heaps. The gods' fell arrows fly 
 " Through th' Achive army wide. A well-skill'd seer 
 " Told us Far-Darter's oracles, and I 
 " The first did straight advise the god to pacify. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " "Wrath seiz'd Atrides then, quick rising he 
 " Did threaten word which is perform'd I trow, 
 " For her on swift ship th' Argives sent to sea 
 " To Chrysa. Gifts for th' king they carry too. 
 "And from my tent the heralds went but now, 
 " And took Briseis, th' Achives gave whilere. 
 " But thou, if able, help thy son, and go 
 " Olympus-ward, to Zeus address thy prayer, 
 ^' If word or deed the heart of Zeus availedst e'er. 
 
16 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " For oft in father's halls I've heard thee say, 
 " Thou sole of gods from Kronos' drive-cloud son 
 " Didst foul disaster keep, when fain would they 
 " The habitants Olympian every one 
 " Have bound him, Here there, Poseidaon, 
 " Pallas Athene. Him from bonds didst straight 
 " Set free, up calling Hundred-Hands anon 
 " T' Olympus long.^^ By gods Briareus hight 
 " ^ga3on he by men, and pass'd his sire in might. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " By Kronos' son he sat in glorying pride. 
 " The blest gods shrank aghast, nor him enchain. 
 " Of this remind him now, and sit by 's side, 
 " And clasp his knees, if aid the Trojans deign, 
 " He will, and shut in there th' Achseans slain 
 " By ships and sea, that all enjoy their king, 
 " And know Atrides eke of ample reign, 
 " His fault th' Achaeans' best not honouring." 
 Him answer'd Thetis then while coursing tears outspring : — 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " Ah me ! my child, why rear'd I thee to fate, 
 
 " So woful born ? Would tearless teenless thou 
 
 "By th' ships wouldst rest. Thy life how brief its 
 
 date I 
 " And thou both short-liv'd art and hapless now, 
 " r th' chamber thus I brought thee forth to woe. 
 " This word to lightning- loving Zeus to say, 
 " I'll to Olympus of abundant snow, 
 " If he'll comply. But thou by th' swift ships stay, 
 " And 'gainst th' Achasans' rage, but keep from battle-fray. 
 
BOOK I. 45—50. 17 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " For Zeus to Ocean went to feast yestern 
 " With blameless iEthiops. Gods went with him all. 
 " He'll to Olympus on the twelfth return, 
 " And then I'll go to Zeus' brass-paved hall, 
 " And clasp his knees, persuade, methinks, I shall." 
 This having said, she him departed from. 
 And left him wroth for well-zon'd girl withal. 
 They 'd forc'd from him. Now had Odysseus come 
 To Chrysa, thither leading sacred hecatomb. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 And as within the haven deep they come, 
 The sails they furl, and in the black ship stow. 
 And mast with halyards low'ring thrust they home 
 To 'ts place with speed. And with the oars then row 
 The bark to dock, and forth the anchors throw. 
 And there with cables tie. Then issuing 
 Themselves upon the sea-beat shore they go ; 
 Far-dart Apollo's hecatomb forth bring. 
 And forth Chryseis went from bark sea-traversing. 
 
 To altar led her wise Odysseus then. 
 And gave t' her sire, and said : — " Chryses, I 
 " Am sent by Agamemnon, king of men, 
 " To bring thy child, and offer Phoebus high 
 " A sacred hecatomb for Danai, 
 
 " To soothe the king who th' woes on Argives pight." 
 He said, and gave t' his hand, who took with joy 
 His child. To th' god the hecatomb so bright 
 They quick round well-built altar set in order right. 
 
 c 
 
18 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Hands then they wash, and barley-meal up-ta'en, 
 'Gan Chryses loud with lifted hands to pray : — 
 " Hear, Silver-Bow, that Chrysa fencest-in, 
 " And sacred Cilia, Tenedos dost sway. 
 " Thou heard'st me when I pray'd to thee that day, 
 '' And, me avenging, th' Achive folk severe 
 " Didst smite. So grant this wish, from Danai 
 " Expel this fatal pestilence so drear." 
 Twas thus he pray'd. Phoebus Apollo him did hear. 
 
 LII. 
 
 When ended prayer, and sprinkled barley-meal, 
 They drew back first the neck, and kill'd and flay'd, 
 Cut out the thighs, and did in fat conceal 
 In double fold, and gobbets on them laid, 
 Burnt them on splints the sire. Wine on them red 
 He pour'd. While youths with five-prong'd spits withal 
 Stood near. And when they 'd burnt the thighs, and had 
 The entrails tasted, they the rest cut small 
 And hung on hooks, roasted with skill, and drew back all. 
 
 UII. 
 
 And when their labour o'er prepar'd had they 
 The feast, they banqueted. Nor wanted will 
 To equal banquet aught. When ta'en away 
 Desire of drink and food, the youths did till 
 The very brim the bowls y- crowning fill, 
 And dealt to all, and cups did auspicate. ^^ 
 All day with song the god they sooth. With skill 
 The Paean raising th' Achive youths the great 
 Far-Darter, who delighted listens, celebrate. 
 
BOOK I. 51—56. 19 
 
 LIV. 
 
 When set the sun, and darkness round 'gan close, 
 They slept, the ship's stern-cables then anent. 
 But when dawn-sprung Eos rose-finger'd rose, 
 Then towards th^ Achasan army wide they bent, 
 And fav'ring gale far-dart Apollo sent. 
 The mast they rais'd, and snowy sails outspread. 
 Wind mid-sail swell'd, and as the vessel went, 
 The dark wave 'bout its keel voice uttered, 
 And o'er the wave accomplishing her way she sped. 
 
 LV. 
 
 But when they reach'd the broad Achaean host, 
 The black ship on the main-land up they drew ^^ 
 High on the sands, long props thereunder thrust, 
 
 ^ And they dispers'd the tents and vessels through. 
 But did by th' swift-pac'd vessels raging so 
 Great Peleus' son swift-foot Achilles stay. 
 Nor would to man-ennobling meeting go. 
 Nor yet to war. But wore his heart away 
 
 Abiding there, and long'd for shout and battle-fray. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 With morn the twelfth the gods t' Olympus wend 
 Y-led by Zeus. Nor Thetis did forget 
 Her son's behests, but did from sea ascend, 
 T' Olympus and the great sky early get ; 
 And wide-voic'd Zeus apart fro' th' rest she met 
 On many-neck'd Olympus' highest peak. 
 Herself then down before him there she set. 
 With left his knees, with right hand chin did take, 
 And thus, imploring sovereign Zeus Kronion, spake : 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " father Zeus, if 'mong th' immortals e'er 
 " By word or deed avail'd thee aught have I, 
 " Then hearken thou to me, and crown my prayer. 
 " Honour my son, so early doom'd to die. 
 '^ Him Agamemnon hath, men's sovran high, 
 " Disgrac'd, and seizing keeps his prize. But thou, 
 " Wise Zeus Olympian, honour him, and aye 
 " The Trojans' strength increase till th' Achives know 
 " To honour too my son, and make in honour grow." 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 She spake, but drive-cloud Zeus not answered, 
 But long sat silent. Thetis to his knee 
 Still holding clung. A second time she said : — 
 " Now truly promise, and vouchsafe to me 
 " Or else refuse, for dwells not fear with thee, 
 " That goddess how despis'd myself I know." 
 Sigh'd deeply drive-cloud Zeus, thus answ'ring he : — 
 '* Sad doings these, to make me Here's foe, 
 " When she '11 with bitter taunting words provoke me so. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " For she incessantly doth me upbraid 
 
 " Among th' immortal gods, asserting she 
 
 " That I the Trojans do in battle aid. 
 
 " But thou return lest Herfe haply see. 
 
 " And these I'll care for, that fulfill'd they be. 
 
 " Come I'll with head confirm, so thou believe, 
 
 " This 'mong immortals greatest sign from me. 
 
 " Not change may word of mine nor yet deceive. 
 
 Nor fail, to which with head assenting nod I give." 
 
BOOK I. 57—62. 21 
 
 LX. 
 
 So spake, and with his dark brows Kronos' son 
 Did nod. The locks ambrosial of the king 
 Y-quiver'd from his head immortal down, 
 And huge Olympus shook. So counselling 
 They separate. And she then with a spring 
 To deep sea plunges from Olympus bright. 
 And Zeus t' his home. The gods encountering 
 Their Sire all from their seats arose. None might 
 His coming bide, but stood to meet him every wight. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 'Twas thus he sat his throne. Nor Her^ not 
 Perceiv'd, who saw when counsel with him had 
 The Sea-sire's daughter Thetis Silver-foot. 
 With sharp words quick to Kronos' son she said : 
 " What god, crafty, with thee counselled? 
 " For still apart from me thy wont is aye 
 " Be brooding some decree in darkness laid, 
 " Nor willing durst speak out thy purpose high." 
 To her then did the Sire of men and gods reply : — 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " Not all my counsels. Here, hope to scan ; 
 " For thee, although my spouse, they're far too high. 
 " What's fit to hear shall 'fore thee, god or man, 
 " None know. But what from gods apart would I 
 " Eesolve, these search not into thou, nor pry." 
 August him answer'd large-eyed Here : — " How ! 
 '^ Harsh Kronides, what speech is this ? Not I 
 " Inquir'd or question'd aught before, I trow, 
 '' But much at ease rcsolvest what desirest thou. 
 
 c 3 
 
22 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXin. 
 
 " I fear now talked thee o'er the Sire of sea^s 
 " Silver-foot daughter Thetis hath. By thee 
 '^ She sat at early dawn, and clasp'd thy knees, 
 " And thou, methinks, didst nod assentingly 
 '^ To grace Achilles, that by ships there be 
 " Slain Achives many." Drive-cloud Zeus replied : — 
 u Perverse ! thou 'rt aye suspecting, spying me. 
 '* But thou wilt nought effect the more, but bide 
 " More alien to my soul ; so worse will thee betide. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 " If this be so, enough it pleaseth me. 
 " But sit thou silent, and my word obey, 
 " Lest all Olympus' gods avail not thee, 
 " When my resistless hands on thee I lay." 
 He said. And large-eyed Here in effray 
 Sat speechless, and kept down her spirit dear. 
 The gods through th' house of Zeus were in dismay. 
 Spake famed artificer, Hephaistos here, 
 His mother, white-arm'd Her^, purposing to cheer : — 
 
 LXV. 
 
 " Sad work, nor to be borne if wrangle so 
 " For mortals' sake, and drive this pother ye 
 ^' Among the gods, that pleasure none is noAv 
 '' Of banquet good, since ill hath mastery. 
 " I'll mother now advise, though knoweth she, 
 " To yield to father Zeus, that so the Sire 
 " Not scold again, and mar our revelry ; 
 " For could Olympius wielding lightning's fire, 
 *' Hurl from their seats ^^ — for such his might transcendent 
 dire. 
 
BOOK I. 63—68. 25 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 '^ Thou speak him soft, Olympius then will grow 
 " Kind to us straight." This said, up bounded he, 
 T' her hands gave double cup, and spake her so : — 
 " Bear mother mine, endure though sad, lest thee 
 " So dear before mine eyes I beaten see ; 
 " Aid thee I could not then, though grieving sore. 
 " Olympius is too rough a foe. For me, 
 " When I would fain have succour'd thee of yore, 
 " By th' foot he caught, and hurl'd from out the heavenly 
 door. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 " Down driven ^^ all the day, with set of sun 
 " I pitched in Lemnos, little life in me. 
 " Me fallen there the Sintians took anon." 
 He said, and white-arm'd Here smil'd, and she 
 Took from her son the goblet smilingly. 
 To all the other gods in proper rows 
 Sweet nectar pour'd from flagon drawing he. 
 And quenchless laughter 'mong the gods arose 
 To see how through the hall Hephaistos limping goes. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 And these all day till sunset feasted so. 
 Nor wanting was to equal banquet will. 
 Nor lovely harp Apollo's self did owe. 
 Nor Muses there, who sang with sweetest skill, 
 Each other answering. Thus they until 
 Went down the light resplendent of the sun. 
 Then homeward went they all to sleep their fill, 
 Where sep'rate house had built to each his own, 
 With wisest heart ^^ Hephaistos, both-feet-lamed one. 
 
 c 4 
 
24 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 And Zeus Olympian lightning- wielder, hies 
 To his own couch, where he was wont to bide 
 When slumber sweet came stealing o'er his eyes. 
 Ascending there, he slept, and by his side 
 Slept Here, queen of gods, his golden throned bride. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 I. 
 
 Throughout the night the other gods, and men, 
 Those chariot'Warriors, slept. But slumber sweet 
 Detain'd not Zeus, who in him ponder'd then 
 How best to work Achilles honor meet. 
 And slay AchaBans many round their fleet.^^ 
 Of thoughts revolving in his mind to him 
 Despatching down pernicious Dream to greet 
 Atrides did the best of counsel seem, 
 And winged words he spake : — " Haste, fly, pernicious 
 Dream, ^^ 
 
 II. 
 
 " Down to th' Achaean vessels swift, and go 
 " To Agamemnon's tent. What I desire 
 " Rehearse thou faithful, and enjoin him now 
 " To harness stright th' Achaean host entire. 
 " Seize Troy's broad-streeted town he may aspire. 
 " No more the Gods, that in Olympus dwell, 
 " Of counsel diff 'rent be ; with prayers to tire 
 " And bend them all hath Here known so well. 
 " Impending o'er the Trojans hang disasters fell." 
 
26 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 He spake. And Dream when heard the message went, 
 And to th' Achasans' swift ships quickly sped, 
 And to Atrides came, and in his tent 
 Him sleeping found. And all around him spread 
 Ambrosial sleep. He stood above his head 
 In aged Nestor's semblance, Neleus' son, 
 ^1^ Whom Agamemnon chiefly honored 
 Of elders all. Such likeness then put on 
 
 / 'l^pake Dream divine: — Sleep'st, child of Atreus tame- 
 
 \ steed one ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Not sleep all night should chief to whom there be 
 " Such people trusted, and such cares require. 
 " Hear quick. Zeus' herald I, who cares for thee, 
 " And bids now arm th' Achaaan host entire. 
 " Seize Troy's broad-streeted town thou mayst aspire. 
 " No more the Gods that in Olympus dwell 
 " Of counsel diff 'rent be ; with prayers to tire, 
 " And bend them all hath Here known so well, 
 *' And o'er the Trojans hang from Zeus disasters fell. 
 
 " Thou in thy mem'ry fix it fast, nor when 
 " Sweet sleep forsakes thee let oblivion seize." 
 He said, and left Atrides, king of men. 
 And to the dusky realm of shadow flees. ^^ 
 He pond'ring projects issueless doth please 
 His mind, and thinketh, simple man, that day 
 To capture Priam's town, nor Zeus' aim sees, 
 Who woes and groans in many a battle-fray 
 On Trojans and on Danai yet more will lay. 
 
BOOK II. 3—8. 27 
 
 VI. 
 
 He woke from sleep, and still the voice divine ^^ 
 About him hovered. Up he sat, and on 
 Him drew his tunic soft, new-spun, and fine ; 
 And mantle broad around him threw anon ; 
 Fair sandals 'neath his shining feet tied on ; 
 And silver-studded sword o'er shoulders cast ; 
 Paternal sceptre took, from sire to son 
 Transmitted aye unscath'd. With this he pass'd 
 Down to the brazen-clad Achasans' vessels fast. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Goddess Eos yclomb Olympus long ^*^, 
 To Zeus and other gods light ush'ring-in. 
 To council bade he heralds clear voic'd strong 
 Th' Achasans of the flowing locks convene. 
 They call'd, and these full quick assembled been. 
 And first at Nestor's ship, the Pylian King, 
 He fix'd the session of the elder men ^^ 
 Magnanimous. They thus convened, the thing 
 Propounds he thus, with prudent counsel ordering :- 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " To me now hearken, friends. In slumber Dream 
 '' Did visit me in sweet ambrosial night, 
 " And chiefly did the noble Nestor seem 
 '' To character ; his very likeness quite 
 " In every feature, face, form, bearing, height. 
 " Above my head the vision stood, and me 
 " Address'd : — ' Sleep'st thou, son of warrior-wight, 
 " The steed-subduing Atreus? Fits not he 
 " Should all night sleep, to whom the people trusted be. 
 
28 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " * And hath such cares. Now quick attend to me. 
 " Zeus' herald I ; afar from thee the Sire 
 " Yet greatly ca.reth for, and pities thee, 
 " And now bids arm th' Achasan host entire. 
 " Seize Troy's broad-streeted town thou mayst aspire. 
 " No more the gods, that in Olympus dwell, 
 " Of counsel diff 'rent be ; with pray'rs to tire, 
 " And bend them all hath Here known so well, 
 " And o'er the Trojans hang from Zeus disasters fell. 
 
 X. 
 
 " * Keep this in mind.' He said, and flew away, 
 " And slumber sweet forsook me. Now let 's see 
 " If arm th' Achseans' sons at all we may. 
 " With speech I'll try them first, as fit may be, 
 " And with their ships of many banks, bid flee ; 
 " While ye with words in various parts restrain, 
 " Among them mingling." Said, and seats him he. 
 Then Nestor rose, of Pylos' sandy plain 
 The king, who wise harangu'd them, speaking in this 
 strain : — 
 
 XI. 
 
 " friends, that Argives' chiefs and leaders be, 
 " If of Acha3ans any else had told 
 " This dream, we had pronounc'd it falsity, 
 " And kept aloof. But saw it who doth hold 
 " Him chief amongst us. Come then, arm the bold 
 " Acha3ans an we may." So said, straightway 
 He 'gan break up the council. They controll'd 
 By th' people-shepherd there did him obey, 
 Those sceptred kings. And throng'd the folk about their way. 
 
BOOK II. 9 — 14. 29 
 
 XII. 
 
 As bees' thick swarms unending issuing 
 From hollow rock keep coming still anew, 
 Fly down in clusters on the flowers of spring, 
 And throng some here, some there a-wing they do. 
 So these their many tribes outpouring go 
 From ships and tents, in front the full deep shore 
 In troops unto th' assembly. Eumour too, 
 Zeus' herald, kindles 'mong them, urging more 
 Their going. Now assembled they, -and huge uproar 
 
 XIII. 
 
 In that assembly was, and earth did groan 
 Beneath the people sitting down, and rose 
 Hubbub-confus'd. Nine heralds in loud tone 
 Call'd out am.ong them there, enjoining those 
 To still their tumult, and themselves dispose 
 To hear the Zeus-nurs'd kings. Scarce settle would 
 The people to their seats, and clamour close. 
 The ruler Agamemnon then up-stood. 
 His sceptre holding which Hephaistos, skilful god. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Had made elaborately fashioning. 
 To Zeus Kronion he the present gave, 
 Zeus t' herald Argicide, and Hermes king, 
 To Pelops next, that horses skilful drave. 
 Pelops to Atreus people-shepherd brave. 
 And Atreus dying left it to his son 
 Thyestes, that in flocks such wealth did have. 
 And he to Agamemnon hands it down 
 With rule o'er many isles, and Argos all upon. 
 
30 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Leaning on this, wing'd words he spake : — " Friends ^^', 
 " Danaian heroes, Ares' servitors ! 
 "• Zeus Kronides fell mischief's net extends ^^ 
 " Round me, nor cruel heedeth how this jars 
 " With what he promis'd erst, that from these wars 
 '^ I should return with Troy's full overthrow; 
 " But now plots evil wiles. My fame all mars, 
 ^' And thus disgrac'd to Argos bids me go, 
 " When people much I've lost in these our wars laid low. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Nathless so pleases Zeus omnipotent 
 
 " Who's many cities' summits prostrate laid, 
 
 " And will yet more, his strength 's so prevalent. 
 
 " Deep shame is this to future times be said, 
 
 " Such and so great Achasan folk array'd 
 
 " Warr'd fruitless war, 'gainst fewer fought in vain. 
 
 " Nor yet there seems an end. For say we made 
 
 " Firm truce, the Trojans and Achaean men. 
 
 And numb'ring both, chose all in Troy that denizen. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " And we Achaeans rang'd in tens, each ten 
 
 " A Trojan had to pour us out the wine, 
 
 " Cup-bearer lack would decades many then. 
 
 " So many more th' Achaeans, I opine, 
 
 " Than those the habitants of Troy divine. 
 
 " But they 've auxiliars there from many a town, 
 
 " Spear- wielding men, that every effort mine 
 
 " Put quite abroad, nor suffer me to crown 
 
 My wish, and overthrow fair Ilium's well-dwelt town. 
 
BOOK II. 15—20. 31 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Already nine of great Zeus' years are gone, 
 " The wood hath rotted in our ships, and worn 
 " The cables be ; while sit our wives alone 
 " There mth our children in their homes forlorn 
 " Expecting us. None issue yet hath borne 
 *' The work we came for here. But come ye now, 
 " "What I shall say let 's hearken every one. 
 " Flee with our ships, and to our lov'd land go, 
 '' Since Troy's broad-streeted town to take despair we so." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He ceas'd. And stirr'd their hearts within them he 
 Of all that crowd to whom unknown his drift. 
 Mov'd was th' assembly like long waves at sea ^^ 
 Which blust'rous Eurus, and the South-wind lift, 
 AVhen forth from out Zeus' clouds down rushing swift 
 They vex th' Icarian. Or some ample field 
 Of corn on which there comes with sudden rift 
 The West-wind fierce.^^ The ears t' his rough breath 
 yield 
 Down-bending. Thus th' assembly mov'd when he appealed. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And to their ships they rush with battle cry, 
 And from beneath their trampling feet anon 
 The dust uprose, and they all clam'rously 
 Each other summon loud, lay hold upon 
 The sable ships, and to the sea drag down. 
 They clear the grooves. With shouts the welkin then 
 Of these home hast'ning rang. The props withdrawn 
 Quick be. And now th' Argives' return had been 
 In fate's despite, but spake t' Athenia Here, queen : — 
 
32 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Unconquer^d child of segis-bearing Zeus, 
 
 " Alas ! shall homeward to their country flee, 
 
 " Upon the sea's broad backs, the Argives thus? 
 
 *' Their boast to Priam all abandon'd see, 
 
 '* And to the Trojans Argive Helen, she 
 
 ^' For whom Achseans brazen-kirtled slain 
 
 '^ From country far in Troas many be ? 
 
 " But go, each man with thy soft words restrain, 
 
 Nor let them draw to sea th* oar- wafted ships again." 
 
 XXII. 
 
 She said. Nor did Athene her not heed, 
 But high Olympus' tops went rushing down, 
 And to th' Achaeans' swift ships came with speed. 
 Odysseus there she found, the paragon 
 Of Zeus in counsel, standing there alone. 
 Nor he black ship with banks well-furnished 
 Had touch'd, such grief his heart and spirit own. 
 Blue-eyed Athene near him stood, and said : — 
 Laertes' noble son, thou craft-accomplished. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Is't thus that home to country dear ye flee ^^ 
 " T' your many-benched ships in-tumbling so, 
 " Your boast to Priam thus abandon ye? 
 " And leave the Trojans Argive Helen too, 
 " For whom Achaeans lie full many low, 
 " Far from their land belov'd in Troas slain? 
 " Now 'mong th' Achasan folk slack not, but go, 
 " And with thy gentle words each man restrain, 
 *' Nor their oar-wafted ships let draw to sea again." 
 
BOOK II. 21—26. 33 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 She said, and he the goddess' voice knew straight, 
 And off he ran, and cast his cloak away, 
 Which Ithac herald, that did on him wait, 
 Eury bates, pick'd up. He on his way 
 Atrides met ; receiv'd that mark of sway 
 His father's sceptre aye unscath'd, and went 
 With this to th' Achive ships without delay. 
 If 'twere a king or man of mark he hent. 
 Him thus accost he would, with gentle words detent : 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Friend, like a churl not fits thee tremble so, 
 " But shouldst, composed thyself, the people still. 
 " Not yet Atrides' aim dost clearly know. 
 " He tries us now, but soon chastise he will 
 " Th' Acha3ans' sons. In council what reveaP^ 
 " He might we heard not all. 'Ware lest he bring 
 " If anger'd on th' Achseans' sons some ill. 
 " For great's the anger of a Zeus-nurs'd king. 
 " Honor's from Zeus, and loves him Zeus deep-counselling. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 If some mean man he met with bawling out, 
 He'd smite with sceptre, and rebuke the wight. 
 " Thou fellow, peace ! thy betters' bidding note, 
 " Lazy poltroon ! that count'st for nought in fight 
 " Or counsel. Govern here all do not quite 
 " Of us AchaBans. 'Tis no seemly thing 
 " Many chief 'd rule. One chief, one king, is right, 
 " To whom the son of Kronos crafty king 
 Gave sceptre eke, and laws, to guide his governing." 
 
 D 
 
34 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 With princely power the host so marshaird he. 
 From ships and tents they to th' assembly pour 
 With noise. As when the much resounding sea 
 In surges roars along the wide-stretch'd shore, 
 And vasty deep far echoeth the roar. 
 Now seated them, and kept their seats the rest, 
 Save Thersites, that babbler, aiming more 
 Disturbance. Stor'd with words and scurril jest, 
 At kings he carped ever with unseemly zest, 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Not fitting grave debate, but still his aim 
 Whate'er he judg'd would raise a laugh among 
 The Argives. Basest man to Troy that came. 
 Squinting, of one foot lame, his shoulders slung 
 Bunch'd on his chest, while from between them sprung 
 His peaked head, with scant hair sprinkled thin. 
 T' Achilles chief, and to Odysseus clung 
 His hate. His wont was railing at those men. 
 But shrieking shrill assail'd he Agamemnon then. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 For him incens'd at sore and angered 
 In mind th' Acha3ans were. Out-bawl'd he so, 
 And railing thus at Agamemnon said : — 
 " Atrides, what's amiss? What long'st for now? 
 " Thy tents be stuff'd with brass, choice women too 
 " Are many there, which when we'd ta'en a town 
 " Thee first we gave. For gold still hank'rest thou ? 
 " Which Trojan bringeth, ransom for his son, 
 " Whom I or some Acha3an else have dragg'd off bound. 
 
BOOK II. 27—32. 35 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Or some fresh woman wouldst thou for thy lust, 
 
 " Whom singling out thyself thou mayst detain? 
 
 " For ill behoves a chief on woes to thrust 
 
 " Th' Achaeans' sons. sluggards, shameful then, 
 
 " Achaean women that ye are, not men ! 
 
 " Let 's homeward with our ships, and leave him now 
 
 " In Troy digest his spoils. He'll find, I ween, 
 
 " If we avail for his defence or no. 
 
 Who one that tops him far Achilles slighted so. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " His prize he took by force, and holds it too. 
 
 " Lack gall Achilles must, and dullard be, 
 
 "• Atrides, else thy last of outrage now 
 
 " Thou hadst atchiev'd." The people's shepherd he 
 
 Did thus revile, when near him suddenly 
 
 Odysseus godlike stood, him eyed askance. 
 
 And stern rebuk'd : — "' Babbler ill-judg'd, though high 
 
 " In talk thou mouth it, Ther sites, at once 
 
 Desist, and sole contending ^^ with the kings renounce. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " More vile than thou I think is mortal none, 
 " Of all to Troy that with Atrides came. 
 " Then railing prate not of the kings, nor on 
 ^' Our going back so harp ; for of the same 
 " To clearly judge as yet we cannot frame 
 " If our return for good or ill will be. 
 " For this dost thou thy set reproaches aim 
 " At people-shepherd Atreus' son, that we 
 " Danaian heroes gifts abundant gave him free ? 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Sharp-tongued thou art, but this to thee I say, 
 " And be perform'd it shall. If raving thee 
 " I catch again as now, his head not stay 
 " Upon Odysseus' shoulders then, nor he 
 " Sire of Telemachus more called be 
 " If thee I seize not, and thy clothes, that been 
 " Right welcome to thee, strip off totally, 
 " Both cloak and coat, and what thy secrets screen, 
 " And scourg'd hence, send thee howling to the ships again." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 He said, and with the sceptre smote his back 
 And shoulders. Writh'd he while the tears fell fast, 
 And rose a blood-swell'd tumour on his back 
 The sceptre golden 'neath. He sits aghast. 
 Trembles, and smarts, and helpless looks he cast, 
 And wip'd his tears. They, fuming though they are, 
 Laugh at him pleasantly. And such words pass'd 
 From one t'his neighbour : — " Sure hath wrought things 
 rare 
 " Odysseus leading council, or preparing war. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " But 'mong the Argives now best deed of all 
 " This scoffing snarler from his jests restrain ; 
 " Nor will his courage prick him on to brawl 
 *' With words opprobrious at the kings again." 
 So spake the throng. And that town-queller then 
 Odysseus rose, with sceptre in his hand. 
 And at his side Athene, blue-eyed queen, 
 In herald's form bade silence and attend. 
 That first and last might hear, and counsel then perpend. 
 
BOOK II. 33—88. 37 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 With prudence he harangu'd, and 'mong them spake : - 
 
 " Atrides, thee, king, th' Achasans would 
 
 " The most disgrac'd of part- voice ^ mortals make. 
 
 " Nor aught of all their promising make good, 
 
 " Which they from Argos marching said they would ; 
 
 " That thou shouldst back return, but first o'erthrow 
 
 " The well-wall'd Ilium. Quite in other mood, 
 
 " Like children young, and widow' d women now 
 
 To one another whining, home they long to go. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " And 'tis a toil, to make the weary sigh 
 " And wish return. For one that is away 
 " From wife but one poor month abiding nigh 
 " His many-bank'd bark chafeth at the stay, 
 " When wintry storms and troubled seas delay. 
 " To us here biding doth the ninth year turn. 
 " Th' Achaeans therefore I not blame if they 
 " By curved vessels chafe at such sojourn. 
 •* Yet base to stay so long, and empty then return. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Then bear ye up, my friends, awhile wait yet 
 " To see or not if Calchas augur'd true. 
 " For well we know, and ye all witnessed it, 
 " (Whom winged fates of death not with them drew 
 '^ As yesterday or earlier as they flew) 
 " What time our ships at Aulis gather'd were, 
 " To Priam and the Trojans bearing woe. 
 " Around a fountain standing did we there 
 " On altars holy to th' immortal gods prepare 
 
 D 3 
 
38 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " Full hecatombs complete beneath the tree, 
 " A platane fair, whence lustrous water went 
 " Clear running. There a mighty sign we see, 
 " A serpent dread, with back all blood-besprent, 
 " Which to the light Olympius' self had sent. 
 " From 'neath the altar gliding swift he slid 
 " Unto the platane. There in nest y-pent 
 " Eight tender things, a sparrow's younglings, did, 
 " Cow'ring beneath the leaves, on topmost bough lie hid, 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Nine with her young the dam made up the tale. 
 " There piteous shrieking these devoured he doAvn. 
 ^ " The mother round and round doth fly, and wail 
 " Her younglings dear. He darting swift anon 
 '' Did catch her by the wing, as she did moan. 
 " When ate the dam and young, the god that sent 
 " Transfix'd him there a wonder ; for to stone 
 " Turn'd him craft Kronos' son. And such portent 
 " There stood we gazing at, in blank astonishment. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " To the gods' hecatombs when thus had come 
 
 " These wonders dread, harangu'd us Calchas straight, 
 
 " The omen thus expounding ; — '- Why grown dumb, 
 
 " Achasans comely-hair'd ? This sign of fate 
 
 " Hath here deep counsell'd Zeus vouchsaf 'd us late, 
 
 " And late fulfiU'd, ne'er die shall its renown. 
 
 " As this the younglings with the dam hath^ate, 
 
 " So we for years as many fighting yon 
 
 Shall be, and in the tenth we take the wide-street town.' 
 
BOOK II. 39—44. 39 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " 'Twas thus he spake. And now fulfilling these 
 " All be. Then here well- shod Achasans all 
 " Abide till Priam's city huge we seize." 
 He ceas'd. With loud acclaim the Argives call, 
 And from the ships all dread the echoes fall, 
 As loud th' Achaeans answer with applause 
 Divine Odysseus' speech. Then spake withal 
 Gerenian Nestor : — " Gods ! how much like boys 
 " Harangue ye, whom no thought of war at all employs ! 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " Where be our solemn compacts ? Whither gone 
 " Our oaths ? Did those our counsels there in fire, 
 " Our manly schemes, and our libations done, 
 "Our right hands' trusted pledge, did all expire ? 
 " For wrangling vain with words what we require 
 " None remedy we find, though long our stay. 
 " Atrides still be thou as erst, nor tire 
 " Of purpose, but in fierce fights th' Argives sway, 
 " And sulk let those, the one or two estrange them may 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " From the Achaeans' counsels, wishing we 
 
 " (Vain be their aim) should back to Argos go, 
 
 '* Ere known if false or true the promise be 
 
 '' Of aBgis-holding Zeus. But this I know, 
 
 '' Mighty Kronion did approve it so 
 
 " The self same day the Argives did ascend 
 
 " The nimbly-pacing vessels, bearing woe 
 
 " And slaughter to the Trojans. He did send 
 
 His lightning at our right, and omens fair portend. 
 
 D 4 
 
40 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Wherefore be homewards none in haste to go, 
 
 " Until that each a Trojan's wife shall bed, 
 
 " And Helen's rape avenge, and sequent woe. 
 
 " Or is there one for home so purposed ? 
 
 " Let him his ship with banks well-furnished 
 
 " But touch, that death and fate first meet he may. 
 
 "• Now ponder well thyself, King, and heed 
 
 " Another too. For what so I shall say 
 
 Should not, methinks, be lightly held, nor cast away. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " Into their tribes and kindreds now divide, 
 
 " Agamemnon, thou the men that so 
 
 *' Tribe succour tribe, and kindred kindred aid. 
 
 " If this be done, and thee th' Achaeans too 
 
 " Obey, then wilt thou see of chieftains who, 
 
 " Or of the folk does well, or bears him ill. 
 
 " For fight they for themselves, and thou wilt know 
 
 " If Troy's non-capture be the gods' high will. 
 
 Or men's remissness, and in war their want of skill." 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Him ruler Agamemnon answ'ring said : • — 
 
 " In council. Sire, o'er Achives dost prevail. 
 
 " Sire Zeus, Athen^, Phoebus ! would I had 
 
 " Ten such Achaean counsellors. Not fail 
 
 '' Would then King Priam's town its top soon vail, 
 
 *' Ta'en 'neath our hands and levell'd with the dust. 
 
 " But a3gis-bearing Zeus did woes entail 
 
 " On me when into bootless strife he thrust. 
 
 I and Achilles wrangled 'bout a girl. I first 
 
BOOK II. 45 — 50. 41 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Wrong'd him. But if in council e'er at one 
 " Again we be. Nought longer shall one whit 
 '^ From Trojans dire disaster then postpone. 
 " Now go ye eat, that we to battle get. 
 " Well sharpen each his spear, his shield well set, 
 '' Well too let each his swift-foot horses feed, 
 " And well his car on this side, and on that, 
 " Each look- to, and intent on war take heed ; 
 " For in fierce fight all day we strive till night succeed. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 ** Pause intervene shall none, though ne'er so small, 
 " If night come not to part men's martial fire. 
 " Sweat shall about the breast of each withal 
 " The thong of his man-shelt'ring shield, and tire 
 ^' Upon the grasped spear his hand. Perspire 
 " Shall each one's steed, that glist'ring chariot draws. 
 *' Whom so I find would to the ships retire 
 " And skulk the fight, he shall not 'scape the jaws 
 " Of dogs and birds." He spake. Th' Achaeans shout 
 applause, 
 
 As surge on gome steep coast the South doth drive 
 'Gainst jutting rock, that may no respite know 
 For ceaseless waves that chafing will not leave 
 From all the winds, now here, now there that blow. 
 Uprising rush and to their ships they go 
 Dispers'd. And at their tents they cause anon 
 The smoke to rise, refection taking so. 
 And each his sev'ral god, with due rites done, 
 Invok'd to grant him death and woes of war to shun. 
 
42 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 An ox now Agamemnon, king of men, 
 Fat, five years old, to Zeus the mighty slew ; 
 And of th' Achaeans call'd the chiefest then. 
 First Nestor and Idomeneus, the two 
 Ajaces next, and Tydeus' son. Sixth too 
 Odysseus who for rede with Zeus might vie. 
 Unhid came Menelaus brave, who knew 
 His brother's mind, what anxious thoughts did ply. 
 They stood around the ox, and held the cakes on high. 
 
 LII. 
 
 And thus pray'd Agamemnon, ruling one : — 
 " All glorious mighty Zeus, that cloud -girt dost 
 " In aether dwell, grant the sun not down, 
 " Nor darkness come until that I have thrust 
 " Great Priam's palace headlong burnt to th' dust, 
 *' And have destroy'd with hostile fire his gate, 
 " Through Hector's mailed coat with spear have burst, 
 '' Pierc'd on his breast, while his familiar set 
 " About him many falling slain the dust shall eat." 
 
 LIII. 
 
 He said ; but not consented Kronos' son. 
 The holy things accepted, but did lay 
 Upon him toil increas'd. Their prayer now done 
 Forth the salt barley cakes they fling. Then slay 
 The beast, his head drawn back. The carcase flay, 
 Cut out the thighs, and then in fat twofold 
 Enwrap, and morsels raw upon them lay. 
 And these with leafless splints they burn so roll'd, 
 And hung on hooks the entrails to the fire they hold. 
 
BOOK II. 51 — 56. 43 
 
 LIV. 
 
 And after they had throughly burnt the thighs, 
 The entrails tasted they, and sliced small 
 The other things, and hung on hooks, in guise 
 Artistic roasted them, and drew back all. 
 And when from labour they had ceas'd withal, 
 And banquet had prepar'd, they banqueted, 
 Nor to the banquet good lack'd will at all. 
 Desire for meat and drink when banished. 
 Then speech to them Gerenian horseman Nestor led : — 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Atrides most renown'd, thou king of men, 
 " Agamemnon, time no more let's waste 
 " Here lying, nor for long defer we then 
 " The work that in our hands the gods have plac'd. 
 " Come let the brass-clad Achives' heralds haste, 
 " And bid by th' ships the people gathering make, 
 " That we in company so having pac'd 
 " Through th' broad Achaean host our circuit take. 
 And them to Ares* conflict rouse, their ardor wake." 
 
 LVI. 
 
 He said. Nor did the king of men refuse. 
 But bade to war the clear- voic'd heralds call 
 Th' Achaeans of the comely locks profuse. 
 They call'd, and quickly these assembled all. 
 The Zeus-fed kings round Atreus' son quick fall 
 To ranging them : Athene these among. 
 And on her arm the a3gis huge withal 
 Unaging, costly, and immortal swung, 
 From which of gold entire a hundred fringes hung. 
 
44 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Well-twisted all, each worth a hecatomb. 
 With this bright beams forth flashing swift she goes 
 Through folk Achaean urging on to come, 
 And doth in ev'ry bosom strength arouse 
 To war and battle on without repose. 
 To them on th' instant war than homewards wending 
 In ships unto their lov'd land sweeter grows. 
 As some chance fire a forest huge unending 
 On mountain-summits burns, the brightness far outsen ding. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 So as they went the gleam of wondrous brass 
 Through air on all sides flashing reach'd the sky. 
 And as of winged birds tribes countless pass, 
 Of geese, or cranes, or long-neck'd swans that by* 
 Cayster's streams in Asian meadow fly 
 Here, thc^e on joyous wings ; the mead with din 
 Resounds, as 'fore each other settling they 
 With clang alight. From ships and tents amain 
 So pour'd their many tribes upon Scamander's plain. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 With tramp of steeds and men earth dire did ring, 
 And in Scamander's flow'ry plain they stood 
 In myriads like the leaves and flowers in spring. 
 As thronging flies in swarms unnumber'd spread, 
 And hov'ring round infest the herdsman's shed 
 In spring, when milk doth wet the pail. So they 
 Th' Achaeans of the comely tresses did 
 So num'rous 'gainst the Trojans stand that day 
 Upon the plain all eager, and intent to slay. 
 
BOOK II. 57 — 62. 45 
 
 LX. 
 
 As goat-herds do broad flocks of goats with ease 
 Asunder part, when in one flock y-blent, 
 For battle so their chieftains sever these. 
 And 'mong them ruler Agamemnon went 
 With eyes and head like Zeus, on thunder bent ; 
 His waist like Ares, with Poseidon's chest. 
 And as some bull through gather'd herd's extent 
 Stands chief; Atrides so mid all the rest 
 Of heroes many Zeus that day made shine the best. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Now tell me, in Olympian homes that dwell. 
 Ye Muses (goddesses in sooth ye are, 
 And present too, and know of all things well, 
 While nought we know, but rumour only hear) 
 Who the Danaian chiefs and leaders were. 
 The throng I might not tell nor name, although 
 Ten tongues, ten mouths, unbroken voice my share, 
 And heart of brass, unless Zeus' daughters so, 
 Olympiad Muses, told who did to Ilium go. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 The ships' chiefs yet I'll tell and vessels- all. 
 The chieftains who Boeotians ruled o'er 
 Were Peneleus and Leitus withal, 
 Arcesilaus and Prothoenor, 
 And Clonius eke. Who Hyrie and shore 
 Of Aulis' rocky land do cultivate. 
 And Schagnus, Scholus, Eteon's mountains store, 
 Thespia, Graea, Mycalessus set 
 In broad domain, and who round Harma fix their seat. 
 
46 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Ilesius who, and round Erythrae dweJl, 
 Who Eleon, Hyle hold, and Peteon, 
 Ocalea too, and Medeon builded well, 
 Copse, Eutresis, Thisbe of renown 
 For many doves : who Coronea own 
 And Haliartus' grassy land ; and those 
 Plat£ea, Glissa hold, and whom the town 
 Well-builded Hypothebse's walls enclose ; 
 Onchestus eke, where sacred grove Poseidon's grows. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And those who grape-abounding Arne haunt. 
 And who Midea, Nissa the divine. 
 And far Anthedon. Fifty ships there went. 
 And each a hundred and a score contain 
 Boeotian warriors strong. And those again 
 That in Aspledon and Orchomenus 
 Minyan dwell. O'er them those heroes reign 
 Ascalaphus and brave lalmenus, 
 Those Ares' sons whom bare Astyoche in Actor's house 
 
 LXV. 
 
 To Ares strong when bashful maid ascend 
 The upper room she did : for all unknown 
 He with her lay. Of these ships thirty wend. 
 But the Pliocaeans sooth led Schedius on. 
 And eke Epistrophus, from Naubol's son 
 Iphitus high soul'd sprung. And some there be 
 Haunt Cyparissus, Pytho land of stone, 
 Crissa divine. Of Daulis Panope 
 Anemorea, and Hyampolis some be. 
 
BOOK II. 63—68. 47 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 ¥ 
 
 Some dwelt divine Cephissus^ river nigh, 
 Some held Lilaea by Cephissus' spring. 
 Black ships on these attendant forty ply. 
 The ranks Phocaean these in order bring, 
 On the Boeotian's left them harnessing. 
 Oilaean Ajax swift the Locrians led, 
 The Less, not Telamonian equalling, 
 Far less, and short, with linen corslet clad^^, 
 But at the spear Hellens and Achives all out-did. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 And these in Gynus and in Opus wojie, 
 And Calliarus and Bessa, Scarphe too, 
 And dwell in sweet Angela's pleasant town, 
 And Tarphe, Thronium eke, and round where flow 
 Boagrius' streams. With him ships forty go, 
 Locrians from past Euboea's holy ground. 
 Euboea's dwellers fierce Abantes who 
 Chalcis, Eretria, and where grapes abound 
 In Histisea, and Cerinthus' sea-wash'd strond. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Dion's steep city, and Caristus hold, 
 And dwell in Styra, these Elphenor led. 
 That Ares' branch Chalcodon's son, and bold 
 Chief of th' Abantes. Him then followed 
 Th' Abantes swift, their locks behind their head, 
 Warriors that yearn with out-stretch'd ashen spears 
 To pierce foes' cuirass on the bosom spread. 
 To him a fleet of forty ships adheres. 
 But those that dwell where Athens' well-built town appears. 
 
48 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Erectheus' state, he of the noble heart, 
 Zeus' daughter him Athene nurs'd of yore, 
 And, born of earth the foodful, him apart 
 To Athens to her own rich temple bore. 
 There bulls and lambs up off'ring her implore 
 The youths Athenian each revolving year. 
 These Peteon's son Menestheus ruled o'er. 
 Like whom in sooth of earth-born mortals ne'er 
 Man was, to marshall steeds, and shielded men's career. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Nestor alone with him might vie, for he 
 Was older. Fifty sable ships he led. 
 With vessels twelve came Ajax over sea 
 From Salamis. And where be stationed 
 The bands Athenian his he marshalled. 
 Who Argos hold, and Tiryns walled well. 
 And in Hermione bay-bosomed 
 Fair cities, and in Asine as well, 
 In Traezen, Eion, vine-clad Epidaurus dwell ; 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 And who iEgina eke, and Mases hold, 
 Achaean youths now marshalling led on 
 Tydides Diomed in onset bold, 
 And Sthenelus the all-beloved son 
 Of Capaneus renown'd. And, godlike one, 
 Euryalus them third accompanied, 
 Sovran Mecisteus' child Talaion's son. 
 But o'er them all the valiant Diomed 
 Supreme. And eighty sable ships them followed. 
 
BOOK II. 69—74. 49 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Who held Mycenae's town constructed well, 
 Corinth the rich, Cleonae builded fair ; 
 And those that in Orneia's city dwell, 
 And Arethyria sweet, and Sicyon where 
 Adrastus reign'd at first ; and dwellers there 
 In Hyperisia, Gonoessa steep. 
 And hold Pellene, and round ^gium are 
 Through all the coast ; and who their dwellings keep 
 Round ample Helice. Ships hundred o'er the deep 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Of these Atrides Agamemnon led. 
 Folk mightiest and most attend his hest. 
 Himself in dazzling brass he harnessed 
 Exulting so to shine beyond the rest. 
 For folk far most he led, himself the best. 
 Who 'f hollow whaly Lacedaemon be, 
 Phare and Sparta, Messa where doves nest 
 Abundant, Brysia, sweetest Augias, 
 Amycla too, and Helos' city by the sea. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 And Laas held, and dwelt round CEtylon ; 
 Of these full sixty ships his brother led, 
 Menelaus in onset bold. They don 
 Apart their harness. He among them sped 
 In courage confident, to battle bade 
 On urging them. On Helen th' outrage done 
 And sorrows thence t' avenge at heart he had. 
 In Pylos who, and sweet Arene wone 
 Thryum Alphasus' ford, and ^py's well-built town ; 
 
 E 
 
50 THE ILIAD. 
 
 I.XXV. 
 
 In Cypariss, and Amphigenia set, 
 And Pteleum, Helos too and Dorium, 
 Where Muses erst Thamyris Thracian met 
 And quench'd his song, as he was journeying from 
 King Eurytus th' CEchalian's city home. 
 His boast that though the Muses sang would he 
 Those daughters of Zeus segis-arm'd overcome. 
 They anger'd smote him blind, and took away 
 His song divine, and made forget on harp to play. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Led these Gerenian horseman Nestor bold, 
 And ninety hollow ships in order right 
 Companion'd him. Arcadia those that hold 
 Beneath Cyllene's lofty mountain-height, 
 By tomb of ^pytus where warriors fight 
 Close-hand ; and those in Pheneus eke that be, 
 Orchomenus, the grazing flocks' delight. 
 And Ehipa, Stratia, wind-vex'd Enispe, 
 And in Tegaea dwell, and pleasant Mantine', 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Stymphalus hold, and in Parrhasia dwell, 
 Of these did sixty ships Ancaeus' son 
 King Agapenor lead, and knowing well 
 Of war Arcadian men in every one 
 A many went. For them did Atreus' son 
 The king of men himself give ships that be 
 With row-banks furnish'd well ; and they thereon 
 Did cross the wine-fac'd deep. For soothly they 
 Did nought concern them touching labours of the sea. 
 
BOOK II. 75—80. 51 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 But in Buprasium those that dwellers be, 
 And Elis the divine ; and those within 
 Hyrmina, utmost Myrsinus, Petre, 
 Olenia, and Alesium eke shut-in ; 
 Of these were chieftains four, and swift ships ten 
 Companion'd each, and many did thereon 
 Epeans mount. Of some the leaders been 
 Amphimachus and Thalpius, one the son 
 Of Cteatus, of Eurytus Actorion one. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Some strong Diores Amaryncide led. 
 Polyxenus a fourth part, godlike son 
 Of Augeas' child Agasthenes, did head. 
 Who in Dylachium, and th' Echinee wone, 
 The holy isles that Elis face beyond 
 The sea ; to Meges Ares' equal bend 
 Do these, the Zeus-lov'd horseman Phyleus' son. 
 Phyleus who to Dylachium erst did wend 
 Wroth with his sire. Him forty sable ships attend. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 The lofty minded Cephallenians bold 
 Odysseus led. The warriors that abide 
 In Ithaca, and Neritus who hold, 
 The mount with rustling leaves on every side, 
 And Crocy lea's island fair divide, 
 Kough ^gilips, Zacynthus, Samos had, 
 Epirus, and what's facing, occupied, 
 Odysseus these, like Zeus in counsel ^^, led. 
 With him a dozen ships did follow painted red. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Th' ^tolians Thoas led, Andra^inon's son, 
 Who Pleuron, Olenus, Pylene hold 
 Sea-neighb'ring Cbalcis, rocky Calydon. 
 For dead the sons of CEneus lofty soul'd • 
 Himself too gone, and of the locks of gold 
 The hero Meleager also dead : 
 So this one rul'd supreme th' iEtolians bold ; 
 And forty sable ships him followed. 
 The Cretans there Idomeneus the spear-skill'd led. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Who Cnossus held and Gortyn walled well, 
 Lystus, Miletus, white Lycastus' town ; 
 In Phaestus, Rhytium, cities throng'd, do dwell, 
 And else in hundred-citied Greta wone. 
 These spear-renown'd Idomeneus led on. 
 And Merion match for Ares homicide. 
 And eighty ships they had. That valiant one 
 Tlepolemus, gigantic Heraclide, 
 From Rhodes nine ships y-led of Rhodians men of pride, 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Who Rhodes held triple-parted, Lindus' town. 
 And lalyss, Camirus white — o'er these 
 Held rule Tlepolemus of spear- renown. 
 Whom bare Astyoche to Hercules, 
 Who from Ephyra river Selleis 
 Led captive her, what time he overthrew 
 Store towns of youths, from Zeus drew pedigrees. 
 When in the fair compacted palace grew 
 Tlepolemus to man's estate he straightway slew 
 
BOOK II. 81—86. 53 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 His sire's lov'd uncle, old already he, 
 Licymnius Ares' branch. Then ships in haste 
 He built, and much folk gath'ring fled o'er sea, 
 For with their vengeance threaten'd him the rest 
 Alcides' sons, and grandsons. He distrest 
 To Rhodes came wand'ring, sufF'ring sorrows sore. 
 In triple tribes they dwelt, belov'd and blest 
 Of Zeus, who gods and men alike rules o'er. 
 And on them did Kronioii wealth unending pour. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Nireus ^^ from Syma brought three ships with him, 
 Nireus king Charops' and Aglaia's son, 
 Nireus most beauteous man to Troy that came 
 Of Danai next Peleus' faultless son ; 
 But feeble he and folk but few led on. 
 Who in Nisyrus, Crapathus abide 
 In Casus, Cos, Eurypalus' fair town, 
 Calydnae isles ; these did Phidippus guide, 
 A^d Antiphus the sons of Thessalus the Heraclide. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 And thirty hollow ships with these there yode. 
 But those that in Pelasgic Argos were, 
 In Alus, Alope, Trachin abode 
 Phthia, and Hellas fam'd for women fair. 
 And Myrmidons, Hellens, Achaeans there 
 Yclep'd ; these then Achilles godlike sway'd, 
 'Neath whose command in fifty ships they fare. 
 But rough- voic'd war no longer now they heed ; 
 For none there is that might their ranks to battles lead. 
 
 E 3 
 
54 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 For wroth divine swift-foot Achilles lay, 
 Sore chafing for Briseis fair-hair 'd one, 
 Whom from Lyrnessus ta'en he had away, 
 When after many toils he'd overthrown 
 Lyrnessus and the walls of Theba3's town. 
 And Mynes, and Epistrophus, those twain 
 The spear-skill'd offspring of Selepius' son, 
 Of king Evenus, smote. Thus he amain 
 There grieving lay ^'^, that would anon uprise again. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 Phylace, flow'ry Pyrrhasus who own, 
 Demeter's grove, Iton, mother of sheep, 
 Antron by sea, and grassy Pteleon, 
 Of these Protesilaus ^^ guidance keep 
 Did while alive. But him now black earth deep 
 Possess'd. Whose wife in Phylace is left 
 In half-built house to tear her cheeks, and weep. 
 For him a Dardan man of life bereft. 
 From ship far first of all Achaeans leaping swift. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Nor leaderless though miss'd their chieftain these. 
 Array 'd them Ares' branch Podarces, seed 
 Of Phylacides flock-rich Iphicles. 
 Own brother eke of him of derring-deed 
 Protesilaus, who did him precede 
 In birth. Yea, elder and more brave y-wis 
 Protesilaus hero. Them to lead 
 To battle forth a chief not wanting is. 
 Yet him that's gone, the valiant one, his people miss. 
 
BOOK II. 87—92. 55 
 
 xc. 
 
 He'd forty ships. But who in Pherse dwell 
 The lake BaBbeis near, and Bseb^'s town, 
 Glaphyra, laolcus builded well, 
 These led in ships elev'n Admetus' son 
 Eumelus, whom Alcestis, fairest one 
 Of Pelias' daughters loveliest in form, 
 Did to Admetus bear. But those that wone 
 In fair Methone, in Thaumacia home, 
 From Melibasa who, and rough Olizon come, 
 
 xci. 
 
 These Philoctetes, skilful archer, led 
 In seven ships. And oarsmen fifty, who 
 Could battle it with bow, in each there sped. 
 But he with torments sore afflicted now 
 In Lemnos' island lay ; where in his woe 
 Th' Achseans' sons had left him languishing 
 With evil snake's foul wound. There grieving so 
 He lay. But at their ships remembrance spring 
 In th' Argives will anon of Philoctetes king. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 Not leaderless in sooth were they although 
 They miss'd their chief. Them Medon marshall'd there, 
 Oileus' bastard son whom Khena to 
 The town-destroying one O'ileus bare. 
 From Tricca who, and steep Ithome were, 
 And town of Eurytus th' (Echalian had, 
 These ^sculapius' sons, physicians fair, 
 Hight Podalirius and Machaon led. 
 And thirty hollow ships with these in file there sped. 
 
 E 4 
 
56 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Orraenius and Hyperia's spring who had, 
 Asterius who, and Titan's summits white, 
 Eurypylus Ev^emon's bright son led. 
 On whom did forty sable vessels wait. 
 But who Argissa, Gyrton cultivate, 
 Ortha, Elon, white Oloosson's town, 
 
 • O'er these rul'd Polypsetes, firm in fight, 
 Of Zeus-begot Pirithous the son. 
 
 Him to Pirithous did she of high renown. 
 
 xciv. 
 
 Hippodamia bear the day that he 
 Aveng'd him of the shaggy Pheras dire. 
 And drove from Pelion out, and made them flee 
 To th' Ethices. Not sole chief. With him there 
 Leon tins went, that Ares' branch whose sire 
 Was Ceneus' son, Coronus lofty-soul'd. 
 With these then forty sable ships there were. 
 From Cyphus twenty-two led Guneus bold. 
 Who th' Enienes and Persebi brave controll'd. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 These they whose homes round bleak Dodona were 
 Eound Titaresius sweet their labours plied. 
 That to Peneus sends his waters fair, 
 But with Peneus' silver-eddied tide 
 Not mingles, but a-top as oil doth glide. 
 For he's a branch from oath-dread Styx' dire flood. 
 Now Prothous Tenthredon's son did guide 
 The Magnets, who Peneus round abode 
 And leafy Pelion. 'Neath swift Prothous they yode. 
 
BOOK II. 93—98. 57 
 
 xcvi. 
 
 With him did forty sable vessels cruise. 
 These the Danaians^ chiefs and leaders were. 
 And who was best of these, tell me Muse, 
 Of men and steeds th' Atrides foUow'd there. 
 The steeds of Pheres' son were best by far. 
 Eumelus drave them, swift as birds they sped, 
 In level line their backs, like age, like hair, 
 And in Pieria them Apollo bred. 
 And both were mares, and bearing battle's terror dread. 
 
 xcvii. 
 
 Of men far first was Ajax Telamon 
 While yet Achilles rag'd : for stronger he 
 By far, and so the steeds of Peleus' son. 
 But in the curved ships, that traverse sea. 
 He now 'gainst Agamemnon raging lay. 
 Folk-shepherd Atreus' son. And on the strand 
 His folk with quoits, and darts, and archery 
 Disport ; while near the cars the steeds at hand. 
 The lotus, and the marsh-fed parsley browsing, stand. 
 
 xcviii. 
 
 But screen'd in tents the chieftains' chariots lay, 
 While these their Ares-lov'd commander miss, 
 And listless rove the camp, nor combat they. 
 Now moves the host as when depastur'd is 
 Of fire the ground. And earth beneath them sighs 
 As under lightning-loving Zeus, when he 
 In wrath his lightnings round Typhaeus plies. 
 And scourgeth there the ground in Arimi, 
 Where on his couch doth, as they tell, Typh£eus lie. 
 
58 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 So 'neath their trampling feet the earth did groan. 
 And they across the plain full swiftly sped. 
 But to the Trojans wind-foot Iris down 
 Came heralding from Zeus with tidings sad. 
 And in full talk at Priam's gates they had 
 Assembling met together young and old. 
 Nigh standing spake swift Iris likened 
 In voice to Priam's son Polites bold, 
 Who, Trojan scout, to swift feet trusting, watch did hold ; 
 
 c. 
 
 And on old ^syetes' tomb did take 
 His stand th' Acha3ans stirring to espy. 
 To him then lik'ned swift-foot Iris spake : — 
 " Old man, unending words delight thee aye 
 " As erst in peace, but now is kindled nigh 
 " Inevitable war. For fights of men 
 " I've many mix'd in, but saw never I ^^ 
 " Such and so great a throng, that, countless e'en 
 As leaves or sand, to fight our city, scour the plain, 
 
 CI. 
 
 " Thus, Hector, now I counsel thee to do. 
 " Many allies doth Priam's town contain, 
 " Far-scatter'd men, of tongues that differ too. 
 " Let each lead those o'er whom himself doth reiorn, 
 " And marshal those that with him denizen." 
 She said. The goddess' voice great Hector knew, 
 And broke the meeting up. To arms they ran. 
 The gates all open'd wide, forth rushing flew. 
 Both horse and foot, the folk, and huge the tumult grew. 
 
BOOK II. 99—104. 59 
 
 CII. 
 
 A mound before the city rises tall 
 Upon the plain apart, of access free. 
 And this in sooth men Batiea call, 
 But gods the tomb of fair Myrinna, she 
 The active bounding one. And there then they 
 The Trojans, and confederates sever'd were. 
 The Trojans Hector, Priam's offspring, he. 
 Of glancing helmet, led. And with him there 
 Folk far the most and bravest arm'd them, skill'd with 
 spear. 
 
 cm. 
 
 The Dardans did Anchises' vig'rous son, 
 iEneas lead, whom Aphrodite bare 
 Anchises erst, when bed with mortal one 
 A goddess deign'd on knolls of Ida fair. 
 Nor he sole chief. Antenor's two sons were, 
 Antilochus and Acamas, with him. 
 In all fight skill'd. But in Zeleia there 
 At Ida's base who dwell, and rich the stream 
 Of dark ^sepus drink, and Trojans call we them : 
 
 CIV. 
 
 These Pandarus did lead, Lycaon's son. 
 To whom his bow himself Apollo gave. 
 Who Adrasteia, and ApaBSUs' town. 
 And Pitysea, and Tereia have. 
 That mountain steep : these led Adrastus brave, 
 And Amphius eke, in linen corselet clad, 
 Percosian Merops' sons ; he, skill'd above 
 All other men in prophecies, forbad 
 His sons go forth to war, the man- destroying, sad. 
 
60 THE ILIAD. 
 
 CV. 
 
 They heark'ned not, for black death's fates impel. 
 Who in Percote, and in Practium wone, 
 In Sestos who, and in Abydos dwell, 
 And fair Arisba, 'neath the princely one 
 Asius Hyrtacides now marched on ; 
 Hyrtacides, wliom coursers huge and fair 
 Brought from Selleis, and Arisba's town. 
 Hippothous Pelasgic spearmen there 
 Did lead, whose dwellings in Larissa fertile were. 
 
 cvi. 
 
 These then Hippothous y-led, and he 
 Pylaeus, Ares' branch. Of Lethus they, 
 Pelasgic Teutamide, the offspring be. 
 The Thracians Acamas, and Peiros sway, 
 To whom swift Hellespont doth bar the way. 
 But the Ciconians sooth Euphemus so. 
 Great Ceades Troezenus' son obey. 
 Pyraechmes Poeons led of curved bow 
 From far-off Amydon, where Axius broad doth flow. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Axius whose fairest stream spreads o^er the ground. 
 The Paphlagons stout-heart Pylsemen led 
 From th' Eneti, where wild the mules are found. 
 These held Cytorus, Sesamus, and glad 
 Bright dwellings round Parthenius' river had, 
 Cromna, iEgialus, high Erythine. 
 But Hodius and Epistrophus did head 
 The Halizonians come from far, where men 
 At Alyba's fair city dig the silver mine. 
 
BOOK II. 105—110. 61 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 The My si Chromis led, and Ennomus 
 The augur, that to 'scape dark death not knew 
 With all his auguries, but smitten was 
 By great iEacides i' th' stream, where slew 
 The swift-foot hero other Trojans too. 
 The Phrygians Phorcys and Ascanius led, 
 From far Ascania ; fierce to fight they go. 
 Methles and Antiphus the Maeons head. 
 Sons of PylaBmenes, of lake Gygaea bred. 
 
 cix. 
 
 And these the Mseons, born 'neath Tmolus, led. 
 'Neath Nastes' rule the rough-tongu'd Carians lie. 
 Miletus these, and leafy Phthira had. 
 Meander's streams, Mycale's summits high. 
 Amphimachus and Nastes govern'd by 
 Are these ; Nastes, Amphimachus, the bright 
 Sons of Nomion. War- wards he did ply 
 Just like a girl all o'er with gold bedight. 
 The fool ! not this avert his dire destruction might. 
 
 ex. 
 
 Beneath swift-foot Pelides' hands he fell, 
 There in that river slain : from him away 
 His gold Achilles took, in war skill'd well. 
 Sarpedon's now and faultless Glaucus' sway 
 Did Lycians there, that came from far, controul, 
 From Lycia far where Xanthus' whirling waters roll. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 I. 
 
 When with their chieftains both sides marshall'd were, 
 The Trojans went with clang and noise amain 
 Like birds. As clang of cranes it rose through air, 
 When these from winter flee, and endless rain. 
 With clang they fly o'er streams of Ocean fain, 
 And to the Pygmies slaughter bring, and woe. 
 For they from high the fatal strife maintain. 
 But vigor breathing silent all, and so 
 To help each other mindful, the Achasans go. 
 
 II. 
 
 As mist on mountain -tops the South doth pour. 
 For shepherd ill, but to the thief more boon 
 Than night itself, and so far on before 
 A man may see as he might cast a stone ; 
 So 'neath their feet a dust- cloud rose anon 
 E'en as they went, and swift they swept the plain. 
 And moving thus when they now nigh upon 
 Each other were, among the Trojans then 
 Pac'd godlike Alexander with the front-rank men. 
 
BOOK III, 1 — 5. 63 
 
 iir. 
 
 A panther's hide his shoulders bore, curv'd bow 
 And sword. He, shaking javelins twain, defied 
 The Argives' bravest all to battle so 
 In combat dread. When Menelaus spied 
 Him stalking 'fore the host with stately stride, 
 As joys a lion finding some huge prey, 
 Horn'd stag or wild goat's carcase, and will bide 
 In hunger fierce devouring it, though they 
 The eager hounds, and lusty youths molest him may. 
 
 IV. 
 
 So Menelaus joy'd with eager eyes, 
 Beholding Alexander god-shap'd one, 
 And thought t' avenge him of his injuries, 
 And from his chariot leap'd full armed down. 
 When him among the foremost coming on 
 The god-shap'd Alexander saw, his heart 
 It sank, and shrinking back he slunk anon 
 Amid his fellows' thick. E'en with such start 
 Recoileth he, that, in some mountain's wooded part, 
 
 v. 
 
 A serpent sees. Chill fear his limbs creeps o'er. 
 And back he shrinks with cheeks all pallor- spread. 
 So to the haughty Trojans' ranks back bore 
 Alexander from Atreus' son with dread. 
 Him Hector eyed, and thus upbraiding said : — 
 '* wretched Paris, of the fair outside, 
 " Ill-starr'd deceiver, thou, and woman-mad, 
 " hadst thou ne'er been born, unwiv'd hadst died, 
 *' I would it had been so, for better so betide 
 
64 THE ILIAD, 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Than thus 'fore all an open shame to be. 
 '^ Now laugh th' Achaeans of the comely hair, 
 " That champion excellent had deemed thee. 
 " For fair thy form, but vigour none is there, 
 " Nor strength of mind. So cast then couldst thou dare 
 " Sail o'er the deep in ships sea-voyaging, 
 " Together summon thy companions e'er, 
 " With strangers mix, fair woman with thee bring 
 " From Apian land, the spouse of men fierce-combating ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Thy father's heavy bane, and of the state 
 " And people all, rejoicing to thy foe, 
 " Thine own disgrace ! What ! durst thou not await 
 '' Ares-lov'd Menelaus, yet didst know 
 " What kind of man's fresh wife thou hadst ? Not now 
 " Avail thee will thy harp, nor favors won 
 " Of Aphrodite, hair, nor form, laid low 
 " In dust. Meek Trojans are or cloak of stone 
 " Ere this thou'dst clad thee with, for all thine ill deeds 
 done." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Then god-shap'd Alexander : — " Hector now 
 " Thou justly chid'st, nor dost what's just exceed. 
 " Thine heart's like axe untiring aye, that through 
 " The wood drives sheer, 'neath one whose art hath need 
 " A ship to hew, whose strength it doth much speed. 
 " Unflinching so thy soul. Yet tax not me 
 " For golden Aphrodite's gifts my meed, 
 " Reject the gods' gifts glorious may not we, 
 " Whate'er they give, nor what one takes aught chooseth he. 
 
BOOK III. 6—11. 65 
 
 IX. 
 
 " If now thou'dst have me war and fight, then seat 
 
 " The Trojans else and Achives all, and me 
 
 " With Menelaus Ares-lov'd mid set, 
 
 " For Helen and the wealth to fight. And he 
 
 " Whoso prevails, and shall the conqu'ror be 
 
 " Home let him treasures all, and woman take ; 
 
 " The rest then truce and friendship made, dwell ye 
 
 " In gleby Troas, they themselves betake 
 
 To horse-apt Argos, lovely- dam'd Achaia back. 
 
 X. 
 
 He said. And Hector much rejoiced to hear 
 That word, and going in the midst he stay'd 
 The Trojan phalanxes, mid-grasp'd his spear. 
 They halted all. With shafts and stones assay'd 
 Long-hair'd Achaeans him to smite, when stay'd 
 King Agamemnon them, and cried : — " Forbear ! 
 " Argives, hurl not, Achive youths," he said, 
 " For promise speech doth plumed Hector there." 
 They staid their hands at once, and hush'd in silence were. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And Hector either host addressing spake ; — 
 " Hear Trojans, and AchaBans buskin' d fair, 
 " The word of Alexander, for whose sake 
 " This strife arose. He bids the Trojans there 
 " And buskin'd Achives all, their armour fair 
 " Put off upon the fertile ground, while he 
 " And Menelaus Ares-lov'd repair 
 " Unto the middle space alone, where they 
 *' For Helen, and the treasures all out-battle it may. 
 
66 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " And whoso conquers and prevails shall take 
 
 " The treasures all and woman home, while we 
 
 " The rest of us firm peace and friendship make." 
 
 He said. And they all hush'd in silence be. 
 
 To them spake valiant Menelaus : — " Me 
 
 " Now hear, for on my soul hath chiefly lain 
 
 " This grief. But parted now I hope to see 
 
 " Argives and Trojans, that such woes have ta'en 
 
 " Through feud of mine, which Alexander first began. 
 
 xni. 
 
 " Let him of us for death is destined die, 
 
 " Then quickly part the rest. Two lambs now bring, 
 
 " One white, one black, for Earth and Sun, and we 
 
 " For Zeus another. Priam's strength ^^, the king, 
 
 " To strike the truce himself, do also bring, 
 
 " For cov'nant break his sons, and faithless be, 
 
 " Lest truce of Zeus they mar. For wavering 
 
 " Are young men's minds. Where comes the old man, he 
 
 Doth past and future, what is best for both sides, see." 
 
 xiv. 
 
 He spake. Argives and Trojans joyous were 
 In hope the end of woful war was found. 
 They rank'd their steeds, themselves alighting there, 
 And doff 'd their arms, and laid them on the ground 
 Each other nigh, with some small space around. 
 And Hector townwards quick two heralds sent 
 To bring the lambs, and summon Priam down. 
 And Agamemnon shipward Talthyb sent 
 To fetch a lamb, and he to th' king obedient went. 
 
I 
 
 BOOK III. 12—17. 67 
 
 XV. 
 
 Iris to fair-arm'd Helen brought the news 
 In sister's guise whom old Antenor's son 
 The sovran Helicaon did espouse, 
 Laodice, for form the fairest one 
 Of Priam's daughters. Her at home she found 
 A huge web weaving twofold, dazzling fair, 
 And labours manifold she wrought thereon, 
 That Trojans and Achaeans eke for her 
 At Ares' heavy hands encounter'd had whilere. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Then standing near her swift-foot Iris said : — 
 
 " Come here, dear nymph, and wondrous doings see 
 
 " Of horsemen Trojans, Argives brazen clad, 
 
 " That erst were wont dire war wage mutually 
 
 " Upon the plain, and bent on battle be. 
 
 " But now they silent sit and, ended war, 
 
 " Lean on their shields, their long spears fix'd hard-by. 
 
 " To fight for thee now Alexander there 
 
 And Menelaus Ares-lov'd with lengthy spears prepare. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " His wife thou'lt be who shall the vict'ry win." 
 This said, the goddess touch'd her soul with sweet 
 Desire for her erst husband, town and kin. 
 At once enfolding her in veil of white 
 Slie hasted forth, soft tears a-flowing set. 
 Nor went alone, her foUow'd servants twain, 
 Pittheus' child ^Ethra and, of eyes dilate, 
 Clymene fair. And quickly reach'd they then 
 The Seaman gates, where session held the aged men. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 There Priam, Panthus, and Thymastes were, 
 Lampus and Clytius, Hicetaon branch of Mars, 
 Ucalegon, Antenor, prudent pair. 
 These at the Scaaan gates, old counsellors. 
 Then sat ; through age surceasing now from wars. 
 But orators withal excelling be ; 
 And like cicalas ^^ so with them it fares, 
 That in a wood a-top of some high tree 
 Do sit, and launch abroad their voice of melody. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 So on the tower there sat those Trojan lords, 
 Who, seeing Helen that way wending now. 
 To one another whisp'ring spake wing'd words : — 
 " No blame that Trojans and Acha3ans so 
 " For such a woman bear so long such woe. 
 " In face and form how like a goddess she ! 
 " Nathless such as she is home let her go, 
 " Nor more to us and ours a mischief be." 
 Thus they. And Priam Helen call'd : — " Come sit by me 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Dear child, thine erst spouse, friends and kindred see. 
 " Not thine the blame ; the gods this thing have done 
 " Who brought this sad Achsean war on me. 
 " That man now name me, that colossal one, 
 " What Argive man so broad-set, ample-grown ? * 
 " For height there taller be, more comely ne'er 
 " Have I with these mine eyes beheld, and none 
 " More worshipful. He hath a royal air." 
 Him answer'd she divine of women Helen fair : — 
 
BOOK III. 18—23. 69 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Thee, father dear, I rev'rence, and I dread. 
 
 " Would death Td chosen dire ere followed here 
 
 " Thy son, or e'er forsook my husband's bed, 
 
 " My brethren, child, and youth's companions dear. 
 
 " It might not be, and so I weep and wear 
 
 " My life away. Thine asking tell I thee. 
 
 " Atrides, broad-rule Agamemnon, there 
 
 " Thou seest, good king, and mighty warrior he ; 
 
 And brother erst of me, the shameless one if e'er there be." 
 
 XXII. 
 
 She spake. The sire with wonder saw, and said : — 
 
 " blest Atrides, happy fate thy share, 
 
 " Thou fortunate, by multitudes obey'd 
 
 " Achaean warriors brave. To Phrygia fair 
 
 " The land of vines I've been, and Phrygians there 
 
 " A many seen, steed-driving warriors they. 
 
 " There Otreus' hosts, and godlike Mygdon's were, 
 
 " That on Sangarius' banks encamped lay ; 
 
 And 1 made one with them as their ally the day 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " The Amazons came down, that equal men. 
 
 " But with th' Acha3ans they compar'd were few." 
 
 The sire Odysseus saw, and ask'd again : — 
 
 " Who this one is, dear daughter, tell me too, 
 
 " His stature seemeth by a head below 
 
 " Atrides Agamemnon, but more broad 
 
 " About the shoulders, and the chest to view, 
 
 '' His armour lieth on the fertile sward ; 
 
 He like a ram keeps pacing through the files his road. 
 
 f3 
 
70 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " For him I to a fuU-fleec'd ram compare, 
 " Through flock of white sheep pacing up and down." 
 And him then answered Zeus-born Helen fair : — 
 " Odysseus this, Laertes' crafty son. 
 " Though bred in rugged Ithaca hath known 
 " All cunning wiles and subtle counsels he." 
 To her then spake Antenor prudent one : — 
 *' The word thou say'st hath, woman, verity, 
 " For here too erst divine Odysseus came for thee 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " With Menelaus brave, in ambassage. 
 
 " My cherish'd guests were they in mine abode. 
 
 " Of both I scann'd the bent, and counsel sage. 
 
 " When in the Trojans' gath'ring they upstood 
 
 " Then Menelaus tower'd with shoulders broad. 
 
 " But seated both, Odysseus then would be 
 
 " More worshipful. And when 'fore all they would 
 
 " Their speech and purposes set forth, then he, 
 
 Wight Menelaus, there harangu'd with brevity, 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " In fewest words, but sweetly spoken clear. 
 " Not wordy, nor of rambling speech, though one 
 " Of younger years. But when Odysseus there, 
 " Of many wiles, uprose, he'd stand, look down, 
 " And stedfast fix his eyes upon the ground, 
 " His sceptre neither back nor forwards sway, 
 " But motionless would hold, as one astound ; 
 " A man that 'neath the power of passion lay, 
 Or some poor ignorant and helpless one you'd say. 
 
BOOK III. 24—29. 71 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " But when the volum'd voice from out his chest 
 " He sent, with words like wintry showers of snow, 
 " Might with Odysseus then none else contest, 
 " Nor e'er as then astound beheld we so 
 " Odysseus' form." The Sire a third time now 
 Ask'd seeing Ajax : — " Who's that other there, 
 " Tall huge Achaean, th' Argives doth o'ershow 
 " By head and shoulders broad." Answer'd the Sire 
 The ample veil'd divine of women Helen fair : — 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " That's Ajax huge, th' Achasans' bulwark he ; 
 " And, opposite, Idomeneus there stands 
 " Among the Cretans, like a god. And be 
 " Around him leaders of the Cretan bands. 
 " Our guest, he oft at Menelaus' hands 
 " In our abode had hospitality, 
 " When out of Crete he came. Mine eye commands 
 " The other dark-eyed Achives all, to me 
 " Well known, of whom I could the names rehearse to 
 thee; 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " But two I see not people-chieftains there, 
 " Horse-taming Castor, Pollux boxer skill'd, 
 " Own brothers that with me one mother bare. 
 " Have they from Lacedaemon sweet not sail'd, 
 " Or in sea-pacing ships though come have fail'd 
 " Amid th' array of warriors now to stand 
 " Through dread of ignominy mine repell'd ? " 
 Thus she. But them boon earth had long detained 
 In Lacedaemon there, their lov'd and native land. 
 
 F 4 
 
72 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Now heralds through the town truce -off 'rings bare, 
 Two lambs and gladdening wine, earth's produce boon, 
 In goat-skins held. Bright bowl, and gold cups fair 
 Idoeus herald brought, and stirr'd up soon 
 The Sire : — " Up, offspring of Laomedon, 
 " The Trojan and Achaean chiefs invite 
 " Thee to the plain to strike a truce anon. 
 " While for the woman there with long spears bright 
 " Will Menelaus brave and Alexander fight. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 "The victor taketh wife and wealth away, 
 " The others then shall peace and friendship make, 
 " And we in fertile Troas dwell, while they 
 " To steed-apt Argos, and Achaia back, 
 " That land of women fair, return." He spake. 
 The old man shudd'ring bade his friends put-to 
 The steeds. And they obedience did not slack. 
 And Priam mounted, and the reins back-drew. 
 Antenor near him clomb the lovely chariot too. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 And through the Scaean gates unto the plain 
 They drave their coursers fleet, and when they now 
 The Trojan and Achaean hosts attain. 
 From off the chariot they dismount, and so 
 Betwixt the Trojans and Achaeans go. 
 Then Agamemnon rose, the king of men, 
 Uprose that wily one Odysseus too, 
 Together also noble heralds then 
 The gods' truce-off'rings brought, and mixed in bowl the 
 wine. 
 
BOOK III. 30-~35. 73 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 And water on the sovereigns' hands they pour. 
 Atrides with his hands ^^ the knife drew there, 
 That hanging aye by sword's huge sheath he wore, 
 And from the lambs' heads cut therewith some hair. 
 The heralds dealt to every chief his share, 
 And loud Atrides pray'd before their sight : — 
 " Sire Zeus, from Ida ruling, past compare, 
 " Of peerless majesty, and peerless might ! 
 " And Sun, that all beholdest, hearest all aright, 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " Ye Rivers, Earth, and who mankind below, 
 " Life's toiling o'er, afflict whoso forswear, 
 " Be ye our witnesses, and guardians now 
 " Of this our truce. If Alexander there 
 " Slay Menelaus he shall Helen fair 
 " And treasures all retain, while we away 
 " In ships that traverse sea do home repair. 
 " But if now auburn Menelaus slay 
 " This x41exander, shall the Trojans not delay, 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 ''But Helen and the treasures all restore, 
 "And pay the Argives mulct shall fitting be, 
 ' ' And stand to future men for evermore. 
 "• If Priam and his sons such penalty 
 " Not pay, on Alexander's fall, to me 
 " Then still for recompense I'll battle on 
 " Here biding till the war do end." Thus he. 
 The lambs' throats then with ruthless brass ^^ anon 
 He slit, and on the earth them quiv'ring laid adown, 
 
74 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Of life bereft ; the brass their strength had ta'en. 
 Wine from the bowl in cups they pour, and pray- 
 To th' gods, that have from everlasting been. 
 And Trojans and Achasans thus did say : — 
 " Zeus glorious, great ! and gods that live for aye, 
 " Which side shall first this covenant violate, 
 " As flows this wine upon the ground, so may 
 " Their brains and children's flow, and strangers mate 
 " Their wives." Thus they. But Zeus their vow did not 
 substantiate. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Priam Dardanides among them spake ? t-?* 
 " Hear Trojans, and well-greav'd Achseans me. 
 " I go in sooth to wind- vex' d Ilium back, 
 " For look I could not on my son, while he 
 " And warlike Menelaus fighting be. 
 " Zeus and the other gods immortals know 
 " For which of them is death the destiny." 
 The hero spake, and in the car did stow 
 The lambs, and mounting then himself the reins back 
 drew. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Antenor at his side the chariot fair 
 Ascends. And they return to Ilium back. 
 Now Hector and Odysseus godlike there 
 A space first measure off*, and after take 
 The lots and in a brazen helmet shake, 
 For who the first the brazen spear should throw. 
 The people all expectant stand, and quake, 
 And to the gods their hands uplift. And so 
 In prayer they spake both Trojans and Achaeans too : — 
 
BOOK III. 36 — 41. 75 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " Sire Zeus from Ida ruling, glorious, great ! 
 " Whichever these doings caus'd on either side 
 " grant that slain he enter Hades' gate, 
 " And we in peace and friendship firm abide." 
 Thus they. And plumed Hector look'd aside, 
 And shook the helm : and Paris' lot out-flew. 
 These sat in ranks, each near his pawing steed 
 And varied arms. With comely arms and true 
 Did shoulders Alexander, fair-tress' d Helen's spouse, 
 endue. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Greaves on his legs, fair, silver-clasp'd first set. 
 Then with Lycaon's corselet cloth'd his breast, 
 Which though his brother's him did also fit. 
 And brazen sword, with silver studs imprest. 
 Around his shoulders flung. His hand then press'd 
 The strong huge shield. Then did his vigorous head 
 With well wrought horse-hair crested helm invest, 
 Whose waving plume above it nodded dread. 
 Next seiz'd a mighty spear, his hands all featly sway'd. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Like arms did Menelaus warlike don. 
 And they now harness'd mid-space striding went 
 'Twixt Trojans and Achaeans. Fiercely on 
 Each other glar'd. And fear th' Achaeans hent^^^ 
 And Trojan warriors as they gaz'd intent. 
 Now near they stood i' th' measur'd space, and shook 
 Their spears in wrath. First Alexander sent 
 His long-shade spear. Strides' shield it strook^^. 
 But on the strong shield blunted, and the brass not broke. 
 
76 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 But second made assay with brazen spear 
 Atrides Menelaus, praying he : — 
 " sov'reign Zeus, grant Alexander here 
 " I punish may for all the injury 
 " Which he hath done, and unprovok'd by me. 
 " Subdue him ^neath my hands, that ev'ry one 
 " May dread of most remote posterity 
 " To wrong his host that him hath kindness shown.*' 
 He said, and whirling hurl'd the long-shade spear, and on 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Priamides' full orbed shield he smote. 
 Through splendid buckler drove the mighty spear, 
 And through the daedal corselet cunning wrought. 
 And nigh the flank cut through the tunic sheer. 
 He stoop'd and shunn'd black fate that else was near. 
 His silver-studded sword Atrides drew, 
 And lifting smote the helmet's front, but there 
 In fragments shiver'd from his hand it flew. 
 Atrides cried aloud, the broad sky looking to : — 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " Sire Zeus, more contrary no god than thou, 
 " I thought to punish Alexander's wrong, 
 " But in my hands my sword is broken now, 
 " My spear too from my hands all vainly flong 
 " And smote him not." He said, and on him sprong. 
 And seiz'd by th' helmet thick with horse-hair dight. 
 And towards th' Acha^ans well-greav'd dragg'd along. 
 By 's tender throat had him nigh chok'd outright 
 The broider'd thong, as 'neath his chin the strap drew tight. 
 
BOOK III. 42 — 47. 77 
 
 XLV. 
 
 He'd dragged him off, and vast renown had ta'en, 
 But quick Zeus' daughter Aphrodite knew, 
 And brake the thong, was cut from ox y-slain. 
 An empty helm his stout hand with it drew. 
 Which whirling round and round the hero threw 
 Among th' Achaeans buskin'd well, which they 
 His dear companions took. And back he flew 
 All eagerness with brazen spear to slay 
 His foe. But him had Aphrodite snatch'd away, 
 
 XL VI. 
 
 With ease as goddess. Him in cloud-dark air 
 She veird, and in his chamber scented o'er 
 With perfume laid. To summon Helen fair 
 She went herself, and on the lofty tower 
 There found, and 'bout her Trojanesses store. 
 With hand y-ta'en she shook her nectar'd veil 
 In guise of crone, wool worker that before, 
 While yet in Lacedaemon she did dwell. 
 Had wrought her wondrous works in wool, and ov'd her 
 well. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 To her so lik'ned Aphrodite said ; — 
 " Come hither ; Alexander homewards thee 
 " Invites. In 's chamber now and turned bed 
 " In beauty glist'ring, and in raiment he. 
 " Nor ever wouldst thou say that this could be, 
 '* One just return'd from fighting man to man, 
 " But one that to the dance would presently, 
 " Or just ceas'd dancing sits him down again." 
 She said, and in her bosom stirr'd her soul amain. 
 
78 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 When of the goddess she did recognise 
 
 The neck so beautiful exceedingly, 
 
 Love-kindling bosom, and the lustrous eyes, 
 
 Astound then utter'd speech, and nam'd her she : — 
 
 " Why, cruel, wouldst thou so impose on me? 
 
 " Or elsewhere further wilt thou lead me yet ? 
 
 " Some town of those that thickly peopled be, 
 
 " In Phrygia or Mseonia lovely set, 
 
 Where friend thou hast ^mong part-voice men^^ articulate. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " Because then Menelaus hath overcome 
 " Forsooth the godlike Alexander now, 
 *' And me detested would with him take home, 
 " Is 't therefore here devising craft art thou ? 
 " Go sit by him, and haunts of gods forego, 
 " Nor on thy feet return t' Olympus e^er, 
 ^* But anxious tend him aye and guard him so 
 " Till thee his wife he make, or slave. But there 
 " I go not. For 'twere shame in me his couch to share. 
 
 " And me the Trojan matrons all would mock, 
 " And in my mind IVe countless woes." Then spake 
 The goddess Aphrodite wroth : — " Provoke 
 *' Not me, thou thing, lest wroth, I thee forsake, 
 " And hate as I've intensely lov'd. I'll make 
 " Twixt Danai and Trojans rancour sad, 
 " And thou have woful end." She said, and quake 
 Did Zeus-born Helen, and in white veil clad 
 Went silent by those dames unseen. The goddess led. 
 
BOOK III. 48—53. 79 
 
 LI. 
 
 When reached they Alexander's lovely dome, 
 The handmaids ^^ quickly 'bout their labours set, 
 She godlike woman mounts the upper room. 
 Smiles-loving Aphrodite ^^ took a seat 
 And placed it Alexander opposite. 
 There Zeus' child Helen sat, and turn'd aside 
 Her eyes, and did with speech her husband twit : — 
 " Thou art return'd from war. Would there thou'dst 
 died, 
 " By valiant man subdued, my spouse of former tide. 
 
 LII. 
 
 " Thy boast than Mars-lov'd Menelaus thou 
 " For strength, and hands, and spear wert stronger far. 
 " Go challenge Marslov'd Menelaus now 
 " Once more to fight. And yet I say forbear, 
 " Nor Menelaus of the auburn hair 
 " Adventure face to face to meet again, 
 " And battle it in war presumptuous e'er, 
 " Lest smitten with his spear thou soon be slain." 
 To her with words did Paris speak in answer then : — 
 
 Lni. 
 
 " Woman with scornful words reproach not me. 
 " Now Menelaus wins b' Athene's aid, 
 " In turn shall I, for gods with us there be. 
 " But be we reconcil'd^^ and so to bed, 
 " For thus enwrap my senses love ne'er did. 
 " No, not when first from Lacedaemon fair 
 " I sail'd, and thee in ships sea-voy'ging led 
 " In isle of Cranae thy couch did share, 
 ' As I'm enamour'd now, and takes me sweet desire." 
 
80 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 He said, and to his couch then led the way, 
 And followed him his spouse. And there the two 
 On perforated couch in dalliance lay. 
 Atrides roaming through the throng did go 
 Like some wild beast to spy out there his foe, 
 The god-shap'd Alexander. Him could then 
 To Mars-lov'd Menelaus no one show 
 Of Trojans or allies renown'd. For screen 
 They would not him for love in sooth had any seen. 
 
 LV. 
 
 For hateful he as death in all their eyes. 
 Then Agamemnon king of men : — " Now hear 
 " Ye me ye Trojans, Dardans, and allies ; 
 " Stands Mars-lov'd Menelaus' vict'ry clear. 
 " Eestore us therefore Argive Helen here 
 " With all her goods, and pay ye too beside 
 " Such recompense as fitting shall appear. 
 And shall in after-men's remembrance bide." 
 Atrides said. Th' Achaeans with applause replied. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 The gods with Zeus upon the golden floor 
 
 Meanwhile in full assembly seated were. 
 
 August did Hebe nectar serving pour. 
 
 And pledg'd them they in golden goblets fair, 
 
 The Trojans' town the while beholding there. 
 
 Then Kronos' son, to anger Her^ fain, 
 
 Haranguing did with taunting words ^* compare : 
 
 " For Menelaus goddesses now twain 
 
 The Argive Herfe, aidful staunch Athene ^^ been. 
 
 n. 
 
 " But these aloof sit still, and, looking-on, 
 " Their pleasure take. While, on the other hand, 
 " Smiles-loving Aphrodite does this one^^ 
 " Keep close-to ever, and from fate defend, 
 " And now hath rescued when to die he ween'd. 
 " Of Menelaus Ares -dear is now 
 " The victory sooth ; so ponder we how end 
 " These doings shall : if evil war renew 
 " And contest dread, or peace we make betwixt the two. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE ILIAD. 
 
 m. 
 
 " And if to all this pleasing were and sweet, 
 " Yea then might men, in sooth, King Priam's town 
 " Inhabit still, and Menelaus get 
 " His Argive Helen back." He said. Whereon 
 With prest lips Here and Athene groan, 
 That sitting close 'gainst Trojans woes conspire. 
 Athene silent was, and word spake none 
 Though wroth at father Zeus, with anger dire, 
 But Her^ in her bosom not restrained her ire. 
 
 iV. 
 
 " Dread Kronides, what speech is this of thine ? 
 " What ! wouldst thou frustrate then my toil? and sweat, 
 " That I have sweated lab'ring sore, make vain? 
 " My steeds I've tir'd, the folk to congregate, 
 " And Priam and his sons work evil fate. 
 " Do this, but all we gods will not agree." 
 Her answer'd then cloud-gath'ring Zeus irate : — 
 " Perverse ! what's Priam or his sons to thee 
 " So evil done, that thou dost rage unceasingly 
 
 V. 
 
 " To overthrow fair Ilium's well-built town ? 
 " But if, her gates and long walls ent'ring, thou 
 " Couldst Priam, and his children every one, 
 " And other Trojans raw devour, might so 
 " Satiety thine anger haply know. 
 *' Do then thy pleasure, lest some future day 
 " This grudge to mickle strife betwixt us grow. 
 " But this I say. Remember, when I may 
 " Wish smite a town, where men there be thou lov'st, delay 
 
BOOK IV. 8—8. 83 
 
 VI. 
 
 " My wrath thou shalt not, but permit. For free 
 " I give thee this though loth. For ^neath the sun, 
 " And 'neath the starry sky whate'er there be 
 " Of cities all, where men terrestrial wone, 
 " My heart most honours Ilium's sacred town, 
 " And Priam, and the folk of Priam too 
 " Of th' ashen spear. For lack of banquet none, 
 " Libation, incense e'er mine altar knew. 
 " For this is our allotted share of honour due." 
 
 VII. 
 
 And large-eyed Here then august replied : — 
 " Three towns I have that are most dear to me, 
 " Argos, and Sparta, and Mycene streeted wide, 
 ** These then destroy whene'er they hateful be ; 
 " For them I'll not contend, nor grudge them thee. 
 " Though if I grudg'd, and would avert their fate, 
 " In sooth 'twere vain, since so surpassingly 
 " The stronger thou. And yet nathless 'tis meet 
 My labour also be not render'd incomplete. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " I'm goddess too, and whence thy lineage mine, 
 " And crafty Kronos me begat, for race 
 " August, and that I'm called consort thine. 
 " Thou rul'st th' immortals all. But yielden place 
 " To one another we- in these a space, 
 " As I to thee so thou to me ; and they 
 " Th' immortal gods will us with foil' wing grace. 
 " Athene now enjoin with speed away 
 '* Down to the Trojans' and Achasans' dire array, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " And try how first the Trojans injure may 
 " Th' Achaean s now elate, and truce so break." 
 She said. The sire of gods and men obey 
 Did straight, and to Athene wing'd words spake : — 
 " Now quickly to the army thee betake 
 " The Trojans and Achasans 'mong, and try 
 " How there the Trojans first the truce shall break 
 " And do th' elate Ach^eans injury." 
 This said, he stirr'd Athene, prompt already she. 
 
 And like a star, by Kronos' son from high 
 
 To seamen or broad host a signal sent. 
 
 Refulgent, whence abundant sparkles fly. 
 
 To earth so Pallas rush'd, and bounding went 
 
 1' th' midst, while wonder dread the gazers hent ^^% 
 
 Horse-taming Trojans, Achives buskin'd fair. 
 
 And thus they spake, beholding this portent : — 
 
 " Fell fight and war's at hand, or friendship there 
 
 To both sides Zeus decrees, men's arbiter of war." 
 
 XI. 
 
 'Twas thus 'mong Trojans and Achseans said. 
 And she as man then mix'd in Troy's array, 
 (Laodocus she seemed Antenoride 
 A warrior strong) to seek if any way 
 Discover godlike Pandarus she may. 
 Lycaon's son brave faultless ^^ find she did. 
 Who stood 'mid mighty files that buckler sway. 
 Of folk that from Esepus' streams he led. 
 To him then standing near these winged words she said 
 
BOOK IV. 9 — 14. 85 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Wilt heed me thou, Lycaon^s warlike son ? 
 " Swift shaft then launch at Menelaus dare, 
 " And win of Trojans favour, and renown, 
 " From all, but Alexander chief, who fair 
 " Rich gifts will give thee straight when sees he there 
 " Atrides Menelaus brave, laid low 
 " With shaft of thine, the pile funereal drear 
 " Ascend. Come aim at Menelaus now, 
 " And to Apollo Lycian-born, bow-famous, vow 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Of firstling lambs a splendid hecatomb 
 " To sacrifice to him, so soon as thou 
 " To blest Zeleia's town returnest home." 
 Thus spake Athene, and persuaded so 
 His foolish mind. At once he stripp'd his bow ^^ 
 Smooth polish'd horn, from bounding wild goat ta'en, 
 He'd ^neath the breast erst smit, as it did go 
 From out a rock, where he'd in ambush lain. 
 Its breast he smote, and on the cliff it fell back slain. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Its horns from th^ head full sixteen palms outgrew. 
 These working up th' horn-polisher did fit 
 And smooth'ning all, with golden tips endue. 
 This plac'd he, earth-ward stooping, drawing it. 
 Their shields his comrades brave before him set. 
 For fear th' Achseans' sons should charge him ere 
 Brave Menelaus th' Achive chief was smit. 
 He stripp'd off quiver-lid, and arrow ne'er 
 Yet shot out-drew, that wing'd did freight of torments bear. 
 
 G 3 
 
86 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 To string he fits fell shaft ; and hecatomb 
 To bow-fam'd Lycian-born Apollo vow'd 
 Of firstling lambs, soon as, returning home, 
 Zeleia's holy city reach he should. 
 He draws, and holding nock and bow-string good, 
 The string to breast, to bow the barb he brings. 
 Drawn circular the huge bow twangs, and loud 
 Eesounds the whizzing cord. Tlie arrow springs 
 Sharp-pointed forth amid the throng on eager wings. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Thee, Menelaus, then forgat not they. 
 The blest immortal gods ; but near thee stood 
 Zeus' child the Spoiler first, and drove away 
 The deadly shaft, and so its force withstood 
 From wounding thee, as when a mother would 
 A fly keep off her child, in slumber sweet. 
 Herself did guide it where of baldric good 
 The golden clasps on folded cuirass meet. 
 On well-knit baldric smote the bitter arrow fleet. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Through daedal belt it went, and cuirass, wrought 
 With skill elaborate, it thrust right through. 
 And girth he wore, to fence his flesh about 
 From darts, his chief defence, this pierced too, 
 And graz'd his skin. Fro' th' wound black blood 'gan flow. 
 As Carian or Maeonian dame doth stain 
 With red the iv'ry, cheek-piece making so 
 For steed. And in her chamber there up-lain 
 Possess the same a many horsemen wish in vain. 
 
BOOK IV. 15—20. 87 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 For kings alone an ornament it lies, 
 The steed's adornment, and the man's renown. 
 So, Menelaus, stain'd thy comely thighs 
 With gore, and calves and ankles fair adown. 
 Aghast was Agamemnon from the wound 
 To see the black blood flowing forth amain. 
 Aghast too Menelaus Mars-lov'd one. 
 But seeing string and barb ^^ outside remain. 
 His soul within his bosom then reviv'd again. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 King Agamemnon spake, with deep-drawn sigh, 
 As Menelaus' hand he held. And sigh'd 
 His comrades too : — " Dear brother caus'd have I 
 " Thy death in striking truce, who made thee bide 
 " Our single champion on th' Achaean side. 
 " So smitten thee the Trojans have, and ta'en 
 '^' No kepe their solemn oaths 'neath foot to tread. 
 " Nathless the truce will not be all in vain, 
 " Lambs' blood, libations pure, right-hands we trusted in. 
 
 " Though not accomplish it Olympius now, 
 " Yet in the end he will, and heavily 
 " They with their heads, and wives and children too, 
 "Will answer it. For clear it is to me, 
 " My soul and spirit feel the day will be 
 " When sacred Troy and Priam perish shall 
 " And spear-skill'd Priam's folk. For on them he, 
 " Great Zeus high-thron'd in aether dwelling, will 
 " His dreadful aegis shake, irate at this their guile. 
 
 G 4 
 
88 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Not vain then these, but who were mine if thou 
 " Menelaus die, and here fulfil 
 " Thy term of life. And deep disgraced now 
 " Should I to much desired Argos sail. 
 " For think of home th' Achaean s will not fail, 
 " And Priam's and the Trojans' trophy we 
 " Abandon Argive Helen here, the while 
 *' In Troas lie and rot the bones of thee, 
 " And this our high emprise will unaccomplish'd be. 
 
 XXII, 
 
 " And thus of haughty Trojans some will speak, 
 
 " And leap on glorious Menelaus' tomb, 
 
 " ' May Agamemnon aye his wrath thus wreak 
 
 " That vainly with the Achcean host had come, 
 
 *' Then went with em.pty ships f his loved land home 
 
 " And left the valiant Menelaus here."* 
 
 " Thus they. Then 'neath me ope earth's yawning 
 
 womb." 
 Then Menelaus of the auburn hair 
 To reassure his mind thus spake : — " Nay do not fear. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 ** By no means thou th* Achaean folk alarm. 
 " No mortal part hath touch'd the arrow keen, 
 ^' But first the curious baldric kept off harm, 
 " And then the girth and plate beneath, which men 
 " That work in brass had wrought." Him answer'd then 
 King Agamemnon : — " Grant that so it be 
 " Dear Menelaus, leech thy wound shall tend, 
 " And med'cines ^\y, that tortures dark allay." 
 He spake, and to Talthybius herald thus did say : — 
 
BOOK IV. 21-^26. 89 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " Taltliybius, quick Machaon call to me, 
 " Of Esculapius, famous leech, the son, 
 " Brave Menelaus Achive chief to see, 
 " Whom hath with arrow now some bow-skill'd one, 
 " Trojan or Lycian smit. To him renown, 
 " But woe to us." He said, nor disobey 
 The herald hearing did, but posted on 
 Amid th' Acha3an brass-clad folk to spy 
 Machaon out. And him there standing did descry, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And round him shielded warriors' strong array 
 He'd led from Tricca nurse of steeds. Anon 
 Him standing near he winged words did say : — 
 '' Up Asclepiades, Agamemnon 
 " Calls thee, brave Menelaus Atreus' son 
 " To see, whom hath with shaft one skill'd with bow, 
 " Of Trojans or of Lycians, smit. Renown 
 " To him thereby, to us a grievous woe." 
 He said, and stirr'd his soul within his bosom so. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 They thread the throng th' Achseans' broad host through. 
 When to the spot, where he of th' auburn hair 
 The wounded Menelaus was, they drew. 
 Round whom the chiefs form'd circle ; mid them there 
 Then stood the godlike man, and from the fair 
 Well-fitting baldric drew the arrow straight. 
 In drawing it back bent the sharp fangs were. 
 Then loos'd the varied belt, and girth and plate 
 Beneath, that men brass-workers wrought elaborate. 
 
90 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 When seen the wound the bitter arrow tore, 
 And blood suck'd out, he soothing drugs applied, 
 Which friendly Chiron gave his sire of yore. 
 While these with Menelaus occupied, 
 On came the squadrons of the Trojan side. 
 These arm'd again, and fir'd at battle's sight. 
 Not slumb'ring hadst thou Agamemnon spied 
 Nor fearing then, nor uninclin'd to fight, 
 But glorious battle hast'ning to, with earnest might. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 He left his steeds, and car adom'd with brass. 
 Apart his servant held them snorting high, 
 That Ptolemy Peraides' offspring was, 
 Eurymedon. And him he bade keep nigh 
 Lest seize his limbs fatigue should by and by, 
 So many marshalling. On foot he went 
 Along the ranks. What swift-steed Danai 
 Preparing prompt he saw on battle bent, 
 He standing near, with words would strengthen their intent. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Argives your martial force no way remit, 
 " Of falseness will sire Zeus no champion be, 
 " But who broke compact first shall vultures eat 
 " Their tender flesh, and in our ships shall we 
 " Their wives belov'd and little ones to sea 
 " Lead captive, when their city we have ta'en." 
 Whom saw he slack dread fight with sharp words he 
 Rebuk'd : — "0 Argives, arrow-doomed men 
 " Opprobrious, have ye no shame within you then ? 
 
BOOK IV. 27—32. 91 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Why stand ye thus aghast like fawns, when tir'd 
 " With coursing through a length of plain they be, 
 " Stock-still with no remaining vigor fir'd ? 
 " So stand ye struck, nor fight. Or wait do ye 
 " Till where our well-stern'd ships by th' hoary sea 
 " Are drawn ashore the Trojans reach, and so 
 " If will Kronion hand stretch o'er you, see ? " 
 And thus he marshalling men's ranks did go. 
 And on the Cretans came, men's squadrons passing through. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 These round Idomeneus their armour don. 
 Idomeneus as wild boar strong the van, 
 And Merion urg'd the hindmost legions on. 
 Glad saw them Agamemnon king of men, 
 T' Idomeneus with honied words began : — 
 " Idomeneus, thee honour chief I do 
 " Of all the swift-steed Danai, both when 
 " The theme is war, and other labours too, 
 " And at the feast, where dark the hon'ring wine doth flow 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " When th' Argives' chiefest mix it in the bowl. 
 " Though other Achives of the comely hair 
 " By measure drink, thy cup stands ever full, 
 " Like mine, to quaff at will. Up then to war, 
 " And be as thou hast vow'd to be before." 
 Idomeneus the Cretan chief replied : — 
 " Atrides as I promis'd thee of yore, 
 " Thy faithful comrade ever I'll abide. 
 " But that we quick may fight, the long hair'd Achives stir 
 beside. 
 
92 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " The Trojans league-libations poured with us. 
 " So death and woe will surely them pursue, 
 " Since truce infring'd they first." When spake he thus 
 On pass'd Atrides glad at heart, and through 
 The throng of men came on th' Ajaces two. 
 These arming were. A cloud of infantry 
 They led. As when from cliif of vantage- view 
 A goatherd swain at gaze doth on the sea 
 A cloud 'neath blast of Zephyrus ^^ descending see. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Afar perceives it coming o'er the wave 
 As black as pitch, a whirlwind bringing dire, 
 Aghast he drives his flock within a cave. 
 So with th' Ajaces youths of martial fire 
 To hot war drew in dense phalanges nigher. 
 That dark with shield and spear were bristling dread. 
 King Agamemnon glad doth them admire, 
 And winged words addressing them he said : — 
 " Ajaces, chiefs of th' Argives brazen harness^, 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " Not you, for 'twere unfit, do I bid stir 
 " The folk to fight, for prompt ye urge them on. 
 " Sire Zeus, Athene, Phoebus, would there were 
 " Such spirit in the breast of every one ! 
 '' Fall speedily would then King Priam's town 
 " Y-ta'en beneath our hands, and rased quite." 
 He said, and leaving them, went forth, and on 
 Old Nestor Pylian orator did light, 
 His comrades marshalling, and urging them to fight, 
 
BOOK IV. 33—38. 93 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Huge Pelagon, Alastor, Chromius there, 
 Prince Hsemon, people-shepherd Bias stout. 
 The charioteers in front with steed and car. 
 And in the rearward, num'rous, brave the foot 
 He set, to be a fence of war, and put 
 The spiritless between, that loth or no 
 Each man nathless perforce must light it out. 
 The horsemen chief he charged, and bade them so 
 Rein-in their steeds, as with unbroken ranks to ^o. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " Let none his valour trusting, horseman skill, 
 " Alone 'fore others wish to fight the foe, 
 " Nor yet draw back. Be feebler so ye will. 
 " Who from his car ^^ shall to another's go 
 " Spear let him wield, for 'tis far better so. 
 " Thus they of old, who in their bosoms bore 
 " This sense and mind, did towns and walls o'erthrow." 
 So urg'd the Sire, in war well-skill'd of yore. 
 With joy saw Agamemnon, standing him before, 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 And him addressing wing'd words spake : — ''0 Sire, 
 " Would to the soul within thy bosom dear 
 " Thy knees responded, and thy strength entire ! 
 " But weareth thee old age, that none doth spare. 
 " Would had it some man else, and thou wert there 
 " Still young." Gerenian horseman Nestor then 
 Replied : — " Atrides, I too wish I were 
 " As when by me was Ereuthalion slain. 
 " But ne'er at once all things the gods vouchsaf 'd to men. 
 
94 
 
 THE lUAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " I then was young, old age is on me now, 
 " Yet so with charioteers I'll mix, and sway 
 " With rede and speech, for thus the old men do. 
 " But brandish spear will younger men than I, 
 " The later born, that on their strength rely." 
 He said. Atrides glad pass'd on and found 
 Menestheus Peteus' son, car skill'd to ply, 
 Who stood, Athenian warriors him around. 
 Odysseus too stood near, that did in craft abound. 
 
 XL. 
 
 No feeble files the Cephallenians nigh 
 Were standing round ; for battle- shout as yet 
 Had not their people heard. But recently 
 The rous'd phalanges were in motion set 
 Of Trojans and Achaeans. These now wait 
 Till coming up some Achive troop beside 
 Should charge the Trojans, and begin the fight. 
 Them Agamemnon king of men did chide. 
 When he beheld, and wing'd words speaking thus he said; 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " son of Peteus Zeus-nurs^d king, thou too 
 
 " With ill wiles fraught, astute. Aloof then why 
 
 " Stand ye afraid, and others wait ? For you 
 
 '' Behoveth be among the foremost aye, 
 
 " And stand and front the battle raging high. 
 
 " Ye first of banquet hear from me, whene'er 
 
 " A banquet for the foremost chieftains we 
 
 " Achasans make. There pleasant roast meats fair 
 
 Ye eat, and honied wine ye drink with pleasure there. 
 
BOOK IV. 39—44. , 96 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " Now pleased ye gaze, though Achive columns ten 
 " To fight with ruthless brass before you go." 
 Him eyed askance, and spake Odysseus then : — 
 " Atrides, what word scap'd thy teeth's fence ^^ through? 
 " How say'st thou we be slack in war ? When so 
 " We Achives 'gainst the Trojans battle keen 
 ** Excite, see shalt thou, if so minded, how 
 '^ Telemachus' lov'd sire ^^ the front-rank men 
 " Of Trojans mixes with. But windy words be thine." 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 King Agamemnon him once more with smiles 
 Address'd when wroth he saw him : — Zeus-sprung thou 
 " Laertes' son, Odysseus, man of wiles, 
 " Not thee I chide o'er much nor urge. I know 
 "Thy bosom's gentle counsels, even so 
 " Thy thoughts as mine. But come, these by and by 
 " We'll settle if amiss ought spoken now. 
 " All these the gods make vain." Thus did he say, 
 And left them there, and unto others went his way. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Tydides high-soul'd Diomed he found, 
 
 Who steeds, and well-knit chariots stood amid. 
 
 Near whom stood Sthenelus Capaneus' son. 
 
 And him King Agamemnon seeing chid. 
 
 And winged words addressing him he said : — 
 
 " Ah ! son of Tydeus war-skill'd, Tame-the-steed, 
 
 " Why tremblest ? Why war bridges ^^ so with dread 
 
 " Dost eye ? So trembled Tydeus not indeed. 
 
 But far before his comrades battling foes would yede. ^^ 
 
96 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " So they relate who him at work beheld. 
 " For him in sooth did I nor meet nor see, 
 " But others he by far they say excell'd. 
 " Without array, as guest to Mycenae, 
 " Came with the godlike Polynices he, 
 " To muster folk. For they 'gainst Thebes' blest town 
 " Then warr'd ; and ask'd that grant allies should we. 
 " And wish'd to grant their asking every one, 
 " But Zeus averted it, with signs disastrous shown. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " They left, and came, as on their way they wend, 
 " T'Asopus' rushy stream, and pastures fair. 
 " Th' Achaeans thence as envoy Tydeus send, 
 " Who went, and found Cadmseans many there 
 " In house of Eteocles, that feasting were. 
 " Nor yet did then, though strange and lone amid 
 " Cadmasans many, horseman Tydeus fear, 
 " But them to contest challeng'd he, and did 
 " In all o'ercome with ease ; so Pallas stood his aid. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " The wroth spur-steed Cadmaeans ambush laid 
 
 " Of fifty men for his return. These have 
 
 " Two chiefs, the godlike Maeon Hasmonide, 
 
 " And Autophanus' war-staunch offspring brave 
 
 " Lycophantes. To them Tydides gave 
 
 " 111 end, slew all, and one sent home alone. 
 
 '* For Maeon did he, mov'd by omens, save. 
 
 " ^tolian Tydeus such, who gat a son 
 
 His worse in war, in council better talking one." 
 
BOOK IV. 45—50. 97 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 He said, but spake not mighty Diomed^ 
 
 The awful King's rebuke respecting he. 
 
 The son of Capaneus renown'd then said : — 
 
 " Atrides, clearly knowing do not lie. 
 
 " We better than our fathers boast to be, 
 
 " We captur'd too Thebes' seven gated town, 
 
 " 'Neath Ares' wall with fewer forces we, 
 
 " The gods' and Zeus' great signs relying on. 
 
 But perish'd they through stubborn folly all their own. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " In grace with us then set our fathers ne'er." 
 To him spake Diomed with sternest frown : — 
 " Be silent, friend, and to my speech give ear. 
 " Folk-shepherd Agamemnon blame can none 
 *' To battle urging thus th' Ach^ans on. 
 " Great glory his if the Achaeans do 
 " The Trojans conquer, seizing Ilium's town ; 
 " Th' Achaeans worsted his again the woe. 
 " But come we, call to mind our martial valour now." 
 
 L. 
 
 He said, and from his car leap'd full arm'd down. 
 As stirr'd the King the brass about his breast 
 Rang dread. Fear might have seiz'd the stoutest one. 
 As on the sounding shore the sea- swell, prest 
 By rough imperious blowing of the West, 
 Doth rushing on upstirr'd together crowd. 
 And on the deep at first uplift its crest. 
 Then bursting on the strand it roareth loud. 
 Swells 'bove the peakM rocks, and sea-foam flings abroad, 
 
 H 
 
98 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 So stirr'd successive th' Achive bands to war 
 Unceasingly. Each chief commands his own, 
 The rest in silence went. Think would you ne'er 
 Such folk with gift of speech were moving on. 
 Silent they heed their chiefs. Round all outshone 
 The varied arms they marched clad withal. 
 The Trojans e'en as sheep of wealthy one, 
 That countless stand a-milking in the stall. 
 Incessant bleating as they hear their lambkins call. 
 
 Ln, 
 
 So through that army broad the Trojans' din 
 Arose. Not like from all, nor one the cry, 
 But tongues confus'd ; from many lands the men. 
 These Ares urg'd, those Pallas Azure-eye, 
 Fear, Flight, and Discord raging quenchlessly, 
 Man-slaught'ring Ares' comrade-sister, who 
 Crests small at first, anon with head i' th' sky 
 She walks the earth, and then did 'twixt them throw 
 Fell strife and pac'd the throng, to men augmenting woe. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 When these then rushing on in one place met 
 Then shields, and spears, and might of mail-clad men 
 Together dash'd, and bossy bucklers set 
 Against each other hurtled. Rose the din 
 And shout, and moan, of slaying and of slain. 
 And earth ran blood. As torrents rushing down 
 The hills their headlong flood do mid- vale join 
 In hollow bed, from mighty flo wings grown ; 
 Afar the shepherd in the mountains hears the sown. ^^^ 
 
BOOK IV. 51—56. 99 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Of these so joining fight rose shout and dread. 
 Antilochus first slew a front-rank one, 
 Trojan Ech^polus Thalj^siade. 
 His horse-hair helmet crest he smote, and on 
 His brow infix'd. And pierced through the bone 
 The spear-point brazen. Darkness veiFd his eyes. 
 He fell i' th' fight, as when a tower comes down. 
 Him fallen did by th' feet Elphenor seize, 
 The brave Abantes' chief, Chalcodontiades. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Past reach of darts fain dragged him ofi* had he. 
 To strip his arms. But brief was his career. 
 Him dragging corse did brave Agenor see. 
 And, as he stoop' d, his side, which did appear 
 Beyond the shield, he smote with brazen spear. 
 And loos'd his limbs. His soul then fled, and 'gan 
 Around him there encounter sad, severe 
 Of Trojans and Achaeans. Rushing ran 
 On one another they like wolves, man grappling man. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 And Ajax then struck down Anthemion's son 
 Hight Simoisius, lusty bachelor. 
 Whom formerly his mother, coming down 
 From Ida, nigh Simois' river bore. 
 She with her parents came the sheep t' explore. 
 Thence Simoisius nam'd b' his parents dear. 
 Whom pay his nurture he will now no more. 
 So brief his life, who sank 'neath Ajax' spear, 
 That him advancing smote abreast the right pap near. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 On went the brazen spear the shoulder through. 
 Down in the dust he fell, as poplar tree, 
 That in dank mead of some vast fen doth grow 
 Smooth-trunk'd, a-top its branches growing be. 
 The car-wright this with bright steel fells that he 
 Wheel-felloe bend for lovely chariot may. 
 And on the river-bank it lies to dry. 
 Such Simoisius^^ Anthemide, whom slay 
 The Zeus-sprung Ajax did, and took his arms away. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Him Antiphus, of corselet variegate, 
 Old Priam's son, with spear aim'd at mid-throng. 
 But miss'd, and in the groin Odysseus' mate. 
 Brave Leucus, smote, that dragg'd the corpse along. 
 He fell. Dropp'd from his hands the corse. Y-stong 
 With wrath for comrade slain Odysseus went 
 With brazen gleaming helm through warriors strong. 
 And glaring round, his glitt'ring spear he sent. 
 And back the Trojans shrank, perceiving his intent. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Nor spear he hurl'd in vain, but smite did he 
 Democoon king Priam's bastard there, 
 Who from Abydos came, where fleet mares be. 
 Odysseus, for his comrade wroth, with spear 
 His temple smote. Through th' other temple sheer 
 The brass-point pierc'd. His eyes then darkness veil'd. 
 With heavy sound he fell, and rattled drear 
 His arms. The Trojans then, and Hector yield. 
 Th' Achaeans, shouting loud, the dead drew off the field. 
 
BOOK IV. 57—62. 101 
 
 LX. 
 
 Far on they'd rush'd, but Phoebus wroth beheld 
 From Pergamus, and call'd to th' Trojans : — "On 
 " Ye tame steed Trojans, nor to th' Argives yield 
 *' In fight, since neither steel their flesh, nor stone 
 " To bear flesh-cutting brass. Nor Thetis* son 
 " Achilles fights, but with soul-gnawing ire 
 " Broods in his ships." The awful god fro' th' town 
 Thus spake. Zeus' glorious child Tritonia dire 
 Pass'd through th' Achaean throng the flagging ones to fire. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Fate caught Diores Amaryncide then, 
 Smit on right ankle he with jagged stone. 
 Imbraside Pirus chief of Thracian men. 
 Who came from ^nus, had the pebble thrown. 
 The fell flint snapp'd both tendons and each bone, 
 And back he fell, with hands t' his comrades dear 
 Expiring stretch'd. Up Pirus then did run, 
 Who'd thrown, and thrust his navel through with spear. 
 Out gush'd his entrails all. His eyes veil'd darkness drear. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Him with his spear ^tolian Thoas smote, 
 His breast above the pap. The brass fix'd in 
 His lungs. Thoas approach'd and puU'd from out 
 His breast the mighty spear, then falchion keen 
 He drew, and him mid -belly smote, but slain 
 Stripp'd not of arms, for stood his comrades round, 
 The top-knot Thracians long spears holding then, 
 Who him, the huge and strong and high renown'd. 
 Did from them thrust; and he by force repell'd gave ground. 
 
 H 3 
 
102 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Thus stretcli'd in dust lay side by side the twain, 
 The Thracians this, th' Epeans that commanding ; 
 And many others were around them slain. 
 Nor blam'd their work had he, through thickest wending 
 Unhurt, unsmit by weapons, whom befriending, 
 Pallas Athene's self had led the way. 
 And ta'en by th' hand, from force of darts defending. 
 For Trojans and Achaeans on that day 
 Stretched side by side in dust a many prostrate lay. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 And then to Diomed Tydides gave 
 Pallas Athen^ strength and might that be 
 Distinguished far above all Argives brave 
 He should, and win renown exceedingly. 
 And kindled from his helm and buckler she 
 Unresting fire. E'en as th' autumnal star, 
 That washed in ocean showeth lustrously, 
 Such fire from head and shoulders gleaming far 
 She lit ; and drove him where they fought in thick of war. 
 
 II. 
 
 Was 'mongst the Trojans Dares, blameless, rich, 
 Priest of Hephaistos he. His sons were twain 
 Hight Phegeus and Idseus, skilful each 
 In fight. These, leaving then their folk, were fain 
 On him make onset. From their car maintain 
 The contest they, he on the ground on foot. 
 When rushing on they nigh each other been 
 Then Phegeus first the long-shade spear sent out 
 Which o'er Tydides' shoulder pass'd, and smote him not. 
 
 H 4 
 
104 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 On rush'd Tydides next with brazen spear, 
 Nor fled the weapon from his hand in vain, 
 But smote his breast mid paps, and thrust him sheer 
 From off the steeds. Down leap'd IdaBus then 
 And left the lovely car, his brother slain 
 Not daring to defend. Nor dreary fate 
 Himself had ^scap'd, had not Hephaistos ta'en 
 And veiFd in darkness him in safety set. 
 That th' old man might not be entirely desolate. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Brave Tydeus* son the steeds off driving gave 
 His comrades to the hollow ships to take. 
 When th^ high-soul'd Trojans Dares' sons perceive 
 One fled, one slain by th' car, their minds all quake. 
 Ta'en Ares' hand blue-ey'd Athene spake : — 
 " Ares blood-stain'd, wall-batt'ring homicide, 
 " The Trojans and Achaeans let 's forsake 
 " And leave them fight, and Zeus exalt what side 
 " He will. And we retiring so Zeus' wrath avoid." 
 
 This said, hot Ares out she led from fight. 
 And on high-bank'd Scamander seated then. 
 The Danai put Trojans there to flight. 
 By every chieftain sooth a man was slain. 
 And first did Agamemnon, king of men. 
 Huge Hodius, chief of Halizons, thrust sheer 
 From car. Him turning smote his back between 
 The shoulders, driving through his chest the spear. 
 He fell with heavy sound, his armour rung out drear. 
 
BOOK V. 3—8. 105 
 
 VI. 
 
 Idomeneus slew Mceon Borus* son 
 Phoestus, who had from fertile Tarne come. 
 And there Idomeneus of spear renown, 
 With long lance him, as on his steed he clomb, 
 Throuo-h his ri^ht shoulder smote. Down sank he from 
 His chariot there ; and seiz'd him darkness drear. 
 Idom'neus^ servants stripp'd him overcome. 
 Atrides Menelaus slaughter'd there 
 Chace-skiird Scamandrius, Strophius's son, with beechen 
 spear. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Skiird hunter he, whom Artemis had taught 
 Herself to smite all salvage things that bred 
 In mountain forests be. Avail him nought 
 The arrow- loving Artemis then did. 
 Nor all far-shooting skill that erst he had. 
 Atrides Menelaus, spear-renown'd. 
 Him did with spear, as he before him fled. 
 Mid shoulders back to chest through-thrusting wound. 
 Headlong he fell. His arms about him rattling sound. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 But Merion there did slay Pher^clus, who 
 Was Harmonides' son th^ artificer. 
 That work all cunning things with hands well knew, 
 For him Pallas Athen^ held full dear. 
 And Alexander built he ships, that were 
 Prime source of ill, that woe to Trojans wrought, 
 And eke himself, the gods' response oracular 
 Discerning not. And him when Merion caught 
 In chase o'ertaking he, upon the right hip smote. 
 
106 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The spear-point pierc'd his bladder 'neath the bone ; 
 With shriek he sank t^ his knee ; Death veil'd him drear. 
 Meges Pedaeus slew Antenor's son, 
 A bastard whom to please her spouse did rear 
 Divine Theano like her children dear. 
 Him then when nigh spear-skill'd Phylides hit 
 Beneath the occiput with sharp-point spear, 
 Right through the teeth the brass his tongue did slit. 
 1^ th^ dust he fell, and with his teeth the cold brass bit. 
 
 X. 
 
 Eurypylus Evaemon's child smote there 
 Godlike Hypsenor, haught Dolopion's son, 
 Scamander's priest, whom did his folk revere 
 As god. Evaemon's offspring radiant one 
 Eurypylus, with falchion rushing on, 
 His shoulder smote as he before him flies, 
 And lopp'd off there his heavy hand, which down 
 Fell bleeding on the plain. At once his eyes 
 The purple death, and fate prevailing occupies. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Thus these in fierce encounter toiled sore. 
 But who Tydides rank'd with you'd not known, 
 With Trojans he, or with the' Achasans more. 
 I' th' plain he rag'd like torrent-river swoln, 
 That bridges bursteth fiercely rushing on ; 
 Not buttress'd bridges can its force sustain, 
 Nor fruitful fields' embankments check, when down 
 It sudden comes, while pours Zeus' gushing rain 
 And swept away be many labours fair of men. 
 
BOOK V. 9 — 14. 107 
 
 XII. 
 
 So broke the Trojans' dense phalanges be 
 By Dioraed, whom num'rous wait they not. 
 When him Lycaon's brilliant son did see 
 Rage on the plain, and whole phalanges rout, 
 He bending quick his bow him rushing smote. 
 Did by right shoulder th' hollow corselet smite. 
 On flew fell shaft, and opposite came out, 
 And blood the corselet stain'd. Straight at the sight 
 Exulting shouted loud Lycaon's offspring bright : — 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " On! high-soul'd Trojans, spur-steed warriors, on! 
 " Th' Achaeans' chief one's smit. I think not he 
 " Will bear fell shaft for long, if sooth Zeus' son 
 " The king when I left Lycia prompted me." 
 He vaunts. But him did not the swift shaft slay. 
 Retiring stood he steeds and chariot near, 
 And Sthenelus addressing thus did say : — 
 " Capaneus' son, quit chariot, comrade dear. 
 And from my shoulder pluck this bitter arrow here." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 He said. Sprang Sthenelus from steeds to ground, 
 And, standing near, the arrow swift from out 
 His shoulder drew complete. Straight from the wound 
 The blood through flexile coat of mail did spout. 
 Then pray'd Tydides, good at battle shout : — 
 " iEgis-arm'd Zeus' untam'd child, hear me thou ! 
 " If me and father loving e'er help out 
 " Thou didst in war, Athen^, 'friend me now, 
 " And grant me catch that man, and come within spear- 
 throw. 
 
108 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " The man thaf s been beforehand smiting me, 
 
 " And boasts and says the sun's fair light I shall 
 
 " Not long behold." Thus praying then spake he. 
 
 Pallas Athene heark'ned to his call, 
 
 His limbs made nimble, feet and hands withal ; 
 
 Stood nigh, and wing'd words spake : — " Now, Diomed, 
 
 " Full confident upon the Trojans fall; 
 
 " Thy father's vigor in thy breast I've shed. 
 
 Intrepid e'en as shake-shield horseman Tydeus had. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " I've purg'd thine eyes from darkness erst was there, 
 " That god from man thou mayst discern aright. 
 " So now if tempting thee a god come here, 
 " By no means thou with gods immortal fight, 
 " Not other gods. But haply chance it might 
 " Zeus' daughter Aphrodite in th' afiray 
 " May enter. Her with weapon keen then smite." 
 This said, blue-eyed Athene went away. 
 Again Tydides moving was in front th' array. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Though he to fight the Trojans long'd before, 
 Him triple rage then took. A lion so. 
 When shepherd tending sheep him leaping o'er 
 The fold doth slightly wound, but not lay low, 
 Stirs more his rage. The man defenceless now 
 To shelter creeps, his trembling charge forsook. 
 That all confus'd together huddling go. 
 From out the deep fold leaps he at a stroke. 
 Strong Diomed so fiercely on the Trojans broke. 
 
BOOK V. 15—20. 109 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Astynous, Hypenor also there, 
 The shepherd of his folk, he slew, the one 
 Above the nipple smote with brazen spear. 
 And one with falchion huge on collar-bone. 
 From neck and back the shoulder cleaving down. 
 To Abas then, and Polyeidus, old 
 Eurydamas' dream-monger's sons, went on. 
 Whom starting so their sire the dreams not told. 
 But slaughter'd there despoil'd them Diomed the bold. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He after Xanthus then, and Thoon hied, 
 The sons of Phenops, in his old age born. 
 Who worn with years hath now no son beside 
 To leave his wealth. From both hath this one torn 
 Their arms and precious life, and left forlorn 
 To grief and dreary cares their sire, who'll ne'er 
 Behold them more alive from war return. 
 But all his vast possessions aliens share. 
 Echemius, Chromius next, that on one chariot were. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And Dardan Priam's offspring twain, he slays. 
 And as a lion, leaping 'mong the kine, 
 Breaks neck of steer, or heifer as they graze 
 In forest green. So Tydeus' son the twain 
 Dash'd from their car by force and spoiled then 
 Of arms. The steeds he to his comrades gave 
 To drive to th' ships. Him routing ranks of men 
 ^neas saw, and through the battle drave. 
 And clash of spears, to find out Pandarus the brave. 
 
110 THE ILIAD 
 
 XXI. 
 
 He found Lycaon's faultless ^^ valiant son, 
 And near him stood, and him such speech address'd : - 
 " Pandarus, where's thy bow, swift shafts, renown ? 
 " In which can here no man with thee contest, 
 " Nor one in Lycia boasteth him the best 
 " Compar'd with thee. Launch arrow at this one, 
 " (With prayer to Zeus,) that here so unsurpassed 
 " Prevails, and hath such ills to Trojans done, 
 " And loos'd the knees of many valiant ones overthrown . 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Unless some god he be, for sacrifice 
 " With Trojans' wroth. A god's ire sooth is dread." 
 To him Lycaon's brilliant son replies : — 
 " ^neas, chief of Trojans brazen- clad, 
 " In all I think him like brave Diomed. 
 " By buckler he and crested helmet known, 
 " And steeds. But am not sure but god indeed 
 " He is. If man, then Tydeus' warlike son. 
 " Nor he without some god assisting rages on. 
 
 xxm. 
 
 " For of th' immortals some one standeth nigh, 
 " With cloud- veil'd shoulders, who the arrow fleet 
 " From him averts. For shaft already I 
 " Have sent, and his right shoulder smit but late, 
 " That did through hollow corselet penetrate, 
 " And him methought I'd sent to Hades there, 
 " Yet slew him not. 'Tis sure some god irate. 
 " Nor steeds there be, that I could mount, nor car, 
 " Though bright new cars eleven in Lycaon's are. 
 
BOOK V. 21—26. Ill 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " And round them veils are spread. Steeds stand a 
 
 pair 
 " By each ; on oats and barley white they feed. 
 " Me setting out gave in his mansion fair 
 " Lycaon, warrior old, abundant rede^^^; 
 " He counselled me that mounting car and steed 
 " I should in battles fierce the Trojans head. 
 " I slighted what had better been to heed. 
 " I spar'd my steeds and fodder scant did dread 
 " In leaguer'd town, since they were wont be highly fed. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " So, leaving these, to Ilium here on foot 
 " I came, my bow and arrows trusting to, 
 " Which were to prove nathless of little boot. 
 " Already have I shot at chieftains two, 
 " Tydides and Atrides, and 'tis true ^^ 
 " Drawn blood from both, but only stirr'd them on. 
 " With evil fate from peg my bow I drew 
 " The day I led to Ilium's pleasant town 
 " The Trojan troops, to pleasure Hector godlike one. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " If I return, and with these eyes see ever 
 " My country, wife, and high-roof 'd house ^^ again, 
 " Then straight from me my head may foeman sever 
 " If I not break and thrust in fire's bright sheen 
 " This bow, that hath companion'd me in vain." 
 To him ^neas, Trojan chief, then spake : — 
 " So say not, 'twill not be before we twain 
 " Our course with horses and with chariot take 
 '' Against this man, and with our weapons trial make. 
 
112 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 "But come, ascend my chariot now, and see 
 " What steeds of Tros be like, how o'er the plain 
 " Swift hither thither skill'd to chase or flee ; 
 " Which city-wards will also save us twain 
 " If Zeus grant Diomed the palm again. 
 " But come, now whip and splendid reins receive, 
 " And I the steeds will quit, and fight maintain. 
 " Or thou take this ^'^, and me the horses leave." 
 Him answered then Lycaon's brilliant offspring brave 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " iEneas, thou the reins and steeds retain ; 
 " They'll rather draw 'neath custom'd charioteer 
 " The car, if Tydeus' son we flee again. - 
 " Lest scar'd they random run, and us not bear 
 " From fight when they thy voice no longer hear. 
 " And on us rush will Tydeus' high soul'd son, 
 " Slay us, and th' whole hoof 'd horses drive ofi* there. 
 " Thyself then guide the car, and steeds thine own. 
 With spear will I encounter this one coming on." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 So said they clomb the varied car, and on 
 Tydides eagerly their horses sped. 
 Them Sthenelus espied, the brilliant son 
 Of Capaneus, and to Tydides said 
 These wing'd words quick : — " Tydides Diomed, 
 " My soul's belov'd, two mighty men I see 
 " Of strength enormous, and determined 
 " With thee to fight ; one skill'd in archery, 
 Pandarus, who Lycaon's off*spring boasts to be ; 
 
BOOK V. 27—32. lia 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " And one *s ^neas, boasting for his sire 
 " High-soul'd Anchises. Aphrodite fair 
 " His mother. Come let 's on our steeds ^^ retire, 
 " Nor rage thou 'mong the foremost so, for fear 
 " Thou lose thy precious life." With look austere 
 To him strong Diomed : — " Talk not of flight, 
 " For thou methinks wilt not persuade me here. 
 " 'Tis not the custom of my race to fight 
 " With him that flees. Fear not, for whole is yet my 
 might. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " It irks me mount the steeds. Them thus Til meet. 
 " Pallas Athene fear permits not me. 
 " Nor back convey will them their horses fleet 
 "The twain from us, if one in safety flee. 
 " But this I say, and thou attentive be, 
 " If wise Athene glory grant to slay 
 " Them both, these swift steeds halt, to car-rim tie 
 " The reins. Rush on Eneas' steeds, nor stay, 
 ^' But towards th' Achaeans from the Trojans drive away. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " Their breed is that which loud-voic'd Zeus ^^ gave erst 
 " To Tros, in recompense for Ganymede, 
 " And so of steeds 'neath morn and sun the first 
 " They be. Anchises, king of men, indeed 
 " Did, bringing in his mares, steal from this breed ; 
 " Laomedon not knowing it. And thence have been 
 " Six foals y-bred. And he at manger four did feed, 
 " And gave ^neas these fear-stirrers twain, 
 " Which could we capture, brilliant glory we should gain." 
 
 I 
 
114 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Such things discours'd to one another they. 
 Those soon drew nigh, their swift steeds driving on. 
 To him Lycaon's bright son first did say : — 
 " Fam'd Tydeus' most enduring warhke son, 
 " Thee sooth swift bolt, fell arrow struck not down, 
 " And now Til try with spear if I may smite." 
 He said, and long spear whirling sent, and on 
 Tydides' shield he smote, and through it right 
 The brazen point approach'd the cuirass in its flight. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Then shouted loud Lycaon's brilliant son : — 
 " Thou'rt smit i' th' flank, nor bear up wilt thou long 
 " Methinks. Me hast thou yielded vast renown." 
 Him spake undaunted Diomed the strong : — 
 " Thou'st miss'd, not hit. But ye will not have done 
 " I think, till one do fall, and there content 
 "With blood the tough-skinn'd Ares ^^ warrior-one." 
 So said, he hurl'd. Athene guiding sent 
 T' his nose by th' eye the dart, which past his white teeth 
 went. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Th' untiring brass the root cut off his tongue. 
 Out at his chin the spear-point did appear. 
 He from his chariot fell, and 'bout him rung 
 His armour glist'ring variegate. With fear 
 Recoil'd the swift-foot steeds, and loosed there 
 His strength and spirit were. iEneas straight 
 Rush'd forth with buckler, and with lengthy spear. 
 Lest the Acha3ans drag the corse from fight. 
 He guards it like a lion, confident in might. 
 
BOOKV. 33—38. 115 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Tore him his spear he held, and shield, intent 
 To slay what man soever might 'gainst him go. 
 He shouted dread. A stone Tydides hent ^^^, 
 Which no two men might lift of mortals now. 
 Yet wielding he with ease alone did throw. 
 With it Eneas' hip-joint smote wherein 
 The thigh bone turns. And this the cup men do 
 Yclepe. Which cup then he with tendons twain 
 There brake. The jagged pebble tore away the skin. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The hero sank t' his knee, with stout hand lean 
 He did 'gainst earth. Night veil'd his eyes. And there 
 ^neas, king of men, had died, if seen 
 Had not Zeus' daughter Aphrodite fair. 
 That him to shepherding Anchises bare. 
 Her white arms round her son she threw, and bright 
 Yell's fold, a fence 'gainst darts, for him with care 
 She spread, for fear his breast with brass spear smite. 
 And take his life some rapid-steed Danaian might. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Her son belov'd she bare from fight. Nor had 
 Capaneus' son forgot the things agreed. 
 What Diomed the onset- valiant bade. 
 But he his whole-hoof'd horses made abide 
 From din apart, and reins to car-rim tied. 
 Eneas' fair-man'd steeds he seiz'd and drave 
 Fro' th' Trojans to the well-greav'd Achives' side. 
 And to Deipylus, his lov'd friend, gave 
 Whom of his equals he did most in honor have, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 For that their thoughts agreed. To him he gave 
 The steeds to drive to th' hollow ships, and so 
 Y-clomb his car, the bright reins seiz'd, and drave 
 The strong-hoof d steeds with eager haste unto 
 Tydides, who did Cypris then pursue 
 With ruthless brass ; a goddess well knew he 
 Unwarlike, not of goddesses that do 
 Men's battles sway. He knew her not to be 
 Athene, nor En^^o town-destroyer, she. 
 
 XL. 
 
 When through the dense throng follVing her he found, 
 Sprang high-soul'd Tydeus' son with outstretched spear. 
 And her soft-arm's extremity ^^ did wound 
 With keen-edg'd brass. Pierc'd through her flesh the 
 
 spear 
 I' th' palm through veil ambrosial, that for her 
 The Graces wrought. The goddess' blood divine. 
 The ichor that from blest gods flows, ran there. 
 They eat not bread, nor drink of purple wine. 
 So bloodless therefore they, and styl'd immortal been. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 She shriekM, and from her cast her son. And him 
 Pheebus Apollo snatch'd in cloud away 
 Lest of the swift- steed Danai one aim 
 Might at his breast a spear, and him there slay. 
 To her brave Diomed 'gan shout, and say : — 
 *' Zeus' daughter back from war, and battle here. 
 " Is't not enough weak woman to betray ? 
 " If war thou visitest thou'lt shrink with fear 
 " From war, though of the same thou but at distance hear."' 
 
BOOK V. 39 — 44. 117 
 
 XLII. 
 
 He said, and she perturb'd and grieved withdrew. 
 Led wind-foot Iris her by th' hand from fight 
 Opprest with pain. Her fair flesh livid grew. 
 To th' battle's left she found hot Ares wight 
 There sitting, spear and steeds in darkness pight. 
 She at her brother's knees did him entreat 
 And ask'd the steeds with gold-gemm'd bridles dij^ht, 
 " Dear brother see to me, those horses fleet 
 " Grant me to go t' Olympus the immortals' seat. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " I'm sorely pain'd with wound from mortal ta'en, 
 " Tydides, who'd with Father Zeus contend." 
 She said. He yields the steeds of golden rein. 
 She, griev'd at heart, the chariot did ascend. 
 Iris b' her side, who took the reins in hand, 
 And whipp'd them on ; and willingly they flew. 
 And quick t' Olympus, seat of gods, they wend. 
 There halting wind-foot Iris swift withdrew 
 The steeds from car, and near them food ambrosial threw* 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Sank Aphrodite at Clone's knees 
 
 Her mother, who takes in her arms anon 
 
 Her child, and sooths with hand, and names, and says, 
 
 1^ " Of Heaven's dwellers serv'd thee thus what one, 
 " Dear child, as if thou 'dst open evil done ? " 
 Smiles-loving Aphrodite answ'ring said : — 
 " Proud Diomed did wound me, Tydeus' son, 
 " For my dear child from fight I'd fain have led 
 
 '" JEneas, who 's by me of all most cherished. 
 
 1 3 
 
 i 
 
118 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Nor fight 'twixt Trojans and AchaBans lies, 
 " But now the Danai with gods contend." 
 To her Dion^ goddess high replies : — 
 " Bear it my child, endure, however pain'd, 
 " For much have we sky-dwellers here sustain'd 
 " From men, we working one another wrong. 
 " So Ares when Aloeus' sons enchain'd 
 " Him fast, Otus and Ephialtes strong, 
 " In brazen dungeon bound he lay thirteen months long. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " There died war-greedy Ares had perchance 
 " But step-dame Eribcea lovely told 
 ^' To Hermes, who by stealth drew Ares thence 
 " Nigh spent, for him the bondage sore control! 'd. 
 " Here, whom smote Amphytrion's offspring bold 
 '^ With three-prong'd shaft, i' th' right breast, agony 
 " Endur'd. Bore Hades huge, of giant mould, 
 " Fleet shaft, when 'mong the dead i' th' gate did ply 
 '' That same man, segis-arm'd Zeus' son, his archery. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " Who him then smiting there to torments gave. 
 " (But he to Zeus' house went t' Olympus long 
 '' Heart-griev'd, transfix'd with pain. The arrow clave 
 " T' his stalwart shoulder, and his soul y-stong, 
 " Pain-quelling med'cines Poeon on him flong, 
 " And heal'd, for no whit mortal born was he) 
 '' Bold derring-doer ! reckless working wrong, 
 " To vex th' Olympian gods with archery ! 
 " Athene, blue-eyed goddess, this one set at thee. 
 
BOOK V. 45—50. 119 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " The fool ! in mind not known hath Tydeus' son 
 " Who fights immortals not endureth long, 
 " Nor children him from war returned will on 
 " His knees ^ papa ' him. So Tydides strong 
 " Beware, lest he thy mightier meet, and long 
 " Adrastian JEgialea wise from bed 
 " Her servants rouse, bewailing that most strong 
 " Of Achives all, who her a virgin wed, 
 " The noble spouse of steed-subduing Diomed." 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 She spake, and wip'd from th' han'd with both her own 
 The ichor. Heal'd the hand, assuag'd th' pain. 
 Then Here and Athene looking-on 
 With sharp words taunt Zeus Kronides were fain : — 
 " Sire Zeus,'' blue-eyed Athene speech began, 
 ** Thee anger will my words ? Sure Cypris there 
 " Hath coax'd some Achive dame her Trojan men 
 " Belov'd to join, and stroking dow^n the fair 
 " 'Gainst golden clasp hath scratch'd her soft hand 
 
 L. 
 
 She said. Then smil'd the sire of gods and men. 
 And calling golden Aphrodite said : — 
 " Not given thee, my child, war's labours been, 
 " Tend thou thy labours sweet of marriage-bed, 
 " These be b' Athene and hot Ares sped." 
 Thus these to one another talked there, 
 Kush'd on ^neas war-stout Diomed, 
 Though him Apollo's self he was aware 
 Did screen with hands he'd yet for puissant god no care. 
 
 I 4 
 
120 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 But he with eager longing burnt alway 
 To kill JEneas, and his armour take ; 
 Thrice then he rush'd desiring him to slay, 
 And thrice his glist'ring shield Apollo strake. 
 When like a god again he'd onset make 
 With fierce rebuke far-darting Phoebus cried : — 
 " Bethink thee well, Tydides, and give back, 
 " Nor think to cope with gods. For not allied 
 " The race of deathless gods, and men on earth that bide." 
 
 LII. 
 
 He said. Tydides then gave back a space 
 Apollo the far-darter's wrath to shun. 
 Apart Apollo did ^neas place 
 In holy Pergamos, where stood his own 
 Fair fane, within whose ample shrine anon 
 Leto and Artemis, whom shafts delight, 
 Did him recure, and eke with lustre don. 
 But silver-bow Apollo form'd a spright 
 In semblance of ^neas, in like armour dight. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Trojans and godlike Achives round this spright 
 About each other's bosoms clave bull-hide 
 Huge shields orbicular, and bucklers light. 
 Phoebus Apollo to hot Ares said : — 
 " Ares, blood-stain'd, wall-batt'ring homicide, 
 " Wilt not from battle this man drive away, 
 " Tydides, who'd in fight Sire Zeus abide ? 
 *' For first wound Cypris in the wrist did he, 
 " And then upon myself he sprang like deity." 
 
BOOK V. 51—56. 121 
 
 LIV. 
 
 This said, he sat on lofty Pergamus. 
 
 The Trojan files stirr'd Ares visiting, 
 
 Like Acamas, who Thracians' prompt chief was, 
 
 And Priam's Zeus-fed sons thus ordering 
 
 He spake : — "0 sons of Priam, Zeus-fed king, 
 
 " How long let Achives smite your people down ? 
 
 " Till battling they your well-built gates enring ? 
 
 " For down *s a man, as Hector godlike one 
 
 We rank, iEneas lofty- soul'd Anchises' son; 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Fro' th' tumult let's our brave companion save." 
 So stirr'd he strength and courage in each one. 
 Sarpedon sharply chideth Hector brave : — 
 " Where, Hector, is thy former courage gone ? 
 " Without or forces or allies, alone 
 " Thy boast with kith and kin this town make good. 
 " Of these perceive or see now can I none. 
 " They cower as dogs before a lion would, 
 " While we allies do fight, and have the foe withstood. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " For I too an ally from far am come, 
 " For Lycia 's far, where whirling Xanthus flows. 
 ^' Dear wife I left, and infant son at home, 
 " And wealth whereat each poor man's envy grows. 
 " Nathless I lead my Lycians, and dispose 
 " Myself to fight the man, though here I've nought, 
 " Bear ofi* or drive th' Achseans could, to lose. 
 " Yet thou dost stand and other folk bidst not 
 " Abide, and in their wives' defence do battle stout. 
 
122 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " Then have a care lest peradventure ta'en, 
 " As in the meshes of a gath'ring net, 
 " To foemen captives, and a prey ye been. 
 " All this behoves thee ponder day and night, 
 " And chiefs entreat, auxiliars calPd from far, 
 " To hold to 't firm, and shouldst sharp speech remit." 
 So spake Sarpedon. Hector from his car 
 Soul-stung by 's speech leap'd down y-clad in armour fair. 
 
 liVIli. 
 
 And shaking javelins keen the host he pac'd. 
 On ev'ry side arousing them to fight. 
 And kindled battle dread. They turn'd and fac'd 
 Th' Achseans there. Th' Argives in close ranks pight 
 Awaited them, withouten touch of fright. 
 As wind in sacred floors chafi* lifteth ethe 
 Where men are winnowing, and gold-tress'd bright 
 Demeter separates with strong winds' breath 
 The husk and grain, and chafi-heaps whiten underneath 
 
 LIX. 
 
 So white a-top with dust th' AchaBans grew. 
 Which th' horses' feet up-cast to th' brazen sky 
 As back commingled they. For turn'd anew 
 The charioteers, and strength of hands they ply 
 And battle veil'd in night. And Troy's ally 
 Fierce Ares, pacing through, the bidding does 
 Of golden-sword Phoebus Apollo high. 
 Who him, Pallas Athene gone, bade rouse 
 The Trojans' force. Danaians' helper sooth she was. 
 
BOOKV. 57—62. 123 
 
 LX. 
 
 He sent ^neas forth from wealthy shrine, 
 And strength y-flong in people- shepherd's breast, 
 ^neas join'd his comrades, who were fain 
 To see him coming live and sound, possest 
 Of perfect strength, but question'd nought, too prest 
 With toil that Silver-Bow y-kindled had, 
 And man-bane Ares eke, and Strife of ceaseless zest. 
 Th' Ajaces twain, Odysseus, Diomed 
 Upstirred there the Danai to battle dread. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Themselves nought fear'd the Trojans' strength, nor cries. 
 But waited them like clouds that Kronos' son. 
 In calm on mountains high, that tower-like rise, 
 Plants motionless, while sleeps the strength anon 
 Of Boreas, and strong winds every one 
 That with their shrill blasts blowing scatter wide 
 The overshad'wing clouds. So fearing none 
 The Danai did firm the Trojans bide. 
 Atrides pac'd the throng, and much commanding cried : — 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " Friends, a valiant heart assume, be men. 
 " Respect each other in the conflicts dread ; 
 " Shame-fearing men more saved be than slain, 
 " For fugitives no glory springs, nor aid." 
 He spake, and javelin hurling there with speed 
 A foremost man, ^Eneas' friend, he smote, 
 Deicoon the high-soul'd Pergaside. 
 Him less than Priam's sons the Trojans nought 
 Receiv'd, for prompt among the foremost aye he fought. 
 
124 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 His shield King Agamemnon smote with dart. 
 The shield not stay'd the spear, which through it drave 
 And pierc'd through belt his belly's lower part. 
 With crash he fell, his arms a dread sound gave. 
 jEneas slaughter'd two Danaians brave, 
 Diodes' sons, Cretho, Orsilochus. 
 Their sire in well-built Phera dwelt, and have 
 Store wealth he did, of lineage too he was 
 Of stream, through Pylians' land that flows, hight Alpheus, 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Who 'gat Orsilochus, of many king. 
 Orsilochus 'gat high soul'd Diodes. 
 And did from Diodes twin-children spring 
 Cretho, Orsilochus fight-skill'd. And these, 
 Grown up, in sable ships across the seas 
 To horse-apt Ilium with the Argives go ; 
 For Agamemnon, Menelaus please. 
 The two Atrides, they desir'd, and so 
 One end of death there both encompassing laid low. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Like lions twain, in mountain-summits high, 
 Bred 'neath their dam the forest's depths within, 
 That oxen snatch and fat sheep by and by. 
 And men's folds ravage till themselves be slain 
 With keen-edg'd brass beneath the hands of men. 
 So these beneath Eneas' hands subdued 
 Like lofty fir-trees fell. Them fallen then 
 Y-pitied Menelaus, th' onset-good. 
 Who through the front rank went, and arm'd in bright 
 brass stood, 
 
BOOK V. 63—68. 125 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 And shook his spear, for Ares spurred him on 
 Intending him b' JEneas' hands t' have sped. 
 Antilochus perceiving, Nestor's son, 
 Rush'd forward for folk-shepherd all y-drad 
 Lest suffer aught he might, and vain be made 
 Most grievously their toil. Those twain 'gan ply 
 Both hands and sharp-edg'd spears with purpose sad 
 To fight against each other eagerly, 
 When stood Antilochus by th' people shepherd nigh. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Though warrior prompt, JEneas did not bide 
 When twain he saw, each other standing nigh. 
 They when the dead they'd drawn to the Achive side 
 To comrades' hands the sad pair flung, while they 
 Returning in the front rank fighting ply. 
 They slew Pylaemon, Ares' paragon. 
 Chief of the Paphlagonian warriors high. 
 Atrides Menelaus, spear-skill'd one. 
 Him standing smote with spear, and hit the collar-bone. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Antilochus smote Medon charioteer, 
 Atymnius' son, as he the steeds turn'd round ; 
 With stone his elbow hit. From 's hands fell there 
 I' th' dust the white-with-iv'ry reins to ground. 
 Antilochus with sword did on him bound. 
 And struck his face. Panting from car head-first 
 He fell i' th' sand on shoulders and on crown. 
 And long thus stood, in such deep sand y-thrust. 
 Till smote him there his steeds, and cast to ground in dust. 
 
126 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Them whipp'd Antilochus, and drave unto 
 Th' Achaean host. And Hector them espied 
 Mid ranks, and shouting loud did on them go. 
 With him the Trojans' strong phalanges hied, 
 Whom Ares and august Enyo guide. 
 She wielding battle's reckless uproar vast. 
 While Ares' hands his spear gigantic plied, 
 'Fore Hector now, and now behind him pass'd. 
 Him Diomed the battle-bold beheld aghast. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 As when a man all inexperienc'd going 
 His journey through a wide outstretching plain, 
 Stands on a rapid river, sea- ward flowing. 
 And seeing it foam and roar runs back amain ; 
 So back Tydides drew, and folk spake then : — 
 " Friends, how we've godlike Hector wonder'd at, 
 " Such spear-man he, and warrior brave t' have been ! 
 " But near him 's aye some god averting fate, 
 ^' Near him that Ares now, like mortal man doth wait. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 " So, towards the Trojans facing, backward aye 
 " Ketreat, nor wish contend with gods in might." 
 He said. The Trojans on them came a-nigh. 
 Then Hector two men slew well-skill'd in fight, 
 Menestheus, Anchialus on one car pight. 
 Them pitied mighty Ajax Telamon 
 Drew near, and stood, and hurl'd with javelin bright. 
 And Amphius smote, of Selagus the son. 
 Who dwelt in Poesus, land-possession'd, wealthy one. 
 
BOOK V. 69—74. 127 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Fate led him Priam, and his sons to aid. 
 Him on his belt smote Ajax Telamon. 
 The long-shade spear fix in his belly did. 
 With crash he fell. Bright Ajax up did run 
 To spoil his arms. The Trojans' darts shower down 
 Keen, glist'ring. Many did his shield receive, 
 But he with heel upon the slaughter'd one 
 PuU'd out the brazen spear. His armour brave 
 He might not strip, upon him so the javelins drave. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 He fear'd the haughty Trojans circling round, 
 Who numerous, valiant stood, and lances held, 
 Who him though huge, and strong, and high-renown'd, 
 Did from them thrust. So back he drew repell'd. 
 And thus they labour'd in the battle-field. 
 Tlepolemus, huge, valiant Heraclide 
 Against divine Sarpedon fate impell'd. 
 And these now in their course each other nigh'd 
 Grandson and son of Zeus, the cloud-compelling wide. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Tlepolemus to him then speech began : — 
 " Sarpedon, Lycians' chief, for thee what need 
 " Be trembling here, in fight an unskill'd man ? 
 " They lie who call thee aegis-arm'd Zeus' seed. 
 " For of those men thou lackest much indeed, 
 " Who sprang from Zeus among the men of old. 
 " But Hercules they say was of that breed, 
 " My sire, of stedfast valour, lion-soul'd, 
 " That for Laomedon's fair steeds came hither bold. 
 
128 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 " With six ships only came, and fewest men 
 " Troy's town he sack'd, her streets all empty made. 
 " But duirs thy soul, thy people perishen. 
 " Nor wouldst thou much, methinks, the Trojans aid 
 " From Lycia come, however strong. Low laid 
 " By me thou'lt pass through gates of Hades down." 
 Sarpedon Lycian chief him answ'ring said : — 
 " Tlepolemus ! he sack'd Troy's sacred town 
 " All through a man's perverseness, fam'd Laomedon. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " Who him, that well had wrought, with ill speech chode, 
 " Nor gave the steeds that he from far had come for here. 
 " Thee slaughter, and black fate I here forbode 
 '* Through me. Thou'lt give me fame, queli'd 'neath my 
 
 spear, 
 " And steed-fam'd Hades yield thy spirit dear." 
 Sarpedon spake. His ash spear lifted now 
 Tlepolemus. Their javelins long career 
 From both their hands at once. Mid neck of foe 
 Sarpedon smote. Right through the ruthless point did go. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Black night enwrapt his eyes. But with long spear 
 Tlepolemus his foe's left thigh did smite. 
 Through went the eager point, the bone a-near. 
 But death his sire averts. His comrades bright 
 Now bare Sarpedon godlike from the fight. 
 And sore the long spear pain'd him trailing there. 
 But pull it from his thigh, that mount he might 
 His car, did no one think of, for they were 
 In eager haste, and such travail they round him bare. 
 
BOOK V. 75—80. 129 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Tlepolemus the well-greav'd Achives bare 
 From fight. Divine Odysseus ^^ patient one 
 Perceiv'd. His heart was stirr'd. He ponder'd there 
 In mind and soul if first pursue the son 
 Of thund'ring Zeus, or Lycians smiting down 
 A many 'reave of life. 'Twas not in fate 
 High-soul'd Odysseus should the mighty son 
 Of Zeus with sharp brass slay. So where was great 
 The throng of Lycians did his mind Athene set. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Caeranus and Alastor there he slew, 
 And Chromius and Alcander, Halius there 
 Noemon, Prytanis. More slaughtered too 
 Divine Odysseus had, but quick aware 
 Huge helmet-glancing Hector did repair, 
 In bright brass harness'd, vanwards to affray 
 The Danai. His coming gladden' d there 
 Zeus' son Sarpedon, who did doleful say : — 
 " Priamides, let me not lie th' Achaeans' prey. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 " But help, and then life quit me in your town, 
 *' Since home I'm not to see, nor country dear 
 " To gladden wife belov'd, and infant son." 
 He said. Helm-glancing Hector answer'd ne'er, 
 But past him rush'd, intent at quickest there 
 Th' Argives repel, of life strip many a one. 
 Godlike Sarpedon's comrades plac'd him near 
 uiEgis-arm'd Zeus' fair beech. From thigh anon 
 Drew th' ashen spear his friend belov'd, stout Pelagon, 
 
130 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 His spirit left him, darkness veil'd his eyes, 
 But he came-to, and breath of Boreas blowing 
 Revives his soul, as breathing hard he lies. 
 Th' Argives for Ares and arin'd Hector's showing 
 Ne'er turn'd to flight, unto their black ships going, 
 Nor forward bore in fight, but backwards aye 
 Eetreated, Ares 'mong the Trojans knowing. 
 Whom first then there, and whom the last did they 
 Great Hector Priam's son, and brazen Ares slay ? 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Teuthras divine, Orestes spur-steed one, 
 And Trechus the JEtolian arm'd with spear, 
 CEnomaus, Helenus CEnops' son, 
 Oresbius, nimble warrior girdled fair. 
 In Hyla dwelling, wealth engross'd his care, 
 By lake Cephissis. Near him others too 
 Boeotians dwelt in fertile district there. 
 When white-arm'd Here goddess there did view 
 In fierce encounter perish so the Argive crew, 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Straight to Athene winged words she said : — 
 "Ah, aegis -arm'd Zeus' child, untiring one ! 
 " Sure Menelaus promise vain we made 
 " That he should home, first taking Ilium's town, 
 " If thus we leave fell Ares rage alone. 
 '^ Of prompt aid think we too." She said. Agree 
 Blue-eyed Athene goddess did. Anon 
 Went harnessing the steeds gold-bridled be 
 Here goddess august, great Kronos' daughter she, 
 
BOOK V. 81—86. 131 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Soon Hebe to the car the curv'd wheels set 
 Of brass, eight-spok'd, at th' iron axle's ends, 
 The felloe gold unwearing. Over that 
 The brass tire, wond'rous sight, well-fitting bends, 
 And naves of silver also on both hands ; 
 By gold and silver thongs the seat was hung ; 
 Each side the car a rim half-circling wends ; 
 And from it forth the pole of silver sprung ; 
 And on the end of this the fair gold yoke she strung. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 The yoke-thongs golden, fair, she cast therein, 
 And 'neath the yoke the horses Here led 
 Swift-foot, alert for strife and battle-din. 
 Athene, asgis arm'd Zeus' daughter dread, 
 Her veil upon her father's pavement shed, 
 Eich varied veil herself with hands had done. 
 And she, in drive-cloud Zeus' own tunic clad. 
 For fell war arm'd, and did her shoulders don 
 With fringed aegis dread, that Terror round y-ronne. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 There Strife, and Strength, chill-fear Pursuit therein, 
 
 There too the Gorgon-head of Monster dire, 
 
 Fearful, horrific, aegis-arm'd Zeus' sign. 
 
 Her head did golden four-con'd helm attire. 
 
 That hundred cities' foot would scarce require. ^^ 
 
 r th' gleaming car she stepp'd, and seiz'd a spear 
 
 Huge, pond'rous, strong, which she, the child of mighty 
 
 sire, 
 Smites heroes' ranks with, have ofi'ended her. 
 And Here prompt with whip now set the steeds-astir. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 Heav'n-gates self-moving sound, which th' Hours do keep, 
 Whose charge Olympus, and the ample sky, 
 And theirs to ope or shut the dense cloud deep. 
 That way through these their goaded steeds they ply. 
 Zeus found they seated, from the gods away, 
 On many-neck'd Olympus' highest peak. 
 There white-arm'd Here did the coursers stay. 
 And question'd Zeus supreme, and thus she spake : — 
 " Sire Zeus, not anger'd art that Ares should such havoc 
 make? 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 " He hath such folk Achaean causeless slain 
 " Unseemly ! Grief to me. Delighted though 
 " Cypris, and silver-bow Apollo been, 
 " Who've stirr'd this madman, that no laws doth know. 
 " Sire Zeus wilt thou be wroth if Ares now, 
 " Severely smitten, I from fight expel ? 
 Cloud-gath'ring Zeus made answer : — " To it thou, 
 " But set Athene Spoiler on as well, 
 *' Who chief is wont to bring upon him tortures fell." 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 He said. And white-arm'd Here did comply. 
 And whipped the steeds that unreluctant flew 
 Midway between the earth and starry sky. 
 What space in air a man with eyes might view 
 On vantage-rock the dark deep looking to, 
 Leap'd at a bound th' immortals' steeds resounding. 
 When Troy they reach' d and flowing rivers two, 
 Simois and Scamander, streams confounding. 
 There Here halting loos'd the steeds, with clouds sur- 
 rounding. 
 
BOOK V. 87—92. 133 
 
 xc. 
 
 Then Simois ambrosial food up-sent. 
 The goddesses like timid doves a- wing 
 To aid the Argive warriors eager went. 
 But when their course did them to th' close ranks brins: 
 That, num'rous, brave the tame-steed Diomed enring, 
 And like to fierce devouring lions be, 
 Or boars, whose strength's in sooth no feeble thing, 
 There standing Here shouts, in guise of Stentor she. 
 Huge brazen- voic'd, no fifty men could shout as he. 
 
 bi 
 
 XCI. 
 
 " Shame ! Argives, ye disgrace ! with forms so fair ! 
 " While went to war divine Achilles high 
 " Went 'fore the Dardan gates the Trojans ne'er. 
 " They fear'd his mighty lance. But now they ply 
 " Far from the town the fight your ships a-nigh." 
 She said, and stirr'd their strength and courage keen. 
 Sought Tydeus' son Athene Azure-eye, 
 And found the king by 's steeds and chariot sheen. 
 Cooling the wound, from shaft of Pandarus he'd ta'en. 
 
 xcii. 
 
 Sweat gall'd him sore that 'neath the broad belt lay 
 Of orbed shield. His tir'd arm ach'd with it. 
 He rais'd the thong, and dark blood wip'd away. 
 His horse-yoke touching, spake the goddess straight; 
 " Sure son unlike himself did Tydeus get. 
 " Small-bodied Tydeus was, yet warrior-one, 
 " Whom fight and furious rush I would not let 
 " When th' Achives leaving, went as envoy on 
 " To Thebes among Cadmaeans many he alone. 
 
 K 3 
 
134 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 " Feast quiet in their hall enjoin'd I him. 
 " But he, as erst his stout heart holding high, 
 " The youths Cadrnaean challeng'd, and o'ercame 
 " In all with ease, so stood I his ally. 
 " And thee too stand a-near and guard do I, 
 ^^ And bid thee fight against the Trojans bold. 
 " Now harassing fatigue thy limbs aby, 
 " Or faint fear seizeth thee, whom none will hold 
 " Henceforth for Tydeus' son, (Enides warlike-soul'd." 
 
 xciv. 
 
 Her answ'ring spake the mighty Diomed : — 
 " I know thee, goddess, aBgis-arm'd Zeus' child, 
 " So will to thee speak freely, nothing hid. 
 " Faint fear hath not, nor sloth o'er me prevail'd, 
 " But I've thy mandates in remembrance held, 
 " Thou didst command. Forbad'st me thou to fight 
 ^' With gods immortal else in battle-field, 
 " Unless Zeus' daughter Aphrodite might 
 " Come forth to war, and her I should with sharp brass 
 smite. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 " So I retreat myself, and have this way 
 
 " The other Argives all assemble bade ; 
 
 ^' For Ares I discern, who sets th' array." 
 
 To him blue-ey'd Athene answ'ring said : — 
 
 " Dear to my soul, Tydides Diomed, 
 
 " By no means thou this Ares fear at all, 
 
 " Nor of th' immortals any other dread, 
 
 " Ally to thee so staunch am I withal. 
 
 But come, with whole-hoof 'd coursers, first on Ares fall. 
 
BOOK V. 93—98. 135 
 
 xcvi. 
 
 " And smite close-hand, nor headlong Ares dread, 
 " This raging adventitious pest, that aye 
 " Doth change. To me and Here late he said 
 " He'd Trojans fight, of Argives be th' ally, 
 " Now rank'd with Trojans these from mind puts by." 
 She said, and Sthenelus from steeds thrust straight, 
 Drawn back by th' hand. Down leap'd he instantly. 
 The goddess prompt by Diomed took seat. 
 And loud the beechen axle creak'd beneath the weight. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 For goddess dread it bore, and hero brave. 
 Seiz'd whip and reins Pallas Athene. Right 
 On Ares first the whole-hoof d steeds she drave. 
 Who Periphas had slain, gigantic wight, 
 Th' ^tolians' chief Ochesius' offspring bright. 
 The blood-stain'd Ares slew him. Hades' helmet did 
 Athene don lest see her headlong Ares might. 
 When man-bane Ares saw the godlike Diomed 
 He left huge Periphas, where first he slain him had. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 Then straight he went at tame-steed Diomede. 
 When on each other rushing near they be. 
 First Ares aini'd o'er yoke and rein and steed 
 With brazen spear, to slaughter eager he. 
 This did Athene blue-eyed deity 
 Thrust with her hand from car, that vain it went. 
 Then war-stout Diomedes made assay 
 With brazen spear. Pallas Athene leant 
 Upon the spear, and' in his groin by 's girdle sent. 
 
 K 4 
 
 i 
 
136 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 There then she hit, and wounded him, and tore 
 His lovely flesh. And out she pluck'd again 
 The spear. And then did brazen Ares roar, 
 E'en as nine thousand shout or thousands ten 
 That strife of Ares join, embattled men. 
 Argives and Trojans were aghast with fright, 
 So lusty roar'd war-greedy Ares then. 
 And as from clouds a darkness as of night 
 Appears, which heat and rudely blowing wind excite. 
 
 So to Tydides did the brazen Ares seem 
 
 There with the clouds unto the broad sky going. 
 
 To th' gods' seat quick, Olympus steep, he came. 
 
 By Zeus Kronion sat heart-griev'd, and showing 
 
 Th' immortal blood from out the wound down flowing. 
 
 And sore lamenting, winged words 'gan say : — 
 
 " Sire Zeus, moves not thy wrath such fell misdoing ? 
 
 " We gods the bitt'rest things do sufier aye, 
 
 All through our own contriving, men to gratify. 
 
 CI. 
 
 " Thee blame we all, that frantic child didst get 
 '' Pernicious, aye ill deeds intent upon. 
 " We other gods here in Olympus set 
 *^ Do thee obey, and be conform each one. 
 " But her with word or deed thou checkest none, 
 " Indulging as begetter of this pest, 
 " Who Diomedes Tydeus' high-soul'd son m 
 
 " Hath stirr'd with rage th' immortal gods t' infest. ' ■ 
 He Cypris first did close-fight wound i' th' hand at wrist. 
 
 
BOOK V. 99—104. 137 
 
 CIT. 
 
 " On me then like a god he rush'd amain, 
 " But me my swift feet bore away, or woes 
 " I long had borne among the heaps of slain, 
 " My strength with brass beat out alive with blows." 
 Him answer'd drive-cloud Zeus with frowning brows : — 
 " Wail not. Inconstant, here, that art to me 
 '' Most hateful of the gods Olympus knows. 
 " Aye dear to thee strife, wars, and battles be. 
 ** Here thy mother's fierce unyielding mind 's in thee. 
 
 cm. 
 
 " And her in sooth I scarce with words restrain. 
 
 " Through her methinks thou hast these pangs. But 
 
 thee 
 " I'll not much longer leave to suffer pain, 
 " For thou'rt my son, thy mother bare to me. 
 " Had any other god begotten thee ^^ 
 " Thou pest, beneath th' Uranians long y-gone 
 " Thou'dst been." He said, and Paeon bade that he 
 Should heal him, who with suage-pain drugs laid on 
 Recur'd him straight. For he mortality had none. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 As juice of fig white milk solidifies 
 All rapidly, that liquid is indeed 
 By mingler quickly turn'd. E'en in such wise 
 He heal'd impetuous Ares there with speed. 
 Him Hebe wash'd, in raiment fair array 'd. 
 By Zeus he sat his glory joying in. 
 To great Zeus' house did Argive Here yede 
 Returning with staunch-aid Athene when 
 The man-bane Ares they had stay'd from slaught'ring men. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK VI, 
 
 The Trojans and Achaeans' combat dread 
 Now lone was left, and sore along the plain 
 The battle fiercely rag'd on either side, 
 As mutual hurl'd they brazen javelins keen, 
 Simois there, and Xanthus' streams between. 
 First Ajax Telamon, th' Achaeans' wall, 
 A Trojan phalanx broke, and light let in 
 T' his mates, and chief one smote of Thracians all, 
 Eusorus' offspring Acamas, huge, valiant, tall. 
 
 II. 
 
 Him on his horse-hair thick-set helmet's cone 
 He smote. And fix into his forehead did 
 The spear-point brazen, piercing through the bone. 
 And darkness veil'd his eyes. Now Diomed, 
 The war-stout, slew Axylus Teuthranid, 
 Who dwelt within Arisbe, builded well, 
 A wealthy one ; to men good will he had, 
 And harbour'd all, and did by way-side dwell. 
 None then of these did 'fore him step, and death repel, 
 
BOOK VI. 1 — 5. 139 
 
 III. 
 
 Him and Calesius smote, his servant, who 
 Then drave his steeds. So enter'd earth the pair. 
 Euryalus Opheltius first and Dresus slew, 
 T' ^sepus, then, and Pedasus, he there 
 Went next, whom Naiad Abarbarea bare 
 To fam'd Bucalion, who was son, they say, 
 Of fam'd Laomedon. His mother fair 
 Him, th' eldest born, in secret had. One day 
 Sheep shepherding Bucalion with the Naiad lay, 
 
 rv. 
 
 And thence conceiving, she twin children bare. 
 Whose strength and bright limbs loos'd Mecisteus' son, 
 And from their shoulders stripp'd their armour fair. 
 And war-staunch Polypsetes there struck down 
 Astyalus. Odysseus slew anon 
 With spear Percosian Pedytes in fight ; 
 And Teucer Aretaon, godlike one. 
 Antilochus there slew with javelin bright 
 Ablerus. Agamemnon Elatus did smite. 
 
 By fair-flow Satniois he habited 
 In steepy Pedasus. Leitus, too. 
 Smote Phylacus, as he before him fled. 
 And there Eurypylus Melanthius slew. 
 And Menelaus on Adrastus drew. 
 And seiz'd alive, whose scar'd steeds scour'd the plain, 
 And on a tam'risk striking, snapp'd in two 
 The chariot pole. And back to th' town again 
 They went, where, panic-struck, the others fled amain. 
 
140 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Himself from car roU'd out, the wheel a near, 
 Headlong i' th' dust on 's face. And by him stood 
 Atrides Menelaus, with long spear. 
 Adrastus clasp'd his knees in suppliant mood : — 
 " Take me alive, Atrides ; ransom good 
 *^ Accept. For at my sire's much treasures be, 
 " Brass, gold, and quaint- wrought iron, whereof would 
 " My sire unending ransom give to thee, 
 *' When in the Achaean ships alive he knoweth me. 
 
 VII. 
 
 He said, and mov'd his mind. He'd giv'n him soon 
 T' his servant to th' Achaean ships to take. 
 When towards him there did Agamemnon run ; 
 And calling out, and chiding, thus he spake : — 
 " soft-heart Menelaus ! why for sake 
 *' Of men this care ? They've serv'd thee well at home 
 " These Trojans sure. Destruction all o'ertake ! 
 " None 'scape our hands, not infant in the womb 
 " The mother beareth yet, let none escape the doom. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " But all of them together perish quite 
 " From Troy, uncar'd, expunged utterly." 
 He said, and chang'd his brother's mind, things right 
 Persuading. He with hand then thrust away 
 Hero Adrastus, whom, without delay, 
 1' th' flank the sovereign Agamemnon smote. 
 He fell back slain. Atrides, as he lay. 
 Heel plants on 's chest, and ashen spear puU'd out. 
 And Nestor, to the Argives calling, loud did shout : — 
 
BOOK VI. 6 — 11. 141 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Friends, hero-Danai, ye Ares* servants ! Now 
 " Let none on spoil intent behind remain, 
 " With all he can unto the ships to go, 
 "But slay the men. At ease then through the plain 
 " You'll spoil the carcases of those youVe slain." 
 He said, and stirr'd their souls. To Troy had gone 
 The Trojans, fear -struck, 'fore th' Achseans then, 
 But t' Hector and ^neas spake the son 
 Of Priam, Helenus, of augurs chiefest one : — 
 
 X. 
 
 "■ ^Eneas, Hector, on whom chiefly lies 
 " Trojans' and Lycians' foil : for chief ye be 
 " In fight and rede^^^ in every enterprise. 
 " Go everywhere and stay the people ye, 
 " And keep them 'fore the gates ere that they flee 
 " And in their wives' arms fall, their foemen's scorn. 
 " When all phalanges ye have set will we 
 " Here bide, and fight the Danai, though worn 
 " In sooth we are, for drives necessity forlorn. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " But, Hector, thou go city- ward, and tell 
 
 " Our mother that convening th' honour'd she 's 
 
 " At blue-eyed Pallas' fane i' th' citadel, 
 
 " She ope the sacred dome's fair gates with keys ; 
 
 " And veil, the largest loveliest she sees 
 
 " Within the house, and is her fav'rite one, 
 
 " She place at comely-hair'd Athene's knees, 
 
 " And promise her within her fane anon 
 
 Twelve kine to sacrifice, year-old, have goad not known : 
 
142 THE ILIAD, 
 
 XII. 
 
 " If she the Trojans^ town but pity will, 
 " And wives and speechless babes. If Tydeus^ son 
 " She'll keep from Troy divine, that warrior fell, 
 " That stirrer-up of fear, whom look upon 
 '' I do as the Achseans' bravest one, 
 " Achilles prince of men so fear'd we ne'er, 
 " Though goddess-born they say. But rageth on 
 " This man with whom for strength may none compare." 
 He said. Nor Hector disobey'd his brother there. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 From car full-arm' d he leap'd to ground, and shook 
 
 His javelins keen, and through the host did pace 
 
 To stir to fight ; and battle dire he woke. 
 
 They turn about, and firm th' Achasans face. 
 
 Th' Argives draw back and there from slaughter cease. 
 
 And thought some god had come from starry skies 
 
 To help the Trojans, they so turn'd a-pace. 
 
 And Hector to the Trojans shouting cries : — 
 
 Ye Trojans lofty-soul'd, and ye far-call'd allies, 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Be men, my friends, your valour high recall, 
 " While I to Ilium wend, and bid them now 
 " Our counsellors, and wives the high gods all 
 " Beseech, and hecatombs to offer vow." 
 This said, helm-glancing Hector left them so. 
 His calves and neck the leathern rim doth smite, 
 That round his bossy buckler's edge did go. 
 Hippolochus' fair offspring Glaucus bright, 
 And Tydeus' son twixt hosts encounter'd, bent on fight. 
 
BOOK VI. 12—17. 143 
 
 XV. 
 
 When towards each other coursing near'd they, then 
 The first spake Diomed, of war-cry clear ^^ : — 
 " Who, valiant one, art thou of mortal men ? 
 " In man-ennobling fight I've seen thee ne'er 
 " Before. But now thou all precedest here 
 " In courage, thus my long-shade spear t' abye. 
 *' For hapless they whose sons my strength come near. 
 " But if immortal thou, hast from the sky 
 " Come down, sky-dwelling gods contend with would not L 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Not Dryas' son in sooth, Lycurgus strong, 
 
 " Who strove with gods celestial long life knew ; 
 
 " Who Dionysus' nurses did along 
 
 " Nisoeus' consecrated mount pursue. 
 
 " They all to th' ground at once their thyrses threw, 
 
 " Sore beaten by Lycurgus homicide 
 
 " With ox-goad ruthless. Dionysus flew 
 
 " Affrighted plunging in the salt sea-tide, 
 
 And Thetis to her breast receiv'd him terrified. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Such tremor seiz'd him at the man's rebuke, 
 " With whom then th' easy living gods were wroth. 
 " The son of Kronos him with blindness strook. 
 " Nor long thereafter lasted he in troth 
 " When all the gods immortal him 'gan loathe. 
 " So fight the blissful gods I would not fain. 
 " But if of mortals thou, that eat in sooth 
 " Earth's fruit, draw near, the sooner death t' attain." 
 Hippolochus' bright son him answer'd thus again : — 
 
144 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVITI. 
 
 " High-soul'd Tydides why enquire of race ? 
 
 " For as of leaves ^^ the race of men is so. 
 
 '' Wind sheds the leaves, and others in their place 
 
 " The budding wood puts forth, in spring- tide grow. 
 
 " And so men's race ; for this doth spring, that cease 
 
 and go. 
 *' But wouldst thou learn these things, that thoumayst ken 
 " Our lineage well, which many men do know. 
 " Ephyra's town lies Argos' gulf within ; 
 " There Sisyphus did dwell, the craftiest of men, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " Sisyphus JEolide, who Glaucus 'gat. 
 " And Glaucus 'gat renown'd Bellerophon, 
 " Whom beauty, manliness engaging sweet, 
 " The gods vouchsaf 'd. Ill towards him brood anon 
 " Did Proetus, who expell'd him from his town 
 " (The Argives' chief, for them t' his sceptre Zeus sub- 
 dued). 
 " Anteia Proetus' wife had with this one 
 " Enamour'd lain, but ne'er persuade she could 
 " Bellerophon the wise, with goodly thoughts endued. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " She spake to sovran Proetus lyingly : — 
 " Die Prcetus thou, or slay Bellerophon^ 
 " Wlio would against my will have lain with we." 
 " She said, and hot wrath seiz'd the King thereon. 
 " To slay he shunn'd, from this he shrank, but on 
 *' To Lycia him with fatal letters sped, 
 " Fell things in folded tablets he'd writ down^^ 
 " T' Anteia's sire bade show to have him dead, 
 *' But he to Lycia went, by th' gods' high conduct led. 
 
BOOK VI. 18—23. 145 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " When he to Lycia came, and Xanthus' waters, 
 " Broad Lycia' s king received him joyously. 
 " For nine days feasts him, oxen nine he slaughters. 
 *' When peer'd rose-finger'd morn the tenth doth he 
 " Then question him, his missives ask to see, 
 " Whatever for him he from king Praetus may, 
 " His son-in-law, have brought. When ta'en had he 
 " The fatal tablets, first he bade straightway 
 " He should ChimaBra the unconquerable slay. 
 
 xxii. 
 
 " Of race not human she, celestial, dire. 
 " Lion-front, snake behind, she-goat mid- way, 
 " Out-breathing dreadful force of flaming fire. 
 " Yet her did he, the gods' signs trusting, slay. 
 " And next he fought the famous Solymi, 
 " Severest fight, he said, 'mong men he'd had. 
 " Then slew the man-like Amazons. His way 
 " From whence they set with crafty snare beside, 
 Ambush of men pick'd out, the best of Lycia wide. 
 
 xxrii. 
 
 " These homeward ne'er return'd again, for slew 
 " Them all renown'd Bellerophon the brave. 
 " When him the king for god-sprung, valiant, knew, 
 " Him kept he there, and eke his daughter gave, 
 " And also half his kingdom's honor grave. 
 " The Lycians too of land the largest share, 
 " Vine-land and tilth, his portion set to have. 
 " She to Bellerophon three children bare, 
 *^ Isander, and Hippolochus, Laodamia fair. 
 
146 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " (Laodamia Zeus tV all-wise did bed. 
 " She bare Sarpedon, godlike warrior-one.) 
 " When hate Bellerophon ^^ the gods all did, 
 " About th' Aleian plain he wander'd lone, 
 " And paths of men did broken-hearted shun. 
 " His son Isander was by Ares slain 
 " Fighting the Solymi, of high renown. 
 " Smote her wroth Artemis, of golden-rein. 
 " Hippolochus 'gat me, from him I me maintain. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 *' To Troy he sent me, much on me impressed 
 " To bear me well, excelling others e'er, 
 " Nor shame my father's race, who far the best 
 *' Both in Ephyra, and broad Lycia were. 
 " And such my race, and blood I here declare." 
 .He spake. Eejoic'd the war-cry Diomed, 
 And in the fruitful earth he thrust his spear. 
 And honied words to th' people shepherd said : - 
 " My guest hereditary thou of old indeed. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " For godlike CEneus erst did entertain 
 
 " Kenown'd Bellerophon in 's mansion fair 
 
 *' As guest, and him for twenty days detain. 
 
 ** And guest-gifts gave they one another there. 
 
 " (Eneus a girdle gave of purple rare, 
 
 " Bellerophon a gold-cup bodied twain. 
 
 " Him did I leave at home, and here repair, 
 
 " Nor Tydeus call to mind, who left me then 
 
 A child, when were at Thebes the folk Achaean slain. 
 
BOOK VI. 24—29. 147 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " So now to thee am I thine host and friend 
 " In middle Argos, and the same to me 
 " In Lycia thou, when to that folk I wend. 
 " With spears then and in general fight will we 
 " Each other shun : for Trojans many be, 
 " And eke far-call'd allies, that kill I may 
 " Whomso a-foot I overrun, or me 
 " The deity vouchsafes put in my way ; 
 " For thee Achaeans many too that thou mayst slay. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But come let's interchange of armour make 
 " That these too here may know we boast to be 
 " Hereditary guests." Thus then they spake. 
 And from their steeds they sprang all eagerly. 
 And seiz'd each other's hands, and pledg'd them they 
 Their faith. And then Zeus Kronides divine 
 From Glaucus did all prudence take away. 
 And armour change with Diomed incline. 
 The gold for brazen, hundred oxen's- worth for nine. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 As Hector reach' d the Scaean gates, and beech 
 About him Trojans' wives, and daughters run, 
 Of sons and brothers, friends and husbands each 
 Enquiring. Pray the gods he all anon 
 Successive bade, with woe fix'd many a one.''^ 
 He came to Priam's lovely mansion high. 
 With porches skilful- wrought adorn' d. Of stone 
 Well-polish' d too within it chambers lie. 
 Full fifty built, to one another joining nigh. 
 
 L 2 
 
 1 
 
148 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 There Priam's sons do with their consorts bed. 
 His daughters' opposite within the hall 
 Twelve chambers roof 'd of stone high-polished, 
 Each other nigh, where, with their chaste wives, all 
 The sons-in-law of Priam couch withaL 
 There Hector's gentle mother towards him came, 
 As to Laodice, so happ'd it fall, 
 She went, of all her daughters fairest dame. 
 T' his hand she clung, and utter'd word, and call'd by 
 name : — 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Son, wherefore rough war leaving hast thou come ? 
 
 " Press sore th^ Achaeans' fell sons fighting there 
 
 " Against our town. And thee thy mind sent home 
 
 " To lift i' th' citadel to Zeus in prayer 
 
 ** Thine hands. But stay, I'll bring thee sweet wine 
 
 fair. 
 " To father Zeus, and other gods first pour, 
 " Then drink thyself, and so thy strength repair. 
 " For much the tir'd man's strength doth wine restore, 
 ^^ As thou with fighting for thy friends art wearied sore. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Her answer'd then helm-glancing Hector great : — 
 " No sweet wine bring me, honor'd mother dear, 
 " Lest thou unlimb me, and I so forget 
 " Both force and strength. With unwash'd hands I fear 
 '^ To Zeus to pour the purple wine, for ne'er 
 " Behoves to Kronos' cloud-compelling son, 
 " Thus stain'd with blood and dirt, to off*er prayer. 
 " But thou t' Athenia's fane, spoil-gath'ring one, 
 " With incense go, the matrons gath'ring thou anon ! 
 
BOOK VI. 30—35. 149 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 *' A veil the largest loveliest that lies 
 " Within the house, and is thy fav'rite one, 
 ** That place on comely hair'd Athenia's knees. 
 " Yow in her fane to sacrifice anon 
 " Twelve yearling goadless kine if Trojan's town, 
 " And wives, and speechless babes she'll pity here, 
 *' And keep from sacred Ilium Tydeus' son, 
 " That warrior fell, that stirrer up of fear, 
 f' But thou t' Athenia's fane, the spoiler, now repair. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " And I'll go summon Paris, if he'll deign 
 '^ " To hear. Would earth might yawn beneath his feet ! 
 
 " For him in sooth Olympius rear'd a bane 
 Jf> *' To Trojans, and to high-soul'd Priam great 
 *' And to his children. If that one the gate 
 " Of Hades enter I could see, my soul 
 " Its bitter sorrow would, I think, forget." 
 He said. She home did go, and maidens call. 
 And they throughout the town conven'd the matrons all. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 T' her scented room she went, where quaintly wrought 
 Fair veils, Sidonian women's labours, be. 
 Whom erst the god-shap'd Alexander brought 
 From Sidon sailing o'er the wide-stretch'd sea, 
 The self-same way led high-born Helen he. 
 
 ^Of these, a gift t' Athene, one most vast 
 Took Hecuba, of richest broidery. 
 Shone like a star, and lay of all the last. 
 She went her way, and matrons many follow'd fast. 
 
 L 3 
 
150 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 And now when they t' Athene's temple came 
 I' th' citadel, to them the gates unbar 
 Did Cisseid Theano, lovely dame, 
 Tame-steed Antenor's spouse of cheeks so fair. 
 Athenia's priestess made the Trojans her. 
 With wailing all lift hands t' Athene they. 
 The veil fair-cheek'd Theano taking there 
 On lovely-tress'd Athenia's knees did lay. 
 And Zeus the mighty's daughter thus beseeching pray 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " August Athenia, guardian of our town, 
 " Divine of goddesses, oh, break the spear 
 " Of Diomed, and grant that headlong down 
 " He fall in front the Scasan gates a-near, 
 " And we'll twelve kine slay in thy temple here 
 " Goadless, year-old, if thou'lt compassionate 
 " The Trojans' town, and wives, and infants dear." 
 She spake. Pallas Athene grants not that. 
 Thus these of mighty Zeus the daughter supplicate. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Hector to Alexander's mansion came. 
 That splendid he himself had built with aid 
 Of men in fertile Troy of highest fame 
 As architects ; who there for him had made 
 Dome, chamber, hall i' th' citadel beside 
 Priam's and Hector's both. There enter'd now 
 The Zeus-lov'd Hector, and in hand he sway'd 
 Th' eleven-cubit spear, whose point did show 
 All glist'ring 'fore him. Round it did a golden circlet go. 
 
BOOK VI. 36—41. 151 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 He found him in his chamber looking to 
 
 His armour beautiful exceedingly, 
 
 Both shield and cuirass handling, and crook'd bow. 
 
 Sat Argive Helen with her women by, 
 
 And bade her maids their lovely labours ply. 
 
 Him Hector ey'd, and chid with words severe : — 
 
 " Friend, ill thou keep'st this wrath ; the people die 
 
 " Around our town and steep wall fighting here. 
 
 For thy sake gird our city war and tumult drear. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Chide wouldst thou any else thou sawest turn 
 I " From hated war. But up then, lest anon 
 K " With foe-men's fire our city quickly burn." 
 m Him answered Alexander god-shap'd one : — 
 K " Hector thou 'st fitly chid me, nor beyond 
 mk " What's just, and so I say to thee, and thou 
 ■^ " Attend and hear. I do from anger none 
 ^P" Nor wrath against the Trojans seat me now 
 " Within my chamber, but would vent my sorrow so. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " With soft words now my wife persuading me 
 " Hath urg'd to war, which seems to me too best, 
 " For doth with men alternate victory. 
 " Come wait until in warrior-arms I'm drest, 
 " Or go, ril follow thee, and, am possest, 
 " Soon overtake." He said. Him answer'd none 
 The helmet-glancing Hector, whom address'd 
 With honied accents Helen thus anon : — 
 " Brother of shameless me, woe-worker, hateful one ! 
 
 L 4 
 
152 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " would the day first bare my mother me 
 " A whirlwind dire had snatch'd me up, and thrown 
 ** On some bleak mount, or surge of sounding sea, 
 " Whose waves had whelm'd me ere these doings done. 
 " But since these things the gods determin'd on 
 " Would of some better man I'd been the mate, 
 " That of men's wrath, and many slights had shown 
 ** Some sense. But this man's mind 's not firmly set, 
 " Nor will be e'er. The fruit whereof methinks he'll eat. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " But come thou now, and enter here, and sit, 
 " My brother, on this double seat ; for thee 
 *' The most doth toiling sore thy soul beset ; 
 ** And all too on account of shameless me, 
 " And through this Alexander's injury ; 
 " Through us on whom an evil fate Zeus laid 
 " A song to men in after-times to be." 
 To her helm-glancing Hector huge then said : — 
 " Nay, Helen, seat me not, though kind thou'lt not per- 
 suade, 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " For now my soul impels me on to aid 
 ** The Trojans, who've great miss of me away ; 
 " But this one urge thou, and himself too speed, 
 " That while I'm yet within the town he may 
 *' O'ertake me. For from hence to home straightway 
 " I go, to see my servants there within, 
 ^* Dear wife, and infant son, for know not I 
 " If I shall e'er return to them again, 
 " Or now b' Acheeans' hands the gods will have me slain." 
 
BOOK VI. 42 — 47. 153 
 
 XLV. 
 
 This said, helm-glancing Hector went away. 
 His house soon reach'd he, where to dwell is good, 
 But found not there white-arm'd Andromache. 
 With babe and well-veil'd nurse, in saddest mood, 
 Wailing, and weeping on the tower she stood. 
 Hector, when found he not his faultless spouse. 
 Fro' th' threshold ask'd the maids ere thence he yode : — 
 " To me, now, maidens, truthfully disclose 
 " Where went white-arm' d Andromache from out the 
 house ? 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " To either of my sisters did she go, 
 " Or brothers' well-veil'd wives, or temple high 
 " Of great Athenia, where the dread power now 
 " The other fair-tress'd Trojans pacify ?" 
 The thrifty stewardess did thus reply : — 
 " Hector, since utter truth thou 'st strictly bade, 
 " Nor sisters, nor thy brothers' wives, nor high 
 " Athenia's temple hath she visited, 
 " Where other fair-tress'd Trojans sooth the goddess dread. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " To Ilium's tower she went, for she had heard 
 '* The Trojans worsted, th' Achives' strength was high. 
 " Like one distraught unto the wall she skirr'd, 
 " The nurse too bare the child." She said, and fly 
 From 's house did Hector back the self-same way, 
 Down the fair streets. When through the huge town he 
 Drew near the Scaean gates, through which y-lay 
 The road to th' plain, came running towards him she 
 His rich-dower'd wife, Eetion's child Andromache. 
 
154 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Eetion did 'neath woody Placus house 
 In Hypoplacian Thebes, Cilicians' king. 
 His daughter brass-arm'd Hector did espouse. 
 Hira met then she ; her servant following 
 With babe on breast, the tender speechless thing, 
 Sole child of Hector, like a lovely star. 
 Hector Scamandrius, but " City's King,''^^ 
 Astyanax, the others styl'd him e'er, 
 For sole defended Ilium Hector's guardian care. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Smil'd Hector on his child with silent look, 
 And weeping near him stood Andromache, 
 And clung t' his hand, and call'd by name, and spoke : 
 " Too bold ! undo thee will thy bravery 
 " That pitiest not thy babe, nor hapless me, 
 " Who of thee soon shall widow'd be ; for soon 
 " Th' Achaeans rushing all will slaughter thee. 
 "But wanting thee 'twere best to th' grave go down, 
 " No comfort's left if thou shouldst die, but woes alone. 
 
 L. 
 
 " No father now, nor mother dear have I. 
 " Achilles slew my sire, and overthrew 
 " The lofty Thebes, the pop'lous city high 
 *' Of the Cilicians, and Eetion slew, 
 " But not of arms despoil'd ; for this to do 
 " He had in aAve, but burnt him clad in these 
 ** His daedal arms, and mound upon him threw. 
 " The Nymphs around it planted elms, fair trees, 
 " Those segis-arm'd Zeus' daughters th' Orestiades. 
 
BOOK VI. 48 — 53. 155 
 
 LI. 
 
 " The seven brothers mine i' th' palace too, 
 
 " They all in one day went to Hades deep : 
 
 " For all swift-foot, divine Achilles slew, 
 
 '' Tending the trail-foot beeves, and snow white sheep. 
 
 " My mother though who reigned^^ in the steep 
 
 " Wood-crown'd Hypoplacus, when he'd away 
 
 *' With other spoil brought here, he did not keep, 
 
 " But freed, when they did ample ransom pay. 
 
 Her at my sire's shaft-loving Artemis did slay. 
 
 LII. 
 
 " But Hector thou, both father, mother dear, 
 " And brother, art to me, thou husband mine. 
 " Take pity then, and in this tower stay here, 
 " Nor orphan make thy child, nor wife to pine 
 " In widowhood. By th' fig-tree bid remain 
 " The folk, where easiest mount the wall and town. 
 " There thrice th' Achasans' chiefs, th' Ajaces twain 
 " Have tried, Idomeneus of high renown, 
 " The two Atrides there, and Tydeus' high soul'd son. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " Be 't some one skill'd in oracles hath told, 
 " Or their own mind inspiring them hath led." 
 Her answer'd huge helm-glancing Hector bold : — 
 " All these I've thought of, wife, but much indeed 
 " The Trojans, and their long-veil'd wives I dread 
 " If coward like I turn from war aside. 
 '' Nor prompts me so my soul, aye tutored 
 " T' excell, and 'mong the foremost fighting bide, 
 " My sire's high fame asserting, and raine own beside. 
 
156 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " For well I know in mind and spirit clear, 
 
 " The day will be shall Ilium overthrow, 
 
 *' Priam, and Priam's folk of th' ashen spear. 
 
 " But not on me the Trojans' future woe, 
 
 *' Not Hecuba's, nor sovereign Priam's so, 
 
 *' Nor of my many valiant brethren weigh, 
 
 " (Who '11 fall i' th' dust by foemen's hands laid low), 
 
 " As thine, when brass-clad Achives thee away 
 
 Sore weeping drag, and from thee take thy freedom's day. 
 
 LV. 
 
 '' In Argos thou wilt weave at other's best, 
 " And from Messeis or Hyperia bear 
 " Water unwillingly in sooth, opprest 
 ^' By sore compulsion thou. And then declare 
 " Will one, the while he sees thee weeping there, 
 " ' ^Tis Hector's wife. He did in fight outdo 
 *' The tame-steed Trojans,, when they fighting were 
 " At IliumJ Thus he'll say, thy sorrow too, 
 *' For such a man to end thy servile day, renew. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 *' But me then dead the heaped earth will hide 
 *^ Or e'er the cry of thee being torn away 
 " I hear." When radiant Hector thus had said 
 He held his arms out there to take his boy. 
 But back t' its nurse's bosom with a cry 
 The infant shrank, from th' aspect dire to hide 
 Of father dear. The brass and, cresting high. 
 The bushy horse-hair plume him terrified. 
 That from the helmet's summit nodding dread he spied. 
 
BOOK VI. 54 — 59. 157 
 
 LVII. 
 
 His sire and honor'd mother laugh'd. And straight 
 Bright Hector took from 's head the helm, and laid 
 It there upon the ground, all glist'ring bright. 
 And he himself, when kiss'd his child, and sway'd 
 Him dandling in his hands awhile, then pray'd 
 To Zeus, and other gods, thus speaking : -— " Deign 
 " Zeus, and you ye other gods beside, 
 " That this my son the Trojans all outshine, 
 " As T, like valiant, and in Ilium strongly reign. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " And grant that men of him hereafter say, 
 u c p^^ braver than his father this one here^ 
 " As him from war return they see one day 
 " With slaughter'd foemen's bloody spoils appear, 
 " Rejoicing so in heart his mother dear." 
 He said, and child t' his wife's hands gave, who him 
 T' her fragrant breast received and laugh'd so drear. 
 Her spouse who saw had pity of the same. 
 And sooth'd her with his hand, and spake, and call'd by 
 name ; — 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " My friend grieve not in soul too sore. For me 
 " Against my fate to Hades premature 
 " Will no man send. For from the destiny 
 " He 's born to first, of mortal men, be sure, 
 " Coward, or brave, can none escape procure. 
 " But now go home, and there applying thee 
 " To thine own tasks, the web and distaff, o'er 
 " Thy maids preside, and to their labours see. 
 " War's all men's business born in Troy, and chief of me." 
 
158 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 When thus he'd said, the radiant Hector took 
 His horse-hair crested helm. His dear lov'd spouse 
 Then homewards went, and often turn'd to look. 
 And tears abundant shed. And soon she goes 
 Where Hector homicide's fair dwelling rose ; 
 There found her maids, and wail with all up-ta'en 
 They mourn'd yet living Hector in his house ; 
 For from the war they thought he'd ne'er again 
 Eeturn, nor 'scape th' Achaeans' strength and hands unslain. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Nor Paris linger'd in his proud abode. 
 But soon as donn'd his bright arms brass-inlaid, 
 His swift feet trusting, through the city yode.^^ 
 And as when manger-fed the stabled steed 
 Breaks halter, stamping o'er the plain with speed, 
 Whose wont in river wanton bathe, lifts high 
 His head, with shaking mane his shoulders spread. 
 Him beauty -proud his knees bear rapidly. 
 Where his accustom'd haunts, and mares at pasture be. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 So Paris Priam's son down Pergamus, 
 In armour glist'ring like the sun, forth went 
 Exulting. Swift feet bare him. Quickly thus 
 His brother godlike Hector, as he bent 
 His steps from where he'd met his wife, he hent.^^^ 
 Speak first the god-shap'd Alexander did : — 
 " Sure brother thee though hasting I've detent 
 " By my delay, nor come to time as bid." 
 And him then answ'ring, helmet-glancing Hector said 
 
BOOK VI. 60—63. 159 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " My friend none will, who judges riglit of things, 
 " Thy war-deeds blame, for thou art brave 'tis clear, 
 " But slack and wanting will. My heart it wrings 
 "The Trojans' shameful words of thee to hear, 
 " Who do for thy sake suffer toil severe. 
 " But come we'll settle this, if Zeus one day 
 " Vouchsafe to heaven's immortal gods we here 
 " Plant in our halls the cup of liberty, ^^ 
 When we've from Troy the well-greav'd Achives thrust 
 away." 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK VIL 
 
 I. 
 
 So said, from out the gates rush'd Hector bright. 
 His brother Alexander with him went. 
 For in their minds both long'd to war, and fight. 
 As when the god a fav'ring breeze hath sent 
 To longing seamen, that be well-nigh spent 
 With toiling sore, belabouring the sea 
 With their so smoothly polish'd oars, and bent 
 Their toil-relaxed limbs beneath them be. 
 Unto th' expectant Trojans so appeared they. 
 
 II. 
 
 Then slew they, this. King Areithous' son ^^^ 
 Menesthius whose home in Arne lay. 
 Him Areithous *gat, club-wielding one 
 And fair large-ey'd Philomeduse. With sway 
 Of spear did Hector sooth Eioneus slay. 
 Smote 'neath the brim of brazen helmet stout 
 His neck, and loos'd his limbs. Glaucus that day 
 The Lycians' chief, Avith spear, where thick they fought, 
 Iphinous Dexias' son, his swift-steeds mounting, smote 
 
BOOK VII. 1 — 5. 161 
 
 III. 
 
 Eight on the shoulder. From the steeds he slid, 
 His limbs unstrung. The goddess azure-eyed 
 Athene there in that encounter dread 
 The Argives falling slain nq sooner spied 
 Than rushing down Olympus' tops she hied 
 To Troy. Sprang tow'rds her Phoebus gazing down 
 From Pergamus, who wish'd the Trojan side 
 Might win. And by the beech they met anon. 
 Her king Apollo first address'd, of Zeus the son : — 
 
 IV. 
 
 " So urgent wherefore from Olympus now 
 
 ^' Zeus' daughter, com'st thou, what strong will hath 
 
 sent ? 
 ** To Danai the vict'ry give wouldst thou ? 
 " Since not for Trojans slain dost thou relent. 
 " But, what were best, obey thou mine intent. 
 " Let's now the war and contest stop this day, 
 " Then fight they on till Ilium end, since bent 
 " To overthrow the town ye gods alway." 
 Him answ'ring did Athene blue eyed goddess say : — 
 
 " Be 't thus Far-Darter, for so purposed now 
 
 " Among the Trojans and Achaeans I 
 
 " Am from Olympus come. But say then how 
 
 " Intendest thou this war of men to stay?" 
 
 Her answ'ring did Zeus' son Apollo say : — 
 
 " Let's now up-stir steed-taming Hector's might, 
 
 " That of Danaians challenge one he may 
 
 " To single combat. Some one then to fight 
 
 With godlike Hector will th' Achaeans wroth incite." 
 
 M 
 
162 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 He said. Nor did the goddess azure-ey'd 
 Athene not comply. The offspring dear 
 Of Priam, Helenus, in mind descried 
 What counsel pleas'd the .gods consulting there. 
 Then forth he went, and stood by Hector near 
 And spake. ^' Hector, Priam's offspring, thou, 
 " That equall'st Zeus in counsel, lend an ear 
 " Wilt thou to me thy brother ? Cause then now 
 The other Trojans sit, and all Achaeans too. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Thyself th' Achaeans' bravest then defy 
 " To fight thee face to face in combat dread, 
 " For not as yet 'tis fated thee to die. 
 " For so I've heard the voice of gods." He said. 
 And Hector hearing was exceeding glad. 
 And forth he went into the midst, and there. 
 His spear mid-grasping, Troy's phalanges stay'd, 
 And they his warriors all thus seated were. 
 And Agamemnon seats th' Achaeans buskin'd fair. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Athenfe and Apollo Silver-Bow 
 In vultures' guise on aegis-arm'd Zeus' tree, 
 A beech, sat joying at the men below. 
 Of these the ranks close-seated orderly 
 With shields, and helms, and spears all bristling be. 
 As when the West- Wind's roughness o'er the main 
 Fresh blowing pours, and darkens all the sea. 
 So th' Achives' files, and Trojans' on the plain 
 Were set. And both addressing thus spake Hector then 
 
BOOK VII. 6 — 11. 163 
 
 IX. 
 
 *' Hear, Trojans and well-greav'd Achasans, me, 
 " While what my bosom prompts I utter now. 
 " The truce Saturnius lofty thron'd we see 
 ^* Hath not confirm'd, but still contriveth woe 
 ^' For either side, until ye overthrow 
 " The towers of Troy, or be yourselves subdued 
 " Beside the ships that ocean-pacing go. 
 " The chief ye have of Panachaean brood ; 
 " Of these whomso his courage pricks, and fight me would, 
 
 " Let him from 'mong them all come out to me, 
 " And champion it with godlike Hector here. 
 *' But this I say, and Zeus our witness be, 
 " If me he slay with outstretch'd pointed spear, 
 " My armour stripp'd to th' hollow ships then bear 
 " He may, but home my corse restore, that they 
 '^ The Trojans and the Trojans' wives, of fire 
 " Partaker make me dead. If him I slay, 
 " And Phcebus favour me, 111 strip his arms away, 
 
 XI. 
 
 *' And bear to Troy divine, and at the fane 
 " Of Phoebus the Far-Darter hang them there, 
 " But send the corse to th' well-built ships again, 
 " That him th' Achaeans of the comely hair 
 " With all the due solemnities inter, 
 *^ And by broad Hellespont his tomb up-heap. 
 " Of men that will in future times be here 
 " Some one will say, as he his course doth keep, 
 ^^ And sails in many-benched ship the wine-fac'd deep 
 
 M 2 
 
 ■ 
 
164 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " ^ J. man^s tomb this who died in olden days^ 
 ** A champion brave ivhom radiant Hector slew.'' 
 " Thus will lie say, and ne'er shall die my praise." 
 He said. And they all hush'd in silence grew, 
 To shrink asham'd, they dread th' encounter too. 
 At length did Menelaus rise, and he 
 With tauntings chid, and groaning spake them so : — 
 " Ah me! ye boasters, Achive women ye, 
 " No longer men, disgrace how grievous, dire 'twill be, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " If no Danaian now 'gainst Hector go. 
 " But earth and water all become may ye, 
 " Here sitting cow'd, inglorious each of you. 
 " Against this one I'll arm myself. For high 
 " With gods immortal vict'ry's issues lie." 
 So having said, he donn'd his armour fair. 
 Then, Menelaus, had thine end been nigh, 
 In Hector's hands, for he past all compare 
 Thy stronger ; but th' Achaeans' kings forth rushing seiz'd 
 thee there, 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And broad-rule Agamemnon, Atreus' son. 
 Thy right hand grasp'd, and spake, and call'd by name::— 
 *' Thou ravest, Menelaus, Zeus-nurs'd one, 
 " This madness fits thee not. Though grieving tame 
 " Thyself, nor, out of strife, thy mightier aim 
 " Great Hector Priam's son t' encounter, thou 
 " When others are afraid. To meet this same 
 " In man-ennobling fight Achilles too, 
 " That is so much thy stronger, would himself be slow. 
 
 I 
 
BOOK VII. 12- 17. 165 
 
 XV. 
 
 '^ But go thou now, amid thy comrades sit. 
 *' 'Gainst this some champion else will th' Achives stir. 
 " Though fearless he of fight insatiate, 
 " I think he'll glad bend knee''^ if 'scape he e'er 
 " From raging battle and encounter dire." 
 And speaking thus the hero did persuade 
 His brother's mind, good things advising there. 
 And he persuaded was. And then right glad 
 His servants from his shoulders strip his armour did. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 And Nestor 'mong the Argives rose and said : — 
 " Ye gods, t' Achaia's land hath come what grief ! 
 " How would old horseman Peleus weep indeed, 
 ^' The Myrmidons' good councillor and chief, 
 " Who erst at home could question me full lief 
 " Of all the Argives asking, child and kin, 
 " If these 'fore Hector quailing past belief 
 " He hear, to th' gods his hands oft lifting then 
 " He'U pray that soul quit body, and to Hades wend. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Sire Zeus, Athene, Phcebus, were I young ! 
 " As erst when fought at rapid Celadon 
 " Pylians and spear-skill'd Arcads, must'ring strong, 
 " At Jardan's streams, and walls of Ph^ea's town, 
 " There stood forth godlike Ereuthalion, 
 " That sovran Areithous' arms did wear, 
 " Great Areithous, whom club-wielding one 
 " Did men yclepe and well-zon'd women fair, 
 " For that with bow he fought not, nor with lengthy spear, 
 
 M 3 
 
166 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " But warriors' ranks with mace of iron broke. 
 " And him with guile not strength Lycurgus slew, 
 " In narrow pathway him at vantage took, 
 '^ Where club availed not. Lycurgus threw 
 " His spear the first, and thrust his midriff through, 
 " And Ares' gift, his arms, took from him there. 
 " These wore then he in fight. But old when grew 
 " Lycurgus in his house, that armour fair 
 ^' He t' Ereuthalion gave, his servant dear, to wear. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " These arms so wearing he defied the best. 
 
 " They shrank aghast. None meet him durst. Then me 
 
 " My mind to combat him advent'rous press'd. 
 
 " Though youngest of them all yet fought him I, 
 
 " And me Athene gave the victory. 
 
 " I slew that hugest, mightiest of men, 
 
 " For bulk and length lay stretch'd enormous he. 
 
 " Would I were young, and whole my strength had been, 
 
 Have one to fight with soon would crested Hector then. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " And you now who th' AchaBans' bravest are 
 " Encounter Hector yet ye be not fain." 
 Thus chode the Sire. Rose champions nine. But far 
 The first rose Agamemnon, king of men ; 
 Brave Diomed Tydides next, and then 
 The two Ajaces rose, in valor clad. 
 Idomeneus came next, with him his friend 
 Great Merion match for slay-man Ares dread, 
 Eurypylus Evsemon's son then followed. 
 
BOOK YLL 18—23. 167 
 
 XXI. 
 
 And up rose Thoas there, Andrsemon's son, 
 Godlike Odysseus eke ; for they did all 
 Desire to combat Hector godlike one. 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor spake withal : — 
 " Now draw ye lots, and see to whom 'twill fall. 
 " For profit will th' Achaaans well-greav'd he 
 " And profit too his soul, if 'scape he shall 
 " From raging fight and dire hostility." 
 He said. And they each one his lot mark'd speedily. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The lots they threw in Agamemnon's casque. 
 The folk all hung suspense, and lifting high 
 Unto the gods their hands, thus one would ask. 
 With upturn'd gaze towards the ample sky : — 
 " Sire Zeus, vouchsafe the lot on Ajax lie, 
 " Or Tydeus' son, or else the very king 
 " Himself of rich Mycenae." Thus said they. 
 Gerenian Nestor shook the helm. The thing 
 They wish'd for, Ajax' lot did from the helmet spring. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 A herald took the sign that throng all through,. 
 And show'd th' Achsean chiefs in order right. 
 They each disclaim' d the sign that neither knew, 
 But throuo^h the throno^ when reach'd he him did write, 
 And in the helmet cast it, Ajax bright. 
 His hand he stretch'd. Did in it herald throw 
 The sign. He knew it straight with soul's delight, 
 And cast it at his feet, and spake then so : — 
 " friends ! this lot is mine, in soul rejoice I now, 
 
 M 4 
 
168 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " For Hector brave I think t' overthrow this day. 
 " But come now while my warlike arms I don 
 *' Do ye to sovran Jove Saturnius pray 
 " In silence, so as not of Trojans known, 
 " Or e^en aloud, since fear we soothly none. 
 " For none by force me 'gainst my will shall move, 
 " Nor my unskill. Methinks I was not born 
 " Or bred in Salamis so dull to prove." 
 He said, and they then pray'd Saturnian sovran Jove. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And thus one spake, and ey'd the blue sky broad : — 
 " Sire Zeus, from Ida ruling, glorious, great ! 
 *' Grant Ajax vict'ry win, and brightest laud, 
 " But Hector if thou love and care for, yet 
 " An equal strength to both and glory set." 
 Thus spake they. Ajax arm'd in glist'ring brass. 
 When 'bout him donn'd his armour every whit, 
 He mov^d him then as Ares huge doth pass. 
 That war- wards goes *mong men whom made Kronion has 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 In soul-consuming strife's high rage contend. 
 Such Ajax mov'd immense, th' Achasans' wall. 
 And smil'd with aspect dire, and he did wend 
 With feet beneath him striding long, his tall 
 Spear brandishing. And him the Argives all 
 Exceeding glad beheld, while shaking fear 
 Did on the limbs of ev'ry Trojan fall. 
 E'en Hector's soul then quail'd. But draw back there 
 Or fly t' his people might not he the challenger. 
 
BOOK VII. 24—29. 169 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 And onward Ajax came with tower- like shield 
 Of brass, compact of sev'n bulls' hides, that had 
 Erst Tychius wrought, who arm'rers all excell'd, 
 And dwelt in Hyla. Variegate he made 
 The shield. Se'en folds of fat bulls' hides, o'erlaid 
 With brass the eighth. This bearing 'fore his breast 
 Near Hector Ajax stood, and threat'ning said : — 
 " Now Hector, man to man, thou'lt have some taste 
 " What the Danaians' chief ones are, next him our best, 
 
 xxviii. 
 
 " Achilles lion-heart, rank-shatt'rer''^, who 
 " In crook'd sea-pacing ships lies raging high 
 " 'Gainst Agamemnon people-shepherd now. 
 " But we be men withal to meet thee, aye 
 " And many such we have. But draw then nigh 
 " And battling now begin." To him did there 
 Of glancing helmet Hector huge reply : — 
 " Zeus-sprung Ajax think not me to scare, 
 " Like some weak boy or woman all unskill'd in war. 
 
 xxix. 
 
 " For well I know of fight, and slaughter too ; 
 " I know at right I know at left to wield 
 " The tann'd-hide shield, and fight untir'd. I know 
 " In standing fight sound Ares' pace a-field; 
 " My chariot mounting too in battling skill'd 
 " Of horses fleet am I. But loth I were 
 " Such as thou art by privy watch t' have quell'd 
 " Thee here by cunning sleight, smit unaware, 
 " But openly if that I may." He said, and there 
 
170 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 His long-sliade spear round brandishing he sent, 
 And smote on Ajax' dreadful sev'n-fold shield. 
 The outside brass that was the eighth it hent^^^, 
 And through six folds its course resistless held 
 The raging lance, but was at seventh repell'd. 
 Next Zeus-sprung Ajax hurl'd the long-shade spear. 
 And smote Priamides' round orbed shield, 
 And through the buckler bright the strong spear there 
 Did penetrate, and drove through dasdal cuirass fair. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 And on by th' groin the spear his vest cut through. 
 He stoop'd, and so black death escap'd. The twain 
 Together both their lengthy spears outdrew, 
 And like devouring lions then amain, 
 Or boars of no mean strength, fell-to again. 
 Priamides his mid-shield smote with spear. 
 The spear-point blunted, nor the brass broke in. 
 And Ajax leaping, struck his shield, and sheer 
 The lance went through, and him on-rushing smote severe. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 It pierc'd his neck. The black blood forth did spout. 
 Hector did not the more from fight refrain, 
 But stepping back a stone in's strong hand stout 
 He took that black, rough, huge, lay on the plain. 
 Ajax' dire se'en-fold shield therewith amain 
 Mid-boss he smote. The brass about it rung, 
 And Ajax then a huger stone up-ta'en 
 Round whirl'd with all his strength gigantic flung. 
 And smash'd his shield, this mill-stone missile hurling 
 strong. 
 
BOOK VII. 30—35. 171 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 With knees y-bruis'd en's back outstretched he lay- 
 Grasping his shield. Him Phoebus rais'd again. 
 And now with swords at close-hand fought had they 
 Had not those messengers of Zeus and men, 
 The heralds there, quick interposed then. 
 The Trojans' one, one th' Achives' brazen clad, 
 Talthybius, and Idaeus, prudent twain, 
 Betwixt them both their sceptres held. Then said 
 Herald Idaaus, knowing well of prudent rede : — 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " No more dear sons contend, nor battle mo', 
 " For both cloud-gath'ring Zeus loves equally, 
 *' And warriors both ye are, we all do know. 
 " But night's at hand, 'tis good ye night obey." 
 To him did Telamonian Ajax say : — 
 " Idaeus, bid thou Hector this express, 
 " For he our chiefest challenged this day. 
 " Let him begin, he ceasing, I'll no less." 
 Him answ'ring then helm -glancing Hector did address : — 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 " Ajax since thee the god gave stature, might, 
 
 " And sense, nor match at spear th' Achaeans thee, 
 
 " Now let us cease from enmity and fight 
 
 " To-day. Hereafter fight till deity 
 
 " Shall separate us, and the victory 
 
 " To one vouchsafe. But draws already near 
 
 " The night, and good it is we night obey. 
 
 " So thou wilt by th' Achaeans vessels cheer 
 
 All that be chiefly there thy friends and comrades dear. 
 
 i 
 
172 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " And I at sovereign Priam's mighty town - 
 " The Trojans and their long-veil'd consorts cheer, 
 " Who will to th' fane to pray for me have gone. 
 " Come gifts then give we one another fair, 
 " That Trojans and Achaeans may declare, 
 " * In soul-consuming strife y-hattled they^ 
 " And reconciVd in friendship parted there,'' 
 This said, gave falchion silver-studded he. 
 With scabbard, and with baldric wroughten curiously. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 A girdle Ajax gave with purple bright. 
 They parting ^^, this to the Achaean throng 
 And that to th' Trojans' went, who with delight 
 Beheld him live and sound there pace along. 
 From Ajax' force and hands resistless strong 
 Escap'd. To th' city led him they, that ne'er 
 Expected him in safety them among. 
 With Ajax, proud of vict'ry, th' Achives there 
 Well-greav'd to godlike Agamemnon straight repair. 
 
 xxxviii. 
 
 When reach'd Atrides' tents, the king of men, 
 Wight Agamemnon, ox a five year male 
 For them to great Kronion slaughter'd then. 
 They flay'd it and prepar'd, and quarter'd all, 
 And skilfully then cut in pieces small. 
 And hung on hooks, and roasted it with skill. 
 And then the whole withdrew. When ceas'd withal 
 Their labour then they banqueted their fill. 
 Nor to the equal banquet lack'd there aught of will. 
 
BOOK VII. 36—41. 173 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 At rides Agamemnon, broad of sway, 
 Grac'd Ajax with the length of chine entire. 
 When wish for meat, and drink they'd ta'en away, 
 Then he whose rede before found best, the Sire 
 Old Nestor first began good rede inspire. 
 And wisely spake : — " Atrides, ye beside 
 " Panachaean chiefs, how slaughter'd dire, 
 " Long-hair'd Achaean s have a many died ! 
 ^* Whose blood swift Ares shed by fair Scamander's tide, 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Whose souls to Hades went. With morning-shine 
 " Thou shouldst th' Achaean s stay from war while here 
 " Assembling we the corses wheel, with kine 
 " And mules. And burn them there the ships a-near, 
 " That each the bones may to his children bear 
 " When to our country we return again. 
 " And issuing forth we'll heap around the pyre 
 " A single mound for all upon the plain ; 
 " High towers build near, shall fence for us and ships main- 
 tain. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " And gates we'll in them make that well shall fit, 
 " That road may through them lie for steed and car, 
 " And deep trench dig a-near outside of it 
 " That either way shall men and horses bar, 
 " Lest storm-like burst ^'' the haughty Trojans' war." 
 He said. The kings applauded all. Now met 
 At Ilium's citadel the Trojans are 
 In troublous meeting rough at Priam's gate. 
 And wise Antenor speaking first began debate. 
 
174 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " Hear me ye Trojans ^^, Dardans and allies! 
 " While what my soul within me prompts, I say. 
 " The Argive Helen, and the goods likewise 
 " Let us th^ Atrides give to take away. 
 " But now we fight, and sworn oaths false gainsay. 
 ^' Till this we do no good atehieve we e'er." 
 He said and sat. Fair Helen's spouse straightway, 
 The godlike Alexander, rose up there, 
 Who answ'ring him did thus in winged words declare 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " Antenor, thou no more as pleases me 
 " Haranguest of these things. Some better rede 
 " Thou couldst devise than this. But if it be 
 " Thy speech does from thine earnest now proceed, 
 " Then have the gods destroyed thy wits indeed. 
 " But I'll harangue the tame-steed Trojans 'mong, 
 " And thus speak out. My wife I will not cede. 
 " The goods from Argos here I brought along 
 " I'll give up all, and others add to me belong." 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 He said, and sat. Priam Dardanides, 
 A counsellor to match with gods, did rise. 
 Who prudent them harangu'd, and spake to these : 
 " Hear me ye Trojans, Dardans, and allies, 
 " While speak I what my mind doth me advise. 
 " Now sup ye through the host as formerly. 
 " Keep guard remember, each with watchful eyes. 
 " IdaBus shall to th' ships at break of day, 
 " And to th' Atrides, Agamemnon, Menelaus, say. 
 
BOOK VII. 42—47. 175 
 
 XLV 
 
 " What Alexander saith, through whom arose 
 "Our strife. This prudent word too speak shall he, 
 " If they'll from roughly-sounding war repose 
 " Until we burn our dead, thereafter we 
 " Will battle on until the deity 
 " Do part us, and the vict'ry give to one." 
 He said. They hearken prompt, obedient be, 
 And supped in ranks throughout the host anon. 
 And to the hollow ships Idaeus went at dawn. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 He found then Ares' servants, Danai, 
 In council at Atrides' ship-stern met. 
 Amid them spake the clear- voic'd herald high : — 
 " Atrides, and ye PanachaBan great, 
 " Priam and other Trojan chiefs bid state, 
 " If ye'll assent, what Alexander says, 
 " Who caus'd our strife. The goods his ships did freight 
 " And he (would first he'd died) brought here o'er seas, 
 '' He'll yield up all and of his own will add to these. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 '* But glorious Menelaus' virgin-spouse '^^ 
 " He'll yield not though the Trojans urgently 
 " Advise. This too they bade, if ye'll repose 
 " From rough- voic'd war till burnt our dead have we, 
 " We'll fight thereafter until deity 
 " Divide us, and to one or other side 
 " Vouchsafe the victory." He said, and they 
 Thereat in deepest silence all abide. 
 At length among them spake the war-stout Diomed. 
 
176 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Let none take goods ^^ of Alexander now, 
 " Nor Helen's self. A child may know withal 
 " That on the Trojans ruin hangs and woe." 
 He said. Th' Achasans' sons t' applauding fall, 
 Diomed Tame-steed's speech admiring all. 
 T' Id^eus did King Agamemnon say : — 
 " Idaeus, th' Achives' sentence hear'st withal 
 " Thyself, how answer they. Approve it I, 
 * But touching burning of the dead I not deny. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " To corpses of the dead no grudging grows 
 
 " To sooth them quick with fire when as they die. 
 
 " The truce shall Zeus, the thund'rer, witness. Here's 
 
 spouse." 
 This said, to th' gods he lifted sceptre high. 
 And back Idaeus went to sacred Troy. 
 In session seated then the Trojans were. 
 And Dardans all assembled waiting they 
 Until Idaeus came. Who coming there, 
 And standing in the midst, his message did declare. 
 
 L. 
 
 They then address'd them quick to bring the dead, 
 And wood procure. The Argives also hie 
 Forth from their well-bench'd ships to fetch the dead, 
 And wood procure. The sun now recently - 
 Smote on the lands, ascending up the sky, 
 From Ocean up, the softly flowing, flowing deep. 
 They met, nor easy 'twas each man descry. 
 With water wash they ofl* the gore, and heap 
 Them on the wagons there, and scalding tears they weep. 
 
BOOK VII. 48-^53. 177 
 
 LI. 
 
 But Priam all lamenting loud forbade, 
 So silent they the corses on the pyre 
 Heart-griev'd dispose. When them with fire they had 
 Y-burnt, to sacred Ilium they retire. 
 So too th' Achaeans, of the buskins fair, 
 The corses on the pyre heart-griev'd dispose, 
 Then seek their ships when burnt the dead with fire. 
 Now ere 'twas morn while yet the twilight shows 
 Then round the pyre a chosen band of Achives rose. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Around it on the plain one mound for all 
 Forth issuing they made, and near to it 
 They builded too with lofty towers a wall, 
 For them and for their ships a fence. And set 
 Within them also gates, that well did fit, 
 That road might through them lie for steed and car. 
 And deep trench dug a-near outside of it 
 Broad, huge ; and palisadoes planted there. 
 Thus toiled they, th' Acha3ans of the flowing hair. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 The gods that sat by Zeus the lightning-one 
 The brass-clad Achives' huge work saw astound. 
 Earth- Shaker then, Poseidon, speech begun : — 
 " Sire Zeus, what mortal now on earth's wide ground 
 " Will tell the gods his mind, and aim profound ? 
 " Seest not th' Achasans with the long hair dight 
 " By th' ships a wall have built, and trench drawn round, 
 " Yet hecatombs to th' gods none gave they bright ? 
 " Its fame will be wherever spreads the morning light. 
 
178 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " They'll that forget which for Laomedon 
 
 " I and Phoebus Apollo toiling made." 
 
 Then wroth address'd him Zeus cloud-gath'ring one : — 
 
 " Earth- Shaker, thou the mighty, what hast said ? 
 
 " Some other god might this contrivance dread 
 
 " For hands and strength inferior far to thee. 
 
 " Thy fame will be as wide as light is spread. 
 
 *' But when th' Achaeans homeward gone shall be 
 
 This wall then shatt'ring thou shalt sweep it all to sea. 
 
 LV. 
 
 " And cover then again the mighty shore 
 
 " With sand. And so clean swept away and gone 
 
 " Th' Ach^ans' mighty wall." Thus talked o'er 
 
 These things with one another they. The sun 
 
 Now set, and the Achaeans' work was done. 
 
 And through the tents beeves slaught'ring sup they there. 
 
 And ships from Lemnos were, that Jason's son 
 
 Euneus sent with wine. Him did the fair 
 
 Hypsipyl^ to Jason people-shepherd bear. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Jason's son to th' Atrides sep'rately, 
 Agamemnon and Menelaus high. 
 Presented wine, a thousand measures free. 
 And of these Lemnian vessels, as they ply. 
 Their wine the comely-hair'd Achaeans buy. 
 Some now with brass, and some with iron bright. 
 And some with hides, with beeves themselves some buy. 
 And some with slaves. Their banquet of delight 
 Prepar'd, the long hair'd Achives feast throughout the night. 
 
BOOK VII. 54 — 57. 
 
 179 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Within the town the Trojans and allies 
 Did like cheer hold. Deep counselled Zeus all night, 
 With thund'rings dire did woes for them devise, 
 And terror seized on all, and pale affright. 
 Wine on the ground from cups they pour'd. No wight 
 Durst drink, but first to Kronos' son did make 
 Libation, then lie down, and gift of sleep partake. 
 
 N 2 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 I. 
 
 Morn saffron- veiPd o'er all the earth was spread ^^, 
 And lightning-loving Zeus the gods did there 
 On many-neck'd Olympus' highest head 
 Convene. Himself harangu'd them, and they were 
 Attentive all : — " Hearken to me, and hear 
 " All gods and goddesses the while what me 
 " Prompts in my breast my soul I utter here. 
 " See now no male nor female deity 
 " To thwart adventure, or to frustrate my decree. 
 
 II. 
 
 " But do ye all assent united give, 
 " That I the sooner bring these things to close. 
 *' But what so god apart I shall perceive 
 " That to th' Achaeans' aid, or Trojans' goes, 
 " Back to Olympus smit with uncouth blows 
 " He shall, or else I'll seize, and hurl him down 
 " To gloomy Tartarus, dire seat of woe ! 
 " Afar, where 'neath the earth th' abyss profound, 
 " And threshold brazen, and the iron gates are found, 
 
BOOK vm. 1 — 5. 181 
 
 III. 
 
 " *Neath Hades far, as 'bove the earth the sky. 
 " Me then how much the strongest he will know 
 " Of all the gods. But come ye then and try, 
 " Ye deities, that all may know it too ; 
 " From Heav'n hang golden chain, and from below 
 " Grasp it ye gods and goddesses a-main 
 " Joining your strength, ye will not compass so 
 " To drag from heaven out unto the plain 
 '^ Zeus counsellor supreme, with all your toiling vain. 
 
 I 
 
 " But when in turn a mind to pull have I, 
 '* With earth itself I'd drag, and with the sea, 
 " And round Olympus' top the chain then tie, 
 " And these in air all hanging high would be, 
 " So much are gods surpass'd, and men by me." 
 He said, and hush'd in silence grew they all. 
 And wonder'd at his speech, for roughly he 
 Harangu'd. At length among them did withal 
 These words Athene goddess, azure- ey'd, let fall. 
 
 " Our father Kronides, of rulers chief, 
 " Thy strength invincible we know full well, 
 " Yet for th' Achaean warriors feel we grief, 
 " Who perishing their evil fate fulfil. 
 " From war we'll yet abstain, since such thy will, 
 " But give the Argives counsel good will we, 
 " That they beneath thine anger die not all." 
 To her cloud-gath'ring Zeus spake smilingly : — 
 " Courage Tritogenia, offspring dear to me. 
 
 N 3 
 
182 . THE ILIAD. 
 
 yi. 
 
 " 'Twas with no willing mind ^ in sooth I spake, 
 " For be indulgent always I were fain." 
 He said, and to the car his steeds did take. 
 Brass-footed, flying swift, with golden mane, 
 And clad in gold his flesh withal, and ta^en 
 His golden whip in hand wrought curiously. 
 His chariot he ascends, and whips them then 
 Upon their course. At once mid -way they fly, 
 All unreluctant 'twixt the earth and starry sky. 
 
 yii. 
 
 To Ida, and her many springs he came, 
 That mother of wild beasts, to Garg'rus where 
 A shrine and fragrant altar stood to him. 
 His steeds the Sire of gods and men stay'd there. 
 And from the chariot loos'd, and round them air 
 Abundant pour'd, and he himself anon. 
 Where the tall peaks their summits highest rear. 
 In glory sat exulting, gazing down 
 On the Achaeans' vessels, and the Trojans' town. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 But they th' Achaeans of the comely hair 
 Did at their tents now snatch their meal in haste. 
 And then their armour donn'd. In arms too were 
 The Trojans through the city also drest. 
 Though fewer they, yet prompt themselves address'd 
 For wives and little ones to fight their foes, 
 In this their sore extremity distrest. 
 The gates all open wide, forth rushing goes. 
 Both horse and foot, the folk, and tumult huge arose. 
 
BOOK VIII. 6 — 11. 183 
 
 IX. 
 
 And when these rushing on in one place met, 
 Then shields, and spears, and might of mail-clad men 
 Together dash'd, and bossy bucklers set ! 
 Against each other hurtling. Kose the din 
 And shout, and moan of slaying and of slain. 
 And earth ran blood. And while 'twas morning still, 
 And sacred day yet grew, nor touch'd its wane, 
 So long did these each other seek to kill 
 With darts encount'ring fierce, and people much there fell. 
 
 X. 
 
 And when the sun the mid-sky circling pac'd. 
 Took then his golden scales the Sire, and twain 
 Long-sleep death's destinies within them plac'd 
 Of tame-steed Trojans, and Achaean men 
 The brazen clad, and balance mid-way ta'en 
 He rais'd. Down sank th' Achaeans' fatal day, 
 And on the many-feeding earth sat then 
 Th^ Achseans' destinies, while upwards fly ^^ 
 The Trojans' fates towards the broad extended sky. 
 
 XI. 
 
 From Ida loud he thunder'd, and sent down 
 Among th' Achseans blazing bolt, and they 
 IiL blank astonishment beheld astound. 
 And seiz'd them all pale horror and dismay. 
 Not durst in sooth Idomeneus that day. 
 Nor Agamemnon, nor Ajaces twain, 
 Those Ares' servants, venture there to stay. 
 Gerenian Nestor did alone remain, 
 Th' Achaeans' watchman, who had folio w'd also fain. 
 
 N 4 
 
184 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 But faird his steed, that fair-tress'd Helen's spouse 
 High Alexander smote with arrow keen 
 Upon the crown, where horses' first hair grows, 
 r th' skull a part most mortal. Stung with pain 
 It bounded up, for reach'd the shaft its brain. 
 Writhing it roll'd, and in confusion threw 
 The other steeds. While hastes with sword the Sire amain 
 To cut the traces. Hector's coursers through 
 The throng came swift, and that bold driver Hector drew. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And there had now the old man surely died. 
 
 But saw him soon the valiant Diomed, 
 
 And urg'd Odysseus, shouting loud and cried : — 
 
 " Zeus-sprung Laertes' son, accomplished 
 
 " In wiles, Odysseus, whither thus in dread, 
 
 " Like some base hilding fleest thou through the throng, 
 
 " Thy back to th' foe ? Take heed thou be not sped, 
 
 " Thrust through behind with spear as fly'st along. 
 
 But stay, and save the Sire from this fell warrior strong." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 He said. Nathless that much enduring man, 
 
 Odysseus godlike heark'ned not, but on 
 
 To the Ach^eans' hollow vessels ran ; 
 
 While to the front Tydides press'd alone. 
 
 And stood before the steeds of Neleus' son, 
 
 And spake words winged, him addressing he : — 
 
 " Sire, press thee warriors young, thy strength too gone, 
 
 " And harsh old age austere companions thee ; 
 
 Thy servant feeble, and thy horses laggard be. 
 
I 
 
 BOOK vni. 12—17. 185 
 
 XV. 
 
 " But come ascend my chariot now, and see 
 
 " What Trojan steeds are like, how o'er the plain 
 
 " Swift hither thither skill'd to chace or flee; 
 
 " Which I have lately from ^neas ta'en, 
 
 " Artificer of dread. Thy steeds let then 
 
 " Thy servants look to, mine we'll onward now 
 
 " Against the Trojans drive, steed-taming men, 
 
 " That Hector also of himself may so 
 
 If in my hands my spear impatient rageth know.'' 
 
 XVI. 
 
 He said. Gcrenian Nestor charioteer 
 Complied. And Nestor's steeds Sthenelus then 
 And brave Eurymedon attended there. 
 The servitors and both right valiant men. 
 The other two Tydides' car ascend. 
 And Nestor took the reins wrought wondrously, 
 And lash'd the steeds. Nigh Hector quick they been, 
 At whom, as he came onward eagerly, 
 His spear the son of Tydeus hurl'd, but miss'd him he. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But servant his, high-soul'd Thebaeus' son, 
 That held the reins, hight Eniopaeus slew. 
 Smiting his breast. From oif the chariot down 
 He fell. And back the steeds swift-footed drew, 
 While ebb'd his soul, and strength. Deep anguish grew 
 In Hector's mind for his companion dear. 
 He left him there though griev'd, and went anew 
 To seek him out a valiant charioteer ; 
 Nor long in sooth his steeds a driver wanting were. 
 
186 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 For soon he found Iphitides, the brave 
 Archeptolemus, whom, anon upta'en 
 Into his car, the reins in hand he gave. 
 Then slaughter huge, and dreadful deeds had been, 
 And they at Ilium now like lambs penn'd in. 
 Had not in sooth of gods and men the Sire 
 Full soon perceiv'd, and dreadful thund'ring then 
 Sent 'fore Tydides' horses blazing dire 
 A thunderbolt. And fearful flam'd the sulphurous fire. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The scar'd steeds 'neath the chariot shudd'ring shook ; 
 
 The bright reins fell from Nestor's hands, and he. 
 
 Full sore afraid, to Diomed thus spoke : — 
 
 " Tydides, turn again thy steeds, and flee; 
 
 " Know'st not from Zeus no vict'ry comes to thee ? 
 
 " Gives him the palm Zeus Kronides to-day, 
 
 " And us hereafter, if his pleasure be, 
 
 " He'll grant it eke. But no man hinder may, 
 
 Strong though he be, Zeus' will, so all supreme his sway." 
 
 XX. 
 
 Him answer'd Diomed the battle-bold : — 
 " Yea, Sire, all this in sooth thou'st said aright, 
 " But this sore grief my heart, and mind doth hold, 
 " Hector one day harangue the Trojans might, 
 " And say, ^ By me Tydides put to flight 
 "^ His vessels sought,^ Thus boast will he, yawn wide 
 " May earth then 'neath my feet." To him then straight 
 Gerenian Nestor charioteer replied : — 
 " Nay, warlike Tydeus' son, what word is this thou'st said ? 
 
BOOK VIII. 18—23. 187 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Though Hector recreant thee and coward call, 
 " Trojans and Dardans he will not persuade, 
 " Nor valiant shielded warriors' wives withal, 
 ^' Whose vig'rous husbands in the dust were laid 
 " Struck down by thee." To flight, so having said, 
 He turn'd the whole-hoof d steeds amid the rout 
 Once more. Whilst on them pour'd the javelins sad 
 Hector and Trojans there with fearful shout. 
 And Hector of the glancing helmet called out : — 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Tydides thee the swift-steed Danai 
 " With seat, and meats, brim goblets honour now 
 " The chief, but will henceforth despise thee they. 
 " Turn'd woman hast thou ; tim'rous girl then go, 
 " Ne'er with my yielding scale our towers shalt thou, 
 " Nor wives lead captive to the ships away. 
 " Thy death I'll give thee first." While spake he so, 
 Tydides anxious did revolving weigh 
 If turn his steeds he should, and fight with him that day. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Thrice in his mind and spirit ponder'd he. 
 And thrice from Ida's mountains thunder'd Jove 
 The sign of alternating victory. 
 In fight vouchsaf 'd the Trojans from above. 
 And Hector calling loud such speech did move : — 
 " Trojans and Lycians, Dardan warriors. Friends ! 
 " Be men, call up your valour now, for Jove 
 " Vict'ry and fame I know approving sends 
 " To me. But to the Danai sheer loss portends. 
 
188 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " The fools ! that now forsooth these walls devise, 
 " Worthless and weak, repel they will not me ; 
 " My steeds the trench they've dug will leap with ease, 
 "But when I reach their hollow vessels see, 
 " Some mem'ry then of hostile fire there be. 
 " As burn with fire their ships I shall, and slay 
 " Th' Argives themselves, as in their ships they flee 
 " Amid the smoke astound, and in dismay.'* 
 He spake, and calling loudly to his steeds did say : — 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Xanthus, and thou Podargus^^, ^thon too, 
 " And gen'rous Lampus, now pay back to me 
 " The feeding full that hath bestow'd on you 
 " High-soul'd Eetion's child Andromache. 
 " You first with heart'ning wheat serves always she, 
 " And mingling wine, as needs your soul, applies 
 " Ere me she serve, who boast her spouse to be. 
 " Now haste, pursue, let 's Nestor's shield make prize, 
 Golden with handles gold, its fame ascends the skies. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Diomed's shoulders strip of cuirass bright 
 
 " Hephaistos quaintly wrought. These if we take 
 
 " Th' Achaeans will to ship, I think, this night." 
 
 Thus vaunteth he. But Here then was wroth, and shake 
 
 She did upon her throne, and dread did quake 
 
 Olympus long.^^ Then to that deity 
 
 The great Poseidon turning her, she spake : — 
 
 " Earth- Shaker wide-prevailing, can it be 
 
 That Danai thus die thou canst unpitying see ? 
 
BOOK VIII. 24—29. 189 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Fair gifts in Helice, and Mgsa these 
 " Do bring thee store, and thou wouldst have them win. 
 " If we that help the Danai did please 
 " Repel the Trojans, and loud Zeus restrain, 
 " On Ida chafing there he'd sole remain.'^ 
 Her great Poseidon wroth made answer straight : — 
 " Bold-spoken Here, what word's this? Not fain 
 " I were with Zeus Kronion that we fight 
 " We other gods, since far exceedeth he in might." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Thus they discoursing spake. And now the space 
 The trench enclosed was fiU'd from ships to wall 
 With steeds and warriors crowding in apace : 
 For on them did that Ares' match withal. 
 Great Hector Priam's son, impetuous fall, 
 When Zeus gave him the palm. And he anon 
 With blazing fire had burnt their good ships all. 
 But Here prompted Agamemnon soon. 
 Himself not slack, to urge th' Achasans quicker on. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 To th' Achive ships and tents he bent his track. 
 With purple mantle in his stalwart hand. 
 And on Odysseus' ship, huge, whale-like, black. 
 That mid-way there was plac'd, he took his stand 
 That so his voice might either side command. 
 To Telamonian Ajax' tent extend 
 And to Achilles'. These their strength of hand 
 And valor trusting to, at either end 
 Had rang'd their ships. To Danai he shouted then : 
 
190 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Shame Argives, ye disgrace I of outside fair ! 
 
 " Where now those vaunts we were such valiant men ? 
 
 " Yain vaunts ye utter' d erst in Lemnos there, 
 
 " Devouring plenteous flesh of straight-horn'd kine, 
 
 " And quafS.ng goblets crown'd with brimming wine, 
 
 " How not 'gainst hundred Trojans would each one, 
 
 " No nor 'gainst hundreds twain the fight decline. 
 
 " And now we match not Hector's self alone, 
 
 Who will with blazing fire our vessels burn anon. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 '' E'er didst thou, Zeus, a mighty sovereign so 
 
 " Deceive with guile, so mar his wide-spread fame. 
 
 ^'- Yet I thine altar fair ne'er pass'd I know, 
 
 " When luckless here in well-bench'd ship I came, 
 
 " But burnt beeves' fat, and thighs on all of them, 
 
 '' To sack Troy's strong town longing eagerly. 
 
 " But now, Zeus, grant this, my only aim, 
 
 " Permit us but ourselves to 'scape and flee, 
 
 Nor thus by Trojans let th^ Achaeans slaughter'd be." 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 He said, and wept. The Sire with pity heard, 
 And safe his folk vouchsaf 'd, and in the sky 
 An eagle swiftly sent, completest bird. 
 A fawn his talons clutch'd as he did fly. 
 Which down he cast Zeus' lovely altar nigh, 
 Where off'ring were th' Achaeans sacrifice 
 To Zeus the source supreme of prophecy. 
 When sent from Zeus they saw the bird that flies 
 The Trojans then they charg'd, then did their spirit rise. 
 
BOOK VIII. 30—35. 191 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Then of the Danai, though many, none 
 Might boast he did his swift steeds sooner stay, 
 Cross trench, or fight the foe, than Tydeus' son. 
 Far first did he a Trojan warrior slay, 
 Phradmon's son Agelaus, that away 
 For flight his steeds had turn'd. Him turning round 
 He 'twixt the shoulders smote with spear, that stay 
 Did not, but through his chest quick passage found. 
 He fell from chariot, and his rattling arms resound. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 And after him the two Atrides come, 
 Agamemnon, and Menelaus there, 
 Then, valor-clad, th' Ajaces. After whom 
 Idomeneus, and foll'wer Merion were. 
 That with man- slaughtering Ares might compare. 
 Eurypylus, Evaemon's famous son. 
 Came next ; and Teucer did the ninth appear, 
 Bending th^ elastic bow, and stood anon 
 Behind the shield ensconc'd of Ajax Telamon. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Ajax his shield extends. The other spies 
 Amid the throng, and launching arrow keen 
 Transfixeth one, and as he falling dies, 
 Back steps the Archer seeking Ajax' screen 
 As child its mother's. Him with buckler sheen 
 He hides. What Trojan first then Teucer slew ? 
 Orsilochus was first by him y-slain ; 
 Ormenus, Ophelestes, Daetor too, 
 Chromius, and Lycophon the godlike, laid he low, 
 
192 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 And Hamopaon Polyaemon's son 
 
 ' And Melanippus. These lie maketh lie 
 Successive all upon the fertile ground. 
 Him Agamemnon there beheld with joy 
 The Trojan ranks with mighty bow destroy, 
 And near him stood and spake : — " Dear Teucer thou, 
 ^' prince and child of Telamon, still ply 
 '* Thine arrows thus, and thou a light wilt grow 
 
 " To Danai, and Telamon thy father so. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " He gave thee nurture, then a tiny thing, 
 " Receiving in his house though bastard thee, 
 " Him though afar wilt thou great glory bring. 
 " But this I tell thee, and perform'd 'twill be, 
 " If aeo-is-holdino: Zeus and Athene 
 " Vouchsafe that I Troy's well-wall'd town o'crthrow, 
 " I'll give thee honour's guerdon first next me, 
 " Tripod or horses twain with chariot too, 
 *' Or woman that with thee to the same bed shall go. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Him faultless ^^ Teucer answ'ring thus replies : — 
 " Eenown'd Atrides, me that am not slow 
 " Why urge ? I cease not sure, what in me lies. 
 " For from the time we made them Troywards go, 
 '' Their men I slay, encount'ring them with bow. 
 *^ Eight shafts long-barb'd I've sent. All fix'd them in 
 " Young warriors' flesh, but smite I may not so 
 " This raging hound." He said, and once again 
 A shaft at Hector sent, and smitten him had fain. 
 
BOOK VIII. 36 — 41. 193 
 
 XXXIX, 
 
 But him he miss'd, and with his arrow there 
 The brave Gorgythion, Priam's mighty son, 
 He smote upon the breast. Him she did bear 
 That came a bride from out iEsyma's town, 
 Goddess- like Castianira lovely one. 
 In gardens as a poppy hangs its head 
 That is with seed and vernal dews weigh'd down, 
 His head so hangs with helmet overweigh'd. 
 And now another shaft at Hector Teucer sped. 
 
 XL, 
 
 But then too faiVd, for Phoebus turned it by. 
 Arch^ptolemus, Hector's driver bold, 
 He smote upon the breast the nipple nigh, 
 As on he came. From out the car he roll'd. 
 The coursers swift their forward pace withhold, 
 While he with loosed soul and strength there lay 
 Sore grieved Hector mourn'd his comrade bold. 
 Yet left, and bade Cebriones straightway. 
 His brother, take the reins, who did not disobey. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Himself y-sprong from glist'ring chariot bright 
 With fearful shout, and seiz'd a stone, and went 
 'Gainst Teucer straight with eager wish to smite, 
 Who bitter arrow had from quiver hent^^^, 
 And fitted to the string, and bow y-bent, 
 And, aiming at him, back the string had drawn, 
 When at his shoulder Hector hurling sent. 
 Where severs neck and breast the collar-bone, 
 A part most mortal, smiting him the jagged stone. 
 
 o 
 
194 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 The bow-string snapped, and at the wrist was numb'd 
 His arm. He sank t' his knee, and dropp'd the bow. 
 Nor Ajax when his brother there succumb'd 
 Neglected him, but ran and round him so 
 Encompassing, his shield did shelt'ring throw. 
 Mecisteus Echius' child, and Alastor, 
 His dear companions twain, him lifted now. 
 And to the hollow ships sore groaning bore. 
 The Trojans' vigour then Olympius rous'd once more. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 To the deep trench they drove th' Achseans straight. 
 And 'mong the foremost Hector glaring round 
 Went in his strength. As trusting its swift feet 
 Hangs at a boar or lion's heels a hound, 
 Doth watch him turn, and still his haunches wound. 
 Hector the brazen-clad Achaeans so 
 Pursued, the hind-most ever smiting down. 
 They fled. And trench and palisadoes through 
 They pass'd in flight. And many there the Trojans slew. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 These by their vessels thus hemm'd-in abode. 
 To one another calling they did raise 
 To all the gods their hands, each praying loud. ^^ 
 While Hector there his fair-man'd coursers plies 
 On every side, and on them glares with eyes 
 Of man-bane Ares, and of Gorgon dread. 
 Them with compassion white-arm'd Here spies. 
 And to Athenia straight wing'd words she said : — 
 " Ah! child of Zeus, not heed we yet the Danai nigh 
 sped ? 
 
BOOK VIII. 42—47. 195 
 
 XLV. 
 
 ** Their evil fate fulfilling they will die 
 
 *' Through one man's force. For all resistless now 
 
 " This Hector son of Priam rages high, 
 
 " And work'd them hath in sooth abundant woe." 
 
 Her answer'd azure-ey'd Athene so : — 
 
 " This man had surely lost both strength and soul, 
 
 " By th' Argives in his native land laid low, 
 
 " But raves that sire of mine, with mind not whole. 
 
 Unbending, aye perverse, that will my force controuL 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " Nor calls to mind how oft I sav'd his son 
 
 ^' When him Eurystheus' labours sore oppress'd. 
 
 " Sky- ward he'd weep, and Zeus would send me down 
 
 " To succour him from heav'n. But in my breast 
 
 " Thoughtful and firm, could I these things have 
 
 guess'd, 
 " When to strong-gated Hades sent was he 
 '* To fetch the dog of Hades dire, detest 
 " From Erebus, he'd not assuredly 
 The headlong streams of Styx' dark flood escaped free. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " Now hates he me, and Thetis' will works out, 
 
 " Who kiss'd his knees, and took with hand his chin, 
 
 " Beseeching him t' avenge Achilles stout. 
 
 ^' But yet * Glaucopis dear ' he'll say again. 
 
 ^^ But th' whole-hoof steeds thou harness for us twain, 
 
 " While I to aegis-arm'd Zeus' house do go, 
 
 ^^ And don my arms for fight, and see if fain 
 
 " Plum'd Hector Priam's son will be, when through 
 
 The bridge-like^^ intervals of war ourselves we show. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Some Trojan, sure, shall satiate dogs and birds 
 " With fat and flesh, at th' Achive vessels smit." 
 She said, and Here heark'ned to her words. 
 The gold-trapp'd coursers Here harness'd straight, 
 Goddess august, the child of Kronos great. 
 Athene, aegis-arm'd Zeus' daughter, on 
 Her father's pavement pour'd th' elaborate 
 Fair veil, her hands had made, and putting on 
 Cloud-girt Zeus' tunic, arm'd for tearful war anon. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 On the bright car she stepp'd, and grasp'd her spear 
 Huge, massy, strong. Men's hero-ranks doth quell 
 Therewith the anger'd child of potent sire. 
 With whip did Here swift the steeds impel. 
 Self-moving creak'd the gates where sentinel 
 The Hours that keep Olympus, and the sky. 
 And have to lift, and fall the thick cloud- veil. 
 Through these the goaded steeds then did they ply, 
 And wroth was Zeus when he beheld from Ida high. 
 
 Rous'd Iris, gold-wing'd herald : — " Haste and go, 
 
 " Swift Iris, turn, nor let them further on, 
 
 " For we in war shall ill encounter so. 
 
 " But this I say, and 'twill in sooth be done, 
 
 " I'll in their chariot lame their steeds, and down 
 
 " Dash from their seat themselves, and break their car. 
 
 " Nor will in ten full years revolving round 
 
 " The gashes heal, where'er the lightnings mar : 
 
 So may Glaucopis know if 'gainst her sire she war. 
 
BOOK VIII. 48—53. 197;. 
 
 LI. 
 
 " Not Here blame I thus, my wrath so rise, 
 " For cross me is her wont." He said, and she 
 Storm-footed Iris on her message hies. 
 Down Ida's mountains went she hastily 
 T' Olympus long ^^, and where the first gates be 
 Of many-valed Olympus them she met. 
 And stopp'd, and told Zeus' message : — " Whither ye ? 
 " What madness drives ? For Zeus will not permit 
 " Your aiding Argives. Thus too Kronos' son doth 
 threat : 
 
 LII. 
 
 " He'll in your chariot lame your steeds, and down 
 " Dash from your seat yourselves, and break the car, 
 " Nor will in ten full years revolving round 
 " The gashes heal where'er the lightnings mar. 
 " So may'st thou know, Glaucopis, if thou war 
 " Against thy sire. He blames not Here here, 
 " Nor is so wroth, for aye he 's cross'd of her. 
 " But thou, shameless hound, withouten fear, 
 " If thou presume 'gainst Zeus to lift thy pond'rous 
 spear " ^^ 
 
 r Liii. 
 
 So said, away did swift-foot Iris go 
 And Rerh then Athen^ thus address'd ; — 
 " Ah ! child of Zeus, no longer I'll allow 
 " That we with Zeus for mortals' sake contest, 
 " Die they or live as haps. What deems he best 
 " 'Twixt Trojans and AchsBans let him judge as fit." 
 She said, and th' whole-hoof 'd steeds back turning press'd* 
 Th' Hours loos'd the fair-man'd steeds, and tied them at 
 Th' ambrosial cribs. And chariot 'gainst the bright wall 
 set. 
 
 o 3 
 
198 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 The pair on golden couches sat among 
 The other gods, sore grieved. And Zeus the Sire 
 From Ida to Olympus drove along 
 His steeds, and well-wheel'd car, and came to T^here 
 The gods then sat. The fam'd Earth-Shaker there 
 His coursers loos'd, and chariot in its nook 
 Put by, and 'fore it spread the curtain fair. 
 And wide-voiced Zeus himself his seat then took 
 On golden throne, and 'neath his feet Olympus shook. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Athene sat and Here sole apart 
 
 From Zeus, nor spake him aught, nor question made. 
 
 But he perceived, and said : — " Why thus at heart 
 
 " Are ye Athene, now, and Here sad ? 
 
 " For in the man-ennobling fight yeVe had 
 
 ^' No toiling long, the Trojans there to slay, 
 
 " On whom ye have your fearful anger laid. 
 
 " For such my strength, and hands' resistless sway 
 
 Not all Olympus' gods united turn me may. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " But fear first seiz'd your lustrous limbs ere seen 
 " War yet ye had, or wond'rous feats of war. 
 " But this I say, and it perform'd had been, 
 " By lightning smit ye'd not upon your car* 
 *' Return'd t' Olympus where the gods' seats are/' 
 He said. Pallas and Here groan'd with ire, 
 Close sat they woes for Trojans plotting there. 
 Athene held her peace. 'Gainst Zeus her sire 
 Sore wroth she was, and seiz'd her wildest anger dire. 
 
I 
 
 BOOK VIII. 54—59. 199 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Here her wrath not held, but answer'd so : . - 
 " Dread Kronides, what hast thou said ? Full well 
 " Thy strength invincible we all do know, 
 " Yet for th' Achaean warriors sad we feel 
 " Who perishing their evil fate fulfil. 
 " From war we'll yet, if so thou bidst, abstain, 
 " But counsel good to th' Argives give we will, 
 " That all be not in thy displeasure slain." 
 To her in answer spake cloud -gathering Zeus again : — 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 *' To-morrow morn yet stronger Kronos' son 
 " Mayst thou if 't please thee, ox-ey'd Here, see 
 " An army huge of Argives smiting down. 
 " For cease from war strong Hector '11 not till he 
 " Uprouse Pelides by the ships, the day 
 " They at their ship-sterns fight in fearful strait 
 " About Patroclus slain. Such fate's decree. 
 " For thee though wrath I reck not, though thou get 
 " Where be of earth and sea the utmost borders set. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " lapetus and Kronos on the ground 
 " There sit, nor sun's bright lustre passing o'er 
 " Enjoy, nor winds, but Tartarus profound 
 " On every side. Though wand' ring to that shore 
 " Thou come I care not for thy wrath, since more 
 " Audacious thing than thou in sooth is none." 
 He said. Nor white-arm'd Here answer'd more. 
 In ocean felP'' the lustrous light of sun 
 And drew black night on foodful fost'ring earth adown. 
 
 o 4 
 
200 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 Unwish'd of Trojans sank the light, but glad 
 To th' Argives came thrice welcome pitchy night. 
 The Trojans then apart convening led 
 From ships to whirling river Hector bright, 
 "Where clear of dead a space. They there alight 
 From off their steeds, and Hector speaking hear- 
 Th' eleven-cubit lance he held, and bright 
 The brass head 'fore him gleamed of the spear, 
 And round it shining ran the golden circlet clear. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 On this he leant and spake wing'd words withal : — 
 " Hear Trojans, Dardans, and allies ! E'en now 
 " The ships destroyed and the Achaeans all, 
 " Methought I should to gusty Ilium go ; 
 " But darkness first hath come, and saved so 
 " Argives and ships on fretted marge of sea. 
 " To sable night let 's now obedience show, 
 " Our meal prepare, and from the chariots free 
 *' The fair-man'd steeds, and fling them food abundantly. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " Fetch from the city oxen and fat sheep 
 " With speed, and gladd'ning wine, and bread too bring 
 " From home, and store of wood abundant heap. 
 " For through the night till morning^s daughter spring 
 " Full many fires we'll burn that shall up-fling 
 " Their lustre to the sky, lest during night 
 " Th' Achaeans comely hair'd endeavouring 
 " Do o'er the sea's broad backs direct their flight. 
 ** See they their barks not mount in peace nor scathless 
 quite, 
 
I 
 
 BOOK VIII. 60— -65. 201 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " But each with wounds at home to look-to go 
 " With arrow smitten or with keen-edg'd spear, 
 " As on his ship he leaps. May others so 
 " To bring war woful melancholy here 
 " On us steed-taming Trojan warriors fear. 
 " Let Zeus-lov'd heralds order through the town 
 " The beardless youths, and hoary elders there 
 " About the city watch the towers upon, 
 And women in their dwellings burn huge fire each one. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 " Let constant guard be kept, for fear the town 
 " Some ambush enter, while the folk away. 
 " Be ^t as I've said, ye high-soul'd Trojans, done. 
 " And now IVe spoke what fitting was to-day ; 
 " What fits the morn I'll mong the Trojans say. 
 " Zeus and the gods I trustful pray to sweep 
 " From hence these fate-conducted hounds away, 
 " Whom fates in sable ships brought o'er the deep. 
 ** But we by night ourselves with watchful guard will keep. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 " By morrow's dawn we will, full harnessed, 
 
 " At th' hollow ships fierce battle rouse. I'll see 
 
 " If Tydeus' son, the mighty Diomed, 
 
 " Will thrust me from the ships, or whether slay 
 
 " Himself I shall with spear, and bear away 
 
 " The blood-stain'd spoils. His valor morn will try, 
 
 " If he my coming spear abiding stay. 
 
 " But 'mong the first, methinks, he'll wounded lie 
 
 With many comrades round, when sun-rise lights the sky 
 
202 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " Would that immortal, and from old age free, 
 " With honor such as men t' Apollo show 
 " Or Pallas, I in sooth might honor'd be 
 " So sure as day will bring the Argives woe." 
 He said. The Trojans shout applause. And now 
 The sweating steeds unyoking, each before 
 His chariot tied. From town they bring not slow 
 Sheep, oxen, wine, and bread, and gather store 
 Of wood. The scent from earth to sky the winds up-bore. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Elate on bridge ^^ of war so sat they down 
 All night, and fires a many kindled there. 
 As in the sky when round the glist'ring moon 
 The stars in all their loveliness appear. 
 And no wind stirs, apparent all and clear 
 The watch-towers, mountain-peaks, and thickets been, 
 And over-head th' unfathomable air 
 Opes wide, and all the countless stars are seen, 
 And in his heart the shepherd joyeth at the scene. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 In number so the Trojan fires between 
 The ships and Xanthus' streams 'fore Ilium seem. 
 A thousand fires were burning through the plain ; 
 By each sat fifty in the blazing gleam. 
 The steeds white barley champ and oaten grain. 
 And nigh the chariots, waiting well-thron'd morn, remain. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 I- 
 
 Such watch the Trojans kept. While heav'n-struck flight, 
 Chill fear's companion, th' Achives held, and woe 
 Jnsuff'rable did all the bravest smite. 
 As two winds stir the fishy sea, that so 
 Both North and West from out of Thracia blow 
 And sudden come : the dark flood lifts its crest, 
 While from the sea abundant weed they throw. 
 So torn th' Achseans' minds within each breast. 
 Atrides then, his heart with heavy grief opprest, 
 
 II. 
 
 Went forth and bade the clear-voic'd heralds call 
 To th' gath'ring each by name, but silence keep. 
 Himself the chief distrest. They seat them all 
 Deject. Eose Agamemnon, and did weep 
 As darkling water-fount that from a steep 
 Goat-baffling^^ rock its black stream poureth down. 
 So he to th' Argives spake, and sighed deep : — 
 " Friends, Argive chiefs and princes ev'ry one. 
 With mischief tangled me has Zeus high Kronos' son. 
 
204 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 " Cruel ! from well-walFd Ilium's overthrow 
 " He promis'd me return. Now bent on guile 
 " My folk so slain to Argos bids me go 
 *' Disgrac'd. But such overpowering Zeus' high will, 
 " Who many towns hath made their tops to vail, 
 " And will yet more, whose might 's o'er every one. 
 " But come let 's all do what I say, make sail 
 " And flee, and to our country dear be gone, 
 " Nor longer hope to capture Ilium's wide-street town." 
 
 IV. 
 
 He spake, and all grew hush'd in silence dead. 
 
 And mute, deject th' AchaBans' sons long sat. 
 
 At length among them spake brave Diomed : — 
 
 '' Atrides, thee distraught, king, where meet, 
 
 " I'll first oppose in council, nor irate 
 
 " Be thou. Me first concerning courage thou 
 
 " Keproachedst 'mong the Danai but late 
 
 " As coward and unwarlike, which things now 
 
 " In sooth alike the Argives young and ag^d know. 
 
 ** Thee crafty Kronos' son but half-endow'd. 
 " With sceptre gave 'fore all rever'd to be, 
 " That chiefest strength yet gave not, fortitude. 
 " Friend, seem th' Achaeans' sons indeed to thee 
 " So weak and spiritless as thou dost say ? 
 " If thine own mind so urge return, then go; 
 *' Thy way is clear thy many ships by sea 
 " That from Mycenae came. We else I trow 
 " Long-hair'd Achaeans here will stay, and Troy o'erthrow. 
 
BOOK IX. 3—8. 205 
 
 VI. 
 
 *' If these too will, in ships then let them fly 
 " Back to their native land. Not less will we 
 " Continue fighting, Sthenelus and I, 
 " Until we shall an end of Ilium see : 
 " We came not here withouten deity." 
 He said, th' Achasans' sons with shouting did 
 Applaud him all, amaz'd admiring they 
 The speech of steed-subduing Diomed. 
 Among them rising Nestor charioteer then said ; — 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Thou'rt chief in war, Tydides, and in rede 
 
 " All passest of thy years. This speech of thine 
 
 " Blame or oppose no Achive will indeed. 
 
 *' Nathless thou dost not counsel's sum attain, 
 
 " Thou 'rt young and mightst my youngest son have been, 
 
 " Yet speak' st to th' Argive kings in prudent wise 
 
 " And sayst aright. But I thy senior then 
 
 " Will all discuss, and in my speech comprise. 
 
 Which speech will none, not Agamemnon's self, despise. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " A tribeless, lawless, hearthless man is he 
 " Whoever loveth war intestine, dire. 
 " But let us now in sooth obedient be 
 " To sable night, and supper straight prepare. 
 " And let the watchers each one couchen there 
 " Close by the trench we dug outside the wall. 
 " These mandates for the youthful warriors are. 
 " Then take the lead, Atrides, thou of all 
 Supreme. The elders feast, behoves thee so withal. 
 
206 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IZ. 
 
 " Tents full thou hast of wine, which bring to thee 
 " The ships of the Achseans every day 
 " From out of Thracia o'er the wide-stretch' d sea. 
 " Thou'st means of entertainment full. Thy sway 
 *' O'er many. Many gath'ring then obey 
 " Thou him who counsels best. Good rede and bright 
 " All Achives need, when foes our ships a-nigh 
 " Burn many fires. Who could in these delight ? 
 " Disperse our host, or save it will this very night." 
 
 X. 
 
 He said. They gladly hear him and obey. 
 Forth haste the watchers arm'd. There Nestoride, 
 Folk- shepherd Thrasymedes, there too they 
 Ascalaphus, lalmen Ares-bred ; 
 There Merion, Aphareus, Deipyrus sped, 
 And godlike Lycomedes, Creon's son. 
 Se'en chiefs of watch there were. A hundred led, 
 Of warriors wielding lengthy spears each one. 
 Forth issuing these 'twixt trench and wall then sat them 
 down. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There fires they kindled each, and supper set. 
 
 Meanwhile Atrides led unto his tent 
 
 Th' Achaean elders all assembling met. 
 
 And there a banquet to their hearts' content 
 
 Before them plac'd. For meat and drink when sent 
 
 Away they had all appetite, and zest. 
 
 The sire first 'gan devise a craft intent, 
 ' Nestor, whose counsel erst had seem'd the best. 
 Who them ail-prudently haranguing thus address'd : 
 
BOOK IX. 9—14. 207 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Atrides, thou most glorious, king of men, 
 " Agamemnon, I'll in thee make end, 
 " With thee begin. For thou dost sovereign reign 
 " O'er many folk, and Zeus hath to thine hand 
 " Entrusted sceptre, and the laws that stand 
 " For thy consulting. Fits thee speak, and hear 
 " And crown what other's soul doth him command 
 " To speak for good. Since thy resolve, 'tis clear, 
 " Must hold. I'll utter what to me doth best appear. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " For better thought none other '11 think than this 
 " That I have thought before, and still do now, 
 " E'er since, Zeus-born, thou taking Briseis 
 " Away from wroth Achilles' tent didst go. 
 " But not with our consent. For thee I trow 
 " Did I with many words dissuade. Nathless 
 " Thou yielding to thine own strong mind didst so, 
 " A man most valiant, whom the gods do grace. 
 Insult, and torn away his prize dost still possess. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Consult we how appeasing him persuade 
 
 " With soothing gifts, and gentle speech we may." 
 
 To him men's sovran Agamemnon said : — 
 
 " Father, thou dost of my folly say 
 
 " But truth. I've sinn'd, myself will not deny. 
 
 " For like a host the man so lov'd of Zeus, 
 
 " Who gracing him th' Achaean folk doth slay. 
 
 " But since I've sinn'd through mine ill mind's abuse, 
 
 " I would propitiate, and presents give profuse. 
 
208 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " The splendid gifts I'll name before you all. 
 " Sev'n tripods ne'er had fire ^^, gold talents ten, 
 " Bright caldrons twenty, coursers twelve withal, 
 " Prize-winners strong, whose feet have prizes ta'en. 
 " ISTot poor a man nor lacking gold had been 
 " With all my whole-hoof d steeds have won for me. 
 " And lovely work-skill'd Lesbian women se'en 
 " I'll give, which erst when Lesbos ta'en had he 
 " I chose, that fair beyond the tribes of women be. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " I'll give him these. She'll with them be whom then 
 
 ** I took, Briseis. Solemn oath I'll swear 
 
 " Her couch I've ne'er approach'd, nor with her been 
 
 ** As is men's wont, and men with women are. 
 
 " All these at once. If Priam's city e'er 
 
 "The gods vouchsafe we take, lade ships he may 
 
 " With gold and brass when th' Achives booty share. 
 
 " And Trojan women twenty choose shall he 
 
 Himself, that after Argive Helen fairest be. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " But Achive Argos, breast of earth, if e'er 
 
 " We reach, as son he'd like my sole one be 
 
 " Orestes, held of me in foison there. 
 
 *' And in my well-built palace daughters three 
 
 " Have I, Chrysothemis, Laodice, 
 
 " And Iphianassa. Her it likes him have 
 
 " Of these withouten dowry take ^^ he free 
 
 " To Peleus' home. And dotal presents brave 
 
 I'll many give, as ne'er yet man to daughter gave. 
 
BOOK IX. 15-— 20. 209 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 *' Sev'n peopled towns TU give, Cardamyle, 
 ^' Enope, Hira green, PhersB divine, ': 
 
 " Antheia eke, whose meads deep herbag'd. be, 
 " ^peia fair, P<]edasus of the vine. 
 " All these by sea, at Pylos' last confine. 
 " There men in flocks and herds abounding stay, 
 ^' Wholl honour him with gifts as one divine, 
 " And splendid tribute 'neath his sceptre pay. 
 " I'll these perform if he will put his wrath away. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " Then let him yield. Stern Hades is unyielding, 
 " So him of all the gods men most abhor. 
 " Yield he to me, as power more sovereign wielding, 
 *' Who am in years too him so far before." 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor spake once more : — 
 *' Atrides Agamemnon, king of men, 
 " Renown'd, t' Achilles no mean gifts make o'er 
 " Would st thou. Some choice men quick despatch we 
 then 
 " Shall to the tent of Peleus' son Achilles wend. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " But come, I'll choose out these, let them comply : 
 ^' And first of all let Zeus-lov'd Phoenix lead, 
 " Then Ajax huge, divine Odysseus high ; 
 " Hodius, Eurybates of heralds yede. 
 " Bring water for our hands, bid prayer be made, 
 " Zeus Kronides to pity us implore." 
 So speaking, word that pleas'd them all he said. 
 Quick on their hands the heralds water pour, 
 And then the youths with wine the mixing-bowls brhii o'er. 
 
 p 
 
210 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 They dealt to all, and cups did auspicate ; 
 Libation done when drank their fill they sped 
 From Agamemnon's tent. Injunctions strait 
 And strict Gerenian horseman Nestor laid, 
 Each eyeing, chief Odysseus, that persuade 
 The faultless ^^ son of Peleus they should try. 
 By shore of sounding sea they went, and prayed 
 Gird-earth, Earth-shaker earnest on their way, 
 That easy move ^acides' firm mind they may. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Myrmidons' tents and vessels reach'd they find 
 Him there, his soul delighting with the lyre 
 Sonorous, lovely, cunning- wrought, and join'd 
 With silver yoke. This from the spoils whilere 
 He took when sack'd Eetion's city fair. 
 So sooth'd his mind, and sang men's glorious deeds. 
 Patroclus sole sat silent list'ning there 
 Until Pelides end his song. Proceeds 
 The embassage, the way godlike Odysseus leads. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 They 'fore him stood. Achilles with surprise 
 Up-sprang, with lyre in hand, and left his seat. 
 Patroclus too, when seen the men, did rise. 
 Swift-foot Achilles speaking them did greet : — 
 " All welcome friends ! Some need hath you beset 
 " Whom I, though wroth, of Achives hold most dear." 
 So brought them in Achilles swift of feet, 
 On couches plac'd, and purple carpet-gear. 
 Then quick address'd Patroclus who was standing near :— 
 
BOOK IX. 21—26. 211 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " A largish, bowl Menoetius' son now set, 
 " And wine mix strong, and cup for each one place 
 " For men most dear that 'neath my tent are met." 
 He said. Patroclus straight his friend obeys, 
 While he a flesh-tray flung i' th' fire's bright blaze. 
 Therein the back of sheep, and fat she-goat, 
 Therein, too, fatted boar's rich chine he lays. 
 Held these Automedon, Achilles cut. 
 These cut in morsels well he hung the spits about- 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Menoetius' son, the godlike man, a fire 
 There kindled huge, and when the fire now had 
 Burnt down, and with'ring did the flame expire. 
 He stretch'd the spits o'er burning embers spread. 
 Show' red sacred salt as raise fro' th' stands he did, 
 And on the dressers all, when roasted, pour'd. 
 Patroclus serv'd in baskets fair the bread. 
 The meat Achilles, seated at the board 
 By th' opp'site wall, divine Odysseus facing tow'rd. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 To th' gods make off 'ring he Patroclus bade. 
 Who firstling morsels in the fire did fling. 
 They stretch' d their hands to th' food before them laid. 
 Quell'd thirst and hunger, Ajax motioning 
 To Phoenix made. Odysseus saw the thing, 
 And wine-cup filling pledg'd Achilles he : — 
 " Achilles hail ! Lack not good banqueting 
 " B' Atrides Agamemnon's tent do we, 
 *' Nor here, where many grateful things for feasting be. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " But not for pleasant banquet-works we care. 
 " Calamity, Zeus-fed, sore we see, 
 " And dread. And doubt if 'scape or perish there 
 " The well-bench'd ships, unless thy bravery 
 " Thou don. For camp by th' wall and vessels they 
 " The haughty Trojans, and far-call'd allies, 
 " Burn many fires, through th' host, nor hinder' d. say 
 ** They'll longer be, but of the ships make prize. 
 ** Zeus Kronides them fav'ring lightens from the skies. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " And Hector in his strength round glaring dire 
 " Fierce rages, trusting Zeus he nought doth fear 
 " Or men or gods. Him frenzy doth inspire. 
 " He prays that morn divine may soon appear, 
 " And threatens he our vessels' prows will shear, 
 " And burn the ships with fire, th' Achaeans kill, 
 "Astounded in the smoke the ships a-near. 
 " And sore I fear me in my mind that will 
 " Th' immortal gods these menacings of his fulfil. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " I fear in Troas perish is our fate 
 " From steed -apt Argos far. But up, and haste, 
 " If minded to defend, albeit late, 
 " From Trojan force th' Achaeans' sons distrest. 
 ** For sorrow will hereafter touch thy breast. 
 " No cure's for evil done. 'Fore-hand th' ill day 
 " Of Danai bethink thee how t' arrest. 
 " To thee thy father Peleus, when away 
 ** From -Phthia to Atrides sent thee, friend, did say : 
 
BOOK IX. 27— '32. 213 
 
 XXX. 
 
 My son, strength Here and Athene ^11 give 
 '' If H please them. Thou thy spirit keep controWd 
 " /' tN breast ; for better ^s gentleness. And leave 
 " All noxious strife. So thee the more will hold 
 " In honor th' Ar gives all both young and old.^ — 
 *^ So bade the Sire, but thou'st forgot. Thy bent 
 " E'en now relax, thine anger fierce withhold, 
 " Gifts worthy '11 Agamemnon give, relent 
 *^ But thou from wrath What gifts he promis'd in his tent, 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " If thou wilt hearken I'll recount them all : 
 " Sev'n tripods ne'er had fire, gold talents ten, 
 " Bright caldrons twenty, coursers twelve withal, 
 " Prize-winners strong, whose feet have prizes ta'en. 
 *' Not poor the man nor lacking gold had been 
 " With all Atrides' steeds have borne away. 
 " And lovely work-skill'd Lesbian women se'en 
 " He'll give, which when thou 'dst Lesbos taken, he 
 " Did choose, that fair beyond the tribes of women be. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 *' He'll give thee these. She'll with them be whom then 
 '^ He took, Briseis. Solemn oath he'll swear 
 " Her couch he's ne'er approach'd, nor with her been 
 " As is men's wont, and men with women are. 
 " All these at once. But Priam's town if e'er 
 *' Gods grant we take, thy ships lade shalt thou free 
 " With gold and brass when th' Achives booty sharCj 
 " And Trojan women twenty choose for thee, 
 " That after Argive Helen shall the loveliest be. 
 
 p 3 
 
214 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " But Achive Argos, breast of earth, if e^er 
 " We reach, his son thou 'dst like his sole one be, 
 " Orestes, held of him in foison there. 
 " And in his well-built palace daughters three 
 " He hath, Chrysothemis, Laodice, 
 " And Iphianassa. Her it likes thee have 
 " Of these, withouten dowry take thou free 
 " To Peleus, home. And dotal presents brave 
 ^* He'll many give, as ne'er yet man to daughter gave 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " Sev*n peopled towns he'll give, Cardamyle, 
 " Enop^, Hira green, Pherse divine, 
 " Antheia eke, whose meads deep herbag'd be, 
 " jEpeia fair, Paedasus of the vine, 
 " All near the sea, at Pylos^ last confine. 
 " There men in flocks and herds abounding stay, 
 " Who 11 honour thee with gifts as one divine, 
 " And splendid tribute 'neath thy sceptre pay. 
 *' He'll these perform if thou thy wrath will put away. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " But if Atrides thou dost so detest 
 " At heart, himself and gifts, compassionate 
 " The other Panachaeans sore distrest 
 " Throughout the host, who'll thee in honor set 
 *' As god. Of them thou 'dst have now glory great. 
 " For Hector now thou 'dst take, who'll come full nigh 
 " In 's rage distract, who boasts none him can mate 
 " Of all that ships brought here of Danai." 
 To him then spake swift-foot Achilles in reply : — 
 
BOOK IX. 33—38. 215 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Zeus-sprung Laertes' son, in wiles deep-skill'd, 
 " Odysseus, now behoves me speak out plain 
 " E'en as I think, and will be sure fulfill'd, 
 . " That none lamenting me beset again. 
 '^ For him I hate as gates of Hades e'en 
 " Who '11 one thing hide in 's breast, another say. 
 " I'll speak my mind. Not move me will I ween 
 " At rides, nor the other Danai, 
 " Since small the thanks for fighting foes incessantly. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " Like shareth if one lag, or vig'rous fight, 
 " Like honor too for coward and for brave, 
 " Dies as the sluggard, so the toiling wight. 
 " No profit of my mind's sore toil I have, 
 " That aye my soul to battle's peril gave. 
 " As bird its callow young what e'er of food 
 " It findeth brings, herself doth scant fare leave, 
 " So many sleepless nights, and days of blood, 
 " Men combating, I've spent, in these men's wives' sole feud. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Twelve sooth with ships I've cities sack'd of men ; 
 " On foot I think eleven Troas through. 
 " From all have treasures bright and many ta'en, 
 " And yielded all to Agamemnon, who 
 " Eeceiv'd them staying with the ships, and few 
 *' Distributing, the many did retain. 
 " Gifts gave to th' chiefs and kings, which keep they do 
 " Secure. From me alone of th' Achives hath he ta'en 
 " And keeps my pleasing spouse. Let him enjoy her then. 
 
 p 4 
 
216 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX, 
 
 " Why Argives Trojans fight ? Why host thus far 
 " At rides led ? Was 't not for Helen fair ? 
 "The only men that love their wives then are 
 " Th' Atrides ? Brave and prudent every where 
 " Her that ^s his own doth love, for her doth care. 
 " So from my soul I've this one lov'd albeit 
 " The captive of my spear. Now after her 
 " My prize he 's ta'en, and practis'd this deceit, 
 " Let him not try me more, he'll not persuade a whit. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Let him with thee, Odysseus, and the kings 
 " Contrive from fire of foes his ships to keep. 
 " He hath withouten me done many things, 
 " A wall hath built, and trench before it steep, 
 " Broad, huge hath drawn, and stakes in-driven deep, 
 " TsTor yet can slaught'ring Hector's force withstand. 
 " While I 'mong th' A chives warr'd by th' wall he'd keep, 
 " Came but to th' Scaean gates a*nd beech. A stand 
 " He made there once, and scarce escaped from my hand. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " Now since I'll fight not Hector godlike one, 
 " To-morrow, rites paid Zeus and gods as wont, 
 " My laden ships, when I've to sea drawn down, 
 " Thou'lt see, if 't please thee take thereof account, 
 " Full early sailing fishy Hellespont 
 " My barks, with men who'll no slack rowing ply. 
 " Fair passage if fam'd Shake-earth give upon 't, 
 '•' The third day gleby Phthia 's reach'd, where lie 
 A many things I left here coming lucklessly. 
 
BOOK IX. 39—44. 217 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " More gold, red brass, fair women, iron bright 
 " Hence take I, mine by lot. My guerdon he 
 " Who gave it Agamemnon took, with slight. 
 " To him then all I've said speak openly, 
 " That other Achives too indignant be, 
 " If some Danaian yet he hopes to cheat, 
 *' Aye clad in impudence. But eyes on me 
 " Let him, though bold, adventure not to set. 
 " I'll nought with him in rede or deed communicate. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " Me hath he bilk'd and wrong'd, but ne'er again 
 " With words will cheat. Enough. Let him be still 
 " And perish. Zeus all-wise his wits hath ta'en. 
 " His gifts I hate, himself I count at nil. 
 *^ Though give me ten or twenty times he will 
 " What now he hath or '11 come to him, or e'er 
 " Orchomenus or e'en Egyptian Thebes did fill, 
 " Where wealth 's most hous'd, where gates a hundred 
 are, 
 " At each out pass two hundred men with steed and car. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 ** Though gifts he'd give as sand or dust, not me 
 " The more would Agamemnon turn aside 
 " Ere paid me all that vex-soul contumely. 
 " Atrides Agamemnon's daughter, bride 
 *' Of mine should never be. Though lovely vied 
 " In form with golden Aphrodite she, 
 " And match'd in skill Athen^ azure-ey'd, 
 " I'd wed her not. Some Achive else choose he 
 " Shall match with him of higher regal dignity. ^^ 
 
218 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " If gods preserve and bring me home, for me 
 " Will Peleus' self for spousals wife provide. 
 " Achaean girls through Hellas, Phthia be 
 " No lack, whose chieftain-sires o'er towns preside. 
 *' Of these the one that I shall choose, my bride 
 " Belov'd I'll make, and thither soothly does 
 " My manly soul vehemently now guide 
 " To wed a lawful wife, a fitting spouse, 
 " The wealth sire Peleus heap'd enjoying in repose. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " To me nought equals life, not all that fame 
 " Reports possest by Ilium's well-dwelt town, 
 " While peace was ere th' Achaeans' sons yet came, — 
 " Nor all that rocky Pytho's fane of stone 
 " Phoebus Apollo's holdeth, darting one. 
 " By rapine may we beeves and fat sheep gain, 
 " And tripods too, and ruddy steeds be won ; 
 '^ But soul of man will ne'er return again, 
 ** Be seiz'd or ta'en, that past his fence of teeth ^^ hath been. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " My goddess-mother, Thetis Silver-Foot, 
 " Hath said two several fates to death's bourn wend. 
 *' If staying here I combat Ilium 'bout, 
 " Dies my return, my glory ne'er will end. 
 *' If homewards to my country dear I bend, 
 " Dies bright renown, be long my life though will, 
 " Nor death o'ertake me with too speedy end. 
 " And I'd advise the rest that home they sail ; 
 *^ For find the end of lofty Ilium now ye'U fail. 
 
BOOK IX. 45 — 50. 219 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Witli hand doth wide-voic'd Zeus so cover it, 
 
 " Her folk take heart. But go, your message say 
 
 " To th' Achive chiefs as envoys doth befit, 
 
 " That they devise some other better way 
 
 " That save their ships and folk Achaean may 
 
 " In th' hollow ships, as through my wrath doth fail 
 
 " Their now device. But Phoenix with us stay, 
 
 " To country dear to-morrow with me sail. 
 
 That's if he please, for I'll not take him 'gainst his will." 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 He said. And all grew silent, wond'ring they 
 At this his speech, who rough denial gave. 
 At length did drive-steed Phoenix sire thus say, 
 And wept hot tears ; for he sore dread did have 
 For th' Achive ships :^ — " If, bright Achilles brave, 
 " Return thou hast in mind determin'd on, 
 " Nor wilt from raging fire the swift ships save, 
 " Since wrath has seiz'd thy soul, how then dear son 
 " Should I here reft of thee be left behind alone ? 
 
 *' Me with thee sent Sire spur-steed Peleus when 
 
 " From Phthia to Atrides sent he thee, 
 
 " A child unskill'd in war, that's all men's teen, 
 
 *' Unskill'd t' harangue where chieftains meet, so me 
 
 " He sent all these to teach thee, both to be 
 
 " Speaker of speech, of deeds a doer too. 
 
 " Wherefore dear son I'd not be left of thee, 
 
 " Though promis'd me a god to cause me mew 
 
 Old age, and blooming youth as then make me anew ^ 
 
220 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 " When fair-dam'd Hellas first I left to shun 
 " Strife with my sire Amyntor Ormenide, 
 u ^poth for his concubine, the fair-tress'd one 
 " He lov'd, my mother slighting whom he'd wed ^ 
 " Who on her knees besought me first to bed 
 " The concubine that th' old man her might hate. 
 " I did. My sire straight knew, and furies dread 
 " Invok'd, did curses on me imprecate, 
 " And pray'd no child of mine might on his knees be set. 
 
 LII. 
 
 " His curses, sooth, the gods fulfiU'd withal, 
 " Infernal Zeus ^^, Persephoneia dire. 
 *' There could my mind no more endure at all 
 " To stay i' th' palace with my anger'd sire. ^^ 
 *' Kinsmen and friends with prayers my stay desire, 
 " And store fat sheep they slew, and trail-foot kine 
 " With crumpled horn. And o'er Hephaistos' fire 
 " Were singeing stretch'd a many full fat swine, 
 " And from the old man's jars was drank abundant wine. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 ** Nine nights by turns they watching 'bout me slept, 
 " Nor fires put out. By th' court-yard porch was one, 
 " In th' entrance-hall by th' chamber-doors one kept. 
 " But when on me the tenth dark night came down 
 " My well-join' d chamber-doors I brake anon 
 " And leap'd the court-yard fence with ease, to th' men 
 *' That watch'd and women- servants unbeknown. 
 *^ I fled through Hellas wide, and Phthia then 
 Sheep-mother fertile reach'd, where did king Peleus reign. 
 
BOOK IX. 41—46. 221 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " And willingly received and lov'd me he 
 *' As sire his only son, begot when old 
 " To vast possessions heir. Rich made he me 
 " And much folk gave ; at Phthia's bounds to hold 
 " O'er the Dolopians sway. So did enfold 
 " My heart's love thee, thou match for gods divine, 
 " That nor at home nor out, Achilles bold, 
 " Wouldst eat, till seated on these knees of mine 
 ^* With meat I fed thee, minced small, and proffer'd wine. 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Thou'st wetted oft my tunic on my breast, 
 
 " Out-sputt'ring wine ^^ in froward infancy. 
 
 " Yea much I've borne and toil'd for thee, possest, 
 
 " That as the gods none issue gave to me, 
 
 " I would, godlike Achilles, make of thee 
 
 " A son might me from ill one day defend. 
 
 " Thy great soul curb, Achilles. Fits not be 
 
 " Relentless thou. The gods themselves do bend, 
 
 Though they in excellency, honor, strength transcend. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " For them with sacrifice and soothing vows, 
 
 " Libation, savor, men propitiate, 
 
 '' Entreating if transgress or sin one does. 
 
 ** For Prayers the daughters be of Zeus the great. 
 
 " Lame, wrinkled they, their eyes askance are set, 
 
 " And Mischief follow they with care to heal. 
 
 " But Mischief vig'rous, and of footing straight, 
 
 " Outruns them all, through earth beforehand still 
 
 Afflicting men. And these behind redress the ill. 
 
222 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " He that reveres Zeus' daughters drawing nigh, 
 " Him profit much, and praying hearken they. 
 " But who refuseth, and doth stern deny, 
 " To Kronos' son great Zeus they go and pray 
 " That Mischief foU'wing him with hurt repay. 
 ^* But thou, Achilles, let Zeus' daughters get 
 " The honor which the noblest minds doth sway. 
 " If gifts not brought, and others promis'd yet 
 ^* Atrides had, but kept his anger obstinate, 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " Not I had bade thee cast off wrath, and aid 
 " The Argives though they need. But now he'll straight 
 " Give much, and promise more. And men beside, 
 ** The chief and choice of th' Achive folk, t' entreat 
 " Hath sent, to thee most dear. Whose speech and feet 
 *' Put not to shame, though justly wroth before. 
 *' For so the praises we have heard repeat 
 " Of heroes old, when seiz'd them anger sore. 
 They'd gifts accept, hear speech, and then their wrath was 
 o'er. 
 
 a 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " I call to mind a fact not late, but old, 
 
 " How 'twas. And, friends, I'll tell it all of you. 
 
 " Fought the Curetes with th' uEtolians bold 
 
 " At Calydon, and they each other slew. 
 
 " Defend fair Calydon th' ^tolians do, 
 
 " Which spoil in war would the Curetes brave. 
 
 , " From gold-thron'd Artemis this evil grew, 
 " Wroth that his field's first fruits to her not gave 
 
 ^* iEneus, when hecatombs the other gods did have. 
 
BOOK IX. 57—62. 223 
 
 LX. 
 
 " To th' daughter sole of mighty Zeus gave none, 
 '' Unheeding or forgot, in mind misled. 
 " Wroth then the Zeus-sprung arrow-loving one 
 " A wild boar sent, white-tusk'd and forest-bred % 
 " That haughty JEneus' lands much mischief did ; 
 " Tall trees with roots and apple-bloom o'erthrew 
 " In heaps. Him Meleager slaughtered, 
 " iEneus' son, who from cities many drew 
 " Hunters and dogs, for conquer it could not a few. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 'Twas such. And many mount the dismal pyre 
 " It made. For 'ts head and bristly hide huge rout 
 " The anger'd goddess stirr'd and battle dire 
 " 'Twixt the Curetes and ^Etolians stout. 
 " While Meleager, lov'd of Ares, fought, 
 " With the Curetes ill it far'd. For stay 
 " Without the wall though numerous they could not. 
 " But wrath seiz'd Meleager, which doth sway 
 " And swell the mind of others, wise albeit they. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " With 's mother he. Althaea, sore irate 
 
 " By 's spouse fair Cleopatra lay, whom bare 
 
 " Evenus' daughter ankled- delicate 
 
 " Marpissa t' Idas. Strongest he of men then were, 
 
 " And Phoebus face with bow he did for fair 
 
 " Sweet-ankled spouse. In palace her y-clepe 
 
 " Alcyone did sire and mother dear. 
 
 " For like the sad Alcyone did weep 
 
 Her mother when Apollo capt'ring her would keep. 
 
224 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 n 
 
 « 
 
 " With her thus Meleager gnaw-soul ire 
 
 *' Y-brooding lay, enraged for that pray 
 
 '' His mother did the gods with curses dire, 
 
 " Griev'd for his brother slain. In thresher's way 
 
 " She did with hands the fertile earth belay, 
 
 " Call'd Hades and Persephoneia dread, 
 
 " Crouch'd on her knees, with tear- wet breast, to sway 
 
 " The powers to kill her son. Through darkness did 
 
 From Erebus Erinnys hear, to pity dead. 
 
 LXIT. 
 
 " Quick round the gates the din and tumult hot 
 
 " Of foemen batt'ring 'gainst the towers rose high. 
 
 '' And him th' ^tolian elders sore besought, 
 
 " And sent the gods' chief priests in embassy 
 
 " To him to come, and drive the foe away. 
 
 " And promis'd guerdon large, and bade him where 
 
 " Sweet Calydon's rich plain most fertile lay 
 
 " Choose fifty acres, one half vine-yard fair 
 
 Unplanted tilth the other, for his sep'rate share. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 ** And much sire drive-steed jEneus him implores, 
 
 " And threshold clomb of 's chamber roofed high, 
 
 " To pray his son, and shook the well-join'd doors. 
 
 " Much him his sisters eke and mother ply 
 
 " With prayers, but he the rather doth deny. 
 
 ^' Much too his friends and comrades, held most dear, 
 
 but none 
 ^* The more persuade his soul in 's breast could they 
 " 'Ere batter'd oft his room, and mounted on 
 The towers did the Curetes fire the mighty town. 
 
BOOK IX. 63—68. 225 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " The lovely spouse of Meleager then 
 " With tears besought hira, and did all things say 
 " What woes in captur'd city hap to men : 
 *^ Of town to ashes burnt, how men they slay, 
 " And babes and wives deep-bosom' d drag away. 
 " His soul was touch'd their doings ill to hear, 
 " And straight he went and did his flesh array 
 " In glist'ring arms. Th' ^tolians* day severe 
 " Averting then, and gave his mind its full career. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 " But they the many fair gifts gave not now, 
 " Yet all the same their woe averted he. 
 " But in thy mind the like resolve not thou. 
 " To that point bring thee ne'er the deity. 
 " To aid when burn the ships far worse will be. 
 " For gifts then come. Thee th' Achseans will revere 
 " As god. If war thou enter giftless, thee 
 " They'll honor less, though war man-slaught'ring drear 
 " Thou quell." Him answ'ring spake swift-foot Achilles 
 here : — 
 
 Lxviil; 
 " Phoenix, friend, father ! Zeus-lov'd, I not need 
 " Such grace. I look for grace from Zeus' decrees : 
 " By th' curved ships a grace shall last while breath 
 
 indeed 
 " Stays in my breast, and stir my precious knees. 
 " This else I say, remember thou, my ease 
 " Of mind with weeping and lament perplex 
 " No more, hero Atrides thus to please. 
 " Him love not lest to me thy friend thou wex ^^^ 
 " Abhorr'd. Vex him thou shouldst with me who me 
 doth vex. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 " My equal reign, and half my honor share. 
 " They'll tell their message. Stay thou here, and ta'en 
 " Thy sleep on good soft bed, with morning fair 
 " Consult we home to go or here remain." 
 He said, and made Patroclus silent sign 
 With brow for Phoenix bed to lay thick-strown, 
 That think to leave the tent for home again 
 They sooner might. Then rose that godlike one 
 And utter'd speech, great Ajax son of Telamon. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " Zeus-sprung Odysseus, thou, Laertes' crafty son, 
 
 " Let 's go. Our speech it seems hath miss'd its end, 
 
 " Take word though ill to th' Danai anon 
 
 " We should, who sitting there do us attend. 
 
 " Achilles holdeth wrath that will not bend. 
 
 " And harsh no kepe of comrades' love hath ta'en 
 
 " That we by th' ships to him 'fore all extend. 
 
 " Relentless. Yet for slaughter'd brother e'en 
 
 A man accepteth mulct, or for a son that 's slain. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 " This 'mong his folk abides, much ransom paid, 
 " The other's heart and high soul 's sooth'd to take 
 " The price. But fierce implacable have made 
 " The gods thy soul, and all for one girl's sake. 
 ** Now seven offer we of loveliest make, 
 " And much besides. Take softer mind to thee, 
 " Eespect thy roof whose shelter we partake 
 " Sent by the Danai. And fain would we 
 Thy most belov'd and dearest of Achaeans be. 
 
BOOK IX. 69-— 74. 227 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Him answering spake Achilles swift of feet : — 
 " Zeus-descended Ajax Telamon, 
 " Thou prince of men. All to my mind most meet 
 " Thou 'st said. But swells my heart with wrath when on 
 ^* That man I ever think, that Atreus' son, 
 " Who me has made to be of no account 
 " The Argives 'mong, as some despised one, 
 " Some alien fugitive be held is wont. 
 But ye depart, and this your embassage recount. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 " Of bloody war 111 nought ere Priam's son, 
 " Y-slaught'ring Argives, Hector the divine 
 " Do reach the tents, and vessels Myrmidon, 
 " And burn the ships. At tent and black ship mine 
 " Slack fight will ardent Hector I opine." 
 He said. Each took the cup, libation made. 
 Then back, Odysseus leading, home again. 
 Patroclus then his comrades and the maidens bade 
 For Phoenix at the quickest strew a good thick bed. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 They strewed the bed as bidden, fleeces fine, 
 A rug, and finest linen of the best. 
 There lay the Sire, and waited morn divine. 
 Achilles in his tent's recess took rest ; 
 By 's side his Lesbian captive, loveliest 
 Fair Diomede Phorbas' child, lay down. 
 Elsewhere Patroclus couch'd, with whom did nest 
 The well-zon'd Iphis, whom that godlike one 
 Achilles gave, when Scyros ta'en, Enyeus' town. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 When these Atrides' tents had reached, to greet 
 Them were with golden goblets sooth not slow 
 Th^ Achaeans' sons, each rising from his seat 
 With questioning. But first men's sovereign so, 
 King Agamemnon ask'd : — " Say, will he now, 
 " Much-prais'd Odysseus, th' Achives' high renown, 
 " Protect the ships from burning by the foe, 
 " Or not, his haught mind's wrath relaxing none ? " 
 Then spake Odysseus, much enduring godlike one : — 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " Atrides Agamemnon, king of men, 
 " He will not quench his wrath, that doth inflate 
 " Him more. Thee and thy gifts he doth disdain, 
 ^' And with the Argives bids deliberate 
 *^ How th' Achive folk and ships to save. And threat 
 " He doth with morning light he'll draw to sea 
 " The well-bench'd ships, with oars on each side set. 
 *' And he'd advise the rest sail home, since ye 
 " The end of lofty Ilium now will never see. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 " With hand doth wide-voic'd Zeus so cover it 
 " Her folk take heart. — So spake he. These too can, 
 " Who with me were, avouch the same, to wit 
 " Ajax and heralds twain, both prudent men. 
 " Phoenix there sleep he bade ; and with him wend 
 " I' th' ships the morn to country dear, if he 
 " So please ; for he'll not take him 'gainst the grain." 
 He said. And all then hush'd in silence be 
 In wonder at his speech, who spake vehemently. 
 
BOOK IX. 75 — 79. 
 
 229 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Long silent th' Achives' sons dejected were ; 
 At length spake Diomed : — " Atrides thou, 
 " Men's sovran Agamemnon, would thou 'dst ne'er 
 " Pelides pray'd, gifts many off 'ring so. 
 " He aye was proud, thou 'st made him prouder now. 
 "But leave we him to go or stay as fall 
 " It may. He then will fight when him thereto 
 " His spirit prompts, or deity shall call : 
 " But come, with what I say be we compliant all. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " Now take your rest, but first your hearts delight 
 
 " With bread and wine, for strength and force is here. 
 
 " When shineth rosy-finger'd morning bright 
 
 " Quick place the folk and steeds the ships a-near, 
 
 " And urge them, fighting in the front career." 
 
 He said. Him all the kings applauding greet, 
 
 Tame-steed Tydides' speech amaz'd to hear. 
 
 Then to their tents, perform' d libation meet, 
 
 They wend, and couching take the gift of slumber sweet. 
 
 Q 3 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK X, 
 
 The other Panaclisean chieftains slept 
 By th^ ships all night, subdu'd with gentle sleep ; 
 But not Atrides Agamemnon kept, 
 Folk-shepherd, slumber sweet, for thinking deep. 
 As fair-tress'd Here's spouse doth lightning keep, 
 Preparing mighty rain, or hail or snow. 
 When snow o'er- whitens all the glebes a-heap, 
 Or bitter war's huge throat. From 's heart's depths so 
 Sigh'd Agamemnon oft. His midriiF shook below. 
 
 II. 
 
 Oft as he looked to th' Trojan plain astound 
 He saw the fires 'fore Ilium burning were^^, 
 "With voice of pipes, and reeds, and murm'ring sound 
 Of men. When th' host and ships Achasan there 
 He saw, he pluck'd from head th' uprooted hair 
 To Zeus on high, and groan'd his noble breast. 
 And first to Nestor Neleus' son repair 
 Resolv'd, with whom devise some scheme might best 
 Deliv'rance bring to all the Danai distrest. 
 
BOOK X. 1 — 5. 231 
 
 III. 
 
 He rose, with tunic clad his breast, and tied 
 Upon his shining feet his sandals fair, 
 Then round him wrapp'd a tawny lion's hide, 
 Blood-red, that reach'd his heels. Then took his spear. 
 So Menelaus too a shudd'ring fear 
 Possess'd, nor slumber settled on his eyes. 
 Lest suffer might the Argives aught, who here 
 To Troy had come o'er vast extent of seas, 
 A war advent'rous bold up-stirring, him to please. . 
 
 IV. 
 
 With skin of spotted leopard first he clad 
 His brawny back. And then he did uprear 
 His brazen helm and place it on his head ; 
 And in his stalwart hand he took his spear ; 
 And issu'd forth to wake his brother dear 
 Who o'er the Argives all did reign supreme 
 By 's folk as god rever'd. In warlike gear 
 By 's ship-stern arming him he found, and came 
 Most welcome. Menelaus brave first spake to him : — 
 
 V. 
 
 " Why honor'd brother harness'd thus ? Wouldst ask 
 " Some comrade go the Trojans spy ? But none 
 " I fear me much will undertake the task 
 " 'Mong hostile men to go, and spy alone 
 " In stilly night. He'd be a stout-heart one." 
 Him answer'd sovereign Agamemnon thus : — 
 u We've need Zeus-nurs'd Menelaus on 
 *' Some cunning counsel light, may be of use 
 " Th' Argives and ships to save, since chang'd the mind of 
 Zeus. 
 
 Q 4 
 
232 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " He more affecteth Hector's sacrifice. 
 
 *' For Tve ne'er seen nor yet heard tell of one, 
 
 " A man in one sole day such things devise 
 
 '* As Hector hath, Zeus-lov'd, to th' Achives done, 
 
 " Though not of goddess, nor of god the son. 
 
 " He 's wrought what long in Argives' memories 
 
 *^ Will live. Such woes he 's plann'd. By th' ships 
 
 now run 
 " And Ajax call, Idomeneus likewise, 
 ** And I'll to godlike Nestor go and urge him rise, 
 
 VII. 
 
 " If he will come to th' watchers' sacred band 
 " And counsel give ; for him they chief obey, 
 *' For 'tis his son that doth with Merion, friend 
 " Of King Idomeneus, the watchers sway. 
 *^ Whom gave we chief command." Then answ'ring say 
 Did Menelaus brave : — " What bidst me then 
 " Or what commandest? There with those to stay, 
 " Thy coming wait, or run to thee again 
 ♦* When those I've told ? " Then Agamemnon king of 
 men ; — 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Stay there for fear we one another miss 
 " By th' way, since through the camp roads many be. 
 *' Call where thou comest, bid them watch ; address 
 " Each man b' his father's name and family, 
 *' And honour all, nor bear thee haughtily ; 
 *' For we must toil ourselves. For Zeus' intent 
 *' Was from our birth t' inflict calamity." 
 He said, and, lesson'd well, his brother sent. 
 While he himself to Nestor people-shepherd went. 
 
BOOK X. 6—11. 233 
 
 IX. 
 
 And him by 's tent and black ship found he pight 
 On softest bed. At hand his weapons were, 
 The shield, and javelins twain, and helmet bright ; 
 At hand the cunning wroughten girdle fair. 
 The sire was wont to gird him with whene'er 
 He arm'd for man-destroying war, and led 
 The folk. For sad old age he heeded ne'er. 
 Eais'd on his elbow, lifting up his head, 
 "With speech he question'd Atreus' son, and said : — 
 
 X. 
 
 " Who by the ships thus roams the host alone 
 
 " At night, when other mortals sleeping been ? 
 
 " Seek'st thou the watch, or of thy comrades one ? 
 
 " Speak ! Silent, come not near. What wouldst thou 
 
 then ?" 
 Him answer' d Agamemnon king of men : — 
 " Nestor Neleus' son, Achaeans' pride, 
 " Atrides Agamemnon do thou ken, 
 " On whom Zeus casteth toils 'fore all beside, 
 " While stir my limbs, and breath shall in my breast abide. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " I roam, for sits not on mine eyes sweet sleep, 
 " War and Achaeans' woes forbid me rest. 
 " I fear for Danai. Nor firm doth keep 
 " My soul. But all astound and sore distrest 
 " Am I. My heart it leapeth from my breast. 
 " If thou canst aught (for sleep 's not come to thee) 
 " Let's to the watch and see, for fear, opprest 
 " With toil and sleep, they haply slumb'ring be, 
 " Their watch and vigilance forgetting totally. 
 
234 THE ILIAD. 
 
 m 
 
 xn. 
 
 " For foemen near encarap, nor aught we know 
 " But they by night may battle choose." Him then 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor answer'd so : — 
 " Atrides Agamemnon, king of men, 
 " Eenown'd ! Not Hector's projects all I ween 
 " As he expects will Zeus the wise fulfil. 
 " But he'll himself with troubles more contend 
 " If once Achilles turn from anger fell 
 " His heart. But thee I'll follow sooth, with right good 
 will. 
 
 xin. 
 
 " But others also let us rouse anon, 
 " Spear-fam'd Tydides, and Odysseus too, 
 " And Ajax swift, and Phyleus' valiant son ; 
 " And if some one would forth to call them go, 
 " Godlike Ajax, Idomeneus I trow, 
 " Whose ships are farthest off, by no means nigh. 
 " But Menelaus dear and honor'd now 
 " I'll chide, nor, though thou'rt angry, hide it I, 
 " That thus he sleeps, and leaves thee sole these labours 
 
 ply- 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Now stir he should and all the chieftains pray, 
 " For need hath come can borne no longer be." 
 Then Agamemnon king of men did say : — 
 " Sire, blame him other ways I counsel thee, 
 " For often slack and loth to toil is he, 
 " Though not from sloth nor mind unskill'd, but look 
 " To me he doth, my leading waits to see. 
 " But now stood by me having far first woke, 
 " And him I've sent to summon those of whom thou'st 
 spoke. 
 
BOOK X. 12—17. 235 
 
 XV. 
 
 " But go we. Those well 'fore the gate overtake 
 " Among the watch, for meet I bade them there." 
 To him Gerenian horseman Nestor spake : — 
 " So '11 blame or disobey him any ne'er 
 " Of Argives, urge or bid he whomsoe'er." 
 He said, and donn'd his tunic 'bout his breast, 
 Tied on his shining feet his sandals fair. 
 In purple cloak did, buckling him, invest 
 Twofold and wide, on which the strong wool stood a-crest. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 And seiz'd his mighty spear brass pointed keen. 
 
 His way to th' brass-clad Achives' ships first took ; 
 
 And Zeus-like counsellor Odysseus then 
 
 From sleep Gerenian horseman Nestor woke, 
 
 Loud calling. Straight the voice his senses strook. 
 
 He issued from his tent, and them address'd : — 
 
 " How is 't by th' ships through th' host ye wand'ring 
 
 brook 
 " Alone b' ambrosial night ? By need so press'd ? " 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor answer thus express'd : — 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Zeus-sprung Laertes' craft-accomplish'd son, 
 " Odysseus, chafe not. Woe hath th' Achives hent.^^^ 
 " But come we'll others summon fit upon 
 " Our flight or fight consult." He said. To 's tent 
 Then he the counsel-fraught Odysseus went, 
 Shoulder'd his varied shield, them foUow'd then. 
 Their steps to Diomed Tydides bent. 
 They found him 'fore his tent with arms. His men, 
 Their heads upon their shields, around him sleeping been. 
 
23G THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Their spears were on the spike ends fix'd upright. 
 Like Zeus' own lightning shone the brass afar. 
 But th' hero slept on wild bull's hide y-pight, 
 And 'neath his head was stretch'd a carpet fair. 
 Him stood Gerenian horseman Nestor near, 
 Did rouse, and stir with foot, and plainly twit ; — 
 " Up Tydeus' son. What all night sleepest there ? 
 " Seest not the Trojans on the plain's mound sit 
 *^ A-near the ships, and small the space 'twixt us and it ? " 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He said. Quick th' other sprang from sleep, and spake 
 Wing'd words: — " Hard art thou sire ; toil stintest ne'er. 
 " Are now no younger Achives who might wake 
 " The kings each one, resorting everywhere ? 
 "But thou indomitable art sire." 
 Again Gerenian horseman Nestor spoke : — 
 " Yea, friend, all this thou'st said aright and fair. 
 " Sons have I famous sooth, and I have folk 
 " And many, one whereof might go and these convoke. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " But reach'd th' Achseans hath sore need. For now 
 " Doth stand on razor's edge t' Achasans all 
 " Destruction dire or life. But do thou go, 
 " And Ajax swift, and Phyleus' son up-call, 
 " For younger thou and pitiest me withal." 
 He said. His shoulders th' other clad in skin 
 Of tawny lion, huge, that to his feet did fall. 
 He seiz'd his spear, and went and brought them in. 
 They reach'd the gather'd watch, whose chiefs not slum- 
 b'ring ta'en, 
 
BOOK X. 18—23. 237 
 
 XXI. 
 
 But watchful all sat arm'd. As dogs do hold 
 Hard watch o'er folded sheep, when wild beast heard 
 Through forest come from mountain to the fold, 
 Whereat huge din of men and dogs is stirr'd. 
 Their sleep destroy'd. So slumber sweet was scar'd 
 From eyelids theirs, who watch through night distrest, 
 And turn'd to th' plain, 'gainst Trojans' coming guard. 
 And them the Sire beheld with joyful breast. 
 And cheer'd with speech and wing'd words utt'ring thus 
 address'd : — 
 
 xxn. 
 " So watch my sons. Let sleep seize none, lest we 
 " Our foemen's sport become." This said, anon 
 He cross' d the trench. And th' Argive kings, that be 
 To council call'd, him foUow'd. Merion 
 Accompanied, and Nestor's brilliant son ; 
 For those to hold consult did them invite. 
 When cross'd the trench in clear space sat they down 
 From fallen corses clear, where back the might 
 Of Hector slaught'ring Argives turn'd at fall of night. 
 
 xxiii. 
 
 And there discours'd together seated they. 
 First spake Gerenian horseman Nestor so : — 
 " friends, will not then some man here obey 
 " His daring soul, 'mong th' haughty Trojans go? 
 " If haply he might take some laggard foe, 
 " Or chance some speech among the Trojans hear 
 " Of what they purpose 'mong themselves to do, 
 *' If minded here to stay, the ships a-near, 
 " Or back to th' town return, since vanquish'd th' 
 Achives here. 
 
238 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " All this might hear, then back to us from thence 
 " Unscath'd. Great 'neath the sky were his renown 
 " All men among with splendid recompense. 
 " For what so chiefs hold rule the ships upon 
 " Present him each with black sheep will anon, 
 '' Ewe with her lamb. Possession past compare. 
 " At feasts and banquets too he'd aye be one." 
 He said. And they all hush'd in silence were. 
 Then Diomed of war-cry good spake 'mong them there : 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Nestor, me my heart and spirit high 
 " Impel within the camp of hostile men, 
 " Of Trojans here to enter, being nigh. 
 " But if some other man went with me, then 
 " 'T were better cheer, more confidence I ween. 
 "Two going one doth 'for^ the other spy 
 " What's good. But lone, though seeing it, less keen 
 " His wit, his counsel weak.V Thus did he say, 
 And 'mong them many would with Diomed away. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Wish'd both Ajaces, Ares' servants. So 
 Wish'd Merion, much too wish'd it Nestor's son, 
 Wish'd it Atrides Menelaus too, 
 Wish'd it Odysseus, much enduring one. 
 Enter the Trojan throng. His soul was on 
 Some daring deed aye bent. The king of men 
 Great Agamemnon spake : ■ — "0 Tydeus' son, 
 " Dear to my soul, choose comrade whomso then 
 " Thou wilt, the best, for many they that eager been. 
 
BOOK X. 24—29. 239 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Thou from respect leave not the best, and take 
 " The worse for mate, through modesty or care 
 " For race, not though more regal he." He spake 
 For Menelaus of the auburn hair 
 Afraid. Brave Diomed again spake there : — 
 " If mate myself thou'dst have me choose, then how 
 " Could I forget divine Odysseus e'er ? 
 " Whose soul is brave, whose heart doth eager go 
 " To every toil, whom loves Pallas Athene so. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " If with me he, through raging fire our way 
 " We'd both win back, such things he knows to frame." 
 Patient divine Odysseus then did say : — 
 " Tydides, praise me not o'er much, nor blame. 
 " Thou talk'st to Argives knowing well the same. 
 " Let's go, the night declines, at hand is dawn, 
 " The stars far on their course. For what we aim 
 " Two parts of night are spent, the third alone 
 " Eemains." This said, the twain their dreadful armour don. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A two-edg'd falchion gave to Diomed 
 The bide-fight Thrasymedes, since his own 
 I' th' ships was left, and shield. And on his head 
 A helm without en rim or crest put on, 
 Catcetyx call'd, that youths are wont to don. 
 And Merion bow and quiver, falchion keen. 
 Did to Odysseus give, and then upon 
 His head he plac'd a helmet made of skin 
 That was with many thongs all firmly bound within. 
 
240 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Without did white-tootli'd boar's white teeth thick-set 
 
 On each side fasten it right skilfully, 
 
 Felt fitted-in between. At Eleon it 
 
 From Hormenid Amyntor formerly 
 
 Auty locus, strong house through piercing, took, and he 
 
 T' Ainphidamas Cytherian gave 't anon 
 
 At Scandy ; and Amphidamas to be 
 
 A guest-gift gave it Molus, who t' his son 
 
 Merion to wear it gave. This did Odysseus don. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 The twain when clad in armour dire set out 
 And left the chiefs. A heron at their right 
 Pallas Athene sent a-near their route ; 
 With eyes they saw it not through dark of night, 
 But heard the clang. And at the bird delight 
 Odysseus felt, and to Athene pray'd : — 
 " hear me, child of Zeus, the aegis-dight, 
 " In all my labours thou art by, nor hid 
 " From thee I stir ; befriend me now, and grant thine aid. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " Grant back to th' ships we come with glory here 
 " Great work achiev'd, which shall the Trojans pain." 
 Next pray'd brave Diomed : — " Me too now hear, 
 " tameless child of Zeus, go with me deign 
 " As with my father godlike Tydeus when 
 *^ To Thebes he went th' Achaean s' messenger. 
 " B' Asopus th' Achives left and soft speech then 
 *' To the Cadmaeans took, but doings rare 
 Perform'd returning, goddess, through thy aid and care. 
 
BOOK X. 30—35. 241 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 ** So willing stand by me, and guard me now ; 
 " ril slay thee yearling heifer fronted wide, 
 " Untam'd, that ne'er man yet hath yok'd to plough ; 
 *^ I'll slay thee this, and gild her horns beside." 
 So praying spake they, fav'ring ear applied 
 Pallas Athene. Ended now their prayer 
 To Zeus the mighty' s daughter, on they hied. 
 Like lions twain, through gloomy night they fare, 
 Through slaughter and through dead, through arms and 
 black blood there. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Nor Hector would th' haught Trojans sleep permit. 
 But all the best, that chiefs and princes were, 
 Of Trojans call'd, and plann'd with them when met 
 His shrewd device : — " This work who '11 do me there 
 " For largess great ? His guerdon ample were ; 
 ^' For car I'll give, and high-neck'd steeds that be 
 " The best in th' Achive vessels swift a pair, 
 " Who so '11 adventure win him fame, and see 
 " The swift ships close, if they be watch'd as formerly ; 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " Or now subdued beneath our hands, on flight 
 " They 'mong themselves consult, nor willingly, 
 " With grievous toil o'ercome, keep watch at night " 
 He said, and they all hush'd in silence be. 
 Among the Trojans was one Dolon, he 
 Herald Eumedes' offspring, wealthy one 
 In gold and brass » ill-shap'd but rapidly 
 Could run. With sisters five was th' only son. 
 Who to the Trojans then and Hector thus begun : — 
 
242 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Hector, my heart and high soul prompts me nigh 
 " The swift ships draw, and reconnoitre there. 
 *' But come now swear, with sceptre lifted high, 
 " The steeds and car with brass inlaid so fair, 
 " To give me, which renowned Pelides bear. 
 " ril no vain scout, inglorious, prove to thee. 
 " For through the host I'll go, and onward fare 
 " To Agamemnon^s ship, where '11 haply be 
 " The chieftains met, consulting or to fight or flee.'^ 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 He said. In ^s hands threw sceptre th' other one, 
 And sware : — " May Zeus himself be witness now, 
 " Here's loud thund'ring spouse. Of Trojans none ^^ 
 " Shall mount the steeds beside, but aye shalt thou, 
 " I say, in them delight." He said, and so 
 Forsware, but stirr'd him on, who instant then 
 About his shoulders cast his curved bow. 
 And donn'd a hoar wolf's hide. Of weasel skin 
 A helmet on his head, and seiz'd a javelin keen. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 To th' ships from camp he turn'd to go, that ne^er 
 Would from the ships bring word to Hector back. 
 When left the throng of steeds and warriors there, 
 He eager went his way. Him on his track 
 Odysseus saw, and Diomed bespake : — 
 " Comes surely, Diomed, fro' th' camp this one, 
 " I know not if to spy our ships, or make 
 " Spoil of the dead. Let's leave him pass us on 
 " The plain a space, then swiftly rushing seize anon. 
 
BOOK X. 36—41. 24a 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " But if upon his feet outstrip us he, 
 *' Him towards the ships drive still fro* th' camp away, 
 " Threat'ning with spear, lest to the town he flee." 
 This said, out of the path 'mong corses lay 
 They down. Unconscious he ran swiftly by. 
 And when he *d pass'd the length that furrows go 
 Of mules (for better be than oxen they 
 To draw in fallow land the well-built plough), 
 They on him ran. He hearing noise stood still, who now 
 
 XL. 
 
 Did them in 's heart his mates to fetch him guess. 
 From Trojans come by Hector sent. When nigh 
 They were some spear-throw oiF, or even less, 
 He then for hostile men did them descry. 
 And unto flight his nimble knees 'gan ply. 
 They after him pursued. And as a pair 
 Of saw-tooth'd hounds well-skill'd in chace do aye 
 Along a woodland track a hind or hare 
 Pursue, the which before them runneth crying there ; 
 
 XLI. 
 
 So Diomed, sack-town Odysseus, aye 
 
 Him intercepting from his folk pursue. 
 
 When with the watch he 'd mingled speedily 
 
 In 's flight to th' ships, strength then Athene threw 
 
 In Diomed, that boast no Achive do 
 
 T' have smitten first, and come but second he. 
 
 Spear shaking spake strong Diomed unto 
 
 Him thus : — " Or stop, or I'll with spear catch thee ; 
 
 Nor long, methinks, thou'lt from my hand destruction flee." 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 He spake, hurl'd spear and willing miss'd his man. 
 O'er whose right shoulder th' point of well-smooth'd 
 
 spear 
 Fix'd in the ground. He stood, and shook again 
 Stutt'ring with chatt'ring teeth, and pale with fear. 
 They panting reach'd and hands laid on him here. 
 He spake and wept : — " Alive take ye me, 
 " Brass, gold, and much-wrought steel I've ample gear, 
 " Of which my sire large gifts will give when he 
 " Alive in the Achaeans' ships knows me to be.'^ 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Odysseus mickle-counsell'd thus replies : — 
 " Cheer-up, nor death for thee in mind thus keep, 
 ^' But come now speak, and tell without disguise, 
 " Where thus to th' ships from camp go'st thou in deep 
 " Of night, alone, when other mortals sleep ? 
 " Would st thou despoil some corse among the dead ? 
 " Or sent thee Hector forth to spy and peep 
 " In th' hollow ships ? Or thee thy spirit sped ? " 
 Him answer'd Dolon then, whose limbs all shook with 
 dread. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " With much beguiling Hector me misled, 
 " Who fam'd Pelides' whole-hoof'd steeds to me 
 " Agreed to give, with car brass-garnished. 
 " Through black night bade approach the foe, and see 
 " If watch'd as heretofore the swift ships be, 
 " Or now subdued beneath our hands, on flight 
 " Ye 'mong yourselves consult, nor willingly, 
 " With grievous toil o'ercome, keep watch at night." 
 Then smiling spake to him Odysseus counsel dight : — 
 
BOOK X. 42—47. 245 
 
 XLV. 
 
 ** Sooth now thy mind was bent on gifts not small — 
 " War-skill'd Pelides' steeds ! Full hard they are 
 '' For mortal men to tame, or drive withal, 
 " Except Achilles, whom a goddess bare. 
 *' But this come tell me, and with truth declare. 
 *' Where, coming here, folk-shepherd Hector now 
 " Didst leave ? Where lie his arms ? His horses where ? 
 " And of the other Trojans also how 
 ** They watch and bed ? And what they counsel 'mong 
 them show. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 *^ Whether they minded be out there to stay 
 " Anigh the ships, or re-ascend to th' town, 
 " Since overcome th' Achasans sooth have they ?" 
 Him answer'd Dolon then Eumedes' son : — 
 " Full sure I'll tell thee these with falsehood none. 
 *^ Hector with those of council-rank who be, 
 *^ Holds council sacred Ilus' tomb upon, 
 " From tumult far. Of watch thou askest me, 
 *' Hero, none fix'd doth guard the camp, t' its safety see. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 *' All Trojans who have hearths, and must, do keep 
 
 " Good watch, to vigil urge each other high. 
 
 " But their allies, invok'd from far, do sleep 
 
 *' And leave the Trojans here their watch to ply. 
 
 " For they 've nor children, nor their wives a-nigh." 
 
 Him answ'ring wise Odysseus spake : — " But how ? 
 
 ' ** With tame-steed Trojans mix'd, or sep'rately 
 '' Do they now sleep ? Tell me that I may know." 
 
 Him Dolon then Eumedes' son made answer so : — 
 
 R 3 
 
246 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " All this 111 truly tell thee too. By th' sea 
 " The Carians, crook-bow Paeons, Leleges, 
 *^ Caucones, and divine Pelasgi be. 
 " By Thymbra Lycians, Mysi proud ; next these 
 " The tame-steed Phrygians, car-borne Masones. 
 " But why these things each one inquire of me ? 
 " If enter in the Trojan camp ye please, 
 " New come, apart and last the Thracians be. 
 " King Rhesus 'mong them, offspring of Eioneus is he. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " His steeds the loveliest, largest, I have seen, 
 " More white than snow, like winds they fleetly flee. 
 " His car well-wrought with gold and silver sheen, 
 " His arms are golden, huge, a sight to see ; 
 " For mortal men not fit to wear they be, 
 " But gods. Now me to th^ vessels swift bring nigh, 
 " Or bound with ruthless cords here leave ye me 
 " Until ye do return again, and try 
 " If spoken out the truth to you, or not, have I.'^ 
 
 Him eyed askance, and spake strong Diomed ; — 
 
 " Think not t' escape now that we have thee, though 
 
 " Thou' st good things, Dolon, told. At ransom did 
 
 " We loose or leave thee, thou 'dst again unto 
 
 " Th' Achaeans' swift ships come as spy to view, 
 
 " Or openly to fight. But if thou 'rt slain, 
 
 " Subdued beneath my hands thou ne'er wilt do 
 
 " The Argives harm." He spake. The other fain 
 
 Had with his large stout hand his chin imploring ta'en ; 
 
BOOK X. 48—53. 247 
 
 LI. 
 
 But Diomed with falchion rising strook 
 Him middle neck, and sever'd tendons twain. 
 Eoll'd in the dust his head while yet he spoke. 
 They took the weasel-helm from 's head, wolf- skin, 
 Elastic bow, and lengthy spear. These then 
 T' Athene, Spoiler, rais'd Odysseus high 
 In 's hand, and pray'd : — " Accept these, goddess, deign; 
 " Of gods Olympian hrst we'll call on thee. 
 " Then lead us where the Thracians' steeds and quarters be." 
 
 LII. 
 
 He spake, and from him rais'd them high, and on 
 A tam'risk hung, and added signal plain, 
 Pluck'd reeds, and tam'risk's leafy boughs broad-grown, 
 Lest miss them they through swift dark night again 
 Returning. On through arms and gore the twain 
 Proceed. Soon at the Thracians' ranks they were. 
 Who slept o'ercome with toil. Their bright arms lain 
 Beside them on the ground in order fair 
 In triple ranks, and nigh to each of steeds a pair. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 And Rhesus slept i' th' midst, swift steeds by 's side 
 To the car-rail tied with thongs. Him first did show 
 To Diomed Odysseus when he spied : — 
 " This, Diomed, 's the man ; these horses too 
 " Are they that Dolon told of, whom we slew. 
 " But come, put forth thy strength. Behoves not thee 
 " To idle stand with arms. The steeds undo, 
 " Or slay the man, and leave the steeds to me." 
 He spake. Breath'd strength in 's mate Athen^ Azure- 
 
 eye. 10^ 
 
 E 4 
 
248 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 He slew around. Dire rose the moan of these 
 With falchion smit. The ground with blood grew red. 
 As lion on a flock that none o'ersees, 
 Of goats or sheep, doth rush with fierceness dread. 
 So on the Thracian men came Diomed, 
 Till twelve he'd slain. Odysseus wise, whome'er 
 Tydides slew, straight dragg'd by th' heels aside 
 To clear the way for th' steeds, lest corses scare 
 Them might to tread on, which unus'd to yet they were. 
 
 LV. 
 
 When Tydeus' son had reach'd the king, then him, 
 Thirteenth, of precious life he reft, who there 
 Breath'd hard. For stood at 's head an evil dream 
 (Enides' son ^^^ that night b' Athene's care. 
 Meanwhile Odysseus th' whole-hoof 'd horses fair 
 Unloos'd and tied with thongs, and out the crowd 
 Drave smit with bow, for splendid whip he'd ne'er 
 From bright car thought of taking, where it stood. 
 To godlike Diomed then whistling signal show'd. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 He stay'd revolving what more bold to do. 
 If seize the car he should, where th^ armour lay, 
 Drag by the pole, or lifting bear ofi^ so. 
 Or take from yet more Thracians life away. 
 So ponder'd he till at his side did say 
 Athene thus : — " Think now of going back 
 " To th' ships, bold Tydeus' son, lest with efFray 
 " Thou wend. Some other god may Trojans wake." 
 She said. He knew the goddess' voice when as she spake. 
 
BOOK X. 54—59. 249 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Steeds quick he mounted. Them Odysseus strook 
 With bow. And they to th' Achives' swift ships fly. 
 Nor did Apollo Silver-Bow not look, 
 But saw by Tydeus' son Athene nigh, 
 And ent'ring Troy's huge host in anger high 
 Eous'd Rhesus' kinsman, brave Hippocoon. 
 He sprang from sleep, and empty space did spy 
 Where stood the steeds, while men in slaughter moan. 
 He cried aloud, his dear companion calling on. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Huge rose the Trojans' clang and din as they 
 Together ran, deeds marvelling at amain 
 Those men had done, then clear to th' ships away. 
 When these had reach'd where Hector's scout they'd 
 
 slain 
 Odysseus Zeus-lov'd did the steeds restrain. 
 Down leap'd Tydides ; blood-stain 'd spoils unto 
 Odysseus' hands he gave ; remounted then 
 And whipp'd the steeds, that unreluctant flew 
 To th' hollow ships. For there with willing mind they go. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 And Nestor heard a sound the first, and said : — 
 " Friends, Argive councillors and chieftains ye ! 
 *' False shall I speak or true ? My soul doth bid. 
 " Of swift-foot steeds a trampling sound doth me 
 *' About my ears now strike. might it be 
 " Odysseus and strong Diomed drave here 
 " The Trojans' whole-hoof 'd steeds thus rapidly ! 
 *' But sore for th' Argives' valiantest I fear 
 " Lest from the Trojan throng they 've sufi^er'd aught of 
 drear." 
 
250 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 Not all his speech he'd spoken when they came. 
 These on the ground alight. And those with glee 
 With right hand, and with friendly speeches them 
 Saluted there. And first inquire did he 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor : — " Tell to me, 
 " Much-prais'd Odysseus, th' Achives' pride, how might 
 " You get these lovely horses ? Enter'd ye 
 ** The Trojan camp ? Or on some god did light 
 *' That gave you these, how resembling sun-beams bright! 
 
 LXI. 
 
 " I mingle with the Trojans constantly 
 " Nor by the ships methinks e'er linger do, 
 " Albeit warrior old in sooth, but I 
 " Such steeds saw never yet nor ever knew, 
 " But think some god hath met and giv'n them you. 
 " For loves you both Zeus cloud-compelling wide, 
 " And Zeus the aegis-holder's daughter too 
 " Doth love you, great Athene azure-eyed." 
 To him Odysseus mickle-counsell'd thus replied : — 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " Neleian Nestor ^^2, Achives' pride, full well 
 " A god that would might better horses e'en 
 *' Than these have giv'n. Their power doth so excel. 
 " These steeds thou ask'st of. Sire, new-comers been, 
 " Thracian. Strong Diomed their king hath slain, 
 " And comrades twelve by 's side, all men of note. 
 " A spy we slew by th' ships would make thirteen 
 *' Whom to our host in sooth sent forth as scout 
 Had Hector, and the Trojans to espy us out." 
 
BOOK X. 60—64. 251 
 
 Lxm. 
 
 Thus having said, across the trench drave now 
 The whole-hoof d horses he exulting there. 
 With him the other Achives joyous go. 
 When reach'd Tydides' tent compact and fair 
 The steeds with thongs, all trimly cut with care. 
 They tied to th' crib, whereat of Diomed 
 The swift-foot horses sweet grain munching were. 
 In 's ship-stern Dolon's blood-stain'd trophy laid 
 Odysseus till t' Athene dedication made. 
 
 LXlV. 
 
 Themselves their mickle sweat did wash away 
 By plunging in the sea, and washen there 
 Both legs and neck, and round their thighs too they. 
 From mickle sweat when cleans'd had sea-wave fair 
 Their flesh, and they at heart refreshed were. 
 In polish'd tubs they bath'd. When wash'd therein, 
 And them anointed had with oil the pair, 
 They took repast. T' Athene then divine 
 From goblet full libation pour'd of dulcet wine. 
 
THE ILIAD 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 Morn from her bed by fam'd Tithonus now 
 Uprose to give to gods and mortals light. 
 Zeus bade to th' Achive swift ships Eris go, ^^^ 
 Baneful, her hands with war's fell signal dight. 
 B' Odysseus' huge black ship she stood y-pight ^^^ 
 That mid-point was, whence voice each way command, 
 Reach Ajax Telamon's pavilions might, 
 And Peleus' son's. Their good ships on the strand 
 Lay last, their valour trusting they and strength of hand. 
 
 n. 
 
 There stood and call'd the goddess loud, and dire, 
 And shrill to the Ach^ans. Strength she threw 
 In every breast to war and fight, nor tire. 
 To them then war on th' instant sweeter grew 
 Than in their ships their land returning to. 
 Atrides call'd and th' Argives arm them bade. 
 Himself in dazzling brass he doth endue. 
 And first with lovely greaves his legs he clad 
 That featly fitted fair, and clasps of silver had. 
 
BOOK XI. 1 — 5. 253 
 
 III. 
 
 204 
 
 Next clad his breast with corselet Cinyras ^^^ gave, 
 Guest-gift, who 'd heard at Cyprus rumour high 
 To Troy would sail in ships Acha3ans brave. 
 This then he gave, the king to gratify. 
 Ten plates it had cyanus'^^'^ dark of dye 
 And twelve were gold and twenty were of tin. 
 Ceerulean serpents rose the gorget nigh, 
 On each side there like bow Kronion in 
 The cloud a sign doth set to voice-dividing ^ men. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And round his shoulders then his falchion slung 
 Where glitter'd golden studs. The scabbard fair 
 Of silver was, on golden thongs it hung. 
 The strong man-shelt'ring shield much-wroughten rare 
 He took, round which ten brazen circles were. 
 In it of tin were twenty bosses white. 
 One in the midst cyanus dark was there. 
 And Gorgon with its eye of freezing sight 
 Thence look'd out dread, and round it Terror, round it 
 Flight. 
 
 v. 
 
 Its thong of silver was, and on it too 
 Caerulean dragon writh'd, whose heads were three, 
 That, turn'd each way, from single neck out grew. 
 On^s head set two-rimm'd four-con'd helmet he 
 With horse-hair plume o'er nodding fearfully. 
 His hand did javelins twain brass-headed hold 
 And keen. The brass fiash'd upwards to the sky. 
 Athene there, and Here thunders roll'd 
 To grace Mycene's sov'reign, of abundant gold. 
 
254 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And each his charioteer then soothly bade 
 His steeds to keep in rank, the trench a-nigh. 
 Themselves on foot in arras full harnessed 
 Did rush. And 'fore the morn rose tumult high. 
 The trench reached first th' embattled infantry, 
 The horse a space behind. And evil stour ^^^ 
 Stirr'd Kronides, and dews sent from the sky 
 All wet with blood, a sign he would full sure 
 Hurl many mighty heads to Hades premature. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Trojans at the plain's mound stirring 'bout 
 Huge Hector, fam'd Poljdamas now be, 
 And him, as god by Troy's folk rev'renc'd, stout 
 ^neas, with th' Antenorides three 
 Polybus, and Agenor brave, and he 
 Young Acamas, so like th' immortals bright. 
 Hector i' th' front with orbed shield did ply. 
 As forth from clouds comes baneful star to sight 
 All glist'ring, then dark clouds re-ent'ring, veils its light. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 So Hector 'mong the foremost now appearing 
 Now rear- ward, dealt command. All brass he shone 
 Like segis-arm'd Zeus' lightning-flash careering. 
 As reapers 'gainst each other working down 
 A swath their way in glebe of wealthy one 
 Of wheat or barley, quick the handfuls fall. 
 So Trojans, Achives at each other run 
 And slay. Of fell flight neither thought at all, 
 But in the battle equal bore their heads withal. 
 
BOOK XI. 6 — 11. 255 
 
 IX. 
 
 Like wolves they rasli'd, and Eris working woes 
 Exulted looking on, sole deity 
 Among the combatants. Eor not with those 
 The other gods then were, but peacefully 
 Sat in their homes, where built them sep'rate be 
 Along Olympus' dells their houses fair. 
 But all drive-cloud Kronion blam'd that he 
 For Trojans purpos'd glory to prepare. 
 But nought for them did he the Father reck or rare. 
 
 X. 
 
 Apart he sat his glory joying in, 
 And Trojans' town and Achives' ships did view. 
 And flashing brass, the slayers and the slain. 
 While morning was, and sacred day yet grew, 
 On both sides people fell, and javelins flew. 
 But when 'tis woodman's wont prepare his meal 
 In mountain-glen, who lofty trees doth hew 
 Till 's hands grow slack, and o'er his soul doth steal 
 A weariness, and wish for pleasant food he feel. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Then brake by valour the Danaians through 
 The columns, calling down the lines to cheer 
 Their mates. Sprang Agamemnon first, and slew 
 The King Bianon, and his comrade dear, 
 Drive-steed Oileus, who from car drew near. 
 Him rushing smote Atrides on the brow 
 With lance. The stout brass helm not stay'd the spear, 
 Which through it pierc'd the bone, and scatter'd so 
 His brains about, and laid the ardent warrior low. 
 
256 THE ILTAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 There left men's sov'ran Agamemnon those 
 Their bosoms bare when he'd their tunics ta'en. 
 Isus and Antiphus to slay he goes, 
 Bastard and lawful, Priam's offspring twain, 
 Both in one car ; the bastard held the rein. 
 Bright Antiphus by 's side. These formerly 
 Achilles bound with pliant osiers thin, 
 On Ida's knolls when capture them did he. 
 As they were shepherding; then did at ransom free. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Broad-rule Atrides Agamemnon smote 
 
 With lance the one on 's breast 'bove teat. On th' ear 
 
 With glaive struck Antiphus, from car hurl'd out. 
 
 Then quickly stripp'd them of their armour fair. 
 
 He knew them whom he'd seen by th' ships whilere, 
 ♦ From Ida when swift-foot Achilles brought. 
 
 As lion doth a fleet stag's younglings tear. 
 
 And crush with ease, y-grip'd with strong teeth stout, 
 When coming to her lair he puts their young life out. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And she though haply nigh can nothing aid. 
 But terror-struck through wood and brake she flees 
 At th' onset of the beast, a-sweat with dread. 
 So 'mong the Trojans none the fate of these 
 Could help, for them did fear of th' Argives seize. 
 Pisander and Hippolochus keep-field, ^^^ 
 Sons of Antimachus war-skill'd he sees. 
 Their father, brib'd by Alexander, held 
 They should not Helen to the auburn Menelaus yield. 
 
BOOK XI. 12—17. 257 
 
 XV. 
 
 Kinpr Aoramemnoa this man's sons now took, 
 That in one car alike the steeds did sway. 
 Their hands the bright reins slipp'd from. Panic-struck 
 They were, when, as a lion on his prey, 
 Atrides rush'd. And from the chariot they 
 Implor'd him thus : — " Alive take us thou, 
 " Atrides, let us worthy ransom pay. 
 " Hath in his house Antimachus enow 
 •* Of treasure, brass and gold, and much wrought-iron too. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Of these would father give thee gifts unending, 
 " When in the ships alive he knoweth us.'' 
 So they with tears to th' king their cause commending, 
 And honied words, but heard no honied voice ; — 
 " If ye be sons of that Antimachus 
 " Who erst i' th' Trojan council bade them slay 
 " Menelaus, who with Odysseus was 
 " An envoy come, nor let them go away 
 *' To th' Achives back, ye shall your sire's misdeeds repay.'* 
 
 xvn. 
 
 This said, Pisander, with a spear-thrust on 
 His breast, from off his steeds to ground he threw. 
 Who, dash'd to earth, there lay supine. Sprang down 
 Hippolochus whom on the ground he slew 
 And lopp'd off both his hands, and sever'd too 
 From neck his head, which then amid the throng 
 E'en as a mortar rolling there he threw. 
 These left, he sped where most phalanges strong 
 Were stirr'd. And with him went the well-greav'd 
 Achives else along. 
 
258 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Foot slaughter' d foot, perforce compell'd to fly, 
 
 And horse slew horse. Fro' th' plain dust 'neath them 
 
 rose 
 From horses' echoing feet, and brass they ply. 
 King Agamemnon there without repose 
 Still slaught'ring on, and cheering Argives goes. 
 As when destroying fire doth chance to light 
 Upon a wood unthinn'd, and each way blows 
 The veering wind, and bears it left and right, 
 And trunks and branches fall, by th' fire's resistless might. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Beneath Atrides Agamemnon so 
 Fell flying Trojans' heads. And many too 
 The high-soul'd steeds with empty chariots go 
 The battle's bridge-like ^^ spaces thund'ring through, 
 Without their charioteers, that prostrate do 
 To vultures than their wives more grateful lie. 
 Zeus Hector then from darts, from dust outdrew, 
 From carnage, and from blood, and tumult high ; 
 Atrides foUow'd, shouting to the Danai. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And some by th' tomb of Ilus Dardan old 
 Mid-plain to th' beech- tree rush the town t' attain, 
 But shouting follow'd still Atrides bold. 
 While dust and gore his hands resistless stain. 
 And when the Scasan gates and beech they gain 
 They stand and wait each other. Some were yet 
 Like frighted beeves a-fleeing through the plain, 
 Which lion, in the milking-time of night. 
 Doth all afi*ear ; on one destruction 's sure to light; 
 
BOOK XI. 18—23. 259 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Its neck he breaks with strong teeth seizing on, 
 Then blood and entrails all devoureth free. 
 So sovereign Agamemnon, Atreus' son, 
 Chac'd these, the hindmost slaught'ring aye. They flee, 
 And many prostrate and supine there be 
 B' Atrides' hands from chariot hurl'd. So ply 
 He did his spear. When town and wall had he 
 Nigh reached, the sire of gods and men from sky 
 Came down, and sat on spring-fed Ida's summits high. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 His hands grasp' d lightning ; gold- wing' d Iris he 
 To message stirr'd : — " Go, Iris swift, and say 
 " To Hector, while king Agamemnon see 
 " He shall i' th' front sweep warrior-ranks away, 
 *' Let him keep back, and bid i' th' dread array 
 " The rest fight foe. But, smit with shaft or spear, 
 " When on his car he springs, then strength to slay 
 '* ril give to Hector, till the ships he near. 
 Until the sun shall set, and sacred night appear." 
 
 xxni. 
 
 He spake, and -vvind-foot Iris swift obey'd. 
 Down Ida's mounts to sacred Ilium sped ; 
 Found Hector, war-skill'd Priam's son, who staid 
 By steeds, and car compact. And at his side 
 Then standing nimble-footed Iris said : — 
 " Priam's son Hector, Zeus-like counc'llor, me 
 " The father Zeus these things to tell thee bade : 
 " While sovran Agamemnon thou shalt see 
 " Eage in the front, the warrior-ranks destroying he, 
 
 2 
 
260 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " Do thou keep back, and bid in dread array 
 " The rest fight foe. But, smit with shaft or spear, 
 " When on his car he springs, then strength to slay 
 " Will Zeus vouchsafe thee till the ships thou near, 
 " And sun shall set, and sacred night appear." 
 The swift-foot Iris went, when thus she 'd said. 
 From car sprang Hector arm'd, and every where 
 Throughout the host keen javelins shaking sped, 
 And urg'd them on to fight, and kindled battle dread. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 They turn'd and fac'd th' Achseans. Th' Argives too 
 Made their phalanges strong. Th' array set right, 
 Now face to face they stood. First forward flew 
 King Agamemnon, foremost far to fight. 
 Muses, whose dwellings in Olympus pight^^^ 
 Say who encounter'd Agamemnon first, 
 Of Trojans or of fam'd auxiliars bright. 
 Iphidamas Antenorides first. 
 The valiant huge in gleby Thrace, sheep-mother, nurst. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 And Cisseus him a child, brought up at home 
 His mother's sire, who 'gat Theano fair. 
 To glorious puberty's full measure come 
 He kept him, and his daughter gave him there. 
 Espous'd, from bridal chamber he whilere 
 Th' Acha^ans' rumour foll'wing voyaged 
 In twelve curv'd ships. These in Percope were 
 Then left, and he on foot to Ilium sped ; 
 And now Atrides Agamemnon he encountered. 
 
BOOK XI. 24—29. 261 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 When these advancing now drew near, his throw 
 Atrides miss'd. The spear did past him slide. 
 Him smote Iphidamas cuirass below 
 By th' belt, and push'd, and on stout hand relied. 
 Nor pierc'd quaint belt. Far first on silver gride 
 Did spear-point bent like lead. This grip'd with hand 
 Like lion Agamemnon, ruler wide, 
 Drew towards him, pluck' d from his, and then with 
 brand 
 His neck y-smote, and limbs relaxed upon the sand. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 There falling brazen sleep slept hapless he 
 From wife afar in 's townsmen's aid. Though store 
 He gave, no grace of virgin spouse did see. 
 Gave hundred beeves and thousand promised more 
 With goats and sheep whereof past counting o'er 
 He fed. Him stripp'd Atrides, and anon 
 Through th' Achive throng his lovely armour bore. 
 Bright Coon saw, Antenor's eldest son, 
 And anguish dimm'd his eyes to see his brother down. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 He stood aside with spear from Atreus' son 
 Conceal' d. Atrides' arm 'neath elbow smote. 
 Through went the brass spear's point. Aghast thereon 
 Men's sovran Agamemnon fight slack'd nought, 
 But rush'd with wind-fed spear on Coon stout. 
 Who drew by th' feet Iphidamas along, 
 Brother by 's sire, to the bravest calling out. 
 'Neath bossy shield him dragging corse through throng 
 He smote with brazen spear, and limbs y-loosed strong. 
 
 s 3 
 
262 THE ILIAD, 
 
 XXX. 
 
 His head he lopped upon Iphidamas. 
 
 Antenor's sons through king Atrides there, 
 
 Their fate fulfilling, so to Hades pass. 
 
 The king to other warrior-ranks with spear, 
 
 And falchion doth, and massy stones, career. 
 
 While blood wells warm from wound, but dry when 
 
 flows 
 No more the blood pangs seiz'd Atrides. Shaft severe 
 When Here's daughters, that of pangs dispose, 
 Th' Ilythiae ^^^ send, and woman feels in child-birth throes. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 So through Atrides' strength shot agonies. 
 
 He sprang to car, and charioteer bade ply 
 
 The steeds to th' hollow ships. Heart-pain'd he cries 
 
 With piercing voice and loud to th' Danai : — 
 
 " Friends, Argive chiefs and counsellors ! Keep from 
 
 nigh 
 " The sail-sea ships fell fight. For me doth here 
 " To fight all day the Trojans Zeus deny." 
 He said. To th' hollow ships his charioteer 
 The fair-man'd coursers lash'd. And eager they career. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Foam-fleck'd their chests, dust sprinkl'd 'neath them they 
 Th' afflicted king from battle bearing out. 
 Hector, on seeing Agamemnon go away, 
 'Gan loud to Trojans and to Lycians shout : — 
 " Ye Trojans, Lycians, Dardan warriors stout ! 
 " Be men ; your valour think of, friends, for gone 
 " Their best man is. Me glory gives past doubt 
 " Zeus Kronides. But th' whole-hoof 'd steeds upon 
 " The Danai drive straight, and win the more renown." 
 
BOOK XI. 30^35. 263 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 He said, and stirr'd the strength of each, as when 
 A hunter sets his white-tooth'd hounds upon 
 Lion or boar. So th' high-soul' d Trojans then 
 On th' Achives set did Hector, Priam's son, 
 Man-slaught'ring Ares' match. In front anon 
 He went. To th' fight, like storm o'erblowing, drave, 
 That stirring up the violet sea comes down. 
 Whom slaughter first, whom last, did then the brave 
 Hector Priamides, when Zeus him glory gave ? 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Assseus first, Autonoiis he slew 
 Ophites, Dolops, Klytis' son, beside, 
 Opheltius also, Agelaus too, 
 JEsymnus, Orus, and the battle-bide 
 Hipp6noiis, chiefs on Danaian side. 
 And then the multitude. And as when smite 
 The clouds doth Zephyrus with south-wind's stride 
 And whirlwind swift, waves rolling to their might 
 With tossing foam by wind up-snatch'd in fitful flight, 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 So thick were heads of common folk subdued 
 
 By Hector there. And now destruction dread 
 
 Had been and deeds past cure. Th' Achaeans would 
 
 Their ships have sought in flight. But calling said 
 
 Odysseus to Tydides Diomed : — 
 
 " Tydides, what can ail us to forget 
 
 *' Our valour thus ? Stand by me, friend, for sad 
 
 " Disgrace it were that wave-helm Hector get 
 
 " Our ships." — To him strong Diomed in answer set: • 
 
 s 4 
 
264 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " I'll stay and bear, though short our pleasure '11 be ; 
 " For drive-cloud Zeus will rather might bestow 
 " On Trojans than on us." This said, did he 
 From chariot to the ground Thymbraeus throw, 
 On left breast smit with spear. Odysseus so 
 The monarch's charioteer Molion slew. 
 These leaving there to war no more, they go 
 And spread confusion all that huge throng through. 
 As when two boars on hunters' dogs turn fiercely do, 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 So these then turn'd again and Trojans slew. 
 Th' Achseans fleeing Hector breath'd now glad. 
 These took a car and men, plebs' bravest two, 
 Percosian Merops' sons, that knowledge had 
 'Bove all in prophecy, and sons forbade 
 To go to man-destroying war. Not they 
 Would heed, by black death's destinies y-lad. 
 Spear-fam'd Tydides Diomed that day 
 These reft of sense and soul, their bright arms took away. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Hippodamus, Hypeirochus, were slain 
 B' Odysseus. Then Kronion, looking down 
 From Ida equal fight did 'twixt them strain. 
 They one another slew. Now Tydeus' son 
 Agastrophus PaBonides upon 
 
 The groin y-smote with spear, whose steeds not nigh 
 For flight. He'd gravely err'd, for those withdrawn 
 His driver held apart, while he did ply 
 On foot among the foremost till he came to die. 
 
BOOK XI. 36 — 41. 265 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Hector through ranks quick saw, and on them sped 
 With shouts, and Troy's phalanges with him go. 
 Him saw aghast the valiant Diomed, 
 And, near him there, addressed Odysseus so : — 
 " On us doth raging Hector roll this woe. 
 " Come, stand we firm, and waiting ward the same." 
 He said, and whirling, did his long spear throw, 
 And smote, nor miss'd, at head there taking aim, 
 The top of helm. Brass glanc'd from brass, to flesh not 
 came. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Withstood it visor'd threefold helmet strong 
 Phoebus Apollo gave. Back swiftly reel. 
 And far, did Hector, mingling with the throng, 
 With stout hand lean against the ground, and kneel, 
 While round doth sable night his eyes conceal. 
 While sought his spear Tydides far among 
 The warriors, fix'd i' th' ground, come-to and feel 
 Himself did Hector. Back to car he sprung. 
 Avoided gloomy death, and drave amid the throng. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 With spear rush'd on and spake strong Diomed : — 
 " Death now thou'st 'scaped, dog ! Nigh thee this day 
 " Came ill. And thee again delivered 
 " Phoebus Apollo hath, to whom to pray 
 " Thou'rt wont, ere entering javelins' tumult-fray. 
 " I'll end with thee if meet again we do, 
 " If any god by me as helper stay. 
 " I'll now the rest, catch whom I can, pursue." 
 He said, and Paeon's spear-fam'd son despoiled whom he 
 slew. 
 
266 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 But Alexander, fair-tress'd Helen's spouse, 
 At Tydeus' son, folk-shepherd, bent his bow, 
 By column couch'd of tomb men made t' enclose 
 The Dardan Ilus, chief died long ago. 
 From strong Agastrophus this, stooping low. 
 From chest bright corselet, shield from shoulder drew. 
 And massy helm. The other took his bow 
 By th' horn, and smote (whose shafts ne'er vainly flew) 
 His right foot's sole, and to the earth transfix'd it through. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 He laugh'd out sweetly, sprang from ambush then. 
 And vaunting spake ^^^ ; — " Thou 'rt smit. No vain 
 
 shaft flew. 
 " Would 'twere thy flank I'd hit, and life so ta'en. 
 " From trouble breath'd had then the Trojans, who 
 " Dread thee as bleating goats the lion do." 
 To him spake undismay'd strong Diomed : — 
 " Archer, disgrace, bow-skill'd, girl- watcher thou ! 
 " With arms if once were open trial made, 
 " Thee would thy bow, and cloud of arrows ill bestead. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " Thou 'st scratch'd my foot, vain boast ! The blow I 
 
 slight ; 
 " A girl or peevish boy had dealt as much. 
 " The dart of feeble, worth-nought man is light. 
 " From me far otherwise. My keen dart such 
 " It strikes him dead whom it but slightly touch. 
 " His wife, that teareth both her cheeks for woe, 
 " And orphan children, do the same avouch. 
 " And, redd'ning earth with blood, he lieth low, 
 " And rots. Birds 'bout him more ^^^ than women be I 
 trow." 
 
BOOK XI. 42—47. 267 
 
 XLV. 
 
 He spake. Spear-skiU'd Odysseus near him came, 
 
 And stood before. Behind he sat him down, 
 
 And drew swift shaft from 's foot. Shot through his 
 
 frame 
 Keen agony. He mounts his car anon^ 
 In haste, and bade his charioteer drive on 
 To the hollow ships. For sore his heart did ache. 
 Alone spear-fam'd Odysseus was, for none 
 Of th' Argives stay'd, such terror all did take. 
 He groan'd, and with his mighty soul communing spake : — 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " Ah me ! how I 'm beset ! 'Twere ill to fly 
 " Fearing the throng, and worse be ta'en alone. 
 " Kronion 's turned the other Danai 
 " To flight. Why reasons thus my soul ? 'Tis known 
 " That cowards are from battle quickly gone. 
 " The valiant man should stand in fight the same, 
 " Be smitten he, or smiting other one." 
 As these in mind and soul with various aim 
 He ponder'd, down the files of shielded Trojans came. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 They girt him round, their bane amid them set. 
 As round a boar when hounds and strong youths press, 
 He doth from covert come his white tusk whet 
 In crooked jaws. They 'bout him charge apace. 
 A sound of teeth up-springs. But they nathless 
 Do him through dread abide. So Trojans round 
 Odysseus Zeus-belov'd did gird no less. 
 And he with keen spear first with forward bound 
 'Bove shoulder smote Deiopites the renown'd. 
 
268 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 And Thoon then he slew, and Ennomus. 
 Chersidaraas he wounded next i' th' waist 
 With spear, 'neath bossy shield, e'en as he was 
 From off his chariot leaping there in haste. 
 I' th' dust he fell, earth grip'd with 's palm. Dismiss'd 
 Then these, Charops Hippasides with spear 
 He wounds, own brother he of Socus, graced 
 With Kneage high. To aid his kinsman dear 
 The godlike Socus went. And spake, him standing near: — 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 *^ Renown'd Odysseus, bent on wiles and moil, 
 " To-day the two Hippasides i' th' field 
 " Such men thou 'It slay and of their arms despoil, 
 " Or smitten with my spear thy life wilt yield." 
 He said, and smote him on his orbed shield. 
 Through glist'ning shield did mighty lance career. 
 And through the quaint- wrought cuirass on it held 
 Infix'd, and from his ribs ihe flesh cut sheer. 
 Pallas Athene from his entrails stay'd the spear. 
 
 Odysseus knew the dart not fatal. Back 
 He stepp'd, to Socus speaking : — " Wretched wight ! 
 " Destruction swift be sure is on thy track. 
 " With Trojans sooth thou 'st stay'd my further fight, 
 " On thee though here I say will slaughter light, 
 " And gloomy death, this day. Thy fame to me, 
 " Thy soul to steed-fam'd Hades thou, by th' might 
 " Of this my spear subdued, wilt give." Thus he. 
 And straight the other turn'd him then about to flee. 
 
BOOK XI. 48—53. 269 
 
 LI. 
 
 Him turning he mid-shoulders smote i' th' back 
 
 With spear, which drave through chest. With heavy 
 
 sound 
 He fell. Divine Odysseus vaunting spake : — 
 " Socus ! brave Hippasus' steed- tamer's son ! 
 " O'erta'en thee hath death's dart ; escape was none. 
 " Poor Avretch ! Nor father thee, nor mother will 
 " Thine eyes when dying close, but birds come down 
 " And tear, and cuiF with pinions never still. 
 " For me when dead th' Achaeans shall due rites fulfil." 
 
 LII. 
 
 So saying war-skill'd Socus' mighty dart 
 From flesh and bossy- centred shield he drew. 
 When drawn, out gush'd his blood, perturb'd his heart. 
 Odysseus' blood when th' high-soul'd Troj ans view 
 All at him went, each other calling to. 
 Retiring shouted he t' his comrades dear. 
 Thrice shouted loud as mouth of man could do. 
 Thrice Menelaus Ares-lov'd did hear. 
 And quickly sooth to Ajax spake, who then was near : — 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " Zeus-sprung folk-ruler, Ajax Telamon ! 
 " Patient Odysseus' shout I hear, as though 
 " The Trojans sorely press'd him there alone. 
 " And in the battle fierce cut ofi*. Let's go 
 " Through throng, and help. Mishap I fear me so 
 " For him the brave, alone with Trojans round. 
 " Sore miss of him the Danai would know." 
 He spake and led. Him foUow'd off the ground 
 The godlike man. Odysseus then Zeus-lov'd they found. 
 
270 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 The Trojans round like rav'ning jackals be 
 'Bout wounded antler'd stag, a man hath smit 
 With shaft from string. Whom scaping he doth flee 
 On 's feet while warm his blood, nor 's limbs remit. 
 But him, when swift shaft quelleth, lacerate 
 r th' mountain-grove fierce jackals. Chance doth bring 
 A lion fierce. They flee and he doth eat. 
 And soothly so war-skill'd, craft-counselling 
 Odysseus Trojans strong and many there enring. 
 
 LV. 
 
 With spear the hero rushing stemm'd th' ill day. 
 Ajax approach'd with tower-like shield, and near 
 Him stood. The Trojans scar'd fled every way. 
 By the hand him Menelaus, Ares-dear, 
 Led out the throng till nigh the steeds career 
 His servant drave. Then Ajax, leaping on 
 The Trojans, Priam's spurious off*spring here 
 Doryclus slew, then Pandocus anon 
 Lysander, Pyrasus, Pylartes woundeth ev'ry one. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 As river swol'n to th' plain runs winter-flowing 
 From mountains down by Zeus' showers forc'd along 
 Dry oaks a many, many firs in going 
 And mud it sweeps to sea. So Ajax strong, 
 Pursued and routed through the plain that throng, 
 Slaying steeds and men. Nor Hector yet had heard 
 Who rag'd to th' left, Scamander's banks along 
 Where most men fell, where tumult high toward 
 Round Nestor great and brave Idomeneus upstirr'd. 
 
BOOK XI. 54 — 59. 271 
 
 LVII. 
 
 And Hector there with spear rough doings shows, 
 And horsemanship, and warrior-ranks laid low. 
 Nor blench'd had th' Achives, but from fight the spouse 
 Of fair-tress'd Helen, Alexander, so 
 With triple-barbed arrow from his bow 
 Machaon people-shepherd's battling stay'd 
 And lest he fall if battle 'gainst them go 
 Were valour-breathing Achives sore afraid. 
 And straight Idomeneus to godlike Nestor said : — 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " Neleian Nestor, Achives' glory great! 
 " Come mount thy car, Machaon with thee wend, 
 " The whole-hoof 'd steeds to ships at quickest set. 
 " Physician's worth doth many men's transcend 
 " To cut out shafts, with soothing med'cines tend." 
 He said, and Nestor mounts, Machaon too 
 Asclepias', fam'd physician's, son ascend 
 Did by his side. He whipp'd the steeds. They flew 
 To th' hollow ships alert, for inclination drew. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Cebriones perceiv'd the Trojans fly, 
 As he by Hector rode, and him addressed : — 
 " Hector, we combat here the Danai 
 " At rough-voic'd battle's verge extreme. The rest 
 " Trojans and steeds together crowd distrest. 
 " Telamon Ajax routs them. Him I know, 
 " His broad shield should' ring. Car and steeds let's haste 
 " Where one another horse and foot o'erthrow 
 " In evil strife, and doth the tumult quenchless grow." 
 
272 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 This said, he whipp'd the fair-man'd steeds with thong 
 Shrill sounding. They when felt the strokes quick drew 
 The chariot Trojans and Achaeans 'mong, 
 O'er shields and corses trampling. Blood imbue 
 Did th' axle all, and chariot-rims, whereto 
 Steeds' hoofs wheel-felloes eke up-spatter'd gore. 
 Enter the warrior-throng and break them through 
 He long'd, upon them leaping. Fell uproar 
 He sent the Danai, nor long from spear forbore. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 To other files with spear and sword he sped. 
 And stones, but shunn'd Telamon Ajax' fight. 
 High-thron'd sire Zeus smote Ajax there with dread. 
 He stood astound, and se' en-hide shield y-pight 
 Behind, retreated as some wild beast might, 
 Still eyed the throng and turning, knee 'fore knee 
 Scant mov'd. So dogs and swains a- watch all night 
 Fierce lion drive from stall where oxen be. 
 Nor let him eat the oxen's prime though eager he. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Eager for flesh he rushes but in vain. 
 Upon him thick the darts from strong hands fly, 
 And blazing torches, fearing which, though fain 
 At morn with sorrowing mind ^^^ he goes away. 
 So Ajax sad at heart unwillingly 
 The Trojans left, in fear for th' Achives' fleet. 
 As ass through boys to corn-field forceth way 
 Slow pac'd, whose ribs have cudgels many split. 
 And ent'ring there the standing corn, doth browse and eat. 
 
BOOK XI. 60—65. 273 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Beat him with sticks the boys, their strength but slight 
 And scarce drive oiF when he with food is fill'd. 
 On Telamonian Ajax huge so smite 
 Did Trojans, and far-called allies mid-shield 
 With spears, and still pursued. Of battle-field 
 High daring Ajax thought, and turn'd to stay 
 Troy's columns now, and now to flight would yield ; 
 He all opposed lest reach the swift ships they. 
 Fierce stood 'twixt Trojans and Achasans he mid- way. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The darts, from stout hands hurl'd, his mighty shield 
 Some bite, endeav'ring on. But most mid- way, 
 Ere white flesh reach'd, do stand upon the field 
 Eager on flesh to glut. When him that way 
 Perceiv'd the show'ring darts so thick belay 
 Eurypylus, Evsemon's ofi'spring bright. 
 He rush'd t' his side, bright spear without delay 
 HurFd, and 'neath mid-riff in his liver right 
 Did Apisaon Phausiades folk-shepherd smite, 
 
 LXV. 
 
 And loos'd his knees. Eurypylus up-ran. 
 And from his shoulders stripp'd his armour so. 
 But him when Alexander, god-shap'd man. 
 Saw thus with Apisaon's armour go, 
 Quick at Eurypylus he drew his bow. 
 The shaft his right thigh smote. The reed then broke. 
 And sore his thigh 'gan ache. Death shunning now, 
 Back to his fellows' throng he him betook. 
 And loudly shouting to the Danai thus spoke : — 
 
274 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " Friends, Argive chiefs, and councillors ! from flight 
 " turn and stand! From Ajax th' evil day 
 " Avert. With darts opprest in evil plight 
 " I think not he '11 from rough- voic'd war away. 
 " By Telamonian Ajax huge stay." 
 Wounded Eurypylus thus spake. And so 
 They clos'd-up, should'ring shields, with spears on high. 
 To them went Ajax straight, but fac'd the foe 
 When reach'd his friends. So there they fought as fire 
 doth glow. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Nestor the mares Neleian sweating bare 
 From fight. Machaon, too, folk-shepherd rode. 
 Him saw swift-foot Achilles godlike there. 
 For he upon his whale-like ship's stern stood, 
 And conflict hard, and tearful chace then viewed. 
 His comrade quick Patroclus spake he to, 
 Calling from ship. Who heard, from tent issued 
 Like Ares he ; beginning of his woe. 
 First spake t' his friend Menoetius' val'rous off'spring so : — 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 " Why callest me, Achilles? Me dost need ?" 
 Swift-foot Achilles answer'd him : — " Divine 
 " Menoetius' son, dear to my soul ! Indeed 
 " Now at my knees will th' Achives I opine 
 " Be praying. Keach'd them hath, past bearing, tine.^^^ 
 " Zeus-lov'd Patroclus go ask Nestor who 
 " The wounded man he bears from fight. Behind 
 " He seem'd Asclepias' son Machaon. View 
 " His eyes I did not. Past me swift the horses flew." 
 
BOOK XI. 66—71. 275 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 'Twas thus he spake. Patroclus did obey 
 His lov'd companion there, and ran and went 
 Past th^ Achives' ships and tents. And meanwhile they 
 When reach'd. they had of Neleus' son the tent 
 To mickle-feeding earth they made descent. 
 The horses then the old man's servant there, 
 Eurymedon, from chariot loosing hent.^'^^ 
 On shore they stand to th' breeze, their tunics air 
 From sweat, the tents then entering sit on couches fair. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 For them did Hecamede, lovely tress'd, 
 A beverage mix. From Tenedos the sire 
 Did bring her when Achilles laid it waste. 
 She was high-soul'd Arsinous' daughter fair. 
 Her th' Achives chose for him so past compare 
 For rede. To them fair table first she set 
 CyanuS'iooiedi^^'^ ^ smooth. And brass tray ther 
 And onion eke drink-relish, thirst to whet, 
 Pale honey, bread of sacred barley meaP^^ by it. 
 
 . LXXI. 
 
 And lovely cup, the sire from home had brought, 
 With gold-studs gemm'd, she set. Its handles four. 
 Two golden doves did feed each one about. 
 And underneath two stems the same upbore. 
 Another 'd mov'd it scarce with moiling sore 
 From table full. Sire Nestor lifts with ease. 
 In this did goddess-woman mingling pour 
 Them Pramnian wine, and grate therein goat's cheese 
 With brazen rasp, and white meal sprinkled on to these. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 And bade them drink when mixture made aright. 
 When drinking quench'd their parching thirst had those 
 Discoursing with each other they delight. 
 Patroclus godlike man at entrance shows. 
 Seeing whom the Sire from splendid seat arose, 
 And brought him in by th' hand, be seated bade. 
 Patroclus spake, declining to repose : — 
 " No sitting, Zeus-nurs'd Sire, thou'lt not persuade. 
 *' August is he who sent me here, and to be held in dread. 
 
 Lxxm. 
 
 " He asks what wounded one you bring. But now I know 
 
 " Machaon people- shepherd 'tis I see. 
 
 " And now t' Achilles back to tell my news I go. 
 
 *' Well know'st thou, Zeus-nurs'd Sire, what man is he, 
 
 " How dread ! He'd blame the blameless easily." 
 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor made reply : — 
 
 " Why plains Achilles th' Achives' sons that be 
 
 " With javelins smit ? Nor knows through th' host how 
 
 high 
 " Stirs grief; how wounded smit by th' ships the bravest 
 
 lie. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " Struck Tydeus' son, strong Diomed, doth lie 
 " Wounded 's Odysseus, Agamemnon too, 
 " Stricken 's Eurypylus with shaft on thigh. 
 ^' This other late I brought from battle, who 
 " Was with an arrow smit, from string that flew. 
 " Achilles brave not pities Danai 
 " Nor heeds but waits till, spite what Argives do, 
 " Our swift ships burn with foe-men's fire a-nigh 
 " The sea, and in succession slain ourselves we die. 
 
BOOK XI. 72—77. 277 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 *' For troth my strength is not as heretofore 
 *' It was in active limbs in all their play. 
 " Would I were young with vigour as of yore 
 " When 'twixt th' Elei rose and us a fray 
 " 'Bout cattle-lifting, when myself did slay 
 " Itymoneus Hypeirochides bright 
 *' Of Elis. I reprisals drove that day. 
 " Him fighting for his herds 'mong foremost smite 
 " I did with spear. His boorish people fled in fright. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 " Spoil from the plain on all sides driving sweep 
 " We did exceeding much. Of oxen were 
 " Full fifty droves, as many flocks of sheep 
 " And herds of swine; broad flocks as many there 
 " Of goats ; thrice fifty steeds of chesnut hair, 
 " All mares, and foals with many. These by night 
 " Unto Neleian Pylos, city fair, 
 " We drove. And Neleus did in soul delight 
 " So much had fall'n to me, that went so young to fight. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 " Heralds at dawn call'd those to come that had 
 " Aught owing them in Elis the divine. 
 " The Pylians' chief men met, and portioned. 
 " (For claims had on the Epeans many then 
 " When few and troubl'd we in Pylos been. 
 " For came and vex'd us Hercules whilere 
 " In former years, and all our best were slain. 
 " For Neleus* sons renowned twelve we were. 
 Of whom alone I'm left, the rest all perish'd there. 
 
 T 3 
 
278 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 " Thence bold the brazen-clad Epeans heap 
 " Upon us injuries, devising wrong.) 
 " The Sire a herd of beeves, huge flock of sheep 
 " Three hundred chose, and shepherds too along. 
 " On Elis the divine he 'd claim full strong. 
 " Four steeds, prize-winners, went with cars to gain 
 " The prize, a tripod to be run for 'mong 
 '' Them there. Augeias, king of men, detain 
 " Them did. But driver grieved for 's steeds sent back 
 again. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " My Sire at words and doings angered so 
 " Took largely then of these. The rest to share 
 " He gave to th^ folk lest any one should go 
 " Through him defrauded of his portion fair. 
 " All this we did, and rites i' th' city there 
 " To th' gods performed. The third day came then they 
 " With whole-hoof'd steeds, a multitude they were. 
 " With them the Molions harness'd in array 
 " As yet but boys, and little skill'd in battle-fray. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 " A city Thryoessa on a hill 
 
 " Afar by Alpheus stands the utmost town 
 
 " Of sandy Pylos. This they siege with will 
 
 " T' o'erthrow. But when the plain they'd traversed, 
 
 down 
 " Olympus did to us Athene run 
 
 " At night to arm. The people, summon'd Pylos through, 
 *' Slack'd not but were alert for war. My armour don 
 " Neleus forbade, and hid my horses too, 
 " Nor deem'd that aught of warlike labours yet I knew. 
 
BOOK XI. 78-^83. 279 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 " Yet I excell'd our horsemen though on foot, 
 " Athene so did me in battle guide. 
 " The Minyeius doth b' Arena shoot 
 " I' th' sea. There Pylian horse blest morn abide, 
 " There flocked the foot. Thence sacred Alpheus' tide 
 " With all our harness'd host at noon we gain, 
 " Where sacred rites to Zeus the mighty paid, 
 " To Alpheus was a bull, bull to Poseidon slain, . 
 " And heifer to Athene of the azure eyen. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 *' Then through the army in our ranks we sup 
 
 " And in our armour slept we every one 
 
 " By th' river-streams. Th' Epei proud were up 
 
 " And, bent on spoiling it, begirt the town. 
 
 " But first to them was work of Ares shown. 
 
 '* When peer'd the sun 'bove ground, we join'd in fight, 
 
 " Our prayers to Zeus and to Athene done. 
 
 " When Pylians and Epei met, first smite 
 
 A man did I, and took his steeds, that Mulius hight ; 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 " Augeas^ son-in-law. He th' eldest had 
 " The auburn Agamed^, she who knew 
 " All healing herbs by ample earth are fed. 
 *' Him coming on with brazen spear I slew. 
 " He sank i' th' dust ; upon his car I flew 
 " And stood i' th' front. Th' Epei fled with fear 
 " When fallen him, that led their horse, they view, 
 " So brave in fight. Like whirlwind I career, 
 *^ Took fifty cars, two hurl'd from each beneath my spear. 
 
 T 4 
 
280 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 " Th' Actorian youths, the Molions eke I 'd slain 
 " But them their Sire, Earth- Shaker wide of sway 
 " Deliver did, and all in darkness screen. 
 " Zeus gave the Pylians mighty strength that day. 
 " For through the shield-like plain ^^^ we chace, and slay, 
 " And gather arms until our steeds we drave 
 " Where rich in corn Buprasium, Petra lay, 
 " Olenia and Alesium, and where gave 
 " Its name Colone. There Athene turn'd our people brave. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 " My last man slain, I ceas'd. Th' Achseans drave 
 " Back from Buprasium unto Pylos then 
 " Their rapid steeds. And all then grateful gave 
 " To Zeus ^mong gods, to Nestor praise 'mong men. 
 " And such I was if e'er I was 'mong men. 
 " Achilles' worth sole profits him. He may 
 " Methinks when th' host 's destroy'd hereafter plain. 
 " friend ! thus thee Mencetius bade, the day 
 " From Phthia to Atrides sent he thee away. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " We being within, I and Odysseus, well 
 
 " Heard all in th' house he bade. For come we were 
 
 '' To house of Peleus, where 'tis good to dwell, 
 
 " Folk gath'ring we throughout Achaia fair. 
 
 " Within we found Menoetius hero there, 
 
 " Thee and Achilles. Drive-steed Peleus old 
 
 " To thunder-loving Zeus fat thighs of steer 
 
 " In straw-yard burning was. His hands did hold. 
 
 As on burnt ofi*'ring wine he poured, the cup of gold. 
 
BOOK XI. 84—89. 281 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 *' Ye were 'bout ox engag'd preparing flesh when we 
 
 " At th' entrance stood. Achilles rose astound, 
 
 " And brought us in by th' hand, bade seated be ; 
 
 " All guest-things proper plac'd as hosts are bound. 
 
 " And when of meat and drink our fill we'd found, 
 
 " I speech began, and you to join us press'd. 
 
 " Ye both were prompt. Much they enjoin'd and sound. 
 
 " On 's son Achilles Peleus Sire impress'd 
 
 To bear him bravely aye, and still excel the rest. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 " Thee thus enjoin'd Mencetius Actor's son : — 
 
 " * My child! Achilles is of birth more high, 
 
 " But elder thou^ though he the stronger one, 
 
 ^' Speak him good rede, advise, and lead the way, 
 
 " For good he HI hear."* 'Twas thus the Sire did say. 
 
 " But thou 'st forgot. Yet might'st e'en now commend 
 
 " T' Achilles war-skill'd this, if he 'U obey. 
 
 " Who knows, god fav'ring, if his spirit bend 
 
 Thou mayst, persuading. Good 's the counsel of a friend. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 " But if in 's mind some oracle he shun, 
 
 " If aught from Zeus his mother 's told. To fight 
 
 " Yet send he thee with forces Myrmidon, 
 
 " And that too in his comely armour dight. 
 
 " So taking thee for him the Trojans might 
 
 " From war abstain, and Achives' brave sons then 
 
 " Take breath, distrest, from war some respite slight. 
 
 " With ease all fresh you 'd thrust those wearied men 
 
 In fight from ships and tents back to their town again." 
 
282 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XC. 
 
 He said, and stirr'd his soul. By th' ships he ran 
 T' JEacides Achilles. When a-near, 
 In running, drew Patroclus to that godlike man 
 Odysseus' ship, where court and market were 
 And to the gods erected altars fair. 
 Wounded Eurypylus Evaemon's son 
 With shaft in thigh, from fight came limping there. 
 The liquid sweat ran head and shoulders down, 
 Black blood from painful wound out-gush'd. His sense yet 
 sound. 
 
 xci. 
 
 Menoetius' brave son pitied him as he 
 Beheld, and wing'd words spake compassionate : — 
 " Hapless Danaian chiefs and rulers ye ! 
 " From friends and country far thus satiate 
 " In Troas here swift dogs must ye with fat ? 
 " Eurypylus, say, thou Zeus-nurs'd hero high, 
 " Withstand huge Hector do th' Achseans yet, 
 " Or by his spear subdued already die ?" 
 To him Eurypylus the prudent made reply : — 
 
 XCII. 
 
 " Zeus-nurs'd Patroclus, fence will be no more 
 " For Achives, but i' th' black ships fall will they. 
 ** For all that were the valiantest before 
 " I' th' vessels smitten now, and wounded lie 
 " By Trojans' hands, whose strength augmenteth aye. 
 " But save me ta'en to th' ship. The shaft cut out 
 " And wash with water warm black blood from thigh, 
 " Sprinkling fam'd drugs, to thee Achilles stout 
 " Reveal'd, whom Chiron, that most just of centaurs, taught. 
 
BOOK XI. 90—94. 283 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 *' For Podalirius and Machaoii, those 
 " Physicians, one in tent doth wounded lie, 
 " And needs skill'd leech himself. The other does 
 " r th' plain the Trojans' battle fierce abye." 
 Then did Menoetius' valiant son reply : — 
 " How will these doings end ? What shall we do, 
 " Hero Eurypylus ? A word to say 
 " Unto war-skiird Achilles now I go, 
 " Gerenian Nestor, Achives' guardian, charg'd me to. 
 
 xciv. 
 
 " Nathless I 11 not omit to care for thee 
 
 " Thus pain'd." He said, and ta'en 'neath bosom led 
 
 The people shepherd t' his pavilion he. 
 
 The servant saw and hides of oxen spread. 
 
 There stretch'd him out, then cut from thigh with knife 
 
 he did 
 Keen bitter shaft, and washed the gore away 
 With water warm, and bitter root applied, 
 Bruis'd in his hands, which healing did allay 
 His every pang. The wound dried up, the blood did stay. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XII. 
 
 Thus at tlie tents Machaon's valiant son 
 Wounded Eurypylus recur'd. Meanwhile 
 Th' Argives and Trojans mingling battled on. 
 Nor longer might Danaians' trench prevail, 
 JSTor wall, built 'bove it broad, for th' ships avail. 
 A trench they 'd drawn around, which ships and prey 
 Immense might safe enclose, but they did fail 
 T' immortal gods bright hecatombs to pay. 
 So built i' th' gods' despite, it reach'd no distant day. 
 
 II. 
 
 While Hector liv'd, and rag'd Achilles high, 
 And sovran Priam's city stood unta'en, 
 Th' Achaean's mighty wall did firm abye ; 
 But when the Trojans' bravest all were slain. 
 And Argives smitten some, some did remain. 
 And in the tenth year ta'en was Priam's town. 
 And th' Argives home in ships return'd again, 
 Poseidon and Apollo to throw down 
 The wall conspir'd, a strength of rivers bringing on. 
 
BOOK XII. 1—5. 285 
 
 III. 
 
 All that from Ida's mountains seaward flow, 
 
 Ehesus, Heptaporus, Caresus there, 
 
 And Ehodius, Granicus, iEsepus, so 
 
 Divine Scamander, eke Simois where 
 
 I' th' dust fell shields, and helms, and lineage fair 
 
 Of demi-gods. Their mouths all joining, he, 
 ' Phoebus Apollo, nine days batter'd e'er 
 
 Full-stream the wall, and Zeus unceasingly 
 Did rain to send it quicker rolling down to sea. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And lead Earth-Shaker did himself the way, 
 Trident in hand, and with his waves up-rout 
 Foundations all of piles and stones, that they 
 Th' Achaeans toiling laid, and all about 
 Fair-flowing Hellespont he smooth'd it out. 
 And hid the mighty shore again with sand. 
 The wall destroy' d, and turn'd the rivers stout 
 To th' stream each erst was wont flow through the land. 
 These would Poseidon and Apollo after take in hand. 
 
 Then fight and noise the well-built wall rag'd round 
 And sound the struck towers' timbers. Quell'd by might 
 Of Zeus' scourge th' Argives, shut i' th' ships astound, 
 Fear Hector, dire artificer of flight. 
 And he as erst like tempest rag'd in fight. 
 As when with dogs and hunters hath to do 
 A boar or lion, glaring in his might. 
 They form in square, and stand and wait him so. 
 And javelins hurling many from their hands they throw. 
 
286 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 His stout heart quails not, flies not. Valour slay 
 Him doth, and oft he turns men^s ranks to try. 
 Where'er he charges there men's ranks give way. 
 So Hector pac'd the throng, and mates did ply, 
 And urge to cross the trench. Their steeds were shy 
 And on the brink there stood they neighing loud. 
 For them the broad trench sore did terrify, 
 Which neither overleap, nor cross they could. 
 So steep the slopes on each side all around it stood. 
 
 VII. 
 
 And sharp stakes hedged its top, thick set and strong, 
 Th' Achaeans' sons 'gainst foes a fence had pight. 
 There steeds uneath wheel'd car could draw along. 
 The foot nathless were fain if so they might. 
 Polydamas to Hector valiant wight : — 
 " Hector, and chiefs of Trojans and allies ! 
 " The swift-steeds drive o'er trench were folly quite, 
 " 'Tis difficult to cross, for in it rise 
 " Sharp stakes, and by them close th' Achaeans' wall like- 
 wise. 
 
 vin. 
 
 " For horsemen there could not descend nor fight, 
 
 " A strait where they methinks would wounded be. 
 
 " If Zeus high thund'ring willeth them to smite 
 
 " And Trojans succour, would 'twere instantly, 
 
 " And far from Argos perish namelessly 
 
 " Th' Achaeans here. But haply turn should they, 
 
 " And chace fro' th' ships and trench encounter we 
 
 " I think no messenger will back to say 
 
 r th' town how th' Achives turn'd again in battle-fray. 
 
BOOK xii. 6 — 11. 287 
 
 IX. 
 
 " But come, comply we all with what I say. 
 " Our servants keep the steeds the trench beside, 
 " While we on foot ourselves in arms array, 
 ' " And joining, follow Hector. Us abide 
 " Will th' Achives not if near their end betide." 
 Thus spake Polydamas. Safe counsel too 
 Pleas'd Hector. Straight from car full panoplied 
 He sprang. No other Trojans muster do 
 On steeds, but sprang to ground when Hector thus they 
 view. 
 
 And each his charioteer then soothly bade. 
 The steeds in order hold the trench beside. 
 And they in ranks the while themselves array'd, 
 And ^neath their chiefs in squadrons five divide. 
 With Hector and Polydamas some hied, 
 The most and bravest they and eager were 
 To fight by th' ships, and break the bulwark wide. 
 Cebriones went third, for with the car 
 Left Hector one, Cebriones' in'feriour far. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Paris, Alcathoiis, Agenor led 
 A part, while Helenus a third band fair 
 Join'd with Deiphobus the god-shap'd sway'd, 
 Priam's two sons, and third did Asius fare. 
 The Hyrtacide, whom from Arisba bare 
 His big bay steeds from river Selleis. 
 A fourth Anchises' son, JEneas there 
 Did sway, with whom Antenor's sons, y-wis 
 Archilochus and Acamas, to whom no fight amiss. 
 
288 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Sarpedon there the fam*d auxiliars hid, 
 And with him Glaucus and Asteropa3us brave 
 He took, that vaUantest the rest out-did. 
 All but himself who no compeer did have. 
 And these, when interlock'd their bucklers, drave 
 Fierce on the Danai, nor deem'd that they 
 Could aught but fall, their sable ships their grave. 
 The Trojans else and fam'd allies that day 
 Blameless Polydamas^ good counsel did obey. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 But Hyrtacides Asius, prince of men. 
 Would not his steeds and driver leave, but nigh 
 The swift ships came with these. The fool 1 that then 
 Fate could not shun with steeds and car, and fly 
 Exulting back to gusty Ilium high. 
 For first fell fate him compassing had ta'en 
 Idomeneus Deucalion's javelin by. 
 To the vessels' left he charg'd, where from the plain 
 With steeds and cars th* xVchaeans back return'd again. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And thither steeds and chariot drive did he. 
 Nor found the folding portals clos'd, nor bar. 
 But men the same wide open held, that through them flee 
 Safe to the ships some comrade might from war. 
 And there with high thoughts drave he straight his car. 
 His folk with shrill cry follow, deeming slain 
 Th' Achaeans helpless in their black ships there 
 Must fall. The fools ! I' th' gates then met they twain, 
 The sons of Lapitha^an warriors, valiant men. 
 
BOOK XII. 12—18. 289 
 
 XV. 
 
 Strong Polypoetes, king Pirithous' son 
 Was one, and there, resembling Ares, bane 
 Of mortals, was Leonteus th^ other one. 
 Before the lofty portals stood the twain. 
 Like hio^h-head oaks i' th^ mountains, that sustain 
 The wind and wet all days continually, 
 With ample roots out-stretching far fix'd in. 
 So these two now on hands and strength rely. 
 And mighty Asius' coming wait, nor deign to fly. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 To th' well-built wall, with tann'd-hide shields on high, 
 Came shouting those that sovereign Asius 'bout, 
 And round lamenus, Orestes ply 
 Asius' son Acamas, and Thoon stout, 
 And eke (Enomaus. The twain within 'gan shout 
 To th' well-greav'd Achives to defend with might 
 Their ships. When rush to th' wall the Trojan rout 
 They saw, and rose Danaian's cry and flight, 
 Then forth the pair rush'd out before the gates to fight. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Like two wild boars that in the mountains hear 
 Of men and dogs the coming noisy throng, 
 And slant- ways rushing wood break 'bout them sheer 
 By th' roots uptorn. While sound of tushes strong 
 Upsprings till they be laid their length along ; 
 So on the breasts of these incessantly 
 The glist'ring brass with frequent buffets rung. 
 For fierce did combat they with valour high, 
 And on their folk above, and on their strength rely. 
 
 u 
 
290 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 And stones from well-built wall they flung defending 
 Themselves, their tents, and vessels swift. Like snow 
 By strong cloud-driving wind out-pour'd, descending 
 Thick on the earth all-nourishing below, 
 So from the hands of Achives missiles flow, 
 And of the Trojans. Helmets echo make 
 With mill-stones smit, and bossy bucklers so. 
 Full sorely groan'd, and both his thighs y-strake 
 Then Asius, son of Hyrtacus, and wrathful spake : — 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " Sire Zeus, thou 'st sure grown falsehood-loving quite! 
 " For ne^er would Achive heroes I did say 
 " Withstand our hands resistless, and our might. 
 *^ But like lithe- waisted wasps or bees are they, 
 " That make their homes beside some craggy way, 
 " Nor leave their hollow house, but there remain, 
 " 'Gainst hunters battling for their young alway ; 
 " So these will from the gates, although but twain, 
 " No whit recede, until they slaughter or be slain." ^^^ 
 
 XX. 
 
 He said, but speaking so Zeus' mind mov'd nought, 
 Who will'd that Hector's should the glory be. 
 Others at other gates fierce battle fought, 
 But like a god tell all were hard for me. 
 All sides by th' wall rag'd fierce exceedingly 
 Strange fire of stone ! ^^^ Th' Argives in evil plight 
 Their ships defend. Griev'd was each deity 
 All that Danaians' helpers were in fight. 
 To battle now the Lapithae address their might. 
 
BOOK XII. 18—23. 291 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Strong Polypoetes then, Pirithous' son, 
 Smote Damasus through brass-cheeked helm with spear ; 
 The brass helm stay'd it not, but through the bone 
 The brass-point brake, and all within did smear, 
 And mar the brains, and quell'd him mid-career. 
 And Pylus next and Ormenus he slew. 
 Leonteus, Ares' branch, did th' offspring dear 
 Of Sire Antimachus there slaughter too, 
 Hippomachus, with spear his girdle smiting through. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 And then from scabbard drawing falchion keen, 
 He first Antiphates did rush through throng 
 And close-hand smite, who fell to earth supine. 
 Menon, laraenus, Orestes, flong 
 He then all stretch' d on fertile earth along. 
 While they did pluck from these their warlike tire, 
 Polydamas and Hector did the strong 
 Youths most and bravest follow, with desire 
 To break there through the wall, and burn the ships with 
 fire. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 They pondering anxious stood the trench beside, 
 For bird there came, when cross fain would they o'er, 
 A soaring eagle did their left divide. 
 And blood-red serpent, huge in 's talons bore. 
 That liv'd and breath'd, nor mem'ry yet forlore ^^^ 
 Of fight, but, writhing back, his captor stong 
 r th' breast by neck, who from him tortur'd sore 
 There cast to earth the snake amid the throng, 
 And screaming thence away flew with the breeze along.^^^ 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Aghast the Trojans saw the agile snake, 
 
 Zeus th' aegis holder's signal, 'mid them lie. 
 
 Polydamas by Hector standing spake : — 
 
 " Hector, thou blam'st me in th' assemblies aye 
 
 " Though couns'lling right, for aught beyond to say 
 
 " The private man in counsel fitteth not, 
 
 " Nor e'er in war, but thine authority 
 
 " Still swell. But what seems best I'll speak it out. 
 
 Let 's not go fight the Danai the ships about. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " 'Twill be me thinks as Trojans did betide. 
 
 " A bird there came when cross fain would they o'er, 
 
 " A soaring eagle, did their left divide, 
 
 " And blood-red serpent huge in 's talons bore 
 
 " Alive, which quick he cast away before 
 
 " His lov'd home reach'd, or to his young y-ta'en. 
 
 " So we if th' Achives' wall and gates by power 
 
 " We burst and th' Achives yield, yet shall we then 
 
 Fro' th' ships in order that way not return again. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " For Trojans many we shall leave, whom will 
 " With brass in ships' defence th' Acha^ans slay. 
 " So would an augur answer who had skill 
 " In signs, and him the people would obey." 
 Him eyeing askance did glance-helm Hector say : — 
 " Polydamas, thy speech now suits not me, 
 " Speak rede thou know'st that 's better every way. 
 " But this thou say'st if sooth thine earnest be 
 Then have the gods themselves thy wits destroy'd for 
 thee. 
 
BOOK XII. 24—29. 293 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Thou bidst loud- thundering Zeus^ designs forget, 
 " That promis'd me himself approving high. 
 " Thou bidst on stretch-wing birds observance set, 
 " For which not turn aside nor care do I 
 " If to the right to east and sunward fly, 
 ^' Or to the left to darkling west they wend. 
 " Let us with mighty Zeus' designs comply, 
 " Who mortals and immortals doth command. 
 " One augury is best, to fight for native land. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But why should' st thou fear war and fight ? For we 
 '' The rest by th' Argive ships might all be slain 
 " And thou not fear to fall ; for lacks in thee 
 " A firm-fight, battling heart. But if abstain 
 ^' From fight thou dost, or mak'st from war refrain 
 " Another one by thy persuasions bent, 
 " Smit with my spear thy life shall straight be ta'en." 
 This said, he leads. They shouting with him went 
 And thunder-loving Zeus from Ida's mountains sent 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A storm of wind that straight to th' ships drave dust, 
 Dull'd th' Achives' sense, gave Hector glory high 
 And Trojans, who his signs and own strength trust, 
 And break th' Achasans' wall gigantic try ; 
 The turrets there and bulwarks tore away. 
 And pillars lever'd up, which th' Achives set 
 r th' ground to buttress up their towers thereby. 
 These tore they down, through th' Achives' wall to get 
 So trusting. But the Danai not yielded yet. 
 
 V 3 
 
294 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 With oxen's hides the bulwarks they defending 
 Thrust back the foes that near'd the wall. The twain 
 Ajaces cheered from towers, on all sides wending 
 Th' Achaeans' strength upstirring there amain. 
 And this with honied words, and that again 
 With harsh rebuk'd whom seen to battle slow : — 
 " Friends, Argives ! whoso best, who middling then, 
 " Who worse ; for all in war not like. But now 
 " There 's work for all,and this yourselves in sooth do know. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Let not a man to th' ships, because he hear 
 " This one so threatening, turn him back, but go 
 " Eight onwards ye, and one another cheer. 
 " If grant us Zeus, Olympian-lightner, so, 
 " Th' attack repell'd to th' town then chase the foe." 
 I' th' front thus they arous'd th' Achaeans' fight. 
 And as full thickly fall the flocks of snow 
 On wintry day when Zeus, the counsel-dight. 
 Is mov'd to snow on men, his weapons brings to sight. ^^^ 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Lulls winds asleep ^^^, then pours, nor ceases ere 
 High mountains' summits, headlands' tops he hide, 
 And blooming plains, and men's rich labours fair ; 
 On th' hoar sea shed, and ports, and sea-shore wide, 
 Stays it th' upwashing wave, but all beside 
 Is cover'd up with Zeus' storm's over-fall. 
 So stones from them flew thick on either side 
 At Trojans these, from Trojans those withal 
 At Achives hurl'd. And uproar rose along the wall. 
 
BOOK XII. 30—35. 295 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Nor Trojans sootli with brilliant Hector had 
 E'en then broke through the portals of the wall 
 And lengthy bar, but Zeus deep-counsell'd made 
 His son Sarpedon on the Argives fall, 
 Like lion on the crook-horn kine withal. 
 Before him straight he held his fair round targe 
 Of brass. With beaten brass the smith had all 
 O'erlaid, and sewn inside skins thick and large, 
 And golden rods continuous round its circling marge. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 This ^fore him held, and shaking javelins twain, 
 He went like lion mountain-bred, that long 
 In want of flesh, by stout heart stirr'd, is fain 
 Attempt the sheep, and comes to th' sheep-fold strong. 
 Though find he shepherd-men that them among 
 With dogs and spears do watch the sheep, away 
 He '11 not without attempt, but drag along 
 He will, in-leaping 'mong them there, his prey, 
 Or else himself doth javelin hurl'd by swift hand slay. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Divine Sarpedon's soul so urg'd him on 
 T' attack the wall, and break the bulwark through. 
 To Glaucus straight Hippolochus' brave son : — 
 " Glaucus, why in Lycia is 't they do 
 " With seat and meats, full cups, extol us two, 
 " Look up to us as gods ? Large portion fair 
 " We till by Xanthus' banks with soil to grow 
 " Both wine and corn. 'Mong Lycians foremost e'er 
 ow fits we stand, and brunt of raging battle bear. 
 
 u 4 
 
296 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " That thus may stoutly-cuirass^d Ly clans say 
 " Not unrenown'd our kings rule Lycia bright. 
 " Fat sheep and choicest dulcet wine do they 
 " Consume. But then all excellent their might, 
 " Since they amongst the foremost Lycians fight. 
 " This war escaping if we should, my friend, 
 '' Be aye from age and death exempted quite 
 " Not 'mong the foremost then would I contend 
 Myself, nor thee to man-ennobling battle send. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " But now that myriad fates of death there be 
 " Which mortal can nor shun nor turn aside 
 " Let's go and glory give, or take it we." 
 He said, nor Glaucus flinched nor not complied. 
 Huge band of Lycians leading straight they hied. 
 Them Peteus' son Menestheus saw aghast. 
 His tower it was they, fraught with mischief, nigh'd. 
 In search of chief through th' Achive towers he cast 
 His eyes for aid t' his comrades 'gainst destruction vast. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 He saw th' Ajaces, war-insatiate pair. 
 Standing, and Teucer, just come forth from tent. 
 At hand. Yet not his shouting reach'd him there, 
 So huge the din : to heav'n the uproar went 
 From batter'd shields and plumed helmets sent, 
 And from the gates. For at them stood the foe, 
 And strove to break by force, on ent'ring bent. 
 Herald Thootes sendeth he to Ajax : — " Go, 
 " Thootes, run and call th' Ajaces ; call the two ; 
 
BOOK XII. 38—41. 297 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " For that were best of all. Dire loss will here 
 " Be soon. Those Lycian chiefs so tempest down ^^^, 
 " That erst were wont through fiercest fights career. 
 "' But if they Ve also toil and conflict yon, 
 "" Then come the valiant Ajax Telamon 
 " Alone, and Teucer follow skill'd with bow." 
 He said. The herald slights not, but did run 
 Along the brass -mail'd Achives' wall and go 
 And by th' Ajaces stand, and straight address'd them so: — 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Ajaces ! brass-maij'd Argives^ chiefs, in troth 
 " Go yonder urgeth Zeus-nurs'd Peteus' son 
 " To share somewhat their toil. He'd rather both, 
 *' For that were best of all. Dire loss will soon 
 " Be there, those Lycian chiefs so tempest down 
 "" That erst were wont career fierce battles through. 
 " But if there's toil and conflict here, alone 
 " Then Ajax Telamon the valiant go, 
 " And Teucer follow him, so skilful with the bow." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 He said. Huge Ajax Telamon complied. 
 Quick winged words t' O'iliades spake he : — 
 " Here Ajax and strong Lycomedes bide, 
 " The Danai to battle urging ye, 
 " While I go yon and fight, and presently 
 " I will return, when I Ve delivered them." 
 This said, went Ajax Telamon away. 
 His brother Teucer too, whose sire the same. 
 With them Pandion bearing Teucer's bow there came. 
 
 L 
 
298 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 When reach'd they lofty-sourd Menestheus' tower, 
 Within the wall they went where toiled those, 
 For on to th' bulwarks came with whirlwind stour ^^^ 
 The Lycians' chief and couns'llors brave. Oppose 
 Them they in conflict dire. The war-cry rose. 
 First Ajax Telamon a man doth slay, 
 Sarpedon^s friend, Epicles brave. He throws 
 At him a jagged stone that in his way, 
 Enormous, on the battlement the topmost lay ; 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 With both hands held it scarce in 's prime had one 
 Of mortals now. But he did lift, and throw. 
 And smashed his four-con'd helm, and crush'd each bone 
 In ^s head. From tower, like diver, plung'd the foe. 
 Life left his bones. And Teucer shot with bow 
 Glaucus, Hippolochus' brave son, whom saw 
 He then with bare arm rush to th' wall, and so 
 Made cease from fight ; who did by stealth withdraw, 
 Lest wounded seeing him some Achive might with words 
 o'ercraw.^^^ 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Sarpedon sorrow seiz'd at Glaucus gone 
 As soon as he perceiv'd. Nathless the fight 
 Forgat not he, but there Alcraaon, son 
 Of Thestor, did with spear assailing smite, 
 And drew it out. Foil' wing to th' spear forth-right 
 He fell. His arms rang 'bout him brass-inlaid. 
 Sarpedon bulwark seiz'd with hands of might, 
 And pull'd, and down came all. And bare was laid 
 The wall above, and road for many thus he made. 
 
BOOK XII. 42—47. 299 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Him Ajax, Teucer, both assail'd. And this 
 
 His man y-shelt'ring shield 's bright belt on 's breast 
 
 With arrow smote. But Zeus averts y-wis 
 
 Fate from his son, lest at the ships opprest 
 
 He die. On ^s shield forth leaping Ajax thrust. 
 
 Through went his spear, and him, though eager, stay'd. 
 
 He yields a space. But not retires, for trust 
 
 To win him glory there his spirit did. 
 
 To th' godlike Lycians turning then he call'd, and said : — ■ 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " Lycians, why valour slack ? 'Tis hard for me, 
 " Though strong, to break and set to th' ships a way. 
 " All follow. Work of many best will be." 
 He said. They rev'rent hear their sovereign say. 
 And round their couns'llor-king thick gather they. 
 The Argives stronger their phalanges make 
 Within the wall. Great work before them lay. 
 For neither Lycians brave the wall could break 
 Of Danai, and so their way to th' vessels take ; 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Nor yet the valiant warrior-Danai 
 Were able e'er from wall the Lycians then 
 To thrust away, when once they drew a-nigh. 
 And as two men for boundaries strife maintain 
 In common ground, with measuring rods the twain, 
 In scanty space contending for their right. 
 So these the bulwarks part ; o'er which amain 
 About each other's breasts they cleaving smite 
 The bull's-hide shields orbicular, and bucklers light. 
 
300 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 In flesh were many smit with brass severe, 
 Both those that turning did the back lay bare, 
 And many through the very buckler sheer. 
 With men's blood towers and bulwarks everywhere 
 Be sprent by Trojans and Ach^ans there. 
 Yet could they not make th' Achives fly. Both be 
 As scales wool-working honest dame with care, 
 While holding weight and wool, trims equally, 
 That for her children earn a scanty wage may she. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Of these so equal war and battle hung 
 Ere Zeus gave higher fame to Priam's son, 
 Brave Hector, who to th' Achives' wall first sprung^ 
 And calling to the Trojans, shouted : — " On ! 
 " Ye tame-steed Trojans ! th' Argives' wall break down, 
 " And on their ships then fire strange burning throw." 
 He urgent spake. With ears heard every one. 
 And straight to th' wall in column rush they so, 
 And on to th' battlements, spears pointed wielding, go. 
 
 L. 
 
 And Hector seizing bare a stone, that stood 
 Before the gates, and, broad at base, above 
 Was sharp, which scarce two men the strongest could 
 Of folk from ground to wagon lev'ring move 
 As men be now. He wields with ease, for Jove 
 The son of crafty Kronos made it light. 
 As shepherd beareth eath ram's fieece that prove 
 Doth little weight to him, in one hand pight. 
 The stone so lifting bare to th' gate-planks Hector bright. 
 
BOOK XII. 48—52. 301 
 
 LI. 
 
 These fenc'd the gates, strong fitting bivalve, high. 
 Two bolts alternate fasten'd them inside. 
 One key for all. He went and stood full nigh. 
 And mid-most struck with all his strength applied, 
 And to enhance the blow stood straddling wide. 
 The hinges both he brake. By 'ts weight roll'd down 
 The stone within. Loud creak'd the gates. Abide 
 Could not the bolts. On all sides shatter'd thrown 
 Were then the planks by force impetuous of the stone. 
 
 LII. 
 
 In Hector sprang with aspect like swift night, 
 And gleam'd in brass that flesh encircled dire. 
 Two darts he held. None meet and stop him might 
 Save gods, when in the gates he sprang. Like fire 
 His two eyes blaz'd. He turn'd with voice t' inspire 
 The Trojans climb the wall. His voice they heard, 
 And scal'd the wall and pour'd through gates. Eetire 
 On every side did Danai, and skirr'd ^ 
 To th' hollow ships, and mighty tumult was upstirr'd. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XIII, 
 
 Zeus when he'd Trojans set and Hector nigh 
 The ships, by these to toil and ceaseless care 
 He left them, while his lustrous eyes to spy 
 The earth he turn'd, where horsemen Thracians were, 
 And close-fight Mysi, Hippomolgi fair, 
 Milk-fed, long-liv'd, of men most just. Nor bend 
 To Troy did he his lustrous eyes, for ne'er, 
 He thought, would any of th' immortals wend 
 To help the Trojans, or the Danai defend. 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor vain Earth- Shaker's watch, who view'd the fight 
 From wood-crown'd Thracian Samos ^^^ wond'ringly 
 From th' highest peak ; whence seen all Ida might 
 And Priam's town, and ships Achaean be. 
 There come fro' th' deep he sat, and griev'd to see 
 Th' Achaeans by the Trojans thus subdued. 
 And wroth with Zeus do^vn mountain steep went he 
 With striding feet. The long hills shook, and wood 
 Beneath Poseidon's feet immortal as he strode. 
 
BOOK XIII. 1 — 5. 303 
 
 III. 
 
 Three strides he took, the fourth f his goal he came 
 To Mg9s, where in sea-depths palace rare, 
 Gold, glist'ring, undecaying, built for him. 
 Arrived, the steeds to car he harness'd there 
 Brass-footed, swift, with manes of golden hair. 
 With gold his flesh y-clad, the whip took he, 
 Of gold well-made, and clomb his chariot fair. 
 O'er wave he drove, and sea-beasts in their glee 
 From all their haunts came forth, rejoic'd their king to see. 
 
 IV. 
 
 With joy the sea disparted. On they flew 
 Nor underneath was brazen axle wet. 
 To th' Achive ships the bounding steeds him drew. 
 There lies in depths o' th' deep a cavern great 
 'Twixt Tenedos and rugged Imbrus set. 
 Stay'd steeds Shake-Earth Poseidon there, untied 
 From car, ambrosia gave, cast o'er their feet 
 Gold fetters break not, loose not, so t' abide 
 Their king's return, who to the host Achaean hied. 
 
 The Trojans sooth united all, like flame 
 Or tempest, foil' wing Hector Priam's son, 
 All eager, noisy, shouting, onwards came, 
 And thought th' Acha3ans' ships to seize anon 
 And there th' Achaeans slaughter every one. 
 Gird-earth, Earth-Shaker, though, from depths of sea 
 Poseidon coming, stirr'd the Argives on. 
 With Calchas' form, and voice untiring, he 
 Th' Ajaces first address'd, though prompt themselves 
 they be. 
 
304 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Ajaces, ye th' Achaeans' folk will save 
 " With thought of valour, none of chilly flight. 
 " Elsewhere I fear not Trojans^ strong arms brave 
 " Who 've scal'd the wall en masse* For buskin-dight 
 " AchaBans bear will all. Yet I 'm in fright 
 " We suffer aught where rabid, like the flame, 
 " Leads Hector, Zeus the mighty's son self-hight. 
 " May you then thus some god your souls inflame 
 To stand up strong yourselves, and others urge the same. 
 
 VII. 
 
 *' Him then though eager drive from swift ships out 
 " E'en though Olympius self hath stirr'd him so." 
 This said. Gird-earth, Earth- Shaker them y-smote 
 With sceptre, and did vigor in them throw. 
 Their limbs, their hands and feet made nimble grow. 
 And as a hawk swift-pinion' d taketh wing 
 And doth, from steep rock rising, headlong go 
 To chace a bird i' th' plain : so did the king 
 The Shaker of the earth, Poseidon from them spring. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 First knew Oilean Ajax swift and said 
 To Telamonian Ajax: — " Ajax, we 
 " B' Olympian god in prophet-guise are bid 
 " To fight by th' ships. For prophet Calchas he 
 " The Augur's not. For I behind did see 
 " His steps in going, calves and feet. For know 
 " The gods is eath. And in my breast to me 
 " My soul is stirr'd to war and fight, and so 
 *' For battle yearn my hands above, my feet below." 
 
BOOK xiii. 6 — 11. 305 
 
 IX. 
 
 Him answering Telamonian Ajax said : — 
 *^ So 'bout my spear my strong hands yearn, and higher 
 " My spirit swells, and I am onwards sped 
 " Of both feet under me ; my strong desire 
 ^' Alone t' encounter Hector's quenchless fire." 
 To one another so discoursing those. 
 With fighting joy the god did them inspire. 
 Meanwhile Gird-Earth doth hindmost Achives rouse. 
 Who by the vessels swift their wearied hearts repose, 
 
 X. 
 
 Whose limbs y-loos6d were with grievous toil; 
 While sorrow in their souls doth rise to see 
 The Trojans scale the mighty wall with coil. 
 They saw, and tears shed 'neath their brows, for flee 
 They thought they should not this calamity. 
 But Shake-Earth coming rous'd the ranks with ease. 
 On Teucer first and Leitus came he, 
 Peneleus, Thoas, and Meriones, 
 Deipyrus, Antilochus, war-skilful these. 
 
 XI. 
 
 With wing'd word urg*d them he : — " Argives, shame ! 
 
 " I 'm sure our ships were safe if ye but fight. 
 
 " But slack sad war, and now 's the day that tame 
 
 ^' Us will the Trojans. Gods ! How strange a sight 
 
 " And dire mine eyes behold, unthought of quite 
 
 " By me, the Trojans at our ships ! who erst 
 
 '^ Were like the deer that take through forest flight, 
 
 " And jackals', leopards', lions' prey through hurst 
 
 At random wander weak, for combat never nurst. 
 
 X 
 
306 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " So Trojans erst th' Achaean s' hands, and might 
 *' Would ne'er stand up agamst one jot, but now 
 ^' Far off the town by th' hollow ships they fight, 
 " Through leader's wrong, and folk's remissness slow, 
 " Who wroth with him their ships defend not, though 
 " They 're by them slain. Wrong hath Atrides done, 
 " The hero broad-rule Agamemnon, so 
 " To have dishonour'd Peleus' swift-foot son, 
 " But us on that account slack war behoveth none. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Quick heal we this, for souls of brave men heal. ^^^ 
 *' Nor longer well your strenuous valour slack 
 ** Can ye, the army's valiantest. I feel 
 " The man's not wrong who, weak, from war hangs back. 
 " With you I 'm wroth at heart. sloths, ye '11 make 
 " With this your sluggardise soon worser woe. 
 " Think each of shame and blame his doings track. 
 " Huge strife is up. By th' ships fights Hector, who 
 " War- valiant, strong, hath broke the gates and long bar 
 through." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Gird-Earth ^^^ exhorting thus th' Achaeans mov'd. 
 Stood strong phalanges round th' Ajaces twain, 
 Which Ares coming had not disapprov'd. 
 Nor yet stir-folk Athenia. Choicest men 
 And best bide Hector and the Trojans then. 
 Spears close to spears, on bucklers bucklers rest, 
 Shield shield, helm helmet, man doth man sustain. 
 And horse-hair plumed helms, with dazzling crest, 
 Touch'd as they nod. So -serried close they stood com- 
 press'd. 
 
BOOK XIII. 12—17. 307 
 
 XV. 
 
 And spears were bent by strong hands brandished, 
 And fain would onward they, on fight intent. 
 But first, the Trojans charg'd. And Hector led. 
 Who rush'd like rolling stone from cliff-brink sent 
 By torrent flood, when tempest-rain hath rent 
 Its holdings on the rugged rock. Away 
 It leaps and flies, and echoes turbulent 
 Wakes in the wood, and doth for nothing stay 
 Till reach'd the plain, where eager roll no more it may. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 So Hector 'd threaten'd eath to reach the sea, 
 Achaean ships, and tents. But reach'd th' array 
 Of dense phalanges stood close grappling he. 
 Him th' Achives' sons thrust back with falchions' sway 
 And twin-edg'd spears. He rough repuls'd gave way. 
 And shouting loud addressed the Trojan throng : — 
 " Trojans, and Lycians, close-fight Dardans, stay, 
 " Keep firm. Th' Achaeans will not stop me long, 
 ** Tower-fashion though they have themselves embattled 
 strong. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " But to my spear, methinks, they '11 yield anon 
 " If truly Here's lofty thund'ring spouse, 
 " The chiefest of the gods, hath urg'd me on." 
 This said, doth each one's strength and spirit rouse. 
 Deiphobus, high-thoughted, pac'd 'mong those, 
 Priamides, with buckler round held out 
 Before. Light footing 'neath his shield he goes. 
 Merion at him aim'd shining spear, and smote, 
 And miss'd not, on his bull's hide ovhhd buckler stout. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 But pierc'd not through. For first the lengthy spear 
 Snapp'd at the stem. Deiphobus before 
 Him far thrust out the bull's hide shield ; for fear 
 He did the war-skill'd Merion's lance. Back bore 
 The hero to his comrades, chafing sore 
 For vict'ry both, and spear that brake. He goes 
 To th' ships and tents Achasan back once more 
 To fetch a lengthy spear, he 'd left 'mong those 
 In 's tent. The rest fought on, and war-cry quenchless 
 rose. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 First Telamonian Ajax slew a man, 
 Brave Imbrius, steed-rich Mentor's son, who had 
 Dwelt in Pedaeus ere arrived han ^^^ 
 Th' Achaeans' sons. The spurious child he did 
 Of Priam, fair Medesicaste, wed. 
 Danaian ships arriv'd, to Troy he went, 
 'Mong Trojans shone, with Priam habited, 
 Who grac'd him like his sons. On th' ear him hent ^^^ 
 Telamon's son with lengthy lance, then spear out-rent. 
 
 XX. 
 
 He fell, as on a mountain-top, that 's round 
 Far seen, an ash brass-hewn vails earth- ward low 
 Its tender leaves. He fell, his brass arms sound. 
 Forth Teucer rush'd, to spoil his arms not slow, 
 And at him Hector shining spear did throw. 
 He saw and scantly 'scap'd the brazen spear, 
 Which Kteatus Actorion's off*spring so, 
 Amphimachus, as he to war drew near. 
 Smote on the breast. He fell. His arms resounded drear. 
 
BOOK XIII. 18—23. 309 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Rusli'd Hector temple-fitting helm from head 
 To tear of brave Amphimachus the stout. 
 Ajax at rushing Hector bright spear sped, 
 But flesh not reach'd, ^twas cover'd all about 
 With dreadful brass. But buckler's boss he smote 
 And him with great strength thrust. He back did fare 
 From both the dead. Th' Achaeans drew them out. 
 And Stichius and divine Menestheus there, 
 Athenian chiefs, Amphimachus to th^ Achives bare. 
 
 t XXII. 
 
 I 
 
 I Th^ Ajaces bent on war drew Imbrius off. 
 
 I As lions twain from saw-tooth'd dogs a goat 
 
 I Do seize, and bear through tangled bushes rough, 
 
 I And high 'bove ground do in their jaws hold out, 
 
 f So him high holding both Ajaces stout 
 
 I Of arms despoil'd. Oiliades his head, 
 
 I Wroth for Amphimachus, from soft neck smote, 
 
 ^ And like a bowl then sent it rolling mid 
 
 The throng. Fall in the dust at Hector's feet it did- 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 And then at heart full wroth Poseidon grows, 
 For grandson slain in combat fierce. Career 
 He did to th' Achives' ships, and tents, and rouse 
 Danaians, working Trojans sorrow drear. 
 Idomeneus the spear-fam'd met him here. 
 From comrade coming ; who 'd from fight but late 
 Come to him, smit i' th' knee with brass severe. 
 Bare him his mates. His charge to th' leeches set. 
 This left his tent, to battle eager back to get. 
 
 x3 
 
310 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 King Shake-Earth spake, and Thoas' voice put on, 
 Andrsemon's offspring, who th* ^tolians sway'd 
 Through Pleuron all and lofty Calydon, 
 Whom as a god his people honored. 
 " Idomeneus, Cretans^ chief, where fled 
 " The threats th' Achseans' sons did Trojans threat ? ^^ 
 Idomeneus, the Cretans' chieftain, said : — 
 " Thoas, not a man 's to blame for it, 
 " That I do know. For war we lack not skill nor wit. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " None is there whom detains disheartening fear, 
 " Nor doth to terror yielding any shun 
 " Pernicious war. But seems that perish here, 
 " From Argos far, th' Achseans every one 
 " Disgraced would pleasure Kronos' mighty son. 
 " But Thoas, thou war-prompt in former tide 
 " Another seeing slack, wouldst urge him on. 
 " So slack not now, but urge each man beside.'^ 
 To him Poseidon then, that shakes the earth, replied : 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Idomeneus, may that man never back 
 " From Troas more return, but here the prey 
 " And sport of dogs become, whoso would slack 
 " With willing heart his battling fierce this day : 
 " Now take thine arms and come. For we away 
 " Must haste. We '11 profit haply since we 're twain. 
 '' Men's valour join'd avails though feeble they. 
 " But we with valiantest can fight maintain." 
 This said, the god to fight of men return'd again. 
 
BOOK XIII. 24—29. 311 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Idomeneus, when reacli'd his well-built tent, 
 In fair arms clad his flesh, two spears did take. 
 And went like lightning, Kronos^ son in hand hath hent^^^. 
 And doth to men from sheen Olympus shake, 
 A signal shown. Its flashings bright outbreak. 
 So as he ran the brass shone 'bout his breast. 
 Merion, his servant good, did towards him make, 
 By 's tent, who brass spear fetching thither press'd. 
 And him the strength of King Idomeneus ^^^ address'd : — 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " Merion, Molus' swift-foot son, most dear 
 
 *' Of friends. Why com'st thou, leaving war and fight ? 
 
 *' Art smit ? With spear-point gall'd ? Or seek'st me 
 
 here 
 " With news ? To sit in tents I 've no delight, 
 " But would to war." Spake Merion, prudent wight: — 
 " Idomeneus, brass-clad Cretans' head, 
 " Pm come to fetch what spear remain there might 
 " r th' tents. For break the one that erst I had 
 " In smiting shield of haught Deiphobus I did." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Him answer'd then Idomeneus withal. 
 The Cretan's chieftain : — " Spears, if so inclin'd, 
 " Be 't one or twenty, leaning 'gainst the wall 
 " Within the tent all glist'ring thou wilt find, 
 " I 've ta'en from Trojans slain. For I 've no mind 
 " At distance from my foes to stand and fight, 
 " And therefore spears ^^^ and bossy shields are mine, 
 " And helms, and coats of mail refulgent bright." 
 And him Meriones then answer'd, prudent wight : — 
 
 X 4 
 
312 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " I too possess, within pavilion mine, 
 " And sable ship, much Trojan spoils y-pight, 
 "But these be not at hand. Nor, I opine, 
 " Am I forgetful aught of vaVrous might, 
 " But in the front in man-ennobling fight 
 " Do stand, whene'er the strife of war doth grow. 
 *' To other brass-arm'd Achive hap I might, 
 " Battle unseen, but thou, methinks, should' st know/' 
 Idomeneus, the Cretans' chief, him answer'd so : — 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " I know thy valour. This why talk of then ? 
 
 " For if by th' ships were now the best pick'd out 
 
 " For ambush, (where men's valour most is seen, 
 
 " Where who 's the coward 's shown, and who the stout. 
 
 " For much doth coward's colour change about, 
 
 " Of him not firm the soul in mind distrest, 
 
 *' And knees doth shift, on both feet sits the cow'ring lout, 
 
 " While flutt'ring beats his heart within his breast, 
 
 Expecting death. Nor may his teeth for chatt'ring rest. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " But valiant warrior's colour changes not, 
 " Nor is he sore dismay 'd when couching low 
 " In ambush first, but in encounter hot 
 " At soonest longs to mix.) There none I trow 
 *' Would blame thy force or hands, for, toiling so, 
 " If smit in fight, or close or distant be 't, 
 '^ Not neck behind, nor back touch would the blow, 
 *' But on thy bosom, or thy belly beat, 
 *' As thou wert rushing on where foremost warriors meet. 
 
BOOK XIII. 30—35. 313 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 *^ Of this come let's no more stand talking now 
 " Like babes, lest some past measure blame us here. 
 " But go to th' tent, and strong spear take thee thou." 
 He said. Meriones, swift Ares' peer. 
 Took quickly from the tent a brazen spear. 
 Idomeneus then sought he battle-bold. 
 As man-bane Ares war-wards goes and Fear, 
 With him his lov'd son, fierce and uncontroll'd 
 Doth wend, who hath appall'd e'en warrior stedfast soul'd. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 From Thrace with th' Ephyri these armour don 
 Or with the Phlegians brave. But to the two 
 They hearken not, but glory give to one, 
 Merion, Idomeneus, men's chieftains, so 
 In dazzling brass y-clad to battle go. 
 First Merion spake : — " Deucalion's offspring, where, 
 " To th' army's right, or midst, or left, wilt thou 
 " Enter th' array. In fight so worsted ne'er 
 " Methinks were the Achaean s, of the comely hair." 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Him Cretan chief, Idomeneus, address'd : — 
 " To fend the centre ships be others pight, 
 " Th' Ajaces twain, and Teucer, th' Achives' best 
 " At archery, and good at stedfast fight. 
 *' They '11 Hector, Priam's son, war-eager wight 
 " And strong employ. Though war he 's bent upon, 
 " Not eath he '11 quell their stalwart hands and might, 
 " And burn the ships, unless great Kronos' son 
 Himself send brand upon the swift ships blazing down. 
 
314 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 ^^ Not yield would Ajax Telamon to man 
 " That's mortal and Deraeter's fruit doth eat, 
 " And crush with brass and mighty stones we can. 
 " Achilles e'en, rank-shatt'rer, he might meet 
 *^ In stand-up fight, though not so swift his feet. 
 " So we '11 to th' left, that whether we renown 
 " Give them, or others us, we soonest weet." 
 He said, and Merion, Ares' paragon. 
 Until they reach'd the part he bade, went pacing on. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 They seeing Idomeneus, for strength like flame. 
 In varied arms, himself and servant, go 
 Through th' host exhorting, on him all they came. 
 Contention fierce doth round the ship-sterns grow. 
 As tempests drive, when piping winds do blow. 
 What time most dust 's upon the road, which they 
 Gath'ring a heap in mighty cloud up-throw : 
 E'en thus their battle join'd, who through th' array 
 With keen-edged brass each other eager sought to slay. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 The man-devouring battle bristled o'er 
 With long flesh-cutting spears, that grasping tight 
 They wielded there. And eyes were daz'd before 
 The brazen gleam from helmets flashing light, 
 From breast-plates burnish'd fresh, and bucklers bright 
 Of these encount'ring. Stout were he of heart 
 Who 'd seen unmov'd their toiling with delight. 
 The mighty sons of Kronos either part 
 Espousing work'd the warrior-heroes grievous smart. 
 
BOOK XIII. 36—41. 315 
 
 Zeus would that Hector and the Trojans won, 
 To grace Achilles swift. Nor utterly 
 "Would have th' Achaeans slain 'fore Ilium's town, 
 But Thetis and her brave son honour'd be. 
 Rouse th' Argives did Poseidon, th' hoary sea 
 By stealth emerging from, them mickle griev'd to vicAV 
 By Trojans quell'd, and wroth with Zeus was he. 
 The race of both the same, like lineage too, 
 But Zeus he was the elder born, and more he knew. ^^^ 
 
 XL. 
 
 So shunn'd Poseidon giving open aid. 
 But secret did as man the host excite. 
 And they fierce strife and fell war's cable sway'd, 
 Alternate straining, break the which none might/' 
 Nor slack, that loos'd the knees of many a wight. 
 Though gray, did leap, and to Danaians shout, 
 Idomeneus, and Trojans mov'd to flight. 
 For there Othrj^oneus, who 'd late from out 
 Cabesus come, at rumour of the war, he smote. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Fairest he wooed of Priam's daughters bright, 
 Cassandra dowerless, vowing derring-do 2^^, 
 To drive th' Achseans' sons, in their despite. 
 From Troy. Old Priam promis'd her, and so 
 He on that promise fought. At him did throw 
 Idomeneus a well-aim'd glitt'ring spear. 
 As proud he pac'd along. Nor ward the blow 
 Could coat of brass he wore. Mid-belly sheer 
 It pierc'd. With sound he fell. His foe did boastful 
 jeer: 
 
816 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " Othryoneus, of all men, thee indeed 
 " I praise, if thou to Priam Dardan's son 
 " Keep promise all. He daughter promised. 
 " And soothly this we promis'd had, and done, 
 " Given of Atrides^ daughters fairest one 
 " From Argos fetch'd to wed, if verily 
 " For us thou 'dst capture Ilium's well-dwelt town. 
 " But come along, at ships that traverse sea 
 " Of nuptials well confer ; no niggard fathers we." 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 This said, him dragged fell fight along 
 Idomeneus. Up Asius came a-foot, 
 Before his steeds, that breathed on 's shoulders strong 
 As them the driver held. He 'd fain have smote 
 Idomeneus, who fore-hand pierc'd his throat 
 Below the chin, and spear sent driving through. 
 He fell as fall an oak, or poplar mote. 
 Or lofty pine, in mountains shipwrights do. 
 For ship-wood, with their axes freshly sharpen'd hew. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 So he, before his car and horses here. 
 Lay stretch'd, and ground his teeth, the dust and gore 
 Convulsive clutching. While his charioteer 
 Distraught had not the mind he had of yore, 
 Nor durst turn back his steeds and scape before 
 His foemen's hands. Antilochus Stay-fight ^^^ 
 His midrifi* struck with spear. Nor coat he wore 
 Of brass suffic'd, but through mid-belly right 
 It pierc'd. He panting fell from well- wrought chariot 
 bright. 
 
BOOK XIII. 42 — 47. 317 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The steeds brave Nestor's son Antilochus 
 Fro' th' Trojans drave to th' Achives buskin-dight. 
 Drew nigh t' Idomeneus, Deiphobus 
 For Asius griev'd, and aim'd a javelin bright. 
 Idomeneus, of brass spear catching sight, 
 Escaped it, hid by shield that, rounded true 
 Of hides compact, and brass out-flashing light, 
 He bore, and which had fitted handles two. 
 With this he screened him quite ; the brazen spear o'erflew. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Grazed by the spear the shield did hollow ring, 
 Nor hurl'd his stalwart hand in vain, but smote 
 Hipp^sides Hypsenor, people-king, 
 'Neath midrifl* liver pierc'd, and knees so stout 
 Straight loos'd. Deiphobus 'gan boastful shout : — 
 " Aveng'd is Asius. Journeying though he be 
 " To Hades, mighty janitor, no doubt 
 " He'll joy at heart I've sent him company." 
 He said, and grief to th' Achives grew, as boasted he. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Main grief did brave Antilochus affect. 
 Who vex'd forgat not yet his mate. Career 
 He did to screen him, and with shield protect. 
 Him then Mecisteus, Echius' son, drew near, 
 And eke divine Alastor, comrades dear. 
 And groaning bare to th' hollow ships from fight. 
 Idomeneus, his huge force slack'd not here, 
 But long'd some Trojan still to clothe with night, 
 Or fall himself, so save th' Achaeans loss he might. 
 
318 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIIt. 
 
 Came Zeus-nurs'd ^syetas' offspring dear 
 Alcatholis, Anchises' son-in-law, whose bride 
 His eldest girl, Hippodamia fair. 
 She was of sire and mother's heart the pride 
 At home, her youth's companions far outvied 
 For loveliness, for labour, and for mind. 
 So spous'd her noblest man through Troas wide. 
 Him 'fore Idomeneus subdue, and blind 
 His lustrous eyes Poseidon did, and bright limbs fett'ring 
 bind. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Flee back he could not nor avoid, but like 
 Some high leaf 'd tree or column, stiff he stood, 
 As him that hero there Idomeneus did strike 
 Mid-breast with spear, and brake brass corselet good. 
 That fence his flesh of yore from mischief could. 
 It crackled cleft by spear. With sound he fell. 
 The lance in 's heart, which, throbbing, th' iron-shod 
 Butt-end of spear at every heaving swell 
 Did cause to shake. And then the strength of mighty spear 
 was still. 
 
 L. 
 
 Idomeneus loud boasting shouts : — " Think'st thou, 
 " Deiphobus, we 're quits, one slain for three, 
 " To vaunt so vain. Thyself, friend, stand me now, 
 " What scion of Zeus I 'm hither come, to see. 
 " First Zeus 'gat Minos, Greta's watchman he, 
 " Minos 'gat fam'd Deucalion, offspring dear, 
 " Deucalion me begat, a king to be 
 " In Crete o'er many men. Ships brought me here 
 " To thee, thy sire, and other Trojans bane severe," 
 
BOOK XIII. 48 — 53. 319 
 
 LI. 
 
 He spake. Deiphobus within him weighed, 
 If of the Trojans lofty soul'd he should 
 Go back, and fetch some comrade to his aid, 
 Or whether single-handed try he would. 
 To him then so revolving seem'd it good 
 ^neas seek ; and last of all th' array 
 Found him, who chaf 'd at godlike Priam stood, 
 That him, though brave, 'mong warriors honour pay 
 Did not. Whom then approaching he wing'd words did 
 say : -— 
 
 LII. 
 
 " jEneas, Trojan chief, behooves thee now 
 " Thy sister's husband succour, if so be 
 " The care of kin affect thee aught. Come thou, 
 " We '11 help Alcathoiis, who formerly 
 " As sister's spouse at home did nurture thee. 
 " Him now spear-fam'd Idomeneus hath slain.'' 
 He said, and stirr'd his soul in 's breast. And he 
 Straight sought Idomeneus for fight full fain. 
 But not Idomeneus did boy-like fear attain. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 He stay'd. As mountain-boar on strength relies. 
 And doth men's coming, noisy throng, await 
 In desert spot, with bristling back, and eyes 
 That flash out fire, and doth his tushes whet. 
 All eager men and dogs to overset. 
 So firm spear-fam'd Idomeneus did bide 
 -^neas coming swift. T' his comrades straight, 
 Ascalaphus, and Aphareus, espied, 
 De'ipyrus^^^, Merion, and Antilochus he cried. 
 
320 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 These urging then wing'd words address'd them he: — 
 " Come help me, friends, thus lone, .Eneas sore 
 " I fear, the swift of foot, that comes on me ; 
 " For great at slaught'ring men in fight his power, 
 " And, greatest strength of all, he 'th manhood's flower. 
 " But were we of an age, and thus opin'd, 
 " Much laud would he or I bear from this stour." 
 He said, and they then all, as of one mind. 
 Drew close with shields, that on their shoulders sloped in- 
 clin'd. 
 
 LV. 
 
 ^neas called f his comrades, seeing there 
 De'iphobus, and Paris, and Agenor too. 
 The brave, that Trojan leaders with him were. 
 Then soothly after him the people drew. 
 As follow ram the sheep from pasture do 
 To drink. And shepherd doth at heart delight. 
 So joy'd jEneas' soul in ^s' breast to view 
 So following him a crowd of warriors bright. 
 These 'bout Alcathoiis with long spears close in fight. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 And dread the brass resounded 'bout each breast. 
 As they each other aim'd at through the throng. 
 But two men warriors there, that all the rest 
 Surpass'd, and paragon'd with Ares strong, 
 ^Eneas and Idomeneus, did long 
 With ruthless brass each other's flesh t' have rent, 
 ^neas at Idomeneus first flong. 
 
 Who saw and shunn'd brass spear ; to earth then went 
 Quiv'ring JEneas' dart, from stout hand vainly sent. 
 
BOOK XIII. 54—59. 321 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Idomeneus the while mid-belly smote 
 (Enomaus. The brass, then bursting through 
 The corselet's hollow, ripp'd his entrails out. 
 r th' dust he fell with hand earth clinging-to. 
 Idomeneus indeed from corse out- drew 
 His long-shade spear, but could not armour fair 
 From shoulders strip, the darts so 'bout him flew. 
 Nor longer firm his limbs for charging were 
 To get his own spear back, or shun another's there. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 So warded woful day in standing fight, 
 
 Nor bare him swift his feet from war to flee. 
 
 At him retiring slow hurl'd javelin bright 
 
 Deiphobus, who grudge kept constantly, 
 
 But then too miss'd. Ascalaphus smote he 
 
 With lance, high Ares' son : through shoulder went 
 
 strong spear. 
 I' th' dust he fell, and clutch'd convulsively 
 The ground. Nor shouting Ares strong did hear 
 As yet of son so falling in the fight severe, 
 
 LIX. 
 
 But on Olympus' top was seated he 
 'Neath golden clouds, by Zeus' high purpose pight, 
 Where shut from war the gods immortal be 
 Beside. And these now rush to close -hand fight 
 About Ascalaphus. Snatch'd helmet bright 
 Deiphobus from Ascalaph. Then bound 
 Did Merion, match for Ares, forth, and smite 
 His arm with spear. From out his hand to ground 
 The oblong helmet soothly falling did resound. 
 
322 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 And Merion forth like vulture sprang again, 
 And from his arm's end ^^^ pluck 'd the javelin stout, 
 And back t' his mates. The other's brother then, 
 Polites, him with arms encircled 'bout 
 His waist, and drew from rough-voic'd battle out. 
 Till reach'd swift steeds, in rear of fight that stood 
 With charioteer and chariot quaintly wrought ; 
 To th' town him groaning sore in woful mood 
 They bare, while gush'd from freshly wounded arm the 
 blood. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 The rest fought on, and quenchless war-cry rose, 
 MnesiS forward rush'd, and on the throat 
 Brave Aphareus, that him did there oppose, 
 Caletor's son, with spear keen-pointed smote. 
 Head droop'd aside, and with it buckler stout 
 And helm. Surrounds him spirit- quelling death. 
 Antilochus watch'd Thoon turn about. 
 And rushing wounds him ; vein all severeth 
 That to the neck doth reach, and back through traverseth. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 This then he sever'd quite. The other down 
 I' th' dust fell on his back, both hands stretch'd out 
 To comrades dear. Antilochus rush'd on. 
 And arms from shoulders stripp'd, and look'd about. 
 The Trojans standing round from all sides smote 
 His fair broad shield, but fell brass drive within. 
 And graze Antilochus' soft flesh could not. 
 For so Poseidon, Shake-the-Earth, did screen 
 The son of Nestor mid a many javelins keen. 
 
BOOK XIII. 60—65. 323 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 For he was never once withouten foes, 
 But ever busy in their midst. His spear 
 Is ne'er at rest, but aye at work it goes, 
 Brandish'd and brisk. In mind he purposed here 
 To hurl at one afar, or battle it near. 
 Of him so aiming Asius' son was ware, 
 Brave Adamas, and mid-shield smote with spear 
 Keen-pointed rushing nigh. Point blunted there. 
 Grudging such life, Poseidon of the dark-hued hair. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And there it stay'd, like stake that 's burnt in fire. 
 In buckler of Antilochus, half on the ground. 
 T' his friends' throng fain he 'd 'scaping death retire, 
 But Merion foU'wing him with spear did wound 
 Below the navel, where is Ares found 
 To hapless mortals worst. There javelin strong 
 Infix'd. He sway'd to th' blow, and struggled round 
 The spear, like ox reluctant that with thong 
 Herdsmen in mountains bind, and drag by force along. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 So smit short time he struggled, no long while 
 Till drawing nigh pluck'd out from flesh his spear 
 The hero Merion. Night his eyes did veil. 
 Helenus smote Deipyrus ^^^, temple near. 
 With Thracian falchion huge, helm sev'ring sheer. 
 Which fell to th' ground and stray'd. And as i' th' fight 
 Roll'd 'mong th' Achaean s' feet it did career 
 One pick'd it up. Enwrapt his eyes dark night. 
 Atrides Menelaus sorrow'd at the sight. 
 
 T 2 
 
324 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Threatening king hero Helenas he went, 
 And keen spear shook, whose bow in hand y-pight. 
 The twain drew nigh. With beechen spear one meant 
 To aim, and one from string with arrow light. 
 Then Priam's son his breast with shaft did smite 
 On corselet's hollow. Arrow glanc'd away, 
 As from broad winnowing fan with bounding flight 
 Black beans or peas in threshing floor by sway 
 Of whistling blast, and sturdy winnower's strong hands' 
 play. 
 
 Lxvir. 
 
 From glorious Menelaus' corselet so 
 Far glanc'd, far flew fell shaft. But Atreus* son, 
 Brave Menelaus, hand that held smooth bow 
 Y -smote. In bow through hand brass spear drave on. 
 T' his comrades' throng back went he death to shun. 
 His dangling arm dragg'd spear along the ground, 
 Which high Agenor drew from hand anon. 
 And hand with sheep's wool ^^^ skilful winding round 
 With sling, that servant held to people-shepherd, bound. 
 
 Lxvm. 
 
 Pisander straight at Menelaus bright 
 Career'd, to death's term drawn by fate severe 
 To be, Menelaus, quell'd in fight 
 By thee. When these were come each other near 
 Atrides miss'd, for glanc'd aside the spear. 
 Bright Menelaus' shield Pisander strook 
 But pierce the brass could not for block'd it here 
 The buckler broad. And snapp'd at stem y-broke 
 The spear. But he was glad and did for vict'ry look. 
 
BOOK XIII. 64 — 71. 325 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Silver-stud sword Atrides drew, and sproug 
 Upon Pisander, who 'd neath shield a fair 
 Brass axe on olive handle smooth and long. 
 They met. Helm-cone this smote of thick horse-hair 
 ^Neath crest, whom as he came smote th' other where 
 Brow meets the nose. The bones crash'd in his head. 
 His eyes at 's feet i' th' dust fell bleeding there. 
 He bent and fell. With heel his foe did tread 
 His breast, and spoil his arms, and vaunting word he said: — 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " Leave now swift-steed Danaians' ships will ye, 
 
 " Haught Trojans, satiate ne'er with war-cry drear ! 
 
 " Insult nor shame ye stint not cast on me. 
 
 " Yile dogs ! that thund'ring Zeus' dread wrath not fear, 
 
 " Guest-god who '11 one day raze your city sheer. 
 
 " My virgin bride and chattels store ye 've ta'en, 
 
 '' And causelessly, she gave you guest-like cheer. 
 
 " And now ye cast i' th' ships that cross the main 
 
 Fell fire, and slay th' AchsBan heroes ye would fain. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 " But ye'll one day though eager stay from war. 
 " Sire Zeus ! they say thou dost transcend in mind 
 " All men and gods. From thee though all these are. 
 " Thou to injurious Trojans show'st so kind, 
 " Whose rage is aye unjust, who fill ne'er find 
 " Of woful war. Men cloy of each delight, 
 " Sleep, love, sweet song, and dance of which iticlin'd 
 " A man would rather glut his appetite 
 " Than war. But Trojans sooth insatiate are of fight." 
 
 Y 3 
 
326 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 So said, give gory spoils, from carcase ta'en, 
 T' his mates did Menelaus, and career 
 'Mong foremost. Him attack'd Harpalion then 
 Of king Pylaemenes the son, who here 
 To Troas warring came with father dear. 
 But ne'er saw country more. Atrides nigh 
 He smote mid-shield but could not pierce with spear. 
 T' his friends' throng back he turn'd from death to fly, 
 And, lest with brass one wound him might, did round him 
 
 spy- 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Merion at him departing brass-shaft sends 
 And smote right haunch ; to bladder way it found 
 'Neath bone. There sitting down in hands of friends 
 Out breathing life like worm stretch'd on the ground 
 He lay. The black blood flow'd, earth wetting round. 
 And him the high-soul'd Paphlagonians tend. 
 And lift on car for sacred Ilium bound. 
 Sore griev'd. With them the Sire in tears doth wend, 
 Nor vengeance any for his slaughter'd son obtain'd. 
 
 Lxxrv. 
 
 But Paris sore was wroth him slain to see 
 His guest 'mong Paphlagonians was this one. . 
 For him so wroth sent brazen arrow he. 
 Was one Euchenor Polyides' son 
 The seer, rich, brave who did at Corinth wone 
 Who knew his fate yet cross'd in bark the main. 
 For oft to him had Polyides shown 
 That he with dire disease at home would wane. 
 Or be among th' Achseans' ships by Trojans slain. 
 
BOOK XIII. 72 — 77. 327 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 So Achives^ hard mulct ^^^ shunri'd and sickness dread, 
 Mind's dolours not to bear. Him Paris smote 
 'Neath jaw and ear ; his soul his limbs soon fled 
 And seiz'd him darkness drear. And so they fought 
 Like raging fire. Nor Zeus-lov'd Hector aught 
 Had heard, or known of folk by Argives slain 
 Upon the left, where soon had th' Achives raught 
 Full vict'ry ; Gird-the-Earth, Earth-Shaker, then 
 So stirr'd the Argives, helping them with strength amain. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 But Hector kept where first leap'd gates and wall, 
 And dense Danaians' shielded ranks broke through, 
 Where they on hoar sea's shore the ships withal 
 Aj aces' and Protesilaus' drew ; 
 Where wall most low, where men and horses too 
 Most fierce in fight. And there Boeotians were, 
 Long-rob'd Tonians, Locrians, Phthians, who 
 With fam'd Epeans stopp'd him eager there 
 Fro' th' ships, but from them flame-like Hector godlike 
 thrust could ne'er. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Th' Athenians' best led Peteus' offspring on, 
 Menestheus. Phidas, Stichius, Bias sped 
 With him. Th' Epeans Meges, Phileus' son, 
 Amphion, Dracius lead. The Phthians did 
 Medon and bide-the-fight Podarces head. 
 Godlike Oileus' bastard, Medon, who , 
 Was Ajax' brother, dwell from 's land he did 
 In Phylac^, for man, own brother to 
 The step-dame Eri6pis, King O'lleus' spouse, he slew. 
 
 Y 4 
 
328 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Iphiclus Phylacides' son was he, 
 Podarces. Arm^d 'fore Phthians brave they fought 
 For th' ships in the Boeotians' company. 
 Ajax Oiliades the swift of foot 
 Not stirr'd from Ajax Telamon a jot, 
 But as in field draw plough dark oxen do 
 Alike. Much sweat at horns' roots breaketh out, 
 And polish'd yoke alone doth part the two 
 Down furrow-straining as the share the glebe cuts through. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 So these conjoin'd by one another stood. 
 Friends valiant many foUow'd Ajax Telamon, 
 That took his shield when toil and sweat subdued 
 His knees. But foUow'd there Oileus' son 
 No Locrians brave. For stiff fight stomach none 
 Had they, nor horse-tail'd helmets brazen had, 
 Nor orb^d shields, nor beechen spears, but on 
 Their bows and well-twist wool ^^^ relying, sped 
 To Troy. Shafts show'ring thick, Troy's ranks they scat- 
 tered. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 And those in front then soothly all bedight 
 In cunning wroughten arms with Trojans fought 
 And Hector brass array'd. Conceal'd from sight 
 These ply their shafts behind. Nor Trojans aught 
 Remember'd fight, b}^ arrows so bestraught. 
 And then from ships and tents sore smitten had 
 In flight the Trojans windy Ilium sought. 
 Had not Polydamas stood near and said 
 To Hector brave : — " Hard art thou Hector to persuade. 
 
BOOK XIII. 78—83. 329 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 " Because to thee the god works warlike gave, 
 
 " Wouldst thou in counsel too 'fore others be ? 
 
 " But thou canst all things ne'er together have. 
 
 " To one war's deeds, to one gave deity 
 
 " The dance, t' another song and minstrelsy ; 
 
 " And Zeus set wisdom in another's breast, 
 
 " Which many taste ^^^, which cities saves, but he 
 
 ' " Doth know it chief by whom it is possest. 
 
 " But I will utter what to me doth seem the best. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 " On all sides burns war's wreath encircling thee, 
 " And high-soul'd Trojans since they seal' d the wall 
 ** Some have with arms withdrawn, some battling be 
 " 'Gainst many few, 'bout ships dispers'd withal. 
 " Retire and hither all the chiefest call, 
 " And then upon the whole consult may we, 
 " If on the vessels many-bench'd to fall, 
 " Should god indeed vouchsafe us mastery, 
 " And then if back fro' th' ships withouten injury. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 " For much I fear th' Achaeans will repay 
 
 " Yesterday's debt. For one 's by th' ships ^^^ whose 
 
 greed 
 " Is war, who '11 not from fight entirely stay 
 " I think." So spake Polydamas. His rede 
 As safe pleas'd Hector. Arm'd he sprang with speed 
 From car to ground, and wing'd words him address'd : — 
 " Polydamas, here keep the bravest. Yede 
 " Yonder will I to meet the war, and haste 
 *' Back hither, when on them I 've mandates strict imprest. 
 
330 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 He said and rusli'd, like snowy mount ^^^ appearing, 
 Through Trojans shouting and allies he flew. 
 And these then all the voice of Hector hearing 
 Swift to Polydamas the valiant drew. 
 But Hector foremost ranks went searching through, 
 Deiphobus ; and King Helenus' might ^^^, 
 Asiades Acamas, and Asius too, 
 To find, of Hyrtacus the offspring bright, 
 But these no more he found unslain nor scathless quite. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 By th' Achive ships some slain by Argives lay. 
 And some by th' wall smit close or distant were. 
 At tearful battle's left did he straightway 
 Find Alexander, spouse of Helen fair. 
 Cheering his mates to fight, and chid him there : — 
 " Yile Paris, fair-fornVd, woman-mad, thou wight 
 " Deceptive, where 's Deiphobus, and where 
 " Be now of sovran Helenus the might 
 *^ Asiades Acamas, and Hyrtacus' son Asius bright ? 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " And where 's Othr^^oneus ? Now headlong down 
 " Will Ilium high, now safe 's thy ruin ^^* dire." 
 To him spake Alexander, god-shap'd one : — 
 " Hector, since blame the guiltless thy desire, 
 " At other times far more from war retire 
 " I might. Though coward gat not mother me. 
 " Since thou our comrades' fight by th' ships didst fire, 
 " Unceasing fought with Danai have we. 
 " But these the friends thou askest after smitten be. 
 
BOOK XIII. 84—89. 331 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 " Deiphobus, and royal strength alone 
 " Of Helenus are gone, i' th' hand the twain 
 " With long spears smit. Death hinder'd Kronos' son. 
 " Now lead where prompts thee heart, and mind, and fain 
 " Will we together after thee amain, 
 " Nor valour lack methinks to strength's extent, 
 " For past his strength to war may none attain 
 " Though prompt." With this the hero did content 
 His brother's mind. And where most rag'd the fight they 
 went, 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 'Bout Cfebrion^^^, Polydamas, Phalces 
 Orthaeus, Polypoetes godlike wight, 
 Palmys, Ascanius, Morys, twain be these 
 Hippotion's sons with yester-morning's light 
 From rich Ascania come in turn to fight 
 Impell'd by Zeus. Like tempest-winds they went 
 That from Zeus' thunder on the plain do smite, 
 With uproar stir the deep, waves turbulent 
 On loud sea swell, and foam, these first, those after sent. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 So Trojans some before some rank'd behind 
 FoUow'd all bright with brass their chiefs a-field. 
 Lead did, like Ares bane of human kind, 
 Hector Priamides, and 'fore him wield 
 Thick-hided, roiijnd, with much brass fenc'd, his shield. 
 And round his temples quiver'd helmet bright. 
 He pac'd phalanges round, and tried if yield 
 To him, 'neath buckler footing forth, they might. 
 But did not in their breasts th' Achseans' souls affright. 
 
332 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XC. 
 
 And Ajax first him challeng'd forth to fight 
 Gigantic striding out : — " Come hither nigher 
 " My friend, why wouldst thou thus the A rgives fright ? 
 " Of battle not unskill'd are we, but dire 
 " Afflicts us Achives scourge of Zeus the Sire. 
 " Destroy our ships thy mind did soothly ween, 
 " But we too Ve hands will force thee to retire. 
 " For long ere that, thy well-dwelt city ta'en 
 " Beneath our hands will utterly destroy'd have been." 
 
 xci. 
 
 '* But to thyself I say the time is near 
 " When fleeing thou to Zeus the Sire wilt pray, 
 " And other gods immortal, that career 
 " More swift than hawks thy fair-man'd horses may 
 " Dusting the plain, and bearing thee away 
 " To th' town." Flew as he spake a bird t' his right, 
 A soaring eagle. Th' Achive folk's array 
 Shout, cheer'd with th' omen. Answer'd Hector 
 bright: — 
 " Ajax, vain prater, what hast said, huge braggart-wight ? 
 
 xcii. 
 
 " For would that I were so the son for aye 
 " Of Zeus the segis-arm'd, and borne had me 
 " Here august, and that so honour'd I 
 " Might like Athene and Apollo be, 
 " As woe to Argives all to-day will see, 
 " And thou slain 'mong them if my long spear wait 
 " Thou durst. 'Twill tear thy tender flesh for thee, 
 " And Trojan dogs and birds with flesh and fat 
 " Thou by th' Achaeans' ships wilt falling satiate." 
 
BOOK XIII. 90—93. 333 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 And he when thus he^d spoken led the way, 
 And after him with awful shout they hied 
 And shout withal the people did behind. 
 And Argives eke with answ'ring shout replied 
 On th' other hand, nor valour slipp'd from mind, 
 But did advancing Trojans' bravest bide. 
 Reach'd aether and Zeus' beams the noise on either side. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XIV. 
 I. 
 
 Not Nestor 'scap'd the shout, though drinking he. 
 T' Asclepias' son wing'd words he spake : — " Divine 
 " Machaon, think how will these doings be, 
 " For more by th' ships than usual I opine 
 " The shout of vig'rous youths. But darkling wine 
 " Sit now and drink, until warm bath prepare, 
 " And wash from clotted gore that wound of thine, 
 " Shall Hecamed^ of the tresses fair. 
 But I'll to th' watch-tower swift, and know what's doing 
 there." 
 
 II. 
 
 So having said, a buckler there he hent 
 That was his son's, a cunning-wroughten shield 
 Of tame-steed Thrasymedes, which i' th' tent 
 With brass all glist'ring lay. For he 'd a-field 
 His father's buckler with him ta'en to wield. 
 Strong spear brass-headed keen took then the Sire withal 
 Stood forth his tent, and work unmeet beheld. 
 Those routed, these that foll'wing on them fall 
 O'erweening Trojans, and o'erthrown th' Acha^ans' wall. 
 
BOOK XIV. 1—5. 335 
 
 III. 
 
 As when tlie huge sea darkens, swelling dumb, 
 And eyes the shrill winds' courses swift and strong 
 In vain. It rolls not either way till come 
 The wind decisive down from Zeus y-flong. 
 The Sire so ponder'd two ways, if mid -throng 
 Of swift-steed Danai himself to throw. 
 Or to the people- shepherd pace along, 
 Atrides Agamemnon. Pond'ring so 
 He judg'd it best in search of Atreus' son to go. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Those battling-on meanwhile each other slay. 
 Sounds stubborn brass, that 'bout their flesh was set, 
 As falchions them and twin-edg'd spears belay, 
 And Nestor there the Zeus-fed sovereigns met 
 Going up fro' th' ships, who all with brass were smit, 
 Tydides, and Odysseus, and the son 
 Of Atreus Agamemnon. Far from fight 
 Their ships were drawn the hoar sea's shore upon. 
 The first to th' plain with wall built round the sterns 
 they 'd drawn. 
 
 For hold could not the shore, though wide withal, 
 The ships entire. The folk were crowded in. 
 So drew them rank on rank and filled up all 
 The shore's long mouth, 'twixt promontories twain ^^^ 
 These then to view the fight and tumult fain 
 Leaning on spears troop'd thither, sore distrest 
 Their souls within them. Whom Sire Nestor then 
 Met, and afirighted^^^ each Achaean breast, 
 And him King Agamemnon speaking thus address'd : — 
 
336 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Nestor Neleus' son, Achseans' pride, 
 " Why left man-wasting war com'st here ? I dread 
 " Strong Hector's kept the word that former tide 
 " He 'mong the Trojans speaking threatened, 
 " Ne'er back to Troy fro' th' ships till burnt he had 
 " Those ships with lire and slain ourselves. He said 
 " And all 's fulfiUing now. Assuredly, 
 " Ye Gods ! have other well greav'd Achives laid 
 " Wrath like Achilles in their minds at me 
 " And so to fight by th' ship-sterns they unwilling be." 
 
 VII. 
 
 Gerenian horseman Nestor then replies : — 
 " These very things are done, nor differently 
 " Could lofty thund'ring Zeus himself devise. 
 " The wall is down, to which so trusted we 
 " A breachless fence for ships and selves to be. 
 " And by the swift ships those have battle stout 
 " Incessant. Looking long ne'er would st thou see 
 " On which side th' Achives stirr'd are put to rout, 
 " They 're so promiscuous slain ; to sky ascends the shout. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Let 's think how these will be, if profit thought. 
 " For us to enter fight I'd not advise ; 
 " For fight the wounded man by no means ought." 
 Then Agamemnon king of men replies : — 
 " Nestor, since at the ships' sterns battle lies, 
 " Nor wall avails nor trench, which toiling rear 
 " Did Danai to them, and ships likewise, 
 " They 'd hop'd a breachless fence. So Zeus severe 
 " Would far from Argos th' Achives perish'd nameless here. 
 
BOOK XIV. 6—11. 337 
 
 IX. 
 
 ** I knew when prompt he help'd the Danai, 
 
 " I know it now that those like blest gods he 
 
 ^* Doth honour, and our strength and hands up-tie. 
 
 " But to the thing I say let 's all agree, 
 
 " And ships that first be station'd nigh the sea 
 
 " Draw all, and launch in sacred sea, and right 
 
 ^' V th' deep with anchors firmly fix them we 
 
 " Till night immortal comes. If keep from fight 
 
 The Trojans then, withdraw the vessels all we might. 
 
 X. 
 
 " Flee woe albeit by night 's no blame. For flying 
 " 'Scape woe is better than be ta'en." Then said 
 Odysseus, counsel-fraught, askance him eyeing: — 
 " What word, Atrides, hath thy teeth's fence fled 
 " Infatuate ! Would some worthless host thou 'dst led, 
 " Not us, whom Zeus from youth to age t' achieve 
 " Hard wars vouchsaf'd, till each of us be dead. 
 " Thus wouldst thou Trojans' broad-street city leave, 
 " On whose account we do with woes so many grieve ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Silence ! lest hear some other Achive do 
 " This speech, which no man with his mouth would say, 
 " That in his mind fit things to utter knew, 
 " A sceptr'd one, and whom such folk obey, 
 " So many as the Argives thou dost sway. 
 " And now thy scheme I blame it utterly, 
 " That midst the din of battle join'd dost say 
 " We should the well-bench'd ships draw down to sea. 
 " So things to Trojans past their hopes, though victors, be, 
 
338 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " On us dire ruin fall ; for battle will 
 " Th' Achaean s not while ships drawn seawards be, 
 "But, slack'ning fight, look back. Thy scheme then ill 
 '' Must work, prime of men." Him answer'd he, 
 Men's sovran Agamemnon : — " Thou dost me, 
 " Odysseus, sharp rebuke. 'Gainst will I ne'er 
 " Bade Achives draw their well-bench'd ships to sea. 
 " And now would one might better rede declare 
 " Than this, or young or old ; to me he welcome were.** 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Then war-stout Diomed : — " The man he 's near ! 
 " Thou seek'st, nor long we '11 search if ye '11 comply, 
 " Nor each be wroth ; I 'm youngest 'mong you here. 
 " My race from valiant sire, from Tydeus, I 
 " Do boast, whom hides at Thebes earth heaped high. 
 " To Portheus were three children of renown 
 " In Pleuron did and Calydon abye 
 " Agrius, Melas, third the horseman-one, 
 " (Eneus, my father's sire, whose virtue all outshone. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " There Portheus stay'd. Sire did at Argos' house 
 " Wand'ring. So Zeus and other gods decree. 
 " One of Adrastus' daughters did espouse, 
 " In rich house dwelt, and lands enow had he 
 " Wheat-sown, store planted gardens 'bout it be. 
 " He 'd many flocks, and Achives all out-vies 
 " At spear. A truth, and must have heard it ye 
 " So not as one of coward race despise 
 Ye me when I do utter speech, and well advise. 
 
BOOK XIV. 12—17. 339 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Though wounded, let 's to war ; there 's need for it. 
 " We '11 there from battle keep ourselves y-pight 
 " Past reach of darts, lest wound on wound one get ; 
 " But others there exhorting we 11 incite 
 " That do by choice hold back, and will not fight." 
 He said. They hear him gladly and consent, 
 And turn'd to go, and Agamemnon bright 
 Men's sovran led. Nor famous Shake-Earth hent ^^^ 
 A watching vain. In old man's guise to them he went. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Atrides Agamemnon's right hand took, 
 - And wing'd words spake : — " Atrides now delight 
 " Achilles' fierce soul will in 's breast to look 
 " On th' Achives' flight and death. For sense how slight 
 " Soe'er he 's none. So perish he and smite 
 " Him may some god with shame. Nor yet with thee 
 " Be gods quite wroth. The broad plain's dust in flight 
 " Up stir will Trojan chieftains yet, whom see 
 " Thou shalt from ships and tents unto their city flee." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This said, he shouts and skirrs the plain along. 
 As men in war, nine or ten thousand shout 
 That join in Ares' strife. A voice so strong 
 From breast great Shake- Earth sent. And courage stout 
 Gave each Achsean's heart to fight it out. 
 And gold-thron'd Here, on Olympus' height 
 That stood, beheld with eyes him pacing 'bout 
 And busied there in man-ennobling fight. 
 Her own and husband's brother ^^^ knew with heart's 
 delight. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Zeus sitting on the highest peak she spied 
 Of Ida many-rill'd, and did detest. 
 August then ponder'd Here ample-eyed 
 How she Zeus' sense, that aegis dire possest, 
 Might cheat. And this t' her mind seem'd counsel best. 
 To Ida go when fair array'd. He might, 
 By beauty smit, desire take loving rest 
 B' her side. In sleep of softness and delight 
 She 'd steep his eyelids then, and heart of prudence quite. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 She sought her chamber, made her by her son 
 Hephaistos, stout doors fitting door-posts tight, 
 With secret key, ope which gods else could none. 
 And ent'ring there she clos'd the door-folds bright. 
 First with ambrosia cleans'd her sweet flesh quite 
 From every stain, with oil anointed her 
 Ambrosial, sweet, with passing fragrance dight, 
 Which if in Zeus' brass paved house one stir. 
 The scent through sky ^^^ would reach the very earth afar. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Her lovely flesh anointed so, and hair 
 Comb'd out, she braids with hands her shining tresses 
 From that immortal head, ambrosial fair. 
 In robe ambrosial, made b' Athene, dresses. 
 She 'd wrought with care and fiU'd with quaint devices, 
 With gold-clnsp buckled it t' her breast. And zone, 
 With hundred tassels dight, her waist compresses. 
 With ear-rings did her well-pierc'd ear-tips don 
 Three-gemm'd elaborate, whose mickle grace outshone. 
 
BOOK XIV. 18—23. 341 
 
 XXI. 
 
 From head the stately goddess veil'd with fair 
 New veil, and white as is the sun. And tied 
 'Neath shining feet her comely sandals there. 
 And all her person's decking done, she hied 
 From chamber ; Aphrodite call'd aside 
 From other gods, and speech to her thus made : — 
 " Wilt grant, dear child, my wish ? or be denied 
 " Must it because with wrath thy mind is sway'd 
 That I the Danai, and thou dost Trojans aid?" 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Zeus' daughter Aphrodite made reply : — 
 
 " Here, dread power, great Kronos' daughter, say 
 
 " What 'tis thou wilt ; my mind bids do 't if I 
 
 " To do 't am able, and be done it may." 
 
 Here august spake subtly : — " Give me pray 
 
 " That love now, and desire, wherewith thou so 
 
 " Immortals all and mortal men dost sway. 
 
 " For visit th' ends of fruitful earth below, 
 
 And Ocean Sire, and Tethys, mother of the gods, I go. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " They in their homes did tend and nurture me, 
 " From Rhea ta'en, when wide-voic'd Zeus did send 
 " Kronos beneath the earth, and fruitless sea. 
 " To those I go, their bitter strife to end ; 
 " For long time now they 've mutually abstain'd 
 " From bed and love, since wrath fell on their mind. 
 " If these with words persuading I could bend 
 " Their heart that they in bed and love be join'd, 
 Then aye of them should I be call'd rever'd and kind." 
 
 z 3 
 
342 
 
 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Smiles-loving Aphrodite in reply 
 Did then address her thus : — " In sooth request 
 " Of thine we may not, ought not to deny, 
 " Who dost in arms of Zeus the mightiest rest." 
 She said, and broider'd girdle loos'd from breast, 
 Quaint-wrought, where all her fascinations lay, 
 Where love, desire, and lovers' meeting blest. 
 And sweet discourse, that fool the wisest may. 
 This in her hand she plac'd, spake word, and thus did say: 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " This girdle take, and in thy bosom lay ^^^, 
 " Quaint-wrought, where all things be. I think not thou 
 " Wilt back without thine aim." Thus did she say, 
 And large-eyed Here smil'd, and smiling so 
 Embosom'd it. And home did Aphrodite go, 
 The child of Zeus. Eush'd Here from Olympus high, 
 Pieria and Emathia did o'ergo, 
 And horsemen- Thracians' snowy hills o'erfly 
 O'er topmost peaks, nor once to ground her feet apply. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 From Athos down she went to th' welt'ring deep. 
 To godlike Thoas' town came speedily, 
 To Lesbos, where she met Death's brother, Sleep ^^\ 
 And clung t' his hand, spake word, and nam'd him she: 
 " Sleep, king of gods and men, if word from me 
 " Thou heark'nedst erst, do now comply again, 
 " And I 11 be grateful all my days to thee. 
 " The lustrous eyes of Zeus let slumber gain 
 " As soon as I with him in dalliance sweet have lain. 
 
BOOK XIV. 24—29. 343 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " 1^11 give thee gifts ; fair throne, gold undecaying, 
 
 '* Hephaistos it, my both-feet-lamed son, 
 ^ " Shall make, beneath thy feet a footstool laying, 
 
 " To put at feasts thy shining feet upon.'' 
 
 To her sweet Sleep then answering spake anon : — 
 
 " Her^, dread power, great Kronos' daughter, know 
 
 " Of everlasting gods another one 
 
 " Lull easily I might, and e'en the flow 
 " Of Ocean's stream, prolific source whence all things grow. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But Zeus, the son of Kronos, soothly I 
 " Would not approach, I would not lull indeed, 
 " Unless that he himself did call me nigh. 
 " Thy former hest hath taught me better rede. 
 " The day that daring one, of Zeus the seed, 
 " From Ilium sail'd, when town of Troy o'erthrown. 
 " Then segis-arm'd Zeus' senses lull I did 
 " Pour'd 'bout him sweet. Thou mischief of thine own 
 " Didst ply, and stir the sea with blasts from tempests 
 blown. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " To well-dwelt Cos without his friends him brought 
 " Hadst thou when Zeus awoke. Sore wroth was he, 
 " And toss'd the gods through th' house. Me chief he 
 
 sought, 
 " And would have hurl'd, destroy'd, from sky to sea, 
 " But Night, that quelleth gods and men, sav'd me, 
 " To whom I fled. He paus'd, though wroth, afraid 
 " To do what would to Night ofi'ensive be. 
 " Now do this other hard thing me persuade 
 " Thou wouldst." August and large-eyed Her^ answer 
 
 made : — 
 
 z 4 
 
344 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Sleep, wherefore these in mind so dwell upon ? 
 " Dost think that wide-voic'd Zeus will Trojans aid 
 " As he was wroth for Hercules his son ? 
 " But go. Of younger Graces one to wed 
 " I 11 give to thee, as partner of thy bed, 
 " Pasithea, desired aye of thee." 
 She spake, and Sleep rejoic'd, and answering said : — 
 " Come now, by dread Styx' water swear to me, 
 " With one hand fruitful Earth, with one take marble Sea. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " So be our witnesses all gods below 
 " That Kronos do surround, thou wilt as bride 
 " Of younger Graces one on me bestow 
 " Pasithea, for whom all days I Ve sigh'd." 
 He said. Nor white-arm'd ^^^ Here not complied. 
 But sware as bid, and all gods' names did say. 
 That Titans hight, 'neath Tartarus abide. 
 When sworn and ended oath, left mist-clad they 
 Lemnos and Imbros' town, accomplish'd swift their way. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Eeach'd Ida, wild beasts' mother, many-rill'd 
 Lecton, where first left sea, on land they ply. 
 And 'neath their feet a-top the forest thrill'd. 
 There Sleep remain'd ere him Zeus' eyes espy, 
 And clomb a lofty pine, that to the sky 
 Through air up-grew, of Ida's trees most tall. 
 There mid thick boughs of fir he sat on high. 
 Like that shrill bird on mountains found withal 
 Which Chalcis gods y-clepe ^^^, but men Cymindis call. 
 
BOOK XIV. 30—35. ' 345 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Swift Here did to Gargarus career, 
 The lofty Ida's peak. Beheld her straight 
 Cloud-gath'ring Zeus, and did no sooner see her 
 Than Love his keen sense cover'd with his net, 
 As when in love's embraces first they met. 
 When they did bed and nought did parents know. 
 Tore her he stood, spake word, and such speech set : — 
 " Bound whither. Here, down Olympus so 
 " Here hastest ? Car nor steeds there be on which to go." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Her^ august him answer'd guilefully : — 
 " To fruitful earth's extremities I 'd wend, 
 " Sire Ocean, Tethys eke, gods' mother see, 
 " Who in their homes did nurture me and tend. 
 " To these I go their bitter strife to end. 
 " For long time past have they, since anger high 
 " Fell on their souls, from bed and love abstain'd. 
 " And steeds at much-rill'd Ida's foot abye, 
 That me will carry over wet and over dry. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 *^ For thy sake here I 'm down Olympus come, 
 " Lest thou be after wroth, if silent I 
 " Should go to deeply-flowing Ocean's dome." 
 Her answer'd drive-cloud Zeus. " Go by and by, 
 " Here, thou thither canst. Turn we and lie 
 " In dalliance now. For so did love's full tide 
 " My soul for woman or for goddess high 
 " Ne'er quell. Not when I lov'd Ixion's bride, 
 " That bare Peirithous, who with the gods in wisdom vied. 
 
346 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Not so I lov'd sweet-ankled Danae 
 " Acrisius' child, who Perseus bare, that shone 
 " All men among. Nor Phcenix' daughter, she 
 " The fam'd afar, who Minos did my son 
 " And Rhadamanthus bear me, godlike one ; 
 " Nor Semele, nor yet Alcmena fair. 
 " Stout-heart Herakles bore me she in Thebes' town, 
 " But Semele did Dion;)^sus bear, 
 " Delight of men. Nor fair-tress'd queen Demeter e'er. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 *^ Nor glorious Leto, no, nor even thee, 
 " Did I so love as I do love thee now, 
 " Such longing sweet hath ta'en its hold on me." 
 Majestic Here subtly answered : — *' How ! 
 " Redoubted Kronides, what word hast thou 
 " Just spoke ? If now in dalliance thou wouldst lie 
 " On Ida's tops, where open all I trow, 
 " What if of gods eternal one espy 
 " Us sleeping here, and tell it all the gods on high ? 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Not I would to thy house again return, 
 
 " Uprising from such bed. For that would be 
 
 " A shame indeed. But if thou dost so yearn, 
 
 " And this so please thy mind in verity, 
 
 " Thou 'st chamber, son Hephaistos built for thee, 
 
 " And solid doors made fit the door-posts high ; 
 
 " Let 's there to couch, since thou 'dst now bed with me." 
 
 To her cloud-gath'ring Zeus did thus reply : — 
 
 Her(i, fear not that us will god or man espy. 
 
BOOK XIV. 36—41. 347 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " With such a golden cloud 1 11 cover thee 
 " That not e'en Helios' self ^^^ could see us through, 
 " Whose eye most penetrating is to see." 
 Spake Kronos' son, and spouse t' his arms he drew. 
 And 'neath them Earth fresh- sprouting grass upthrew, 
 And dewy lotus, crocus, daffodil. 
 That thick and soft from ground did lift the two. 
 Therein they bed, and round them to their will 
 Fair golden cloud y-spread, whence glist'ring dews distil. 
 
 XL. 
 
 So calm the father slept on Gargarus' steep. 
 By love and sleep subdued. In 's arms his spouse. 
 To th' ships Achaean running sweetest Sleep 
 To tell the news to Hold-Earth Shake -Earth goes. 
 And standing nigh, in wing'd words did disclose : 
 " Prompt now the Danai, Poseidon, aid, 
 " And give them glory now a space, while doze 
 " Doth Zeus. For 'bout him slumber sweet I 've laid, 
 ** Him by deceit to bed with her hath Here made." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 He said, and went to men's fam'd tribes ^^^ away. 
 Him to Danaians' aid so pricking on. 
 Who 'mong the foremost sprang, and thus did say 
 " Argives, yet leave we Hector, Priam's son, 
 " Vict'ry, to take our ships and win renown ? 
 " For he so weens, and boasts, since in his ire 
 " Achilles in the hollow ships doth wone. 
 " But we of him shall have no great desire, 
 ** If but the rest of us each other aid with fire. 
 
348 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " With what I '11 utter all comply, and dight 
 " In bucklers, best and largest through the field, 
 " And heads defended well with helmets bright, 
 " The while our hands do lengthy lances wield, 
 " Let 's on, and I will lead, and think that yield 
 " Though eager sooth will Hector Priam's son. 
 " And staunch-fight whoso shoulders smallish shield 
 " To worse man give it, and the big shield don.'' 
 He said, and hearken'd and obey'd him every one. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 And these the kings themselves, though wounded, range, 
 Tydides and Odysseus, and the son 
 Of Atreus ; travers'd all, their arms they change, 
 Brave donn'd brave arms, gave worse to worser one. 
 And when their flesh in bright brass clad, then on 
 They went, and them Poseidon Shake-Earth led. 
 Whose stout hand grasp'd dire falchion long that shone 
 Like lightning-fl.ash, 'gainst which might none make head 
 In woful stour, but kept men back its very dread. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 The Trojans also on the other side 
 The radiant Hector rang'd. And then y-pight 
 War's fiercest conflict straining soothly plied 
 Dark-hair'd Poseidon, radiant Hector bright. 
 For Trojans this, for Argives that did fight. 
 Sea dash'd the Argive tents and ships before. 
 With war-cry huge they close, such uproar might 
 The surging swell ne'er sound with 'gainst the shore 
 From sea when drives it Boreas' imperious blore. ^^^ 
 
BOOK XIV. 42 — 47. 349 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Nor crackling so of raging fire 'mong trees 
 In mountain-thickets breaking out enough 
 To burn the forest all. Nor yet the breeze 
 Against the high-hair'd oaks^^^ so soundeth bluff 
 When chief it rages blust'ring fierce and rough, 
 As Trojans' and Ach^eans' cry did grow, 
 Loud shouting as they rush t' encounter tough. 
 At Ajax first did radiant Hector throw 
 A spear as he against hira fac'd, nor miss'd his blow, 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 But smote where two belts gird his breast, one hung 
 The shield, and one the silver-studded brand. 
 These fend his tender flesh. And Hector stuno^ 
 With wrath that vain his dart had flow/i from hand, 
 Avoiding death, retir'd t' his comrades' band. 
 Aim'd at him, going, Ajax Telamon 
 A stone, of those that propp'd the ships on land 
 And roU'd at fighters' feet. Uplifting one 
 He smote 'bove buckler's rim nigh neck his breast upon. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 He hurl'd and sent it like a top, and round 
 And round it twirling flew. And as an oak 
 Torn by the roots comes toppling to the ground, 
 'Neath Zeus the father's strong and sudden stroke, 
 Whence stench of sulphur dread ; that who doth look 
 Thereon doth lose all heart if he be near. 
 So dire Zeus' bolt. To ground in dust so strook 
 Fell Hector's strength. From hand escap'd the spear. 
 Shield to him clave and helm; his quaint arms echoed 
 drear. 
 
350 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 With clam'rous shouting huge upon him ran 
 Th' Acha3ans' sons, and hop'd to take him they, 
 And thick they hurl'd the spears, but ne'er a man 
 Strike close or far the people-shepherd may, 
 For so the bravest guard him every way, 
 Polydamas, JEneas, godlike one, 
 Agenor, and Sarpedon, who did sway 
 The Lycians, faultless Glaucus too, and none 
 Were slack besides, but shields held 'fore him every one. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 And him uplifting in their hands y-pight 
 They carried from the moil till came they where 
 His swift steeds stood, in rear of war and fight. 
 Driver and quaint- wrought car. Him then they bare 
 Groaning to th' town. When ford of Xanthus fair 
 They reach'd, whose lovely stream in eddies flies. 
 Whom Zeus immortal 'gat, him lift they there 
 From car to ground, and on him as he lies 
 Pour water. He reviv'd and look'd up with his eyes. 
 
 L. 
 
 And sitting on his knees brought up black blood, 
 Then fell to earth again. His eyes dark night 
 Obscur'd, for yet the stroke his soul subdued. 
 Th' Argives, on Hector leaving 'fore their sight, 
 Kush'd on the Trojans more intent on fight. 
 Oilcan Ajax swift far first did there 
 Leap forth with keen-edg'd spear and Satnius smite 
 Enopides, whom nymph a Naid fair 
 To Enops, feeding herds by banks of Satnio^^^, bare. 
 
BOOK XIV. 48-^53. 351 
 
 M. 
 
 Him tlien Oileus' offspring spear-fam'd wight 
 Smote in his flank to him approaching near. 
 Supine he fell. Join'd round him fearful fight, 
 Trojans and Danai. T' avenge him here 
 Polydamas Panthoides Shake-spear 
 Came forth, and Prothoenor's shoulder smote 
 Areilycus' son. Pierc'd shoulder sheer 
 The lance. He fell, and earth with hand stretch'd-out 
 He clutch'd. Polydamas did glory much and shout : — 
 
 Ln. 
 
 " Not vain the dart from stalwart hand leap'd out 
 " Of lofty-soul'd Panthoides I ween, 
 " But of you, Argives, I do nothing doubt, 
 " Some one the same hath in his body ta'en, 
 " On which on 's way to Hades' house to lean." 
 Th' Argives were chaf'd him boasting thus to hear. 
 Chief war-skiird Ajax' soul was touched with teen. 
 The son of Telamon, whom fell he near. 
 At him departing then he hurl'd a glitt'ring spear. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Polydamas himself black death did shun 
 By leaping brisk aside. But did indeed 
 Receive the javelin there Antenor's son, 
 Archilochus, whose death the gods decreed. 
 Smote him at joint where neck doth head succeed. 
 The spine's last joint, and cut both tendons through. 
 Far first to ground head, mouth, and nostrils did. 
 Tore legs and knees of him there falling, go. 
 Ajax to fam'd Polydamas then call'd out so : — 
 
352 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " Ponder, Polydamas, tell true the case. 
 " Was this man slain for Prothoenor one 
 " To match ? Not base he seems, nor sprung from base; 
 " Tame- steed An tenor's brother he, or son. 
 " Near kin he seems." He said, to him though known. 
 The Trojans griev'd. Then Acamas about 
 His brother stalking did with spears strike down 
 Boeotian Promachus that corse drew out 
 By th' feet. Much gloried Acamas, and loud did shout : — 
 
 LV. 
 
 ^* Argives, shaft-skill'd, that full of threat'nings be, 
 " Sooth not alone to us travail and woe, 
 " But thus be slaughter'd too sometimes will ye. 
 " Ponder how sleeps your Promachus laid low 
 " By spear of mine, that brother's were-geld^^^ go 
 " Not long unpaid, and so would each desire 
 " In 's house leave brother will t' avenge him know." 
 He said, and boasting mov'd the Argives' ire. 
 But chief did soul of Peneleus, the war-skill'd, lire. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 He rush'd on Acamas, who stayed not there 
 King Peneleus' assault, who smote anon 
 Hioneus, flock-wealthy Phorbas' heir. 
 Him Hermes lov'd 'fore Trojans every one 
 And riches gave. Ilioneus alone 
 To him his mother bare. There smite him did 
 The king 'neath brow the eyes' foundations on. 
 Thrust eye-ball out, through eye the javelin sped 
 And occiput. He sat and both his hands outspread. 
 
BOOK XIV. 54 — 59. 353 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Peneleus sharp sword drawing mid-neck strook, 
 And dash'd to earth with helmet's self the head, 
 Spear still in th' eye. Like poppy-head up took 
 He show'd the Trojans, boasting word he said : — 
 ^' Trojans, Ilioneus' dear father bid 
 " And mother in their mansion mourn ; for she 
 *^ Promachus' consort Alegenorid 
 " Her spouse come back will greet not glad when we 
 " Th^ Achaeans^ sons from Troy in ships return o'er sea." 
 
 Lvm. 
 
 He spake, and on them all pale terror fell, 
 Each look'd about how headlong death to shun. 
 Say Muses, in Olympian homes that dwell, 
 Who of th' Achaean s' gory spoils first won 
 From foe when turn'd the fight Earth-Shaking one ? 
 First Ajax Telamon kill'd Hyrtius who 
 Did lead the Mysi, and was Gyrtius' son. 
 Antilochus did Phalces, Merm'rus too 
 Despoil. And Merion Morus and Hippotion slew. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 And Teucer soothly Prothous struck down 
 And Periphetes eke. Atrides too 
 Did Hyperenor, people-shepherd one, 
 Wound in the flank, and tap his entrails through 
 Did tearing brass. Fro' th' wound his soul out flew, 
 And darkness there his eyes up-cover'd quite. 
 But most Oileus' swift-son, Ajax, slew, 
 For like him sooth on foot was never wight 
 For chasing flying men, when Zeus doth stir to flight. 
 
 AA 
 
 k 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XV. 
 
 And when the palisadoes and the moat 
 They *d past through flying, and a many died 
 Beneath the hands of the Achseans stout. 
 By th' cars they check'd their flight, and there abide 
 All pale with fear, and sorely terrified. 
 Zeus woke on Ida's heights by Here lying, 
 The golden thron'd. Up- sprung he stood, and spied 
 The Trojans and Achaeans, Trojans flying, 
 Argives in chace, and King Poseidon ^mong them plying. 
 
 II. 
 
 r th' plain saw Hector lie, his mates him 'bout, 
 
 Hardbreathing and distraught, who blood out-spu'th, 
 
 For not th' Achaeans' feeblest him y-smote. 
 
 The Sire of gods and men beheld with ruth. 
 
 And Herfe eyed askance, and spake : — " Hath sooth 
 
 " Thy guile, false subtle Here, stay'd from fight 
 
 " Hector divine, and scar'd his folk. In truth 
 
 " I know not but thou 'It fruit of thine ill sleight 
 
 Again first eat, and I shall thee with scourgings smite. 
 
BOOK XV. 1 — 5. 355 
 
 in. 
 
 " Forget'^t when hanged 'st high to feet I hong 
 " Two anvils, Piands with gold band breachless tied ? 
 " Thee hung in cloud and sky the gods through long 
 " Olympus griev'd at, but could by thy side 
 " Not loose, for I had ta'en and hurl'd who 'd tried 
 " From threshhold forth to earth scant breath'd. Not me 
 *' Fierce wrath for sacred Hercules so plied 
 '' Whom thou, with Boreas tempests stirr'd, hadst sent 
 " To fruitless sea, then brought to well-dwelt Cos with fell 
 intent. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Him thence I freed, to steed-apt Argos brought 
 " Who 'd much endur'd. Of this remind I thee 
 " That guile thou cease, and know if stead thee aught 
 " T' have come fro' th' gods, in dalliance lain with me, 
 " And so deceived." He said, and shudd'ring she 
 Large-eyed majestic Here wing'd words said : — 
 " Now witness Earth and broad Sky 'bove us be, 
 " And stream of Styx, with underchannell'd bed, 
 " That oath to blissful gods the greatest and most dread, 
 
 V. 
 
 " Thy sacred head, that nuptial couch of ours, 
 " Which I would not forswear, avouch not sent 
 " By me Poseidon Shake-Earth Trojan powers 
 " And Hector harms, helps those. His own mind's bent 
 " Impels. Doth Achives slain by th' ships relent 
 " To see. But thither go I 'd him advise 
 " Where thou the Cloud-Compeller wouldst he went." 
 She said. Men's Sire and gods' with smiles replies 
 And her in winged words address'd he on this wise : — ^ 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 (( 
 
 " If soothly thou, then, Her^, large-eyed queen, 
 
 " Wouldst 'mong th' immortals sit and think with me, 
 
 " Poseidon, though averse, would soon I ween 
 
 " Change sense to yours and mine. If true this be, 
 
 " And spoken from thy heart, betaking thee 
 
 " To th' gods' tribes bid now Iris come down here, 
 
 " And bow-renown'd Apollo, too, that she 
 
 " Go to th' AchaBan folk of brazen gear, 
 
 And King Poseidon bid cease fight, and home career," 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Phoebus Apollo '11 Hector rouse to fight, 
 
 " New strengh inspire, his pangs forgot, that gall 
 
 " His soul. But th' Achives will again to flight 
 
 " Inglorious turn, till fleeing they do fall 
 
 " On Peleus' son Achilles' ships withal. 
 
 " He '11 stir his friend Patroclus, whom with spear 
 
 " Will radiant Hector slay 'fore Ilium's wall 
 
 " When that he 'th slain young warriors many here, 
 
 Among them too my son, divine Sarpedon dear." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ** Whereat Achilles wroth will Hector slay 
 ** Whenceforth fro' th' ships the chace I '11 constant set, 
 " Till Iliam high b' Athene's counsel they 
 " Th' Achseans take. My wrath I '11 not remit 
 " Nor other gods aid Danai permit 
 " Before Achilles' wish fulfilled be, 
 "As first I promis'd him confirming it 
 " With head the day that Thetis touch'd my knee, 
 *' And pray'd me grace Sack-town Achilles." Thus spake he. 
 
BOOK XV. 6—11. 357 
 
 IX. 
 
 Nor goddess white-arm'd Here disobeyed, 
 Down Ida's heights t' Olympus long she hies, 
 And as man's thought up-springs, who 'th journey made 
 O'er mickle land, thinks in his bosom wise, 
 " ^Twas there I was, or there,''^ Thoughts many rise. 
 So eager swift majestic Here flew. 
 And reach'd Olympus steep, and did surprise 
 In Zeus' house met ^^^ the gods immortal, who 
 At sight of her all rise, and pledge in goblets do. 
 
 X. 
 
 Leaving the rest, from fair-cheek'd Themis take 
 She did the cup, who first came running here 
 To meet her, and wing'd words addressing spake : — 
 " Here, why com'st thou, thou dost seem so drear? 
 " Thee Kronos' son, thy spouse, sure 's strook with fear.'* 
 Her answer'd goddess white arm'd Here so : — 
 " Ask me not, goddess Themis. How severe 
 *' His mind and overbearing thou dost know, 
 " But lead the gods in th' house to th' equal banquet thou. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " And these things too, with all th' immortals hear 
 " Thou shalt, what woful doings meditate 
 " Doth Zeus. Nor think I aught the soul 'twill cheer 
 " Of all, be 't gods or mortals, though as yet 
 " Each now hilarious to the banquet set." 
 Majestic Here sat when spoke she had. 
 The gods through th' house of Zeus were mov'd thereat. 
 She laugh'd with lips, but forehead show'd not glad 
 Above her eyebrows dark, and wroth to all she said : 
 
 A A 3 
 
358 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Insensate we at Zeus who rage distraught, 
 " Or yet restrain him wish, nigh drawing we, 
 " By words or force. For he apart heeds nought, 
 " Nor 's mov'd, but weens ^mong deathless gods that he 
 " In strength and power 's the best exceedingly. 
 " So take what e'er he send you every one. 
 " For harm 's now happ'd to Ares, seemeth me, 
 " For slain in light most dear of men, his son 
 " Ascalaphus, whom mighty Ares calls his own." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 *Twas thus she spake, and Ares then y-smote 
 His brawny thighs with open palms. In tone 
 Of wailing them addressed : — " Now blame me not, 
 " Ye dwellers in Olympian homes, if down 
 " To th' Achive ships to Venge my slaughtered son 
 " I go, though 't be my doom, and Zeus' bolt smite 
 " Me through, mid corses, blood, and dust y-thrown.'' 
 He said, and straight bade Terror and Affright 
 His horses yoke. Himself his glist'ring armour dight. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Then had some other greater more severe 
 From Zeus t' immortals wrath and anger been 
 Had not Athene, who for gods did fear. 
 Sprung out the porch, and left her seat and ta'en 
 From head his helm, from shoulders buckler sheen, 
 From 's strong hand pluck'd brass spear, and fix'd up- 
 right. 
 Kebuk'd hot Ares then with chidings keen : — 
 " Furious, insane, thou 'rt lost. Hast ears y-pight 
 ** In vain to hear, have sense and shame then perish'd quite ? 
 
BOOK XV. 12—17. 359 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Hear'st not what goddess wliite-arm'd Here said ? 
 " Who sooth from Zeus Olympian came but now. 
 " Or wouldst thyself store ills accomplished 
 " Keturn perforce t' Olympus griev'd, and so 
 " To all the other gods work mighty woe ? 
 '* Trojans and high-soul'd Achives straight he '11 quit, 
 " And come t' Olympus, us in tumult throw, 
 " One after other seize, deserving it 
 " Or not. So I arede thee wrath for son remit. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ** Better than he for hands and strength is slain, 
 
 " Or will be. All men's race from death to screen 
 
 " Were hard." She said, and Ares set again 
 
 On 's seat. Apollo call did Here, queen, 
 
 From house, and Iris, messenger between 
 
 Th' immortal gods, and wing'd words spake then she: 
 
 *' Zeus bids ye quick to Ida go, and when 
 
 " Ye are arriv'd, and face of Zeus shall see. 
 
 To do whatso exhorteth and commands you he," 
 
 XVII. 
 
 This said, back pac'd then Here, stately dame, 
 And seated her on throne. Those rushing fly. 
 To much-rill'd Ida, wild beasts' mother, came, 
 And wide-voic'd Kronides on Gargarus high 
 Found seated. Clouds sweet-scented 'bout him lie. 
 'Fore drive-cloud Zeus arriving stand did they, 
 Nor he with wrathful mind did them espy. 
 For quick did they his consort's words obey. 
 And first to Iris he these winged words did say : — 
 
 JL A 4i 
 
360 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Hence, Iris swift, Poseidon tell from me 
 " All this, nor herald false. Bid him leave fight, 
 " And to the gods' tribes wend, or sacred sea. 
 " But if my words he '11 not obey, but slight, 
 " Let him in mind and soul then w^eigh it right, 
 '' Nor dare, though strong, to wait my coming near. 
 " For I 'm his stronger far, I say, in might, 
 " And elder eke. Not shrinks his spirit dear 
 " To call himself my equal, whom the others fear." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He spake. Obeyed him wind-foot Iris fleet 
 
 Down Ida's heights to sacred Ilium went, 
 
 As when from clouds flies snow or chilly sleet, 
 
 By force of sky-y-clearing Boreas sent. 
 
 So rapidly swift Iris flew intent. 
 
 Nigh Shake-Earth stood and spake : — "A word to thee, 
 
 " Dark-hair'd Gird-Earth, I bring from Zeus the great, 
 
 " To cease from war and fight enjoins thee he. 
 
 And to the gods' tribes wend, or else to sacred sea." 
 
 XX. 
 
 " If thou his words obey not, but misprise, 
 
 " He threatens hither, strength to strength to fight, 
 
 " He '11 come. And shun his hands doth thee advise, 
 
 " For he 's thy stronger far, he saith, in might, 
 
 " And elder eke. But thy dear heart thinks slight 
 
 " To call thyself his match whom others dread." 
 
 To her then much enrag'd spake Shake-Earth bright : — 
 
 *' y e gods ! He hath though strong full proudly said. 
 
 If me like-rank'd by force he '11 stop, consent not had. 
 
BOOK XV. 18—23. 361 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " We ^re brethren three, to Kronos Rhea bare, 
 
 " Zeus, I, and Hades third, that rules the dead. 
 
 " All shar'd in three, each took his honour^s share. 
 
 " I th' hoary sea to always dwell-in had, 
 
 " When lots were shook, and Hades darkness dread, 
 
 ** And Zeus took ample heav'n in clouds and sky. 
 
 " Earth and Olympus long, were common made 
 
 " To all. So live by will of Zeus not I, 
 
 So quiet he, though strong, in his third part abye. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " With hands not me as base intimidate 
 ** Will he. Daughters and sons it better were 
 " With bouncing words assail, whom he begat ; 
 " They to his ordering will perforce defer." 
 Him answer'd wind-foot speedful Iris there : — 
 " Thus then indeed dark-hair'd Gird-Earth from thee 
 " Shall I to Zeus this word rude rugged bear ? 
 " Or change wilt aught ? for chang'd great souls can be. 
 " Thou know'st th' Erinnyes follow ^^^ th' eldest constantly." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 And her Poseidon Shake-Earth then address'd 
 In answer : — " Iris, goddess, spoke hast thou 
 " This word as is most fitting, sooth, and best. 
 " 'Tis good when messenger what ^s fit doth know. 
 " But this sore grief touched heart and spirit so, 
 " When one of equal lot and equal fate 
 " He would forsooth with angry words overcrow. 
 " But now indeed I '11 yield albeit irate, 
 " But this I '11 tell thee else, and this with soul I '11 threat. 
 
62 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " If verily without consent of me, 
 " And of drive-spoil Athene, Her^ too, 
 " And Hermes, and the King Hephaistos, he 
 " Shall lofty Ilium spare, nor will o'erthrow, 
 " And Argives vict'ry give, this let him know, 
 " 'Twixt us will wrath past healing be." With this 
 Shake-Earth did leave th' Achaean folk, and go 
 And plunge in sea. Him th' Achive heroes miss. 
 Then to Apollo spake cloud-gath'ring Zeus y-wis : — 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Go then, dear Phoebus, unto Hector now, 
 " The brazen helmeted ; for soothly down 
 " To sea divine already wends I trow 
 " Gird-Earth Shake-Earth, our anger dire to shun. 
 " For of that fight had others also known 
 " Who be the gods below 'bout Kronos set. 
 " But this for me and him is better done, 
 " Fearing my hands, t' have yielded ere we met, 
 " For it had not been ended sooth withouten sweat. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " But in thine hands the fringed Mgis take, 
 " And at them sorely shaking it affright 
 *' Th' Achaean heroes. But, Far-Darter, make 
 " Thy special care the radiant Hector bright. 
 " Eouse in him mickle-strength until in flight 
 " Th' Achaeans ships and Hellespont attain. 
 " Thenceforth I '11 think by word and deed aright 
 " How th' Achives from their toil shall breathe again." 
 He said nor disobey'd the Sire Apollo then. 
 
BOOK XV. 24-~29. 363 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Went Ida's heights like fleetest falcon down, 
 Dove-slaught'ring bird, most swift of winged crew. 
 Found godlike Hector, war-skill'd Priam's son, 
 Who sat, not lay. His soul reviv'd, he knew 
 His comrades round. Sweat ceas'd, breath freer grew. 
 Since rous'd him sense of Zeus the segis-dight. 
 Far- dart Apollo spake as near he drew : — 
 " Why, Hector, Priam's son, in feeble plight 
 *' Dost sit fro' th' rest apart ? Doth dolour on thee light ? " 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Him glance-helm Hector then in feeble state 
 Address'd : — " Who, best of gods, art thou, that so 
 " Dost me now face to face interrogate ? 
 " Knowst not at me, who laid his comrades low, 
 " By th' Achives' ships' sterns Ajax stone did throw, 
 " And smite my breast, mine eager valour stay ? 
 " I thought to th' dead and Hades' house to go 
 " This day, for I was breathing soul away." 
 To him did then far-darting King Apollo say : — 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Be bold now, Kronos' son such aid doth send 
 " From Ida thee to succour and stand by, 
 " Pheebus Apollo Gold-sword, who defend 
 " Of yore am wont both thee and city high. 
 *^ Come now, and num'rous horsemen that they ply 
 " To th' hollow ships their coursers fleet excite, 
 " While go before, and steeds' road smooth, will I, 
 " And the Achasan heroes turn to flight." 
 So said, he breath'd on people-shepherd mickle might. 
 
364 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 As stabled steed at manger barley-fed 
 His halter breaks, and trampling scours the plain 
 To bathe in flowing river wont, and head 
 He holdeth high exulting, while his mane 
 About his shoulders shakes. Him beareth vain 
 Of lustihood, his knees full eath toward 
 His custom'd haunts, where mares a-pasturing been. 
 So Hector quick plied feet and knees, and stirr'd 
 The horsemen, when the voice of deity he'd heard. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 And as when hounds or hunters antler'd stag 
 Or wild goat chase, but who not catch him may, 
 So screen him shady wood or lofty crag. 
 Their noise man'd lion stirs, who in their way 
 Appears, and makes them flee, though eager they, 
 So them the Danai in troops pursue 
 With twin-edg'd spears and falchions, smite and slay 
 Till Hector, come to th' ranks of men, they view, 
 Then courage fell to feet, astound with fear they grew. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Spake Thoas then, Andraemon's offspring, who 
 Th' iEtolians' chiefest was, who dart could aim. 
 In stand-fight good. In counsel Achives few. 
 When youth with words contended, him o'ercame. 
 Who them haranguing wise such speech did frame : - 
 " Ye gods ! what marvel do I look upon ! 
 " He's up again, scap'd death, this very same, 
 " This Hector, who in soul we 'd hop'd each one 
 " Had died beneath the hands of Ajax Telamon. 
 
BOOK XV. 30 — 35. 365 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Some god hath Hector sav'd, who knees did loose, 
 *' Of many Danai. As 'twill, I say, 
 " Now be. For not without loud-sounding Zeus 
 " Such champion fierce he stands. Let 's all obey 
 " The word 1 11 speak. To th' ships send crowd away, 
 " While we, who boast us th' army's best, do swink^^^ 
 " And stand the brunt. So met first check we may 
 " With lifted spears. For he, though hot, I think. 
 From ent'ring throng of Danai in soul will shrink." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 He said, and glad they hear him and obey. 
 Ajax, Idomeneus, and Teucer there, 
 Merion and Meges, Ares' match, th' array 
 For battle's fierce encounter straight prepare 
 'Gainst Hector and the Trojans, all that were 
 The bravest calling, while the common rout 
 Did back unto the ships Achaaan fare. 
 Th' embodied Trojans them the first y-smote. 
 And Hector led them on, gigantic striding out. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Phoebus Apollo him did go before. 
 With cloud-veil'd shoulders, ^gis swift he had 
 Dire, round y-fring'd and stately, which the smith of yore 
 Hephaistos gave to Zeus, to wield to th' dread 
 Of men. With this in hands the folk he led. 
 Th' embodied Argives wait. Shrill clamour sprong 
 On either side. From string the arrows sped. 
 And many darts from stalwart hands were flong. 
 Some fasten'd in the flesh of youthful warriors strong. 
 
366 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Many between ere tasted flesh did stand 
 I' th' ground, and yearn for flesh. While movelessly 
 Phoebus Apollo th' Mgis held in hand, 
 The darts on both sides flew, and people die. 
 But when to face he eyed the Danai, 
 And shook it, shouting he both loud and deep. 
 They, spirit-quell'd, forgat their valour high. 
 As two wild beasts rout drove of beeves or sheep 
 At dead of night, when he 's away that them should keep, 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 So fled th' Achaeans, spiritless, unbrave, 
 For on them sooth Apollo sent affright, 
 But Trojans and to Hector glory gave. 
 And man then man amid the scatter'd flight 
 Y-slaughter'd there. And Hector sooth did smite 
 Stichius and eke Arcesilaus too. 
 One led Boeotians brazen- corselet-dight. 
 One was high-soul'd Menestheus' comrade true. 
 -3Eneas Medon there, and lasus y-slew. 
 
 xxxvm. 
 
 Oileus' bastard, Medon, Ajax' brother, 
 In Phylac^, from 's land he habited. 
 Brother of Eriopis, his stepmother, 
 Oileus' spouse, he slew. Th' Athenians' head 
 Was lasus, of Sphelus Boucolide 
 Reputed son. Polydamas Mecisteus slew, 
 Polites Echius, in front fight. So did 
 Agenor Clonius. Smote on shoulder too 
 Paris Deiochus in front rank fleeing. Brass drave through. 
 
BOOK XV, 36—41. 367 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 While those despoird their arms, th' Achseans all 
 I' th' deep-dug trench, and stakes y-plunging fly 
 This way and that, and seek perforce the wall. 
 And Hector to the Trojans shouted high, 
 To rush to th' ships and gory spoils leave by : — 
 " Whomso fro' th' ships elsewhere I see retire, 
 " His death I '11 work, nor him shall, though he die, 
 " Brothers and sisters cause partake of fire, 
 " But dogs shall 'fore our city drag him at desire." 
 
 XL. ^ 
 
 So saying, he with whip on shoulders smote 
 The steeds, and cheer'd through ranks the Trojan crowd. 
 And they with him together all did shout. 
 With menacings, and well-carr'd horses rode 
 And tumult dire. Phoebus Apollo yode 
 Before. Each bank that trench profound o'erhang'th 
 Thrust eath with feet i' th' midst and bridg'd a road, 
 Both long and wide, as far as spear-throw's length 
 Would reach, when spear a man doth hurl to try his 
 strength. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Through it in troops they pour. With ^gis he 
 Apollo led. Fell'd eath th' Achaeans' wall. 
 As child the sand it shapes at play by th' sea, 
 Doth then with hands and feet confuse it all. 
 So then didst Phoebus mickle care and moil 
 Of Argives mar, themselves didst drive to flight. 
 By th' ships they stop, to one another call, 
 And there to all the gods in that ill plight 
 Their hands uplifting pray aloud ^^^ did every wight. 
 
368 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Chief th' Achives^ watch Gerenian Nestor there 
 Did pray with hands to starry sky extent : — 
 " Sire Zeus, if one in corn-rich Argos e'er 
 " Return of thee with bulls and sheep's thighs brent 
 " Implor'd, and thou didst promise and consent, 
 " Think on 't Olympius, keep off th' evil day, 
 " And Trojans quelling th' Achives thus prevent." 
 Thus spake he praying. Thunder'd loud straightway 
 Wise Zeus, who heard the Sire, the son of Neleus, pray. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Trojans as aegis-arm'd Zeus' mind they 'd known, 
 On Argives rush'd the more, on fight intent. 
 As sea's broad swell o'er ship's walls crests anon 
 By force of wind, that waves chief swelleth, sent. 
 So Trojans on the wall with outcry went 
 Steeds driving they by th' sterns with spears fight nigh 
 These from their steeds, those black ships mounting pent 
 Long spears that in their ships for sea-fight lie 
 Compact with brass-heads furnish'd, these they wield from 
 high. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 AYhile Trojans and Achaeans fought by th' wall 
 Outside swift ships, Patroclus sat i' th' tent 
 Of valour-fond Eurypylus withal. 
 And cheer'd with talk, his woful wound y-sprent 
 With drugs for black pains healing excellent. 
 But when the Trojans force the wall he spies. 
 While cry of Danai with flight y-blent 
 Arose, he then exclaim'd, and smote his thighs 
 With down-turn'd hands, and thus with voice lamenting 
 cries : — 
 
BOOK XV. 42—47. 369 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Eurypylus, I may not more abye 
 *^ With thee, although thou need. A-foot 's dread fight. 
 " Let servant entertain thee ; haste will I 
 *' Unto Achilles, him to war excite. 
 *' Who knows but him, god fa v' ring, move I might, 
 '' Advising ? Friend's advice is soothly good." 
 This said, his feet removed him. Firm y-pight 
 Th' Achseans wait the Trojans, but ne'er could 
 Thrust them from ships away, although they fewer stood. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Nor yet the Trojans ever break through could 
 
 Danaians' phalanxes, and penetrate 
 
 Among the tents and ships. But as the wood 
 
 I For building ships the levelling line makes straight 
 In skill'd Wright's hands, whom doth indoctrinate 
 Athene with her rules all art to know. 
 So equal stretch'd their war and fight was set. 
 Others at other ships were battling so, 
 But Hector did against the glorious Ajax go. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 These 'bout one ship had toil. Nor could they aught 
 This drive out that, with fire set ships a-light. 
 Nor th* other this, when god him near had brought. 
 Caletor, Cly tins' son, then Ajax bright. 
 To th' ship fire bringing, breast with spear did smite. 
 He fell with crash. From hand the torch fell out. 
 When Hector saw with eyes his kinsman's plight 
 'Fore black ship fall'n i' th' dust, to warlike rout 
 Of Trojans and of Lycians calling he 'gan shout : — 
 
 B B 
 
370 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XL VIII. 
 
 ** Trojans, and Lycians, close-fight Dardans brave, 
 " From battle do by no means now recede 
 " Within this narrow strait. The son come save 
 " Of Clytius, lest tV Achaeans him despoil 
 " Of arms, who 's fall'n by th' ships in battle-moil." 
 This said, at Ajax glitt'ring spear he threw, 
 Which missing him did Mastor's offspring foil, 
 Lycophron, Ajax' servant, Cyth'ran who 
 Dwelt with him since of godlike Cy th'rans man he slew. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 His head 'bove ear with keen brass smote, who then 
 
 Near Ajax stood. Supine i' th' dust adown 
 
 By th' vessel's stern he fell. Limbs loosed been. ^^^ 
 
 Ajax aghast t' his brother spake anon : — 
 
 " Dear Teucer, slain 's our faithful friend, the son 
 
 " Of Mastor whom, Cythera come from, we 
 
 " Did like our parents honour where we wone. 
 
 " Him high-soul'd Hector 's slain. But where now be 
 
 Thy swift-fate shafts and bow, Apollo gave to thee ? " 
 
 L. 
 
 His brother heard, and ran, and him stood nigh 
 With bounding bow, and hold-shaft quiver on, 
 And quick at Trojans let his arrows fly, 
 And Clitus smote, Pisenor's son, 
 Friend of Panthoides, renowned one, 
 Polydamas. Keins holding steeds he plied, 
 And where were ranks most troubled drove to d6n 
 Hector and Trojans grace. But soon betide 
 Did him, though bold, a woe that none could turn aside. 
 
BOOK XV. 48 — 53. 371 
 
 LI. 
 
 Fell shaft smote neck behind. From chariot there 
 He fell. Steeds back'd and void car shook. Anon 
 Was King Polydamas thereof aware, 
 And stood 'fore steeds and them t' Astynous gave, the son 
 Of Protiaon, charging him thereon 
 Keep steeds in sight, then mix'd in fight again. 
 Teucer once more at Hector, brass-clad one, 
 Took shaft, and fight by th' Achives' ships refrain 
 Had made, and, striking him there battling, soul had ta^en, 
 
 LII. 
 
 But 'scaped not Zeus* keen sense, who Hector kept 
 
 And Telamonian Teucer reft of fame, 
 
 In good bow well-twist string in drawing snapt. 
 
 That shaft brass-heavy wand'ring swerv'd from aim. 
 
 Bow dropp'd from hand. T' his brother did exclaim 
 
 Teucer aghast : — " The deity our schemed fight 
 
 " Cuts short. Bow flung from hand, broke string, the 
 
 same 
 " New-twist that I to-day tied on, that might 
 " Securely bear the leaping arrows' frequent flight." 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Huge Ajax Telamon did then reply t — 
 " Friend, leave the bow and frequent arrows quite, 
 " Which some god 's marr'd that envies Danai. 
 " But long spear handling, shield on shoulder pight, 
 " The Trojans combat, other folk incite. 
 ^' That not with ease they get, though victors they, 
 " Our well-built ships. And we will think on fight." 
 He said. Bow th' other put in tent away. 
 And 'bout his shoulders did a shield four-hided lay. 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 On stout head well- wrought helm horse-tail'd did don, 
 Crest nodding dire. Strong spear brass-headed keen 
 He took, and running stood by Ajax soon. 
 Hector, when Teucer's shafts so marr'd he 'd seen, 
 To Trojans and the Lycians shouted then : — 
 " Trojans and Lycians, Dardans battling nigh, 
 " Be men, my friends, and stoutly you demean 
 " By th' hollow ships, for seen with eyes have I 
 " From Zeus y-spoilt ar mighty man's artillery. 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Eath known 's Zeus' might to men, some makes he 
 
 grow 
 " In fame, and some impairs, and help will not. 
 " Now 'bateth Argives' strength he aids us, so 
 " Fight all by th' ships. And whoso strook or shot 
 " Shall reach death's term let die. Not mean his lot 
 " To die his native land defending here, 
 " While safe his wife and children safe he 'th got, 
 " And house and heritage, if back career 
 ** Th' Achaeans with their ships to native country dear." 
 
 LVI. 
 
 He said, and each man's force and soul did stir. 
 And Ajax eke his comrades there did cheer : — 
 " Shame, Argives ! Now be slain it better were 
 " Or sav'd, than not from ships thrust mischief drear. 
 " Deem ye when wave-helm Hector's gotten sheer 
 " Our ships, can foot it to his land each wight? 
 " Or urging all his folk do ye not hear 
 " This Hector bent on setting ships a-light ? 
 " 'Tis not to dancing, sure, he bids them come, but fight. 
 
BOOK XV. 54—59. 373 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " For us no counsel is, no better rede 
 " Than this, in battle close, mix hands and might. 
 " 'Tis better perish here at once indeed 
 " Than live, and wear away in grievous fight 
 I " Thus vain by th* ships, by men inferior quite." 
 r His speech stirr'd soul and strength of every one. 
 Hector slew Perimedes' offspring, Schedius hight. 
 The Phocians' chief, and Ajax there struck down 
 Laodamas, that led the foot, Antenor's son. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Polydamas Cyllenian Otus slew, 
 Phylides' friend, who led th' Epeans high. 
 Him Meges saw, and hurl'd at. Slant withdrew 
 Polydamas. The spear did past him fly. 
 Apollo would not Panthus' son should die 
 In foremost rank. With spear did Meges smite 
 Croesmus mid-breast. With sound he fell thereby. 
 From shoulders Meges stripped his armour bright, 
 At whom rush'd son of Lampus, Dolops, spear-skill'd wight. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 (Begat him Lampus, valiantest of men, 
 Son of Laomedon, most skill'd in fight.) 
 With spear he smote mid-shield Phylides then. 
 Close-thrust, whom sav'd the corselet stout he dight 
 With well-knit parts, which erst did Phyleus wight 
 Bring from Ephyra, from Selleis river. 
 Euphetes, king of men, his host, that worn it might 
 In battle be, did give it, fence Against foemen ever. 
 Him erst it did, does now son's flesh from death deliver. 
 
 B B 3 
 
S74 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 But Dolops' brazen horse-tail'd helmet^s crown 
 Meges with keen-edg'd spear a top did smite, 
 And lopp'd off horse-hair plume. The whole came down 
 Upon the ground i' th' dust with crimson bright. 
 While fought him he, and weened to win the fight. 
 Came Menelaus brave t' his help. Aside 
 He stood with spear unseen, and smote him right 
 On shoulder from behind. Through bosom hied 
 The eager point beyond, he headlong down did slide. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 And these to strip his arms from shoulders run. 
 But Hector called f his kith, and first he chid 
 Strong Melanippus, Hicetaon's son. 
 Who trail-foot beeves erst in Percote fed 
 While foes yet far. When came in ships oar-sped 
 The Danai, he back to Ilium came ; 
 Excelled 'mong Trojans, dwell with Priam did, 
 W^ho as his children honoured him the same. 
 Him Hector then rebuk'd, spake word, and call'd by name. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " Are we, Melanippus, so remiss ? 
 " Does not thy heart now slaughter'd kinsman pain ? 
 " Seest not how these ^bout Dolops' arms y-wis 
 " Do busy them ? But follow me amain, 
 " For Argives fight we must, nor part again 
 " Until we slaughter them or they from crown 
 ** Take Ilium high, her denizens y-slain." 
 He spake and led. Him follow'd godlike one. 
 And rous'd the Argives there huge Ajax Telamon. 
 
BOOK XV. 60—65. 375 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 *^ Friends, be men, and shame in mind y-ta'en 
 " Each other rev'rence in the conflicts dread. 
 " Shame-fearing men more saved be than slain. 
 " For neither glory springs nor any aid 
 " In sooth for fugitives." 'Twas thus he said. 
 They to repel the foe themselves desire, 
 And cast in mind his word. Ships fence they did 
 With brazen wall.^^^ Stirr'd Trojans Zeus the Sire, 
 While Menelaus brave Antilochus did fire : — 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 " Antilochus, than thou Achseans none 
 " More young, more swift of foot, so strong to fight 
 " When leaping forth thou smit'st some Trojan down." 
 This said he went, and him he did excite. 
 Who sprang from foremost rank, aim'd javelin bright, 
 And look'd about. From man so aiming spear 
 Back Trojans drew. Nor hurled he in vain, but smite 
 Did breast by teat, to battle drawing near. 
 High Melanippus, Hicetaon's pfi*spring dear. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 With crash he fell. His armour on him rung. 
 Antilochus rush'd forth, as runneth hound 
 At stricken fawn, which, as from lair it sprung, 
 The hunter struck, with loos'd limbs brought to ground. 
 So did on thee, Melanippus, bound 
 Bide-fight Antilochus, to take from thee 
 Thine arms. But Hector saw, through fight around 
 To meet him ran. Not stay'd though warrior he 
 Full strong, but like a b(iast that 's mischief done did flee, 
 
 B B 4 
 
376 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Which, slaying dog or herdsman by the oxen, flies ' 
 Ere throng of men collect. In such wise fled 
 Nestorides. On whom with horrid cries 
 Trojans and Hector poured the javelins sad. 
 He stood and turned when friends' throng reach'd he had. 
 The Trojans on like ravening lions went 
 To th' ships, and Zeus' commands accomplished, 
 Who still their strength increased, but spirit shent 
 Of Argives, glory reft, and those still onward sent. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 To Hector glory give his mind did will 
 On curved ships strange quenchless fire to fling, 
 And Thetis' monstrous prayer entire fulfil. 
 For Zeus, of counsel wise, did wait this thing 
 With eyes to see, from burnt ship splendour spring. 
 Thence would he set the Trojans' backward flight 
 Fro' th' ships, and glory to Danaians bring. 
 So minded, he by hollow ships excite 
 Pid Hector, Priam's son, himself full eager wight. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 He rag'd as Shake-spear Ares, or fierce fire 
 On hills doth rage in forest-thickets deep. 
 And foam was at his mouth, and flash'd out dire 
 His eyes neath fearful brows. With sway and sweep 
 'Bout temples helmet dread did moving keep 
 As Hector fought, whose help was Zeus from sky 
 Who 'd on him sole 'mong many honour heap, 
 For brief his date. His fated hour to die, 
 Impell'd by Pallas through Pelides' strength, drew nigh. 
 
BOOK XV. 66—71. 377 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 He 'd fain have broke men's ranks with fierce endeavour 
 Where he most throng and fairest arms doth spy, 
 But could not so break through, though raging ever, 
 So column'd firm they stood, like rock that high 
 And huge doth stand the hoary sea a-nigh. 
 And doth the piping winds' careering sweep. 
 And burly waves that 'gainst it dash, abye. 
 Danaians so 'fore Trojans stedfast keep. 
 But he aU flashing fire upon the crowd doth leap. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 He dash'd as when impetuous wind-fed wave 
 On swift ship strikes, which foam all covereth, 
 And wind's dread blowing on the sail doth rave, 
 The seamen quake in soul, so scant ^^^ scap'd death. 
 In Achives' breasts their soul so travaileth. 
 But he as lion fierce on herd doth light, ^ 
 
 Which vast fen's meadow moist depastureth, 
 Unnumber'd beeves, whose herdsman knows not quite 
 If with the beast for curv'd-horn ox y-slain to fight. 
 
 Lxxr. 
 
 'Mong foremost beeves or last he paceth aye. 
 Leaps lion midst them, and devours a steer. 
 The rest all flee. So Achives then did fly 
 'Fore Hector and Sire Zeus. Sole smote he here 
 Mycenian Periphetes, ofi'spring dear 
 Of Copreus, King Eurystheus' messenger 
 To Hercules. Ill father 's more than peer, 
 The son for feet and fight, all virtues rare. 
 And sense, with Mycenaeans' chiefest might compare. 
 
378 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 So he to Hector greater glory gave. 
 For turning he on buckler's rim did tread, 
 Which reaching heels he bore from darts to save. 
 Stumbling he fell supine. The helmet dread 
 'Bout temples of him falling echoed. 
 Quick Hector saw, and ran, and stood a-near 
 And pierc'd with lance his breast, and smote him dead. 
 Close by his friends, who griev'd but could not comrade 
 dear 
 Assist, for they themselves the godlike Hector fear. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 And now they face the ships, and all around 
 Lay th' outward ships, which first were drawn on land. 
 On pour'd the foe. From foremost ships gave ground 
 Th' Argives perforce, but made at tents a stand, 
 Nor scatter through the camp but closely band. 
 For fear restrain'd them there, and shame's appeach. 
 And they with ceaseless cheer each other mann'd. 
 But chief by parents dear adjuring each 
 Did th' Achives' watch, Gerenian Nestor, them beseech : — 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " Be men, friends, and rev'rence other men, 
 *' Remember each your children, wives, and store, 
 " And parents, if alive or dead they been, 
 " By these not present here I you implore 
 " To stand up strong, and turn to flight no more." 
 His speech stirr'd strength and soul of every wight, 
 Athene heav'n-sent cloud, that was to-fore 
 Their eyes, remov'd. To each side was there light 
 Immense by th' ships, and in the all-pernicious fight. 
 
BOOK XV. 72 — 77. 379 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 And Hector they perceive, war-vig'rous wight, 
 And his companions, those that stay'd behind 
 And battled not, and those that fought the fight 
 Beside the vessels swift. Nor was the mind 
 Of large-soul'd Ajax yet aloof resign'd 
 To stand, the other Achives' sons among, 
 But ships' decks pacing strode in val'rous kind. 
 Huge ship-fight spear in hands he wielded strong 
 Compact with hoops, and two and twenty cubits long. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 As man, that 's skill'd to ride on steeds, picks out 
 From many horses four, and drives them he 
 From plain to city large through folk-throng'd route. 
 And him a many men and women see. 
 He stumbles ne'er, but as his horses flee 
 Alternate leaps from one to other aye. 
 So Ajax many ships' decks there that be. 
 With huge stride pac'd. His dread shout reach'd the sky, 
 As ships and tents defend he bade the Danai. 
 
 liXXVII. 
 
 Nor Hector stay'd in Trojans' mailed throng, 
 But as on flock of birds swoops eagle red, 
 Of geese, or cranes, or swans y-necked long, 
 By river feeding. Dark-prow'd ship a-head 
 So Hector rush'd at. Zeus him onward sped 
 With mighty hand, and did his folk excite. 
 By th' ships again encounter keen they had. 
 Thou wouldst have thought with fresh unwearied might 
 They 'd then first battle join'd, so eagerly they fight. 
 
380 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Thus thought the combatants. Th' Achaeans ill 
 Ne'er ween'd to scape, but die. Each Trojan thought 
 To burn the ships, and Achive heroes kill. 
 So minded they against each other fought. 
 And Hector hold of pace-sea ship's stern caught, 
 Fair ship and swift through sea to plough its way 
 And had to Troy Protesilaus brought, 
 But ne'er to 's land took back. In close fight they 
 Th' Achives and Trojans 'bout this ship each other slay. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Assault of bows or darts at distance nought 
 They wait, but close with one consent they stood 
 And sooth with axes keen, and twy-bills fought, 
 Huge swords, and spears that cut on both sides could. 
 And many black-heft, huge-hilt falchions good 
 Some out the hands, some off the shoulders fall^^^ 
 Of men that fought. Dark earth the while ran blood. 
 Nor Hector, once y-ta'en the stern, slack'd hold at all, 
 But, stern-end ^^'^ kept y-gript, did Trojans ordering call: — 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 " Bring fire, and rousing battle all unite, 
 " For Zeus a day worth all hath giv'n us now 
 " To burn the ships that came in gods' despite, 
 " And us through elders' fault work'd many a woe, 
 *• Who, me that wish'd to fight by th' ships, let go 
 " Would not, and folk kept back. If Zeus marr'd then 
 " Our minds, now prompts and stirs us he." 'Twas so 
 He spake, and they on Argives rush'd more fain. 
 Nor, sore beset by darts, could Ajax more remain. 
 
BOOK XV. 78—82. 381 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 But did expecting death a space retreat 
 To se'en-foot bench, from good ship's deck retire, 
 There watching stood, with spear fro' th' ship still beat 
 The Trojans off, whoe'er brought restless fire. 
 And urging Danai he shouted dire : — 
 " Friends, Ares' servants, hero -Danai ! 
 " Be men, friends, let valour firm inspire. 
 " Or think we that behind us helpers lie? 
 " Or better wall, from men to keep calamity? 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 " No tower-fenc'd city 's near, whose people sent 
 " By turns might save. In strong-arm'd Trojans' plain, 
 " From country far, we stand, by sea y-pent. 
 " In hands then 's safety, not in slack'ning fight, y-lain." 
 He said, and rag'd with keen-point spear amain. 
 What Trojan so to th' hollow ships drew near 
 With burning fire, at Hector's urging fain. 
 Him Ajax aye receiv'd with keen-point spear. 
 And twelve before the ships in close-fight smote he here. 
 
 * BB 8 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XVI, 
 
 For th' ship so fought tliey. But Patroclus stood 
 B' Achilles, people-shepherd, scalding tears he shed 
 As black fount pours from goat-shunn'd rock^^^ dark 
 
 flood. 
 Swift-foot divine Achilles pitied, 
 Beholding him, and wing'd words to him said : — 
 " Why dost like little girl, Patroclus, weep ? 
 " That runs by 'r mother, take her up doth bid, 
 " And pull b' her gown, and her though hasting keep, 
 And to be taken up doth look at her and weep. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Like such thou shedst, Patroclus, tender tear. 
 
 " Wouldst aught announce to Myrmidons or me ? 
 
 " Or hath from Phthia news sole reach'd thine ear ? 
 
 " Alive Menoetius, Actor's son, and he 
 
 " 'Mong Myrmidons -^acian Peleus be. 
 
 " For both of whom, if dead, 't were with us woe. 
 
 " Or for the Argives mourn'st thou, them to see 
 
 " By th' hollow ships for their unright laid low ? 
 
 Speak out. nor hide it in thy mind, that both may know." 
 
BOOK XVI. 1 — 5. 383 
 
 III. 
 
 Sighed heavily, and him then thus address'd 
 Horseman Patroclus : — "0, Achilles, son 
 " Of Peleus, thou th' Achseans' mightiest ! 
 " be not wroth, such woe weighs Achives down ! 
 " For all that were the valiantest time gone 
 " From far or close-hand struck i' th' vessels lie, 
 " For shot 's strong Diomedes Tydeus' son. 
 " Spear-skiird Odysseus eke, and Agamemnon nigh 
 " Were struck. And shot 's Eurypylus with shaft in thigh. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Them drug-skilPd leeches tend, their wounds recure. 
 " Thou 'rt hard, Achilles. Wrath ne'er seize on me 
 " As keepest thou, of ill-starr'd valour, sure ! 
 " What after-born for thee will better be,^^^ 
 " If thou from Argives' fell calamity 
 " Avert not ? relentless, of a truth 
 " Not horseman Peleus father was to thee, 
 " Nor Thetis mother. Blue sea, and uncouth 
 " High rock engender'd thee, thy soul 's so void of ruth." 
 
 Y. 
 
 " If oracle thou shun, or aught told thee 
 " From Zeus thy mother, me quick send I pray, 
 " With other Myrmidons, thine arms give me 
 " To don. Danaians' light ^^^ become I may. 
 " If me for thee the Trojans take, and stay 
 " From fight, th' Achaeans' warlike sons worn out 
 " Will breathe again, brief respite from affray. 
 " For fresh we'll eath those battle- wearied rout, 
 " And to their city drive from ships and tents about. 
 
384 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " 'Twas thus he pray'd unwise. For self he did 
 " Sad death, and fate, implore in asking so.^' 
 Then sighing deep, swift-foot Achilles said : 
 " Ah me, Zeus-sprung Patroclus, what sayst thou ? 
 " Not oracle I heed that I do know, 
 " Nor aught from Zeus did honour'd mother say, 
 " But wounds my heart and soul this grievous woe 
 " When man will mulct his fellow, take away 
 " His prize, for that forsooth he holdeth stronger sway. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " "Woe 's this to me, in soul I \'e suffered pain. 
 
 " Girl th' Achives' sons had guerdon chose me, won 
 
 " By mine own spear, when well-wall'd city ta'en, 
 
 " Her back hath Agamemnon Atreus' son 
 
 " Torn from my hands like mean land-louping one.^^^ 
 
 " But leave we these as past. Be wroth for aye 's not 
 
 right, 
 " Though I ^d not meant slack wrath ere ships mine own 
 " Had shout and battle reach'd. But lead thou, dight 
 " With my fair arms, the war-fond Myrmidons to fight. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Dark cloud of Trojans girds the ships, while hold 
 " Scant space the Argives coop'd by sea-shore pight, 
 " And all the Trojans' town throng thither bold, 
 " For front they see not of my helmet bright 
 " Flash near, or soon they 'd ditches in their flight 
 " With corses fill had towards me mildness known 
 " King Agamemnon. Leaguer'd host they fight, 
 " Nor spear of Diomedes Tydeus' son 
 " In 's hands doth rage to keep death off Danaians yon. 
 
BOOK XVI. 6 — 11. 385 
 
 IX. 
 
 ** Nor aught I hear Atrides' voice call out 
 *^ From hated head, though urging Trojans ring 
 *' Doth Hector homicide's, while they with shout 
 ^' Hold all the plain, th' Achaeans vanquishing. 
 " Yet so Patroclus on them stoutly spring. 
 " Keep mischief from the ships, lest burn them they 
 " With raging fire ^^^ and bar return. This thing 
 " As I shall put it in thy mind obey, 
 ** And me from all Danaians bring much fame away. 
 
 " Fair girl restore me, bright gifts give will those. 
 
 " *' But foe from ships repuls'd, return, and though 
 *' Vouchsafe thee glory Here's thund'ring spouse, 
 '' To fight withouten me wish not the mo' 
 " With war-fond Trojans. Thou 'dst disgrace me so. 
 " Nor yet exulting thou in war and fight 
 " Y-slaught'ring Trojans on to Ilium go. 
 " Fr' Olympus one o' th' gods e'erlasting might 
 
 '* Come down. Far-dart Apollo doth in them delight. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " But back return when thou hast made it light ^^^ 
 " By th' ships, and them i' th' plain let battle on. 
 " Sire Zeus, Athene, and Apollo ! might 
 " As many as there be of Trojans none 
 " Escape from death, nor yet of Argives one ! 
 " But only we destruction so eschew, 
 " Troy's sacred battlements o'erturn alone." 
 To one another thus discours'd the two. 
 Nor longer Ajax stay'd ^^^, the darts so gall him do. 
 
 c c 
 
386 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Queird him Zeus* rede and hurling Trojans high, 
 And 'bout his temples did dread ringing yield 
 Bright helmet strook. On well-wrought bosses aye 
 Twas smote. Left shoulder weary wax'd to wield 
 The firmly grasp' d and rapid glancing shield. 
 Nor could they drive him back that on him set 
 With darts. But panting sore in that hard field 
 Down him from all his limbs ran mickle sweat, 
 Nor breath could he for ill to ill y-cleaving get. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Tell me, Olympus- dwelling Muses, how 
 Fire first reach'd th' Achive ships. Stood Hector near 
 And Ajax' ash-lance smote on shaft below 
 The head with falchion huge, and sever'd sheer. 
 Wields Ajax Telamon this maimed spear 
 In vain. Far from him rang the brazen head, 
 Falling to ground. Ajax in 's mind with fear 
 Gods' doings saw, how marr'd Zeus thund'rer dread 
 All scheme of fight, and vict'ry will' d to Trojans had. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 He shrank fro' th^ darts. They fire that tireth not ' 
 On swift ship flung. Flame quenchless down it dread 
 Pour'd swift as fire, and stern en wrapt. Then smote 
 His thighs Achilles, to Patroclus said : — 
 " Up now, guide-steed Patroclus, Zeus y-bred, 
 " For foe's fire's strength by ships I see. Be ta^en 
 " Let not the ships, lest flight no more be had. 
 " Arms quickly don, and I '11 the folk convene." 
 'Twas thus he said. Patroclus donn'd the armour sheen, 
 
BOOK XVI. 12—17. 387 
 
 XV. 
 
 And first in lovely greaves his legs he drest, 
 With silver buckles clasp'd. And next put on 
 The quaint-wrought starry cuirass 'bout his breast, 
 Cuirass of JEacus' swift- footed son. 
 O'er shoulder ^^^ silver-stud brass sword was thrown, 
 Then huge and solid shield. On vig'rous head 
 He did well-wroughten horse-tail'd helmet don. 
 Whose waving crest above it nodded dread, 
 And two strong darts he took, his hands all featly sway'd. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 -zEacides' spear ^^^ only took not too, 
 Huge, heavy, strong, no Achive might aspire 
 To wield. Achilles sole to wield it knew. 
 A Pelian ash, that Chiron gave his sire 
 From Pelion's top, to heroes' slaughter dire. 
 Quick yoke the steeds he bade Automedon, 
 Whom next rank-shattering Achilles higher 
 Than all he honour'd. And most faithful one 
 In fight he was to bide the foemen's coming on. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Automedon 'neath yoke the swift steeds led, 
 Xanthus and Balius. These with winds would fly. 
 To Zephyr ^^^ them Podarge Harpy bred 
 In meadow grazing, Ocean's stream a-nigh. 
 To side-rein faultless Pedasus did tie. 
 'Twas ta'en b' Achilles with Eetion's town. 
 And mortal yet with deathless steeds did vie. 
 Achilles arm'd the Myrmidons anon 
 And went through all the tents, and made them harness don, 
 
 cc 2 
 
388 THE ILIAD, 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 As ravening wolves, whose hearts have strength past 
 
 speech, 
 Huge antler'd stag in mountains slaught'ring rend, 
 While waxen red with blood the jaws of each, 
 In pack to darkling water-fountain wend, 
 And dark stream's surface lap with thin tongues' end, 
 Y-belching gore. While fearless in each breast 
 Their spirit is, and belly doth distend. 
 Myrmidons' chiefs and leaders with such zest. 
 About swift foot ^acides' brave servant press'd. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 'Mong them Achilles warlike stood, and did 
 Both horse and shielded men exhort amain. 
 Fifty swift ships they were Achilles led. 
 The Zeus-belov'd, to Troy. Each did contain 
 Companions at the row-banks fifty men. 
 Five made he captains, sooth to lead them on 
 In whom he 'd trust. Himself supreme did reign. 
 One band Menesthius, of quaint- wrought habergeon, 
 Y-led, who was the Zeus- sprung river Sperchius' son. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Fair Polydora, Peleus' child, the same 
 To ne'er-tire Sperchius bore (the god did woman bed) 
 But 'twas to Perieres' son in name. 
 To Borus, who with large gifts her had wed. 
 Another leads Eudorus, virgin-bred. 
 Whom lovely dancer Polymela bare. 
 Old Phylas' child. Lov'd her great Argicide, 
 Whose eyes 'mong singers her in chorus fair 
 Of gold-shaft sounding Artemis beheld whilere. 
 
BOOK XVI. 18—23. 389 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Straight mounting upper room did Hermes lie 
 Secret and still with her. She bare bright son, 
 Eudorus, runner swift and warrior high. 
 When Eilithyia, travail-ruling one, 
 Brought him to light, and splendour of the sun 
 He saw, then took her home for vast gifts told 
 Echechleus' mighty strength ^2^, old Actor's son. 
 Bring up and cherish then did Phylas old. 
 As his own son, the boy, and him with love enfold. ^^^ 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The third led brave Pisander, Maimal's son, 
 "Who passed all Myrmidons with spear to fight 
 Next to Pelides' friend. The fourth led on 
 Old drive-steed Phoenix. Fifth, that faultless wight, 
 Alcimedon, Laerceus' offspring bright. 
 When all with chiefs he 'd set, Achilles said : — 
 *' Ye Myrmidons, let none of threats lose sight, 
 " That in the ships ye 've Trojans threatened 
 " All through the time of wrath, and me thus challenged, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " * Hard son of Peleus, nursed thy mother thee 
 
 " To v:rath^ thou cruel^ that hy ships keep'st still 
 
 " Reluctant friends. With harks that traverse sea 
 
 " LeVs home^ since on thy soul hath anger ill 
 
 " Thus fallen,'' Gath'ring round ye 've oft your will 
 
 " Thusspoke. Now fight's huge work erst wish'd for shows. 
 
 " There each stout heart 'gainst Trojans fight his fill." 
 
 He spake, and each one's strength and soul did rouse. 
 
 The warrior-ranks, when heard their king, more densely 
 
 close. 
 
 cc 3 
 
390 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 As joins a man with close-fit stones a wall 
 Of mansion high, the wind's rough force to breast, 
 So fitted helms and bossy shields withal. 
 Shield shield, helm helmet, man on man y-prest, 
 And horse-hair plumed helms with dazzling crest 
 Touched as they nod, so serried close they stood. 
 And warriors twain then arm'd Tore all the rest, 
 Patroclus and Automedon, whose mood 
 Was one, for fight in front of Myrmidons they would. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Achilles went t^ his tent. Op'd coffer's lid, 
 Fair daedal chest, that Thetis Silver-foot 
 Had placed in 's ship ; replenish it she did 
 With vests, and fence- wind cloaks, soft rugs to boot. 
 There was his well- wrought cup, whence none else mote 
 Drink dark-fac'd wine. Nor he to gods beside 
 The father Zeus libation pour'd thereout. 
 This taking from the chest, he purified 
 With sulphur first, then washed in limpid water's tide. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Washed hands, and drew dark wine, then stood mid-ring> 
 And pray'd and pour'd out wine, and gaz'd to th' sky, 
 From thunder-loving Zeus not hid : — "0 King, 
 " Dodonian Zeus Pelasgic, that not nigh 
 " Dost dwell, wintry Dodona's ruler high ! 
 " Thy Selli, priests with unwashed feet, dwell round 
 " And couch on earth. Thou heard'st my word when I 
 " Erst pray'd, and Venging me didst sorely wound 
 " Th' Achasan folk. Now too this wish of mine be crown'd, 
 
BOOK XVI. 24—29. 391 
 
 xxvn. 
 
 *^ By th' ships I stay, but send my friend to fight 
 *^ With many Myrmidons. Fame grant him thou, 
 " wide-voic'd Zeus, and heart in 's breast excite 
 " That Hector ken if servant ours do know 
 " To war alone, or, but when I too go 
 " To Ares' combat, rage his hands severe. 
 " And when fro' th' ships he 'th war and tumult so 
 " Repell'd, return him me to th' swift ships here, 
 " Unscath'd with all his arms, and close-fight comrades 
 dear." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 'Tw"as thus he praying spake, and Zeus all- wise 
 To him did hearken, and in sooth some del 
 The father grants his prayer, some del denies. 
 From ships he granted war and fight repel, 
 Denied return from battle safe and well. 
 Libation done, with prayer to Zeus the Sire 
 He enter'd tent, plac'd cup the chest intill. 
 Then came and stood 'fore tent, with strong desire 
 To view the Trojans' and Achseans' conflict dire. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 With brave Patroclus harness'd in array 
 High-thoughted went to rush on Trojans these. 
 And on the instant then outpouren they. 
 Like way-side wasps, which boys to vexen please 
 Whose wont those way-side dwellers aye to tease. 
 Thoughtless ! to many working woe thereby. 
 For them if man, who that way voyages, 
 Disturb unconscious, they stout-hearted high 
 Their offspring to defend do one and all outfly. 
 
 cc 4 
 
392 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 With hearts like theirs the Myrmidons pour'd out 
 Fro' th' ships. Rose quenchless shout. T' his mates 
 
 'gan cry 
 Patroclus loud : — "0 Myrmidons, ye stout 
 " Comrades of Peleus' son, Achilles high, 
 '' Be men, my friends, mind val'rous constancy, 
 " And grace Pelides, th' Argives' bravest one, 
 " By th' ships let us his servants battling nigh. 
 ** That broad-rule Agamemnon, Atreus' son, 
 " His folly know th' Achaeans' best t' have honour'd none." 
 
 . XXXI. 
 
 He said, and each one's strength and spirit stirr'd. 
 Trojans they charg'd en masse. To th' Achives' shout 
 From ships around an echoing dire was heard. 
 When Trojans saw Menoetius' offspring stout. 
 Servant and self in bright arms harness'd out, 
 Their souls perturb'd, phalanges troubled be. 
 Swift-foot Pelides had by th' ships they thought 
 Cast wrath aside, and chosen amity. 
 Each look'd about what way destruction dire to flee. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 And first Patroclus hurl'd with glitt'ring spear. 
 Eight in the midst where throng the most they did, 
 High-soul'd Protesilaus' ship's-stern near. 
 Pyraechmus smote, who horsemen-Paeons had 
 From Amydon, broad-flowing Axius led. 
 Him on right shoulder smote. Cry out and fall 
 Supine he did. Were round him seiz'd with dread 
 His Paeon mates, Patroclus so on all 
 Sent fear, their chief y-slain, at fight their best withal. 
 
BOOK XVI. 30—35. 393 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 And from the ships they drave them and put out 
 The burning fire. Half burnt upon the shore 
 The ship was left, and Trojans put to rout 
 With tumult strange, and Danai out-pour 
 Through th' hollow ships, and quenchless rose uproar. 
 As when from mighty mountain's summit high 
 Wield-lightning Zeus thick cloud expels to-fore. 
 Watch-towers, bluff peaks, and thickets all to th' eye 
 Appear, and boundless ether openeth from the sky. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Foe's fire from ships so thrusting, Danai 
 Did breathe a space, but fight grew nothing slack, 
 Nor headlong 'fore th' Achseans warlike fly 
 Did Trojans yet away from vessels black. 
 But still stood out, and but perforce gave back. 
 There man slew man amid the scatter'd fight 
 Of chiefs. And first Menoetius' brave son strake, 
 Just as he turn'd, Areilycus wight 
 On thigh with keen-edg'd spear, and brass he thrust 
 through quite. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Brake bone the spear. To ground he fell on 's face. 
 Brave Menelaus Thoas' breast, where nigh 
 The shield 'twas bar'd, did smite, and limbs unbrace. 
 Phylides did Amphiclus rushing eye. 
 And, fore-hand with him, smite at end of thigh. 
 Man's muscles there be thickest. Spear-point sheer 
 Through tendons cut, and darkness clouds his eye. 
 Of Nestor's sons, Antilochus with spear 
 Atymnius smote. Through flank did brazen lance career. 
 
394 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Tore him he fell. Maris with spear, irate 
 For 's brother, on Antilochus did run. 
 And stood 'fore corse. His stroke anticipate 
 Did Thrasymedes aiming, godlike one, 
 Nor miss'd his shoulder. Spear point crush'd the bone, 
 And arm from muscles tore. With sound he fell : 
 Night veil'd his eyes. To Erebus thus down 
 Went Amisodarus' two sons, that well 
 Hurl'd spear, Sarpedon's mates, whom brothers twain did 
 quell. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 'Twas Amisodarus^^'' that unquell'd thing 
 Chimaera rear'd, the bane of many men. 
 Ajax Oiliades did forward spring 
 And Cleobulus seize alive, hemm'd in 
 By th' crowd. Smote neck with huge-hilt falchion then. 
 And loos'd his strength. The sword all blood- warm grew. 
 Eed death and fate relentless clos'd his e'en. 
 Again Peneleus rush'd, and Lycon who 
 With spears each other 'd miss'd, for hurl'd in vain the 
 two. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 To it with swords they ran, and Lycon strook 
 The horse-tail'd helmet's crest. To shivers sprung 
 By th' hilt his sword. liis neck Peneleus took 
 'Neath ear. The blade all enter'd, solely hung 
 By th' skin the head, and were his limbs unstrung. 
 Merion with swift feet Acamas o'erta'en. 
 Right shoulder smote as on t' his steeds he flung. 
 He sank from car. Pour'd darkness round his e'en. 
 Idomcneus smote Erymas on mouth with javelin keen. 
 
BOOK XVI. 36—41. 395 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 And onward traversed, underneath the brain, 
 The brazen spear, and white bones did divide. 
 His teeth out-shaken were, and eyes the twain 
 Y-fiird with blood, which at his mouth beside 
 And nostrils forth he breathed, gaping wide. 
 Yeird him death's cloud. Danaian chiefs each one 
 Thus slew his man. On lambs and kids, if tide 
 Through shepherd's fault the flock be scattered, run 
 I' th' mountains eager wolves, that watch and tear the weak 
 things down. 
 
 XL. 
 
 So Danai on Trojans fiercely set, 
 And these of flight tumultuous them bethought, 
 And did their stedfast valour all forget. 
 And ever with his spear huge Ajax sought 
 The brass-mail'd Hector, who in war well-taught, 
 With bull's hide buckler cov'ring shoulders stout, 
 Watch'd arrows whiz, spears sounding as they fought, 
 And knew the battle's vict'ry chang'd about. 
 Yet stay 'd and sav'd his lov'd companions in the rout. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 As from Olympus comes a cloud to th' sky 
 From sacred ^Ether, when a storm Zeus breeds, 
 So from the ships rose flight and battle-cry. 
 Nor they recross'd the trench as order needs. ^^^ 
 Arm'd Hector thence on swift-foot horses yedes. 
 But Trojans left, whom trench in their despite 
 Detain'd. In trench store draw-car rapid steeds 
 Brake poles and kings' cars left. Patroclus wight 
 Pursued, and did Danaians sore to Trojans' hurt excite. 
 
6\)b THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 These scatf ring fiird all ways with noise and rout. 
 Dust-storm 'neath clouds rose high. Back-strain'd to 
 
 th* town 
 The whole-hoof'd steeds. Patroclus drave with shout 
 Where folk most throng'd. 'Neath wheels were men 
 
 hurl'd down 
 From cars, and hurtling chariots overthrown. 
 O'er trench the steeds immortal swift y-sprong, 
 Bright gift the gods gave Peleus. Eager on 
 They went. His soul for Hector call'd, for long 
 He did to smite. But him bare off swift steeds and strong. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 As dark earth all oppress'd 'neath tempest lies 
 In autumn-day, when sudden flood of rain 
 Zeus pours, when fierce his wrath 'gainst men doth rise 
 That justice in th' assembly forceful strain, 
 And right thrust out, no kepe of gods' wrath ta'en. 
 Their rivers all a-running overflow, 
 And many a hill-slope torrents cut off then, 
 To th' blue sea rushing, groaning as they go, 
 From mountains headlong, and the toils of men o'erthrow. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 The Trojans' steeds so running sorely groan. 
 Patroclus the phalanges first in 's way 
 O'erta'en, drave back to the ships, nor to the town 
 Would suffer to ascend, albeit they 
 Full eager were, but chasing them did slay, 
 The river, ships, and lofty wall between, 
 And made a many then their were-geld ^^^ pay. 
 With bright spear first smote Pronous, where seen 
 By th' shield his breast. With crash he fell. His limbs 
 y-loosed been. 
 
BOOK XVI. 42—47. 397 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Patroclus next on Thestor, Enops' son, 
 That cow'ring sat on polished chariot, flew, 
 Who 'd dropp'd distraught the reins. By 's side anon 
 Eight cheek he smote with spear, teeth piercing through, 
 And him o'er chariot-rim with spear out-drew. 
 As man on high rock sits with bright brass hook 
 And line, from sea draws sacred fish, so too 
 With bright spear he from car him gaping took. 
 And on his mouth dash'd down, whom, falling, life forsook. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Rushing Euryalus with stone he smote 
 Mid-head, that in stout helm all split in two. 
 To earth he fell, and crush-life death about 
 Him pour'd. Then Erymas, Amphot'rus too, 
 Epaltes, and Tlepolemus then, who 
 Damastor's offspring was, Echius, Pyres, 
 And Ipheus and Evippus eke he slew. 
 And Polymelus also Argeades ; 
 Successive all on fertile earth he prostrates these. 
 
 XLVIT. 
 
 Sarpedon, when he saw that smitten down 
 His mates, the beltless-mail'd, on this wise be. 
 Beneath Patroclus' hands Menoetius' son. 
 To th' godlike Lycians call'd he chidingly : — 
 " Shame, Lycians ! whither fly ? Be valiant ye, 
 " I '11 meet this man myself, and who 'tis ken 
 " So strong. Work'd Trojans many woes hath he, 
 " Since knees he 's loos'd of many mighty men." 
 He said, and sprang to ground full arm'd from chariot 
 then. 
 
398 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Patroclus, seeing this, from chariot sprang. 
 As crook-claw'd vultures twain of curved bills do ply, 
 That fight on lofty rock with scream and clang, 
 So these on one another rush'd with cry. 
 And them beholding did with pity spy 
 The crafty Kronos' son. To Here then, 
 His spouse and sister, spake he ; — " Woe am I 
 " If 'tis Sarpedon's fate, most dear of men, 
 '^ To be beneath Mencetius' son Patroclus slain. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 ** My heart yearns two ways indeterminate, 
 " Him snatched alive from tearful fight away 
 " In Lycia's people opulent to set, 
 " Or 'neath Menoetius' offspring's hands to slay." 
 Large-ey'd august did Here answ'ring say : — 
 " Dread Kronides, what utt'rest thou to me? 
 " A mortal man, and doom'd this many a day, 
 " Wouldst thou from death the melancholy free ? 
 ** Then do. We other gods though will not all agree. 
 
 L. 
 
 " This else I say, in mind revolve it do : 
 " Send'st thou Sarpedon home alive, will none, 
 " Think' st thou, of other gods desire it too 
 " From battle fierce to send his cherish' d son ? 
 " For many fight round Priam's mighty town, 
 " Immortals' sons 'gainst whom thou 'st fearful ire. 
 *' But if so dear, so pity dost this one, 
 *' Him soothly suffer thou in battle dire 
 ** Beneath Patroclus' hands, Menoetius' son, t' expire. 
 
BOOK XVL 48—53. 399 
 
 LI. 
 
 " When quit him soul and life, him hence to bear 
 " Send Death and dulcet Sleep, till Lycia wide 
 " They reach. Him friends and kinsmen bury there 
 " With mound and column will. For of the dead 
 " This is the honour sooth." Twas thus she said, 
 Nor Sire of gods and men did disobey, 
 But on the earth some bloody drops he shed 
 To grace his son, whom must Patroclus slay 
 In fertile Troas far from native land away. 
 
 LII. 
 
 As near they drew Patroclus smote y-wis ' 
 
 r th' groin Sarpedon's servant, strenuous wight, 
 Fam'd Thrasymed, and loosed his limbs. Him miss 
 Sarpedon did, who next hurFd javelin bright, 
 But did steed Pedasus' right shoulder smite 
 With spear. It groan'd, out-breathing soul away, 
 And screaming fell i' th' dust. Its soul took flight. 
 Apart stood th' other steeds, yoke creak'd and they 
 The reins confus'd as side-rein courser sprawling lay„ 
 
 LIII. 
 
 For this found cure spear-fam'd Automedon : 
 Long sword from stout thigh drew, and cut away 
 The side-rein steed, nor slack'd. The steeds anon 
 Righted and drew to rein. Once more did they 
 The warriors meet in soul-consuming fray. 
 With bright spear miss'd Sarpedon. Point of dart 
 Left shoulder of Patroclus pass'd astray. 
 Who next hurl'd spear, nor weapon vain did part 
 From 's hands, but smote where midriff girds the close- 
 pack'd heart. 
 
400 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 He fell as falls an oak or poplar tree, 
 Or tall upshooting pine, tliat shipwrights do, 
 As timber, for the building ships to be. 
 With fresh-set axes in the mountains hew. 
 So he ^fore steeds and car lay stretch'd out too. 
 And clutch'd the gory dust, with dying cry. 
 As tawny stout of heart 'mong trail-foot crew 
 A bull, that lion, which on herd doth fly, 
 Hath slaughter'dj doth 'neath jaws of lion groan and die. 
 
 LV. 
 
 So, by Patroclus slain, indignant here 
 
 The shield-arm'd Lycians' chieftain groan'd, and he 
 
 His comrade call'd by name : — "0 Glaucus dear, 
 
 " 'Mong men thou warrior, much behoove th thee 
 
 " Play champion now, and warrior bold. Then be 
 
 *• Sad war thy wish if brave. First seeking out 
 
 " The Lycians' chiefs, and urging them that me, 
 
 " Sarpedon, they defend go all about. 
 
 And then thyself for me with spear do battle stout. 
 
 a 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " For thy reproach shall I from henceforth be, 
 *^ And shame for all thy days, if soothly shall 
 " Th' Achaeans of mine arms despoilen me, 
 " Who in this battle of the ships do fall. 
 " But bear thee stoutly, rouse the people all." 
 He said, and death o'er eyes and nostrils grew. 
 Patroclus on his breast doth heel instal, 
 From flesh pluck'd spear, which midrifi" did ensue 
 And so at once his soul with spear-point out he drew. 
 
BOOK XVI. 54 — 59. 401 
 
 LVII. 
 
 And there the Myrmidons detain'd the steeds 
 That panting thence all eager would have skirr'd 
 When left the monarchs' cars. In Glaucus breeds 
 Sore anguish when his comrade's voice he heard. 
 Aid him he could not, and his heart it stirred. 
 His arm with hand he squeezed, for pain'd him there 
 The wound that Teucer, who on wall did guard 
 His folk from ill, him rushing dealt whilere 
 With bow. Far-dart Apollo thus did he invoke in 
 prayer: — 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 *' Hear king, that somewhere art in Lycia's folk 
 ^' The rich, or Troy's. On all sides hear canst thou 
 " The troubled man, and trouble's on me broke. 
 " Wound have I grievous thus, my hand is through 
 " Transiix'd with pangs. Nor can the blood thereto 
 ^' Be stanch'd. The anguish weighs my shoulder down. 
 " Spear firmly grasp I can't, nor forward go 
 " And foemen fight. And slain 's our bravest one, 
 " Sarpedon, child of Zeus, who succours not his son. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " sovereign, heal my grievous wound, allay 
 " My pangs, and grant me vigour, that incite 
 " My Lycian mates to battle strong I may, 
 " And fight myself for th' corse." So pray'd the wight. 
 Phoebus Apollo heard him, and forthright 
 His pangs assuag'd, and from his wound so sad 
 The black blood stanch'd, his soul endued with might. 
 Glaucus perceiv'd in mind, exceeding glad 
 That heard his prayer the mighty god so promptly had. 
 
402 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 To fend Sarpedon he doth all sides pass, 
 And stir the Lycian chiefs. To th' Trojans strode 
 He then, to Panthus' son, Polydamas, 
 And brave Agenor ; and t' ^neas yode 
 And Hector brazen-arm'd, and near him stood, 
 And winged words on this wise soothly spake ; — 
 " Now, Hector, thou allies forget'st for good, 
 " Who far from friends and country for thy sake 
 " Lose life, yet thou no kepe to succour them dost take. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 " Sarpedon 's down, the shield-arm'd Lycians' head, 
 " Who Lycia kept with judgment and with might, 
 " Whom 'neath Patroclus hath brass Ares sped 
 " With spear. Stand by him, friends, nor bear the slight 
 ** That spoil his arms and do his corse despite 
 " Should Myrmidons, in wrath for Danai, 
 " Whom we with spears by swift ships slew in fight." 
 He said. And Trojans grief past bearing high 
 For him who, though an alien, was their town's defence 
 abye. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 For followed him much folk, and aye their head 
 In battle he. Now eager went they right 
 At Danai. Them soothly Hector led 
 Wroth for Sarpedon. Th' Achives doth incite 
 Menoetius' son, Patroclus' heart of might. 
 Who did th' already prompt Ajaces call ; — 
 *^ Ajaces now resolve to stoutly fight 
 " As erst your wont 'mong men the best withal. 
 " A man is down, Sarpedon, first that leap'd th' Achaeans' 
 wall. 
 
BOOK xvr. 60 — 65. 403 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " But if seize and do him a despite, 
 " And from his shoulders strip his arms away, 
 " Or there against us combating we might 
 " Some friend of his with brass relentless slay!" 
 He said, and prompt to drive the foe were they. 
 With strengthen'd columns Trojans, Lycians sped, 
 And Myrmidons and Achives to the fray. 
 And join'd in fierce encounter 'bout the dead, 
 And shouted dire, the warriors' armour clashing dread. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And Zeus fell night stretch'd o'er the combat dire 
 To make for 's son belov'd fell toil of fight. 
 Trojans made dark-ey'd Achives first retire. 
 For slain was Myrmidons' not basest wight. 
 High soul'd Agacles' son, Epigeus hight. 
 That godlike erst did well-dwelt Budium sway ; 
 But when he had y-slain his kinsman bright. 
 Then did he suppliant come, and Peleus pray. 
 And Thetis Silver-foot. Companion sent him they 
 
 LXV. 
 
 With rank y-shattering Achilles out 
 To steed-apt Ilium, Trojans there to fight. 
 Him seizing corse with stone bright Hector smote 
 On th' head, which clave within stout helmet quite 
 In twain. Prostrate he fell on corse y-pight. 
 Around him pour'd soul-quelling death. Then rue 
 Patroclus did his slaughter'd comrade's plight. 
 And he the combatants went rushing through 
 Like rapid hawk that daws and starlings doth pursue. 
 
 DD 2 
 
404 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 At Lycians so, drive-steed Patroclus ! run 
 And Trojans didst, heart- wroth for comrade's sake. 
 And Sthenelaus there Ithsemen's son 
 On neck with stone he smote, and tendons brake. 
 The foremost back with Hector bright betake. 
 And far as long spear's cast, a man might throw 
 That in contention doth endeavour make, 
 Or else in war at life-consuming foe, 
 So Trojans back, so Achives onward thrusting go. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 But Glaucus first, the shield-arm'd Lycians' head, 
 Fac'd round, and lofty soul'd Bathycles slew, 
 Chalcon's dear son, that house in Hellas had. 
 In weal and wealth did Myrmidons out-do. 
 Him Glaucus sooth mid-breast with spear ran through, 
 Quick turning round when him he 'd reach'd in chace. 
 With sound he fell. Th' Achaean s sorely rue 
 That fell so bright a man. But at the case 
 Much Trojans joy'd and stood, and round him throng'd 
 a-pace. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Achasans valour not forgat, but on 
 With force they went. And Merion there a Trojan slew, 
 Laogonus, stout warrior, valiant son 
 Of Zeus Idaean's priest Onetor, who 
 From folk had grace as to a god is due. 
 'Neath ear and jaw he smote him. Quickly went 
 From limbs the life. Dread darkness o'er him drew, 
 ^neas brazen spear at Merion sent. 
 Whom pacing there he thought beneath his shield t' have 
 hent.253 
 
BOOK XVI. 66— -71. 405 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 But he perceiving shunn'd the brazen dart, 
 And forward stoop'd. Behind him javelin long 
 Fix'd in the ground. The javelin's hinder part 
 Did shake. Then strength remitted Ares strong. 
 JEneas' quiv'ring spear went earthward, sprong 
 From stalwart hand in vain. And spake then he, 
 ^neas, who in soul with wrath was stong : — 
 " Merion soon stay'd thee, dancer though thou be, 
 " My spear for ever had, if I had smitten thee." 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Him spear-fam'd Merion answer'd ; — " 'T were for thee, 
 "Though strong, ^neas, hard to quell, I trow, 
 " The strength of all men, whosoe'er it be 
 " That 'gainst thee comes, since mortal too art thou. 
 " Could I with brass spear strike thee full thou 'dst now, 
 " Though strong and trusting to thy hands, renown 
 " On me, on steed-fam'd Hades' soul bestow." 
 He said. Him chid Menoetius' valiant son : — 
 " Why talkest, Merion, thus, although a valiant one ? 
 
 Lxxr. 
 
 " For sharp words, friend, will Trojans corse not quit 
 " Ere earth hold some. In hands war's business lies, 
 " In council words'. So speech to swell's not fit, 
 " But fight." This said he leads, and with him hies 
 The godlike man. As woodmen's din doth rise 
 In mountain-thickets, which afar one hears. 
 So din of these from broad earth upward flies 
 From brass and shields, the well-wrought hides of steers. 
 As battcr'd them the falchions and the twin-edg'd spears. 
 
 D D 3 
 
406 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Not shrewdest might Sarpedon recognise 
 With darts, and blood, and dust from head to foot beset. 
 They throng his corse as in a stall the flies, 
 That buzzing round the milky pails do get 
 In hour of spring, when milk the pails doth wet. 
 So throng the corse did these. Nor Zeus turn'd e'er 
 From battle fierce his lustrous eyes, but at 
 Them still did gaze. And much he ponder'd there 
 In mind about Patroclus' death, with anxious care. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 If now in fierce fight him bright Hector there 
 Should on divine Sarpedon slay with spear, 
 And of his armour strip his shoulders bare, 
 Or yet augment to more their toil severe. 
 So pond'ring deem'd he best brave servant here 
 Of Peleus' son Achilles should to th' town 
 Trojans and Hector of the brazen gear 
 Drive back, and 'reave of life full many a one. 
 On Hector first he sent a craven spirit down. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Ascending car, he turn'd to flight, and bade 
 The other Trojans fly. Of Zeus he knew 
 The sacred scales.^^^ Nor mighty Lycians stay'd, 
 All fled when they their king heart-riven view 
 On th' heap of dead ; on whom fell many too 
 When that Kronion mighty contest drave. 
 From shoulders they Sarpedon's armour drew, 
 Brazen and bright, which to his comrades gave 
 To bear to th' hollow ships Menoetius' ofi'spring brave. 
 
BOOK XVI. l^'-ll, 407 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Then spake t' Apollo drive-cloud Zeus : — " Now go, 
 " Dear Phoebus, cleanse from gore Sarpedon, freed 
 " From darts. Take him afar, and wash in river's flow, 
 " Anoint him with ambrosia, and in weed 
 " Immortal clad, commit to guides of speed, 
 " To Sleep and Death the Twins. Him soon they '11 bear 
 ** To ample Lycia's wealthy folk indeed. 
 " And friends and kinsmen him will bury there 
 " With tomb and column eke, for such the dead man's 
 share." 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 He said, nor did Apollo disobey 
 His father there in sooth, but swiftly go 
 Th' Idaean mountains down to th' dreadful fray. 
 Divine Sarpedon straight he lifts from darts, and so 
 Far thence convey'd and wash'd in river's flow, 
 Anointed with ambrosia, clad in weed 
 Immortal, and swift guides committed to. 
 To Sleep and Death the Twins, that him indeed 
 In ample Lycia's wealthy folk deposited with speed. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Patroclus there, and eke Automedon, 
 Urging the steeds in chace of Trojans sped 
 And Lycians, to his hurt, infatuate one ! 
 Had he Pelides' mandate hearkened 
 Black death's pernicious fate he would have fled. 
 Zeus' rede aye passeth men's ; he puts to flight 
 The strong, and 'reaves of vict'ry him whom led 
 He haply hath himself, and urg'd to fight. 
 'Twas he did then his soul within his breast excite. 
 
 BD 4 
 
408 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Who first who last didst slay, Patrocliis, there 
 When unto death the gods did call thee on ? 
 Adrastus first, Autonous there were 
 Echeclus, Perimus of Megas son, 
 Epistor, Melanippns, and anon 
 Elasus, Malius, and Pylartes. Slain 
 Were these. The rest of flight thought every one. 
 Then high-gate Troy th' Achaean s' sons had ta'en 
 Beneath Patroclus' hands, who rag'd with spear amain, 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 But Phoebus stood on tower, with ill device 
 Towards him, and Trojans help'd. Patroclus wight 
 Went thrice at th' high wall's elbow. Phoebus thrice 
 Foil'd him, and smote with hands immortal buckler 
 
 bright. 
 A fourth time on he rush'd, as some god might, 
 When threatening spake Apollo, Far- Dart one : — 
 " Zeus-sprung Patroclus, back. 'Tis not in fate y-pight 
 " That by thy spear the haughty Trojans' town, 
 " Or by Achilles', far thy stronger, be o'erthrown." 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 'Twas thus he spake. Patroclus far recedes 
 To shun far-dart Apollo's wrath. Then stay 
 By Scaean gates did Hector th' whole-hoof steeds 
 In doubt to fight, back rushing to the fray. 
 Or shouting bid by th' wall collect th' array. 
 Phoebus did form of man, strong, vig'rous, don, 
 And near him stood as he these things did weigh. 
 Like Asius seein'd, of Hector tame- steed one 
 The uncle, Hecuba's own brother, Dumas' son. 
 
BOOK XVI. 78—83. 409 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 He dwelt in Phrygia, by Sangarius' streams. 
 So guis'd Apollo spake: — " Hector, why 
 " Surceasest war ? for thee it ill beseems. 
 " Thy w^eaker were as much thy stronger I, 
 " Thou 'dst to thy hurt left war. But come now ply 
 " Thy stout-hoof 'd steeds Patroclus-ward, whom seize 
 " Thou mayst if grant thee fame Apollo high." 
 Through men's toil back the god when spoken these. 
 Steeds war-wards drive bright Hector bade Cebriones. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Apollo went and enter'd throng, and on 
 The Argives sent ill tumult, glory gave 
 Trojans and Hector. Hector left alone 
 The other Danai, nor slew, but drave 
 His stout-hoof 'd coursers at Patroclus brave. 
 From steeds Patroclus sprang. In left hand spear, 
 In right seiz'd white rough stone, could hand encave. 
 Straining he threw and miss'd his man, but near, 
 Nor vain the throw, but struck down Hector's charioteer. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Cebriones, fam'd Priam's bastard son, 
 
 Steeds reining, he on brow with sharp stone smote. 
 
 Both eye-brows pebble took. Nor hold could bone. 
 
 His eyes upon the ground i' th' dust fell out 
 
 Before his feet, and he, as diver mote, 
 
 From quaint car pitch'd. From bones his life doth flee. 
 
 Then him, Patroclus horseman, thou didst flout : — 
 
 " Ye gods ! how brisk a man, how nimbly he 
 
 Doth dive ! had this but happcn'd now in fishful sea ! 
 
 TT- 
 
410 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 " He 'd seeking oysters satiate many a one, 
 " From bark so leaping, though full rough the sea, 
 " As now to th^ plain from steeds brisk dives he down. 
 *' Among the Trojans soothly divers be." 
 
 ; He said and on Cebriones went he 
 
 With lion's strength, that wasting folds around 
 Is smit i' th' breast, whom slays his bravery. 
 So on Cebriones, Patroclus, bound 
 
 Didst thou ! while Hector too from horses sprang to ground. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 These *bout Cebriones like lions fought. 
 In mountain-tops for slaughter'd stag that fight, 
 Both famish'd, both with soul intrepid, haught. 
 So 'bout Cebriones two lords of fight, 
 Menoetius' son, Patroclus, Hector bright, 
 Would gash with ruthless brass each other's breast. 
 Nor Hector slack'd his hold on head y-pight 
 Patroclus held by th' foot. Meanwhile the rest 
 Trojans and Danai in fierce encounter press'd. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 As Eurus and the South- wind quarrel make 
 In mountain depths, and forest deep, where grows 
 The beech and ash and long-bark'd cornel, shake ; 
 While these to buffets fall with reaching boughs, 
 And mighty din, and crashing clamour grows. 
 So Trojans, Achives, leaping slaught'ring go. 
 Nor once of baneful flight bethought them those. 
 Darts many round Cebriones they throw 
 That fix, and arrows, too, that leap from string of bow. 
 
BOOK XVI. 84—89. 411 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 And many mighty stones their bucklers smote 
 That round him fought. In whirl of dust he lay 
 In large space large, his horsemanship forgot. 
 And while the sun to mid-sky made his way, 
 The darts on both sides smite and people slay. 
 But when the sun his course ^gan westward keep, 
 Th' Achaeans did 'gainst fate prevail i' th' fray. 
 Hero Cebriones from javelins' heap 
 They drew, from Trojans' din, and arms from shoulders 
 strip. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 On Trojans rush'd Patroclus, bent on ill. 
 Thrice rush'd like Ares swift with fearful cry, 
 And thrice nine men he slew. When fourth time still 
 Godlike he rush'd, thy end of death ^^^ w^as nigh, 
 Patroclus ! Met thee Phcebus dread in high 
 Encounter. Him i' th' throng he not descries 
 Who veil'd in darkness came. Behind him nigh 
 He stood, and back and shoulders broad likewise 
 Y-smote with down-turn'd palm. Round whirl'd his dizzy 
 eyes. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 From head Apollo dash'd his helmet. RoU'd 
 'Neath steeds' feet rang the vizor'd helm. With gore 
 And dust its horse-hair crest was all befoul'd. 
 Nor dust might soil that horse-tail'd helm before, 
 That, fending head and graceful forehead, wore 
 Achilles godlike man. To Hector here 
 Zeus gave 't on 's head to wear, destruction sore 
 'T would bring him soon. In 's hands ^^^ the long-shade 
 spear 
 Huge, heavy, strong with brazen head all shatter'd sheer. 
 
412 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XC. 
 
 From arm fell reach-foot shield with thong to ground. 
 Zeus' son Apollo loos'd his habergeon. 
 Distraught with bright limbs loos'd he stood astound. 
 Him from behind on back mid- shoulders one 
 With bright spear smote, a Dardan, Panthus' son, 
 Euphorbus, who before his equals far 
 At spear and horsemanship and swift feet shone. 
 And erst had hurl'd full twenty men from car 
 When first he came with chariot there to learn of war. 
 
 xci. 
 
 He first, Patroclus, hurl'd a dart at thee. 
 Nor quell'd, but ran and mix'd again i' th' rout. 
 Ash spear from flesh out-pluck'd. In fight not he 
 Abide Patroclus, though unarmed, mote. 
 Patroclus, quell'd by spear, and god's stroke, sought 
 His fellows' throng. But Hector saw with spear 
 So smit high-soul'd Patroclus pace thereout. 
 And arm'd with javelin through the ranks drew near, 
 And smote him in the flank, and brass drave through it 
 sheer. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 He fell with heavy sound, and grieved sore 
 Th' Achaeans' folk. And as by strength amain 
 A lion quells in fight a huge strong boar. 
 In mountain-tops stout-hearted fight the twain 
 For some small spring, where both to drink are fain. 
 The lion doth the boar, much panting, slay. 
 So from Menoetius' son, who 'd many slain. 
 Hector Priamides took life away 
 With spear. And boasting o'er him winged words did 
 say: — 
 
BOOK XVI. 90—95. 413 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 " Patroclus, thought'st thou waste our town to lay, 
 
 " And Trojans' Avives their freedom's day y-ta'en 
 
 " Send in thy ships to country dear away ? 
 
 " Thou fool ! 'Fore these would Hector's swift steeds 
 
 strain 
 " With feet to war. Myself with spear amain, 
 " Who war-fond Trojans do surpass, had from them staid 
 " The servile day. Thee vultures on this plain 
 " Shall eat. Thee, wretch, could not Achilles aid, 
 " Though strong, who stay'd behind, and much to thee 
 
 departing said : — 
 
 xciv. 
 
 " ' Come not, drive-steed Patroclus, hack to me 
 " To thJ hollow ships, ere pierced the blood-stained mail 
 " On slay -man Hector's breast.^ Thus spake to thee, 
 " And mov'd thy witless mind." With voice of ail 
 Patroclus spak'st : — " Now, Hector, freely rail ! 
 '' Zeus Kronides and Phcebus vict'ry clear 
 " Give thee. 'Twas they did o'er me eath prevail, 
 ** And arms from shoulders strip. Had twenty here 
 " Like thee encounter'd me, they 'd died beneath my spear. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 " Fell fate and Leto's son have slaughter'd me, 
 " Euphorbus eke of men. But third despoil' st me thou. 
 " I tell thee, bear 't in mind- Not long thou 'It be. 
 '' For death and strong fate 's near thee even now, 
 " 'Neath fam'd Achilles' hands to make thee bow." 
 Concluding death round veil'd him as he spake. 
 From limbs fled soul to Hades, wailing how 
 Its lot was sad that manhood must and youth forsake. 
 To him so dead such speech did radiant Hector make. 
 
414 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 " Patroclus, why foretell me speedy death ? 
 " First fair tress'd Thetis' son, Achilles, might, 
 " Who knows ? lose life by my spear smit." He saith, 
 And brass spear pluck'd from wound, heel on him pight 
 And push'd supine from spear. Then godlike wight 
 Automedon he sought with spear up-lift. 
 Swift-foot Pelides' servant, whom to smite 
 He long'd. But bore him off the coursers swift 
 Immortal, which the gods gave Peleus, brilliant gift. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XVIL 
 
 I. 
 
 Nor soothly not perceive did Atreus' son, 
 Ares-lov'd Menelaus, when in fight 
 Patroclus was by Trojans quelFd, but run 
 Through front ranks did in brass all-glist'ring bright, 
 Went round him as round calf its mother might 
 First calving, wailing, young before had ne'er. 
 So round Patroclus Menelaus bright 
 Did go, and spear and round shield fore him bear, 
 Intent to slaughter him who 'gainst him came so e'er. 
 
 n. 
 
 Nor Panthus' spear-skill'd son not heeded here, 
 
 Patroclus fall'n, but near him stood and said, 
 
 Addressing Menelaus, Ares-dear : — 
 
 " Atrides Menelaus, Zeus-y-bred 
 
 " Folk-chief retire, leave gory spoils and dead. 
 
 " None sooner, Trojans or allies did there 
 
 " Patroclus smite with spear in combat dread. 
 
 " So high renown let me 'mong Trojans bear 
 
 Lest tbee I smite, and from thee soul y-cherish'd tear." 
 
416 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 Then wroth spake auburn Menelaus so: — 
 " Sire Zeus ! unseemly is o'erweening boast ; 
 " Not panther's spirit such, nor lion's, no, 
 " Nor deadly boar's, whose spirit hugest most 
 " Within his breast doth rage in strength robust, 
 " As Panthus' spear-sldll'd sons do ween in pride. 
 " Yet tame-steed Hyperenor ^'^^ had small gust 
 " Of youth when me he jeer'd, and me did bide, 
 " And call'd me meanest warrior on Danaians' side. 
 
 " Nor did, methinks, on feet returning he 
 
 " His wife belov'd and honour'd parents cheer. 
 
 " So sooth thy strength I '11 loose if thou wilt me 
 
 ^' Abide. But I areed thee back career 
 
 " To th' crowd, nor 'gainst me stand, lest ill severe 
 
 " Do on thee fall. When done a fool may know." 
 
 He said, but not persuades. He answer'd here : — 
 
 " Now, Zeus-bred Menelaus, shalt thou so 
 
 My brother 'venge, by thee, as thou dost boast, laid low, 
 
 V. 
 
 " And widow'd hast his wife in deep recess 
 *^ Of chamber new, and grief untold and woe 
 " T' his parents set. But I shall maken cesse 
 " The anguish of those wretched ones, I know, 
 " If that thy head and armour bearing throw 
 " In Panthus' and in noble Phrontis' hands I might. 
 " Nor longer shall untried the task be now 
 " Nor void of strife, nor valour, nor aifright." 
 He said, and did his all- sides-equal buckler smite. 
 
BOOK XVII. 3 — 8. 417 
 
 vr. 
 
 
 But brass not broke, point bent on buckler stout. 
 Atrides Menelaus second tried 
 With brazen spear, and father Zeus besought. 
 On throat's root smote his foe, that backward plied. 
 To th' blow he leant, and on stout hand relied. 
 Through tender neck came out the point of spear. 
 He fell with sound, his clashing arms collide. 
 Blood- wet his locks, that with the Graces' peer, 
 And braids of hair all wasp'd ^^^ with gold and silver gear. 
 
 VII. 
 
 And as a man doth some luxuriant plant 
 Of olive rear in solitary spot. 
 Where water bubbleth up withouten scant, 
 Fair blooming tree, which breezes all about 
 Do shake, which brightest flowers all blossoms out, 
 When sudden comes a blast with whirlwind down 
 Immense, that doth the tree from trench up-root 
 And lay by th' ground. Euphorbus, spear-skill'd one, 
 Panthoides, so slay and spoil did Atreus' son. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 As mountain-lion courage trusting eath 
 On fairest ox of grazing herd doth fall, 
 Whose neck he breaks y-grip'd with stubborn teeth 
 At first; then blood and entrails lappeth all. 
 Fierce rending him, while dogs and herdsmen bawl 
 Around, but from afar, nor venture e'er 
 To close with him. Pale fear doth them enthrall. 
 So no man's soul of these in breast did there 
 Encounter with the glorious Menelaus dare. 
 
 EE 
 
418 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Atrides eath the arms of Panthu$' son 
 Had ta'en, but Phoebus envied him the fame, 
 And stirr'd up Hector Ares' paragon. 
 Disguis'd as Mentes Cicons' chief he came, 
 And wing'd words speaking, him address'd by name : — 
 " Now Hector, runn'st thou chacing what will ne'er 
 " Be caught, war-skill'd Pelides' steeds, which tame 
 " Or drive were hard for mortal men soe'er 
 " Except Achilles, whom immortal mother bare. 
 
 X. 
 
 " Meanwhile hath Menelaus, warlike son 
 " Of Atreus, in Patroclus guarding kill'd 
 " Panthoides Euphorbus, bravest one 
 " Of Trojans, and from vig'rous valour still'd." 
 This said, and sought men's moil the god. Then thrill'd 
 Through Hector's darken'd soul severest woe, 
 And down the files he gaz'd and quick was skill'd 
 Who 'twas the fair arms stripp'd, and who lay low 
 Stretch'd on the ground, whose blood from wound received 
 did flow. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Through front rank arm'd in glist'ring brass he flew, 
 E^en as Hephaistos' quenchless flame, with cry 
 Most shrill. Nor Atreus' son his cry not knew, 
 But to his valiant soul did speak, and sigh : — 
 " Ah me! if leave these radiant arms should I 
 " And leave Patroclus, who for my sake 's in this plight, 
 " I fear Danaians' wrath if any spy ; 
 " If Hector and the Trojans sole I fight 
 " Through shame, then me alone surround a many might. 
 
BOOK XVII. 9 — 14. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " For glance-helm Hector here brings Troj ans all. 
 " Why reasons thus my soul? In god's despite 
 " When man fights man a god doth grace, soon fall 
 " On him will loss. Blame no Danaian might 
 " Who sees me yield to Hector, who doth fight 
 " By th' god. But could I war-stout Ajax hear 
 " We 'd think of battle both, and to it right 
 " Though 'gainst a god, so sav'd we corse so dear 
 " T' Achilles, Peleus' son. Of ills 't were least severe." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 While thus he ponder'd mind and soul, on drew 
 The Trojans' files, and led them Hector bold. 
 Ketir'd he leaving corse, oft turning too 
 Like bearded lion doth, which dogs and men from fold 
 Expel with spears and shout. A shudd'ring cold 
 O'er stout heart creeps, and loth leaves mid-fold he. 
 Thus leave did Menelaus, so controU'd, 
 Patroclus there ; but friends' throng reaching turn'd to 
 see 
 Where Ajax huge, the son of Telamon, might be. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Him soon he spied at left of all the fight. 
 Who strength'ning friends to battle stirr'd, for dread 
 Phoebus Apollo strange had on them pight. 
 He went, and ran, and near him stood, and said : — 
 " Here, Ajax, haste we for Patroclus dead, 
 " And bring Achilles back the naked corse ; 
 " The arms hath wave-helm Hector ta'en." He said, 
 And stirr'd in war-skill'd Ajax' soul remorse. 
 Through front doth he with auburn Menelaus course. 
 
 £ E 2 
 
420 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV, 
 
 Hector Patroclus, stripp'd of bright arms, drew, 
 To lop with keen brass head from shoulders sheer, 
 And corse in triumph drawn ^"^ to give unto 
 The Trojan dogs. With tower-like shield draw near 
 Did Ajax. Hector did t' his friends career, 
 Mount car in haste, gave Trojans armour sheen. 
 To take to th' town, that great his fame appear. 
 Ajax with ample shield did stand, and screen 
 Menoetius* son, as lion guard its young is seen ; 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Which leading whelps i' th^ wood by hunters met 
 
 Exults in strength, whose brows entire drawn down 
 
 Do shroud his eyes. Such guard did Ajax set 
 
 Patroclus round. On his side Atreus' son 
 
 Brave Menelaus stood, and sorrow'd on. 
 
 Then Glaucus Lycians' chief Hippolochide 
 
 To Hector frowning spake in chiding tone : — 
 
 " Hector, fair-form'd, of martial valour's mark how wide! 
 
 A fugitive, thy fame of brave is misapplied. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Now think how town and tower to save alone 
 
 " With folk in Ilium born. No Lycian will 
 
 " For th' town go fight Danaians. Grace is none 
 
 " Withouten end be fighting foemen still. 
 
 " Save meaner man o' th' throng, thou most ill ! 
 
 " How wilt when thou 'st Sarpedon, guest and friend, 
 
 " To Argives left to spoil, and mock their fill ? 
 
 " Who did thy town's behoof and thine much tend 
 
 Alive, and now from doo^s thou durst not him defend. 
 
BOOK XVII. 15 — 20. 421 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " So now what Lycian hearkens me will home. 
 " Troy's doom is clear. Had now bold spirit been 
 " And firm in Trojans, as doth men become 
 " That strife with foes for country wage, I ween 
 " Patroclus dragged in Ilium soon we 'd seen. 
 " Had he king Priam's mighty town indeed 
 " But enter'd dead, and him from fight we 'd ta'en, 
 " Th' Argives Sarpedon's comely arms with speed 
 " Would loose for price, and we himself to Ilium lead. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " For servant 's slain of man that 's Argives' best 
 " By th' ships, and battlers-close his servants be. 
 " But thou 'gainst Ajax brave not venturest 
 " To stand, his eyes in foemen's battle see^^^, 
 *' And face in fight, since much thy stronger he."^ 
 Him wave-helm Hector eyeing askance replied : — 
 " Why, Glaucus, that art such, speak haughtily ? 
 " friend, I thought in mind thou hadst outvied 
 The rest whoe'er they be in fruitful Lycia bide. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Thy mind now blame 1 quite, that say'st I '11 not 
 " Huge Ajax face. JSTor war nor steeds' din fright 
 " Can me. But aegis-arm'd Zeus' rede I wot 
 " Is aye too strong, who puts the brave to flight, 
 " Of vict'ry robbeth eath, or stirs to fight. 
 " But come, stand by me, friend, my labour see 
 " If I all day as say'st be slothful wight, 
 " Or if of Danai some valiant he, 
 Defending dead Patroclus, shall be check'd by me." 
 
 E£ 3 
 
422 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 So saying, shouting call'd to Trojans he : — 
 *' Trojans and Lycians, close-fight Dardans too, 
 " Be men, my friends, of valour mindful be, 
 " While I renown'd Achilles* arms endue 
 *^ Comely, ta'en from Patroclus whom I slew." 
 So saying, Hector did, helm-glancing one, 
 Leave raging war, and on swift feet pursue 
 His mates, soon caught, not far, that to the town 
 Were bearing then the famous arras of Peleus' son. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 He changed arms apart from tearful fight, 
 And his to take to Troy divine gave Trojans bold, 
 And arms of Peleus' son Achilles dight. 
 Immortal, which the gods that heav'n do hold 
 Erst gave his sire, and he t' his son when old. 
 But old in father's arms grew not the son. 
 Him Zeus apart, by whom the clouds controli'd, 
 Beheld divine Pelides' harness don. 
 And shook his head, and commun'd with his soul thereon. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Ah, hapless ! not of death dost think, though near, 
 " But in immortal arms dost thee array 
 " Of man most excellent, whom others fear, 
 " Whose friend, the gentle, valiant, thou didst slay, 
 " From head and shoulders arms ill strip away. 
 " But now much power I '11 give thee to requite 
 " That ne'er '11 receive of thee return'd from fray 
 " Andromache Pelides' armour bright." 
 Kronion spake, and with black brows approv'd it right. 
 
BOOK XVII. 21—26. 423 
 
 XXIV. ^ 
 
 Arms Hector fit. Him Ares warlike, dread, 
 Enter'd. His limbs were fill'd with strength and might. 
 He 'mong the fam'd allies, loud shouting sped, 
 And in high-soul'd Pelides' armour bright 
 Seem'd such. He went with words each one t' excite, 
 And Mesthles, Glaucus, Medon eke urg'd on, 
 Thersilochus, Asteropa3us wight, 
 Disenor, and Hippothous anon, 
 Phorcys, and Chromius, Ennomus sooth-saying one, . 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And these exhorting, winged words he spake : — 
 " Ye myriad tribes, auxiliar neighbours, hear ! 
 " Not seeking multitude, nor for its lack, 
 " I summon'd each from out your cities here, 
 " But that the Trojans' wives and younglings dear 
 " Ye prompt defend from Achives brave. And so 
 " I wear the folk with gifts, and food to cheer 
 " Your hearts each one. So turn, each forward go 
 " To die or 'scape. For such war's tryst twixt foe and 
 foe. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Who drags Patroclus, dead although he be, 
 " To th' tame-steed Trojans, Ajax giving place, 
 " I '11 yield him half the spoils, keep half for me, 
 " And like to mine he '11 honour have and grace." 
 He said. They rush'd on Danai apace 
 With lifted spears, and thought in mind they should 
 The corse from Ajax Telamonian race.^^^ 
 The fools! Take life from many sure he would. 
 Then Ajax spake to Menelaus, th' onset-good : — 
 
 E E 4 
 
424 THE ILIAD. 
 
 0^ XXVII. 
 
 " friend, Menelaus, Zeus-y-bred ! 
 " Not we, I think, shall back from war career. 
 " Not for Patroclus^ corse am I in dread, 
 " Who '11 Trojans' dogs and birds soon satiate here, 
 " As for my head, lest happen aught, I fear, 
 '"' And thine. For Hector all hath wrapp'd about 
 *' In cloud of war. To us destruction 's clear. 
 "But call Danaians' best. Some hearken mote." 
 He said. Obey'd him Menelaus battle-stout. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And shouting to Danaians, shrill he cried : — 
 " Friends, Argives' heads and chiefs, that Atreus' son 
 " Agamemnon, and Menelaus' side 
 " In public drink by, and command each one 
 " His folk. From Zeus comes grace and honour down. 
 " Spy out each chief were hard in any sort, 
 " Such strife of war doth rage. But now come on, 
 " Self-prompted some, nor with his mind comport 
 " Patroclus should of Trojan dogs become the sport." 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 He said. Heard swift Oileus-Ajax soon, 
 And first came towards him running, through the fight. 
 Next came Idomeneus and Merion, 
 His foU'wer, slay-man Ares' peer. One might 
 In mind name many after did excite 
 Th' Achaeans' fray. On them first Trojans smote, 
 And Hector led. As Zeus-sprung river right 
 At outflow 'gainst the stream the raging surges flout. 
 While shores around do roar, the sea y-belching out. 
 
BOOK XVII. 27—32. 425 
 
 XXX. 
 
 So rose the Trojans' cry. Th' Achaeans stood 
 Round Menoetiades, and one mind bore, 
 Y-fenc'd with brazen shields, while mickle cloud 
 Did round their glistVing helms Kr onion pour. 
 Nor hated he Menoetius' son before 
 When servant of jEacides alive, 
 But hates he should the sport of foes be tore 
 By Trojan dogs. So urg'd his friends to strive 
 In his defence. First Trojans back th' Achaeans drive, 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Who left the corse and fled. Nor one of them 
 Could high-soul'd Trojans slay with spear though fain. 
 But 'gan draw oif the corse. Not long from him 
 Might Achives be, for turned them soon again 
 Ajax, who did for form and deeds transcend 
 Danaians all, next Peleus' faultless son. 
 Through foremost ranks he rush'd with force amain 
 Of boar i' th' hills, that dogs and men anon 
 Scatters, when them a-through the glen he turneth on. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Bright Ajax, son of famous Telamon, 
 So Trojans' columns scatter'd where he came. 
 Who busy 'bout Patroclus, to their town 
 Had thought to drag him oif, and win them fame. 
 By th' foot Pelasgic Lethus' son, by name 
 Hippothous, him drew fierce fight a-down 
 With thong 'bout ankles' tendons bound. His aim 
 Hector and Trojans pleas'ring. Evil soon 
 Upon him came, which, though they wish'd, avert could 
 none. 
 
426 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Eush'd at him son of Telamon through throng, 
 And close-hand through the brass-cheek'd helmet smote. 
 To shivers horse-tail'd helm round spear-point sprong 
 Smitten with mighty spear, and hand so stout. 
 The brains by th' socket, from the wound gush'd out, 
 All blood. His strength was loosed there. His hand 
 Let go the lofty-soul'd Patroclus' foot. 
 And he a-near him prostrate on the sand 
 Fell on the corse, far from Larissa's fertile land. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Nor nurture he repaid his parents dear, 
 Short-liv'd by high-soul'd Ajax' lance struck down. 
 But Hector aim'd at Ajax glitt'ring spear, 
 Who saw, and brass spear did by little shun. 
 Which Schedius smote, of Iphitus the son, 
 Phocaeans^ bravest far, in town of fame. 
 In Panopeus, o'er many reigning he did wone. 
 'Neath collar bone he smote him ; through the same. 
 Forth at the shoulder's end the brazen point out-came. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 With crash he fell, his arms y-clatt'ring sound 
 Upon him. Ajax there mid-belly smote 
 The war-skiird Phorcys, Phasnops' son, that round 
 Hippothous to guard him pac'd about. 
 Burst corselet's hollow, brass drew entrails out. 
 r th' dust he fell, and clutch'd the ground. Drew-back 
 Front rank with Hector bright. Loud th' Argives shout. 
 Draw off the dead, both Phorcys thence and eke 
 Hippothous, and harness from their shoulders slack. 
 
BOOK xvii. 33—38. 427 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Then Trojans, 'neath AchaBans Ares-dear, 
 Had, queird by cowardise, to Ilium gone, 
 And Argives, by their strength and valour sheer. 
 Against the fate of Zeus, the vict'ry won. 
 But urg'd Apollo's self Jj^neas on. 
 Did form of herald Periphas endue, 
 Epytides, who 'd by th' old sire Anchises grown 
 As herald old, whose mind sweet counsel knew.^^^ 
 Then spake Zeus' son Apollo, him so lik'ned to : — 
 
 xxxvii. 
 
 " JEneas, how then in a god's despite 
 " The lofty Ilium e'er defend could ye ? 
 " As I've seen other men, that on their might 
 " And fortitude relied, and bravery, 
 " And multitude, and folk that fearless be. 
 " Zeus wills us vict'ry far 'fore Danai, 
 " Yourselves do fear-struck fly nor fight." Thus he. 
 jEneas knew far-dart Apollo high 
 When he beheld, and loud he 'gan to Hector cry : — 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Hector, and chiefs of Trojans, and allies, 
 " What shame if, 'neath Achaeans Ares-dear, 
 " We go to Ilium, quell'd by cowardise ! 
 " 0' th' gods, too, one hath told me, standing near, 
 " High Zeus in fight abets and helps us here. 
 " So let 's at Danai, nor eath shall they 
 " With dead Patroclus to the ships career." 
 This said he sprang, and stood far-front the fray. 
 They turn'd and stood against th' Achaeans in array. 
 
4:28 THE ILIAD, 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 jEneas smote Leocritus with spear, 
 Arisbas' son, bright friend of Lycomede. 
 Him pitied valiant Lycomede, drew near, 
 Hurl'd lance, and pierce 'neath chest i' th' liver did 
 Folk-shepherd Apisaon Hippaside. 
 Straight slack'd his knees. From rich Paeonia came, 
 And next Asteropaeus shine he did 
 In fight. Asteropaeus brave had ruth o' tV same. 
 And forward rush'd, and fight with Danai did aim, 
 
 XL. 
 
 But could not yet, so fenc'd with shields they were. 
 That round Patroclus stood spears 'fore them held. 
 Much Ajax visits all, enjoining there. 
 None backwards from the corse, he bade, should yield, 
 None fight 'fore other Achives far a-field, 
 But still about him go and battle nigh. 
 So bade huge Ajax. Earth with red blood spill'd 
 Was wet. The dead they fell each other nigh, 
 Trojans alike, auxiliars bold, and Danai. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 For these not bloodless fought, though fewer fell 
 By far. For through the throng, aye mindful they 
 From one another stress of toil repel. 
 And so like fire they fought. Nor wouldst thou say 
 That sun was safe at all, or moon that day, 
 For wrapt in darkness those that valiantest 
 Stood round dead Menoetiades i' th' fray. 
 The other Trojans sooth, and buskin-drest 
 Achacans, free beneath the open sky contest. 
 
BOOK XVII. 39—44. 429 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Abroad was spread the sun's keen radiance bright, 
 And not a cloud from all the land there shows, 
 Nor from the hills. These, 'tween whiles resting, fight, 
 Stand far, each other's sad darts shun, while those 
 r th' midst from war and darkness suffer woes ; 
 With fell brass bravest worn. Two men heard nought. 
 Antilochus nor Thrasymed yet knows 
 That famous man, renown'd Patroclus, dead, but thought 
 Alive i' th' foremost tumult he the Trojans fought. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 These watchful, eyeing comrades' death and flight, 
 Were battling on apart. For so whilere 
 Enjoin'd had Nestor, urging to the fight 
 From darkling ships. But to those others there 
 All day arose huge strife's contention sare. 
 With toil and sweat unceasing aye the knees. 
 And calves, and feet, of each one 'neath him were. 
 And hands and eyes befoul'd, as battl'd these 
 Round servant brave of him swift-foot ^Eacides. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 As when a man gives hide of some huge bull 
 T' his folk to stretch, and drunk with fat 's the skih^^^. 
 They take it, stand apart, and stretch, and pull 
 In ring. Straight wet comes out, fat enters in 
 As many pull. All equal them between 
 'Tis stretched. This way and that, in small space so 
 Both tugg'd the corse. Draw which their souls did ween 
 The Trojans Ilium wards, th' Achaaans though 
 To th' hollow ships. About him tumult wild did grow. 
 
430 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Not stir-folk ilres, not Athene then, 
 Though seiz'd with wrath, had blam'd it, looking on ; 
 Such toiling sore that day of steeds and men 
 Did Zeus about Patroclus stir. And known 
 Had not as yet Achilles, godlike one, 
 Patroclus dead. For far from ships they fought. 
 Away beneath the wall of Ilium's town. 
 That he was dead he ne'er in mind had thought. 
 But that alive he would return when gates he 'd raught. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 For lie not hop'd at all that he ^d the town 
 Without himself, or with him, overthrow. 
 This heard apart he 'd oft from 's mother known. 
 When Zeus' decrees she us'd to tell him, though 
 Not then she told what happed, how great a woe, 
 That dearest friend should die. And soothly they 
 About the corse with pointed lances so 
 Incessant charge, and one another slay. 
 And thus would one of th' Achives, brazen kirtled, say: — 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " friends, 't were not f our famereturn did we 
 <^ To th' hollow ships. But black earth rather yawn 
 " T' us all. For us such better far would be, 
 " Than suffer tame-steed Trojans to their town 
 " Should drag this one away, and win renown." 
 Of high-soul'd Trojans thus would talk a wight : — 
 " Friends, though our fate to be alike struck down 
 " At this man's side, let none withdraw from fight." 
 So soothly one would say, and comrades' force excite. 
 
BOOK XVII. 45—50. 431 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 So battl'd these, and iron uproar right 
 To brazen sky there came through barren air. 
 Steeds of ^Eacides, apart from fight, 
 Did weep when they of driver slain were ware 
 Fall'n in the dust 'neath slay-man Hector there. 
 Automedon, Diores' mighty son, 
 
 With sharp thong whips them oft, oft speaks them fair, 
 Oft threats, yet they nor back to th' ships upon 
 Broad Hellespont, nor to th' Acha3ans' fight would run. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 But as a column bideth firm, that o'er 
 A dead man's tomb or woman's standeth, so 
 Kemain'd they moveless, lovely car before, 
 And to the ground their heads y-fixed low, 
 Hot tears from eyelids mourning driver flow 
 To th' ground. Fresh mane in both was soil'd y-shook 
 From yoke-loop nigh the yoke. Kronion though 
 Beheld them mourning thus, and pity took, 
 And shaking there his head unto his soul he spoke : — 
 
 L. 
 
 " Alas, ye wretched ! wherefore gave you we 
 " To mortal man, to Peleus then the king ?^ 
 " You that unaging, and immortal be ? 
 " That ye 'mong woful men have suffering ? 
 " For sure there 's not than man more woful thing 
 " Of all that on the earth do breathe and crawl. 
 " With you and daedal car go charioting 
 " Shall not though Hector, Priam's son, at all. 
 " I '11 not permit. Is 't not enough he 'th arms, and boasts 
 withal ? 
 
432 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 " I'll cast you strength in knees and soul to save 
 " From fight to th' hollow ships Automedon. 
 " These give I fame to slay till bench'd ships brave 
 " They reach, sets sun, comes sacred darkness down." 
 So saying mighty strength he breath'd upon 
 The steeds. They shook the dust from mane, and tore 
 Trojans and Achives 'mong with car whereon 
 Automedon did fight, for comrade grieving sore. 
 With steeds, like vulture after geese, he onwards bore. 
 
 LII. 
 
 For eath he could from din of Trojans flee. 
 And easy chasing through much throng career. 
 But slay the men o'erta'en that could not he. 
 For no way might he sooth, when he was here 
 Alone on sacred car, both charge with spear, 
 And check his steeds. At length beheld him one 
 With eyes, Alcimedon his comrade dear, 
 Who was jEmonides Laerceus' son. 
 Who stood behind the car, and spake t' Automedon : — 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " Automedon, what god put in thy breast 
 " 111 rede, of good sense reft ? In front rank lone 
 " Fight Trojans ! Slain 's thy friend, and Hector drest 
 " Exults in armour of jEacus' son." 
 Spake then Diores' child, Automedon ; — 
 " Alcimedon, what Achive else thy peer 
 " Immortal steeds to check or urge, save one, 
 " Patroclus, who alive as charioteer 
 " Might match with gods ? But death and fate have 
 reach'd him here. 
 
BOOK XVII. 51—56. 433 
 
 nv. 
 
 " But thou take whip and shining reins, I '11 down 
 " From steeds and battle it." So spake the wight. 
 Then sprang to speed-fight car Alcimedon, 
 With whip and reins full soon in hands y-pight. 
 Down leap'd Automedon. Him Hector bright 
 Perceiv'd, and straight addressed iEneas nigh : — 
 " ^neas, chief of Trojans brazen-dight, 
 *' Steeds of swift-foot iEacides I spy, 
 That forth to war with worthless charioteers do ply. 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Take them methinks I should if willing thou 
 " In soul. For they against us rushing on 
 " Would venture not to stand and fight, I trow." 
 He said. Complied Anchises' valiant son. 
 Straight went the twain, their shoulders bulls' hides don, 
 Y-tann'd and stout, which mickle brass did overlay. 
 And Chromius and Aretus, god-shap'd one, 
 Went both with them. In mind much hoped they 
 To slaughter those, and drive the long-neck'd steeds away. 
 
 LVI* 
 
 Fools ! they 'd not bloodless back fr' Automedon, 
 
 Who Zeus implor'd, while strength and bravery 
 
 His dark mind fill'd. He spake t' Alcimedon, 
 
 Staunch friend : — " Alcimedon, steeds far from me 
 
 " Not keep, but on my back let breathing be. 
 
 " Not Hector, Priam's son, will stint of might 
 
 " Ere mount Achilles' fair man'd horses he 
 
 ^' And slay ourselves, put warrior-ranks to flight 
 
 Of Argives, or be ta'en 'mong them that foremost fight." 
 
434 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Th' Ajaces, Menelaus eke, so said, 
 He call'd : — " Ajaces Argives' chieftains ye, 
 *' And Menelaus there, to guard the dead 
 " And stem men's files, leave some that bravest be, 
 " And us alive from evil day set free. 
 " For storm-like here through tearful battle ply 
 " Hector, iEneas, Trojans' best that be. 
 " And sooth on knees of gods ^"^ these things do lie. 
 " For I '11 hurl too. Have care of all will Zeus most high."' 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 He said, and long-shade spear y-brandish'd sent, 
 And smote Aretus' orbed shield, which save 
 Did not from spear, but brass right through it went. 
 Through belt in bottom of his belly drave. 
 As strong youth doth of salvage bull, 'hind horns y-clave 
 With hatchet keen, cut through all sinew sheer. 
 The beast up-springs and falls. The warrior gave 
 Like leap, and fell supine. In him the spear 
 In entrails quiver'd keen, and limbs were loosed here. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 And Hector at Automedon did throw 
 "With glitt'ring spear, but he did 'fore him look, 
 And shunn'd the brazen lance. For forward low 
 He stoop'd. Long spear behind him with the stroke 
 Fix'd in the ground, and spear-tail quiv'ring shook. 
 And there did force of mighty Ares fall. 
 And now close-hand to swords they 'd them betook, 
 But prompt th' Ajaces parted them withal. 
 Who came a-through the throng at their companions' call. 
 
BOOK XVII. 57— -62. 43^ 
 
 LX. 
 
 Of these then half afraid again withdrew 
 Hector, ^Eneas, Chromius, god-shap'd one, 
 And let Aretus lie heart-pierced through. 
 His arms took Ares' match, Automedon, 
 And vaunting spake : — " For dead Menoetius' son 
 ** Heart's pain I've somewhat eas'd, though worser slain." 
 He said, and gory spoils up-piling on 
 The car himself ascends, while blood doth stain 
 Both hands and feet, like lion bull devouring fain. 
 
 LXl. 
 
 Once more about Patroclus strain'd strong fight 
 Severe, and full of tears. And from the sky 
 Descending did Athene strife excite. 
 For wide-voic'd Zeus to stir the Danai 
 Did send her doivn when chang'd^^^ his purpose high. 
 As Zeus to mortals sets his purple bow 
 From Heaven forth, a sign that war is nigh, 
 Or winter bleak, that maketh men forego 
 Their toils on earth, and mischief to the flocks to grow. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 So she in purple cloud did her invest, 
 Enter th' Achseans' throng, and each incite. 
 First Atreus' son exhorting she address'd 
 Then near her, Menelaus, valiant wight. 
 And Phoenix' form and voice unwearied dight ; - 
 " Disgrace will on thee, Menelaus, fall 
 *' If trusty comrade of Achilles bright 
 " The swift dogs tear beneath the Trojans* wall. 
 '' But bear thee stoutly, and arouse the people all. 
 
 rr 2 
 
4.36 
 
 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Then Menelaus, battle-stout, replied : — 
 " Phoenix, aged sire, that grant me would 
 " Athene strength, and darts' force draw aside ! 
 " Then to defend Patroclus I had stood, 
 " Who dying touched me sore. But dire and rude 
 " The strength of fire hath Hector homicide, 
 " Nor stints to rage with spear. Zeus grants him laud.'' 
 He said. Athene, goddess azure-eyed, 
 Was glad he pray'd to her 'fore all the gods beside. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 In 's shoulders force, and in his knees she set, 
 Fly's boldness eke in bosom, which, albeit 
 From men's flesh often brush'd, is eager yet 
 To bite. For blood of man to him is sweet. 
 With courage so his dark heart grew replete ; 
 He sought Patroclus, hurl'd the glitt'ring spear. 
 Among the Trojans Podes was, to weet, 
 Eetion's son, rich, brave, whom Hector here 
 Most honour'd of the folk, his friend and boon-companion 
 dear. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 r th' belt him auburn Menelaus smote, 
 
 Rushing to flight, and brass pierc'd through. A-down 
 
 With crash he fell. Drew corse from Trojans out 
 
 T' his friends' throng Menelaus, Atreus' son. 
 
 By Hector stood Apollo, urg'd him on 
 
 Like Phaenops Asiades, his dearest guest 
 
 Of all, and in Abydos sooth did wone. 
 
 So guis'd, far-dart Apollo him address'd : — 
 
 Thee, Hector, fear will what Achaean of the rest ? 
 
BOOK XVII. 63—68. 437 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " Fear'st Menelaus so, weak warrior erst, 
 " But now from Trojans sole bears corse away, 
 " Slain too thy staunch friend, fighting 'mong the first, 
 " Podes, Eetion's son." Thus did he say. 
 Grief's dark cloud veils him. Bright in brass array 
 He rush'd though foremost. Take fring'd aegis bright 
 Did Kronides, and clouds round Ida lay. 
 Loud thund'ring light'ned, shook it and y-pight 
 To Trojans vict'ry, and th' Achaeans turn'd to flight. 
 
 LXVIT. 
 
 Peneleus the Boeotian first led flight, 
 
 Spear-smit on top of shoulder graz'd, who aye 
 
 Fac'd round. Scarce touch'd the bone spear-point of 
 
 wight 
 Polydamas, who 'd hurled drawing nigh. 
 And Hector close-hand Leitus, the high 
 Magnanimous Alectryon's son, y-smote 
 r th' hand at wrist, and staid from fight ; who spy 
 Around him did with fear, nor ever thought 
 In mind again with Trojans, spear in hand, t' have fought. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 As Hector chaced Leitus, him smote 
 Idomeneus by teat mail'd breast upon. 
 At stem the long spear brake. The Trojans shout. 
 He at Idomeneus, Deucalion's son. 
 
 In 's chariot aim'd ; scant miss'd. But smote of Merion 
 The squire and driver Coeranus, that him 
 Had follow'd out of Lyctus' well-built town. 
 For leaving well-bench'd ships at first he came 
 On foot, and had to th' Trojans yielded mighty fame, 
 
 r F 3 
 
438 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 But Coeranus up-drove without delay 
 The swift-foot steeds. To him indeed a light 
 He came, and fenc'd from him the ruthless day, 
 But self lost life 'neath slay-man Hector's might, 
 Who him beneath the jaw and ear did smite. 
 Spear thrust out teeth, and tongue y-slit. He slid 
 From car, while streamed the reins on ground y-pight, 
 And these with hands from ground then Merion did 
 Stoop down and take, and to Idomeneus he said : — 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " Whip now the steeds till vessels swift thou gain. 
 
 *^ Strength 's not th' Achasans' more, thou know'st." He 
 
 said. 
 Idomeneus the steeds of comely mane 
 Whipp'd to the hollow ships. On soul fell dread. 
 Nor Zeus from Ajax brave nor Menelaus hid 
 Gave change-sides vict'ry to the Trojans so. 
 Discourse huge Ajax Telamonian led : — 
 " Ye gods ! the very simplest now may know 
 " That doth on Trojans glory Zeus the Sire bestow. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 " For all their darts do hit whoe'er may send, 
 " Coward or brave. Zeus guides them all indeed. 
 " While all our darts in vain do ground- wards wend. 
 " But come, bethink us of some goodly rede, 
 " How we may drag the corse away, and yede 
 '^^ Ourselves a joy unto our friends again, 
 " Who hither looking grieve, and soothly drede 
 " We shall not slay-man Hector's strength sustain 
 " And hands resistless more, but fall by th' black ships 
 slain. 
 
BOOK XVII. 69—74. 439 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 " Would friend there were miglit quick bear message 
 
 here 
 " To Peleus' son ; for knows I think not he 
 " The tidings sad that dead 's his comrade dear. 
 " But ^mong th' Acha3ans such I not yet see, 
 " For wrapp'd in darkness they and horses be. 
 " Sire Zeus ! draw th' Achives' sons from darkness thou, 
 " And make it clear, and grant with eyes to see, 
 " And in the light destroy if 't please thee so." 
 He said. The father pitied him whose tears did flow, 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 And straight the darkness sooth he scattered, 
 And thrust the cloud aside. The sun shone out, 
 And all the fight appear'd. Then Ajax said 
 To Menelaus, good at battle shout : — 
 " Now Menelaus, Zeus-fed, look about. 
 '' If seest yet living Nestor's high-soul'd son, 
 " Antilochus, bid quick t' Achilles stout 
 " He go, and tell his much-lov'd friend is down." 
 He said, and heark'ned Menelaus, war-shout one. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 And forth he went as doth a lion when 
 He mid-fold leaves, whom doth a-weary make 
 His constant harassing of dogs and men, 
 Who choice of oxen will not let him take, 
 But watching keep throughout the night awake. 
 With greed of flesh he springs, no profit had 
 So thick from strong hands spears against him shake, 
 And blazing torches eke, whereat in dradde 
 Though eager he with morn departs in spirit sad. 
 
 F F 4 
 
440 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 So Menelaus, good at battle-shout, 
 Did all unwilling from Patroclus go ; 
 For much he dreaded that th' Achaeans mote 
 Through terror leave him there a prey to th' foe. 
 Much charg'd he Merion and th' Ajaces so : — 
 " Ajaces, Argives' chiefs, and Merion see 
 " That some one sad Patroclus' mildness now 
 " Eemember. Kind to all he knew to be, 
 " While yet alive. But caught of death and fate is he." 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Away went auburn Menelaus high, 
 Gazing around like eagle, who, 'tis said. 
 Hath sharpest sight of birds beneath the sky. 
 From whom aloft not swift-foot hare in 's bed, 
 Is hid 'neath bush of tresses broadly spread. 
 He on him darts and life quick taketh he. 
 So then, Menelaus, Zeus-y-bred, 
 Through throng of many friends bright eyes of thee 
 On all sides turn'd, yet living Nestor's son to see. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Him soon he spied at left of all the fight 
 That urg'd his mates, to battle stirr'd. Stood near 
 And spake then auburn Menelaus bright : — 
 " Hither, Antilochus, Zeus-bred, and hear 
 " The tidings sad. Would it had happen'd ne'er! 
 *' Thyself I tliink beholding now wilt ken 
 " On Danai the gods roll'd loss severe. 
 " Yict'ry 's the Trojans', th' Achives' best is slain, 
 " Patroclus, whom the Danai do miss amain. 
 
BOOK XVII. 75 — 80. 441 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 " T' Achilles run, to th' Achive ships, and say, 
 '' If quick he '11 save by th' ship stript corse. For wears 
 " His arms the wave-helm Hector." He did say. 
 Antilochus aghast with horror hears. 
 Long seiz'd him lack of speech. His eyes with tears 
 Did fill. His lusty voice within him clave. 
 Nor Menelaus' hest he not reveres, 
 But sped to run, and arms to comrade gave, 
 Laodocus, who th' whole-hoof horses near him drave. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Him weeping, bare his feet from fight, the ill 
 Account unto Achilles Peleus' son 
 Conveying he. Nor then thy soul did will 
 Indeed, Menelaus, Zeus-fed one. 
 To help the comrades worn from whom had gone 
 Antilochus, though sore was Pylians' need, 
 But Thrasymedes godlike sent he on 
 To them, and to Patroclus hero yede 
 He did, and by th' Ajaces stood, and straightway said 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 " Him I 've despatch'd to th' rapid ships to go 
 
 " T' Achilles swift of foot. Nor thinketh me 
 
 " He '11 come, though wroth with godlike Hector so, 
 
 " For not unarm'd ^^^ will fight with Trojans he. 
 
 " Ourselves then best of counsel think of we 
 
 " How corse drag ofi^, and how ourselves anon 
 
 " From Trojans' clamour death and fate may flee." 
 
 Him answer'd then huge Ajax Telamon : — 
 
 Thou 'st all said right, Menelaus of renown ; 
 
442 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 " But tliou and Merion lift the corse anon, 
 " And bear from moil. Behind will fight we twain 
 " Trojans and Hector brave. We 're wont as one 
 " In name and spirit Ares fierce sustain, 
 " And by each other stand." He said. They strain 
 And lift with arms the corse. With huge uproar 
 Shout Trojan folk, who see the corse upta'en 
 By th' Achives thus, and rush as on a boar 
 That 's wounded rush the hounds the hunter-youths before. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 At times they run to tear him fain, but when 
 Turns on them he, that doth on strength rely. 
 On all sides flee. So trooping Trojans then 
 With swords and spears y-thrusting followed aye. 
 But when th' Ajaces turning them abye. 
 Their colour chang'd, nor one of them did dare 
 Eush forth, and for the corse contending try, 
 So fiercely these the corse and eager there 
 Unto the hollow ships from out the battle bare. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Their fight grew fierce as raging sudden fire 
 That comes and burns men's town. In mighty flame 
 Their homes consume, and wind's strength rages dire. 
 On these of steeds and warrior-men the same 
 As forth they went rough-sounding tumult came. 
 And these as mules, their strong force round them thrown. 
 From mountain draw down rugged path a beam, 
 Or shipping timber huge, their soul o'erdone 
 Both with fatigue and sweat, as they be toiling on. 
 
BOOK XVII. 81—85. 443 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 So corse bear eager they. Behind restrain 
 Th' Ajaces did the foe, as wooded-mound 
 Stems water, mound that 's stretched o'er all the plain, 
 Which e'en strong rivers' roughest streams doth bound, 
 And all repelling, guides to level ground. 
 Nor break it through their streams for all their might. 
 So stemming Trojans' battle were th' Ajaces found. 
 The foe still follow, chiefly twain, the wight 
 ^neas, old Anchises' son, and Hector bright. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 As cloud of starlings or of daws do fly 
 With shrilly scream, a hawk espying out 
 That slaughter brings small birds. With shrilly cry 
 So 'fore ^neas eke and Hector stout 
 The youths Achaean, fight forgetting, ply. 
 Fair weapons many fell in trench and 'bout 
 Of flying Danai, and battle ceased not. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 ii 
 
 BOOK XVIIL 
 
 These fought like burning fire. T' Achilles went 
 
 Antilochus, a swift-foot messenger, 
 
 And found him Tore the high-stern'd ships intent 
 
 In mind, things pond'ring which accomplish'd were. 
 
 Who sigh'd, and with his high soul commun'd there : - 
 
 "Why crowd again to the ships astoni^d 
 
 " Through th' plain th' Achasans of the comely hair ? 
 
 " Pray gods have wrought not what 's disquieted 
 
 My soul, which me my mother erst foretold, and said, 
 
 II. 
 
 " That of the Myrmidons the bravest one, 
 " While I was yet alive, should soothly, sped 
 " Beneath the Trojans' hands, leave light of sun. 
 " For sure Menoetius' valiant offspring 's dead, 
 " Hapless ! Yet him, foe's fire repell'd, I bade 
 " Return to th' ships, nor fight with Hector bold." 
 While these he weigh'd in mind and spirit sad, ^ 
 Drew near fam'd Nestor's son, while scalding roll'd 
 His tears adown, as he the woful tidings told : — . 
 
BOOK XVIII. 1 — 5. 445 
 
 III. 
 
 " Ah ! war-skiU'd Peleus' son, thou 'It hear sad news, 
 " Would ne'er had been ! Patroclus slain. They fight 
 ** For 's naked corse. His arms doth Hector use." 
 He said. And him dark cloud of dolour dight. 
 With both hands ta'en black ashes pour'd he right 
 On 's head, and comely visage did disgrace. 
 To nectar'd tunic clave black ashes pight, 
 And he i' th' dust did huge in hugest space 
 Lie stretch'd, and tearing with his hands his hair deface. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The maidens whom Achilles and Patroclus won 
 In war, did, griev'd in soul, all loudly wail, 
 And forth around war-skill'd Achilles run. 
 All beat their breasts, the knees of each did fail. 
 Antilochus on his side too did wail 
 And weep, and hold Achilles' hands, for he, 
 In 's stout heart groaning, fear'd his throat withal 
 He 'd cut. So dire his cry. From depths of sea 
 His mother heard, by 'r Sire, the old man, seated she. 
 
 She shriek'd, and goddesses quick round her were, 
 All the Nereides from depth of sea. 
 Glauce, Cymodoce, Thalia there, 
 Nessea, Speio, Thoa, eke and ox-eyed she 
 Halia, Cymothoe, Actaea be. 
 There Melita, and Limnoreia go. 
 And eke lasra, and Amphitho^. 
 Thither Agave, Doto, Proto so, 
 And there Pherousa, and Dynamene not slow. 
 
446 THE ILIAD^ 
 
 VI. 
 
 Dexamene Amphinome there also do, 
 With Kallianeira, Doris, Panope, 
 And famous Galatea haste ; Nemertes too, 
 Apseudes, Kallianassa Clymene, 
 There lanassa, laneira be, 
 Maira, Orithyia, and the fair- 
 Tress'd Amatheia. And in depth of sea. 
 What Nereids else there were. Bright cavern rare 
 They fill'd. All beat their breasts. Lament led Thetis 
 there. 
 
 a 
 
 VII. 
 Hear, sister Nereids, that hearing know 
 
 " May all what griefs be in my soul. Ah me ! 
 " How wretched I, who Ve bravest borne to woe, 
 " Who 've brought forth son renown'd, most valiant he, 
 " Of heroes chief, who 's run up ^^^ like a tree. 
 " Him having nurs'd, like plant in fertile spot, 
 " In curv'd ships I to Ilium sent from me 
 " Trojans to ^ght, whom home return'd thereout, 
 " Again receive in house of Peleus I shall not. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " For while he lives and sun-light sees, ill cheer 
 " He '11 have, nor profit aught my going may, 
 " Nathless I '11 go, and see my son, and hear 
 " What grief hath seiz'd him who from fight doth stay." 
 She said, and left the cave. With her away 
 Weeping they went. Around them swell of sea 
 Did break, and gleby Troas reaching, they 
 The shore ascend in file, where crowdingly 
 Ships Myrmidon drawn round Achilles swift-foot be. 
 
BOOK XVIII. 6—11. M7- 
 
 IX. 
 
 Him groaning deep his mother stood beside, 
 And shrieking shrill the hand of this her son 
 She clasp'd, and wailing, wing'd words to him said : — 
 ** Why weepest, son ? What grief hath lighted on 
 " Thy soul ? Speak out, nor hide. The things are done 
 " Of Zeus, that thou with up-lift hands didst pray; 
 " All th' Achives' sons to th^ ships recoil fordone 
 " And thee do lack, and suffer things unseemly they." 
 To her did, sighing deep, swift-foot Achilles say : — 
 
 " My mother, these in sooth Olympius did, 
 
 " But what 's my pleasure since my friend is gone, 
 
 " Patroclus ? whom of all friends as my head 
 
 " I priz'd. Him have I lost. Hector doth don 
 
 " His stripp'd arms huge, to gaze with wonder on, 
 
 *^ Beauteous, which gods gave Peleus, presents rare, 
 
 " The day that thee in bed of mortal one 
 
 ** They set. Would with the sea-immortals there 
 
 Thou 'dst stay'd, and Peleus had to wife some mortal fair. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " But now will on thy soul huge sorrow be 
 " For son y-slain, whom home return'd thou 'It not 
 " Again receive. My soul not urgeth me 
 " To live, or bide 'mong men, if Hector mote 
 " Not first lose life by spear of mine y-smote, 
 " Menoetius' son Patroclus' death so pay." 
 Him answer'd Thetis, hot tears pouring out : — 
 " Thou 'rt early doom'd my son, what dost thou say ? 
 " On thee quick after Hector fate will then have way." 
 
448 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 To her swift-foot Achilles, sighing, said : ^ 
 " At once I 'd die, since I my comrade slain 
 *' Was not to aid, who far from 's land is dead 
 " For want of one to save from ill. Again 
 " I go not home. I 've to Patroclus been 
 " No light ^^^, nor friends who 've else by Hector died, 
 " But sat by th' ships on earth a burden vain, 
 *' Though such, no brass- arm'd Achive with me vied 
 " In war, albeit in council better be beside. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Would strife from gods and men were perished, 
 
 " And wrath, that wise makes harsh, which sweeter mo' 
 
 " Than dropping honey doth in men's breast spread! 
 
 " Like smoke. For me hath Agamemnon men's king so 
 
 " Made wrath ; but these, as things done long ago 
 
 " We '11 pass, tliough griev'd ; need quellmg soul in 
 
 breast. 
 " Now that dear head's destroyer catch I go, 
 *' Hector, and then I '11 fate receive when best 
 " Deems Zeus fulfil it, and immortal gods the rest. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " For not Heracles' strength did fate eschew, 
 '' Though dear to Zeus Kronion king. But him 
 " Did fate, and Here's rugged wrath subdue. 
 " So I, if me befall a fate the same, 
 " Shall lie when dead. But now I 'd win me fame, 
 " And with both hands her tender cheeks to tear, 
 " Cause Trojan, or deep-bosom'd Dardan dame, 
 " Who, wiping tears and sobbing frequent there, 
 " Will know how long from war I must have kept whilere. 
 
BOOK xviii. 12 — 17. 449 
 
 XV. 
 
 " From fight not keep me, fond. Thou 'It not persuade.' 
 
 Spake goddess Thetis, Silver-Foot : — " Yea, son, 
 
 " 'Tis true. Nor ill is it thy comrades worn to aid 
 
 '' From ruin fell. But goodly arms thine own 
 
 " The Trojans have, brass, glist'ring, which doth don 
 
 " Helm-glancing Hector's self, exulting he, 
 
 " But not for long, methinks. His death draws on. 
 
 " But thou not enter Ares' fis-ht till me 
 
 Returning here again thou with thine eyes shalt see. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " At morn I '11 come, with sun-rise, armour fair 
 
 " From king Hephaistos bringing." Thus said she, 
 
 And left her son, and t' her sea-sisters there 
 
 She turn'd, and said : — " To th' sea's broad bosom ye 
 
 " Go Sire marine and father's dwellings see, 
 
 " And tell him all. To long Olympus' height 
 
 f '' I go t' Hephaistos, famous smith, if he 
 
 " Will give my son fair arms, all dazzling bright." 
 
 'Twas thus she spake. At once the swell of sea they 
 dight.i«2 
 
 XVll. 
 
 T' Olympus goddess Thetis, Silver-Foot, 
 Departs, the armour fair to bring her son. 
 Her feet t' Olympus bare her. With strange shout 
 Th' Achaeans flee from Hector slay-man one, 
 And to the ships to Hellespont be gone. 
 Patroclus there Achaeans buskin-dight, 
 Achilles' servant's corse from darts drew none. 
 Caught him had folk, and steeds, and Hector wight, 
 King Priam's son, again, like flaming fire in might. 
 
 G G 
 
450 • THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Thrice him behind by th' feet seiz'd Hector bright, 
 Eager to draw, and loud to th' Trojans cried. 
 And thrice th' Ajaces twain, in valour dight, 
 Thrust him from corse, but he on force relied. 
 And would at times through tumult rush, or bide 
 At others standing still, and shout he Avould, 
 But ne'er gave back at all. So turn aside 
 A tawny lion from his carcass-food 
 Night-watching shepherds may not in his hungry mood. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 So could not both Ajaces brave the son 
 
 Of Priam, Hector, from the corse affright, 
 
 Who 'd drawn it off, and boundless glory won. 
 
 But ran to Peleus' son fr' Olympus' height, 
 
 On message wind-foot Iris him t' excite, 
 
 Unknown of Zeus and gods. Her Here had 
 
 Despatch'd. And wing'd words spake she near him 
 
 pight : — 
 " Up, Peleus' son, of all men most y-drad ^^^, 
 '* Patroclus help, for whom by th' ships there 's battling sad. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " They slaughter one another. These, indeed, 
 " The carcass of the dead defending, fight, 
 " Which forth to drag to windy Ilium yede 
 " The Trojans on, but chiefly Hector bright 
 " Would drag it fain. The head his mind bids smite 
 " From tender neck, and fix on stake the same. 
 " But up, no longer lie. Awe touch thy sprite 
 " That dogs of Troy should do Patroclus shame, 
 " For thine the wrong, if on the corse disgrace there came.'' 
 
BOOK XVIII. 18—23. 451 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Swift-foot divine Achilles answered : — 
 *' Iris, goddess, who of gods then thee 
 " To me sent messenger ? " To him then said 
 Again swift wind-foot Iris : — " Here me 
 " Did send, Zeus' stately spouse. Nought knoweth he, 
 " The high-thron'd Zeus, nor gods immortal, they 
 " That round the mickle-snow Olympus be." 
 Her answering did swift-foot Achilles say : — 
 " How then can I, while they Ve my arms, go forth to 
 th' fray ? 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " My mother dear forbade my arming ere 
 " Mine eyes beheld herself return'd, and said 
 " She 'd bring me from Hephaistos armour fair, 
 " Nor know I whence with fair arms else be clad, 
 " Save shield of Ajax Telamoniade. 
 " But he, I judge, 'mong foremost in the fray, 
 " Eages with spear around Patroclus dead." 
 To him did wind-foot Iris swift then say : — 
 " Well sooth do we too know the comely arms have they. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Yet at the trench thyself to th' Trojans show, 
 " Who, fearing thee, abstain from battle might, 
 " And th' Achives' warlike sons have breathing so 
 
 I " Fatigued, a little breathing from the fight." 
 So having said took swift-foot Iris flight. 
 Zeus-lov'd Achilles rose. Athene 'bout 
 His shoulders strong the fringed aegis dight. 
 His head the goddess crown'd with cloud about 
 
 Golden, and kindl'd flame that dazzling flash'd thereout. 
 
 G a 2 
 
452 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 As smoke from city rising mounts to th^ sky 
 From far from isle round which be battling foes. 
 While theses all day with horrid Ares try 
 From city theirs. Sun down no sooner goes 
 Than thick the torches flame, whose splendour shows, 
 Upspringing high, that dwellers round may see, 
 If they '11 with ships come help in battle those. 
 So from Achilles' head doth radiance flee 
 To th' sky. And at the trench outside the wall stood he, 
 
 XXV* 
 
 Nor Achives join'd, but kept wise best of mother. 
 Standing he shouts. Pallas Athene eke 
 Call'd out. And huge 'mong Trojans rose the pother. 
 As clear the voice when trumpet shrill doth speak 
 When girt 's a town with foemen, which its ruin seek, 
 So voice then of ^^acides was clear. 
 When heard ^acides' brass voice grew weak 
 The souls of all. The fair-man'd steeds career 
 With chariots back, for eyeing coming woes they fear. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Drivers aghast the Are unresting spy 
 Dreadful o'er th' head of Peleus' high-soul'd son 
 A-blaze up-lit b' Athene, goddess azure-eye. 
 Thrice shouts by trench Achilles, godlike one, 
 And thrice did thrill of fear through Trojans run 
 And fam'd allies. Twelve bravest perished 
 By th' cars and spears. Th' Achasans glad anon 
 From darts Patroclus drew, and laid on bed, 
 And comrades dear stood round, and lamentation made. 
 
BOOK XVIII. 24—29. 453 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 With them swift -foot Achilles folio w'd too, 
 And hot tears shed to see his faithful friend 
 Lie on the bier, with keen-edg'd brass pierc'd through, 
 Whom he to war with steeds and car did send, 
 And who to him far other back doth wend. 
 To ocean's streams sent Here oxen-eyed 
 Th' untiring Sun^^^, unwilling to descend. 
 Sun sets, nor more AchaBans godlike plied 
 The grievous iight, and battle inj'ring either side. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And Trojans eke from fight retiring there 
 The swift-foot steeds from car unharnessed, 
 And council hold, or e'er for supper care. 
 Th' assembly stood, for sit none durst ; such dread 
 Seiz'd all because appear'd Achilles had, 
 Who 'd long indeed surceased woful fight. 
 Prudent Polydamas debate then led 
 Panthoides, who past and future sole saw right. 
 And Hector's comrade was, both born the self-same night. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 But one in speech and one at spear indeed 
 Exceird. He wise did them harangue, and say : — 
 " Now well consider, friends. For I arede 
 " To th' town now go, nor sacred morning stay 
 " r th' plain by th' ships. We 're far from wall away. 
 " While this man rag'd at Agamemnon bright, 
 " Th' Achseans sooth were easier met i' th' fray, 
 " And cheerful I by th' swift ships pass'd the night, 
 " Expecting take the both-sides-oar-urg'd ships we might. 
 
 G G 3 
 
454 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " But now swift-foot Pelides fear I sore. 
 " Of soul impetuous, he ^11 not bide i' th' plain 
 " Where Trojans and Achaeans heretofore 
 " r th' midst did force of Ares share, the twain, 
 " But fight our city's self and wives to gain. 
 " But let 's to th' town, mind me, for 'twill be so. 
 " Now Night doth Peleus' swift-foot son restrain 
 " Ambrosial. If he catch us here, I trow, 
 " At Morn, when arm'd he comes, then him will some one 
 know. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Who 'scapes will sacred Ilium reach right glad, 
 
 " And dogs and vultures Trojans many '11 eat. 
 
 *' Would 't were unheard ! My words if ye, though sad, 
 
 ^' Will hear, our power we will in-gath'ring seat. 
 
 "Our town its towers and lofty gates with planks that 
 
 meet, 
 " Long, polish'd, interjoin'd, will safely guard. 
 " And early we will morn full harness'd greet, 
 " And man the towers, so wishing he '11 find hard 
 " To come fro' th' ships, and fight us with the wall toward. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 " He '11 back to th' ships when long-neck'd steeds t' his fill 
 " He 's cours'd outside, nor '11 let him rush i' th' town 
 " His soul, nor '11 waste it he. First eat him will 
 " Swift dogs." Him wave-helm Hector wroth look'd on 
 And spake : — " Polydamas, things please me none 
 " Thou say'st, that we i' th' town go coop again. 
 " Not had your fill shut up in towers time gone ? 
 " Of Priam's city erst did part- voice men 
 " All speak, for mickle gold and brass it did contain. 
 
BOOK XVIII. 30—35. 455 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " But now the precious hoards fro' th' houses be 
 " Consumed. Possessions many sold and gone, 
 " To Phrygia went and pleasant Maeonie^^ 
 " When mighty Zeus was wroth. Now when the son 
 " Of crafty Kronos grants me win renown 
 " By th' ships, and shut th' Acha3ans in by th' sea, 
 " Fool, broach no more such rede to th' folk. For none 
 " Will of the Trojans sooth comply Avith thee, 
 " Nor I permit. Now what I say all hearken ye. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " Take supper now in bands throughout the host ; 
 " Of watch be mindful, keep each one awake. 
 " Of Trojans who for 's goods ^^^ is anxious most 
 " Collect, and gift for host's consumption make. 
 " Them better any than th' Achasans take. 
 " Early at morn our harness don will we, 
 " And by the hollow ships sharp battle wake. 
 " If sooth by th' ships arise, and wills it he, 
 " Godlike Achilles, 't w^ill for him the harder be. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " Him I '11 not shun in roughly sounding fray, 
 " But stand and face. Let him prevail, or I 
 " Common's Enyalus^^^, doth slayer slay," 
 So Hector spake. The Trojans plausive cry. 
 Fools ! reft their sense Pallas Athene high. 
 For Hector couns'lling ill they 'plaud, but none 
 Polydamas, who 'd counsell'd well, set-by. 
 Then through the host they sup. Th' Achseans moan. 
 And all night long lamenting o'er Patroclus groan. 
 
 G G 4 
 
456 " THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 To them continuous wailing Peleus' son 
 Did lead, and on his comrades' bosom lay 
 His man-y-slaught'ring hands, and frequeiit groan. 
 As bearded lion, when his cubs away 
 Hath hunter, meaning hunt the stag that day ^^'^^ 
 From thick wood stole. He comes, and grieves, and track 
 Doth many a vale, if of the man he may 
 The footsteps find. For him sore wrath doth take. 
 So 'mong the Myrmidons he deeply sigh'd and spake : — 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " Ye gods ! that day I utter'd speech, how vain, 
 " In 's house Menoetius hero cheering there ; 
 " Said I 'd to Opus bring his son again, 
 " Kenown'd, when Ilium ta'en, with booty's share. 
 " But Zeus not all fulfils men's hopings fair, 
 " For both alike earth redd'ning doom'd to stain 
 " In Troas here. Since me returning ne'er 
 " Will horseman Peleus old in 's house again 
 ** Receive, nor Thetis mother mine, but earth will here 
 detain. 
 
 XXXVIIT. 
 
 " Now since, Patroclus, after thee it is 
 
 " I go 'neatli earth, I '11 not inter thee ere 
 
 " I 've head and armour hither brought y-wis 
 
 " Of Hector lofty-soul'd, of thee the slayer. 
 
 " And at thy pyre of Trojans' offspring fair 
 
 " Twelve throats I '11 cut, in wrath for thee so slain, 
 
 " And thou 'It meanwhile lie thus by th' curv'd ships 
 
 there. 
 " Deep-bosom'd Trojan dames and Dardans plain 
 " About thee shall and weeping night and day remain. 
 
BOOK XVIII. 36 — 41. 457 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " Whom we ourselves by force and long spear won, 
 '' Wasting rich towns of part-voice men." This said, 
 Commands his mates Achilles, godlike one, 
 That fire quick round the tripod huge be made, 
 Patroclus wash from gore. In bright fire laid 
 The wash-bath tripod the}^, and pour'd in water, while 
 Thereunder wood they lit. The fire it play'd 
 'Bout tripod's bulge. I' th' singing brass when boil 
 Did water, wash'd and bath'd him they in unctuous oil. 
 
 XL. 
 
 His wounds with ointment nine year old they brim, 
 On bed then place, with softest linen don 
 From head to foot, with white sheet over him. 
 Then all night round swift-foot Achilles groan 
 The Myrmidons, Patroclus there bemoan. 
 Spake Zeus to Here, wife and sister she : — 
 " Her^, large-eyed august, the thing thou 'st done 
 " Arous'd swift-foot Achilles. Sure from thee 
 " Thyself y-sprong the comely-hair'd Achaeans be." 
 
 XLT. 
 
 August him answer'd Here, oxen-eyed: — 
 " Dread Kronides, what speech hast utter'd now ? 
 " E'en man to man will by his purpose bide 
 " Who 's mortal, nor such counsel kens, then how 
 " Should I, of goddesses the chief I trow, 
 " Both for my birth, and that I 'm 'clep'd thy spouse, 
 " For over all immortals rulest thou, 
 " Should I with Trojans wroth not work them woes ?" 
 To one another there discours'd such matters those. 
 
458 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 T' Hephaistos' house the silver-footed Thetis came, 
 Immortal, starry, brazen it outvied 
 Th' immortals' domes. And made it he the Lame. 
 She found him sweating, busy, occupied 
 By 's forge. Full twenty tripods that should bide 
 By 's firm-built mansion's wall was working he. 
 And made them each on golden wheels to glide, 
 To come self-mov'd, where met th' immortals be. 
 And self-mov'd home again ; a wondrous thing to see ! 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Finish'd thus far, but daedal ears thereto 
 
 Not yet. To fit which bands he cut. The same 
 
 While he with wise heart wrought, near Thetis drew, 
 
 Silver-foot goddess. Saw her as she came 
 
 Fair Charis, of the head-band bright, whom Both-feet- 
 
 Lame 
 Kenown'd espous'd. She clung t' her hand, speech set. 
 And spake : — " Why com'st thou, Thetis, long-veil'd 
 
 dame, 
 " Rever'd, belov'd, t' our house ? Not oft as yet 
 " Hast been. Come in, that I the guest-meal 'fore thee set.'^ 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 This said, august the goddess led the way, 
 Plac'd her on throne, fair silver-studded, made 
 With skill, and stool beneath her feet there lay. 
 Then caird Hephaistos, famous smith, and said : — 
 " Hephaistos, hither, thee doth Thetis need." 
 Her answer'd Both-feet-Lam'd^^^, of highest fame : — 
 " Goddess, to me august rever'd indeed 
 " Hath come, who sav'd me when on me there came 
 " Far-fallen pain, through shameless mother's rede to hide 
 me lame. 
 
BOOK xviii. 42 — 47. 459 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Soul's pangs I 'd borne but then in bosom me 
 
 " Eurynome and Thetis shelter gave, 
 
 " Back-flowing ^^^ Ocean's child, Eurynome. 
 
 " With them nine years I wrought quaint things i' th'cave, 
 
 " Curv'd bracelets, clasps, and cups, and chains. Vast 
 
 murm'ring wave 
 " Did yeasty Ocean round. Of gods and men none knew, 
 " But Thetis and Eurynome that save 
 " Me did. She comes now here. Behoves I do 
 " To Thetis comely-hair'd pay all a sav'd life's due. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " But thou set 'fore her guest-meal fair and good, 
 " While I put bellows by and tools." He said. 
 And huge from stithy up the fire-god stood , 
 Limping, whom legs beneath him weak upstaid. 
 Bellows away from fire he drew, and laid 
 In silver chest all tools wherewith he wrought. 
 With sponge wipe face, and hands, and strong neck did, 
 And hairy chest. Then tunic donn'd, and stout 
 And massy sceptre ta'en, went limping forth thereout. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 With toil sustain the king attendants who 
 Of gold do like to living damsels show. 
 For sense in heart is theirs, voice have they too. 
 And strength, and works, y-taught of gods, they know. 
 So ply they 'bout the king, who painful, slow 
 Nigh Thetis came, on bright throne sat. And grew 
 T' her hand, spake word, by name addressing so: — 
 " Why, long- veil' d Thetis, honour'd, lov'd, unto 
 " Our house hast come ? Not oft thou comest hitherto. 
 
460 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 *' Speak out thy thought. My soul to do it 's fain 
 " If I can do it, and it can be done." 
 Then Thetis weeping answered him again : — 
 " Hephaistos, doth there in Olympus wone 
 " Goddess with woes of mind like anguish which the son 
 " Of Kronos, Zeus, hath brought of all on me ? 
 " To man Peleus ^acides alone 
 " Hath me subdued, of all the powers of sea. 
 " To bed with man I 've borne, but most unwillingly. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " In 's house lies dreary age's prisoner ^^^ he, 
 
 " But more 's for me. When son he gave to bear 
 
 " And rear, of heroes chief that ran up like a tree. 
 
 " Him nurs'd as plant in fertile spot and fair, 
 
 *' I sent in curved ships to Ilium there, 
 
 " Trojans to fight. Eeceive him shall I none 
 
 " To Peleus' house again returning e'er. 
 
 " And while he lives and sees the light of sun 
 
 He '11 sorrow sooth. Nor aid him could I thither gone. 
 
 L. 
 
 " A girl, which th' Achives' sons his guerdon chose, 
 
 " From 's hands king Agamemnon 's torn away. 
 
 " So griev'd he eats his soul. Trojans enclose 
 . " Th' Acha^ans by their ships. None issue may 
 
 " Thereout. And him the Argive elders pray, 
 
 " And count him o'er a many presents bright. 
 
 " Himself repel their ruin did denay. 
 
 " Patroclus though, in his own armour dight, 
 " And with him eke much people sent he forth to fight. 
 
BOOK xviii. 48 — 53. 461 
 
 LI. 
 
 " All day they fought by th' Scsean gates, and had the 
 
 town 
 " Taken that day, had not Apollo slain, 
 " Woes dealing there, Menoetius' valiant son 
 " In foremost rank, and fame made Hector gain. 
 " Now to thy knees I come, if thou wilt deign 
 " My swift-fate son give shield and helmet stout, 
 " And comely greaves with clasps, that featly join, 
 " And corselet eke. For all his staunch friend, smote 
 " By Trojans, lost. Soul-griev'd he lies on ground stretch'd 
 out.'' 
 
 LII. 
 
 To her the all-renowned Both-feet-Lame 
 Made answer then : — " Cheer up, disquietude 
 " Of soul have none for these. I would the same 
 " From death harsh-sounding him conceaP^^ I could 
 " When grievous fate draws nigh, as armour good 
 " Shall sure be his, and such admir'd indeed 
 " Of many men, view them whoever would." 
 This said, did leave her there, t' his bellows yede 
 And set them to the fire, and bade to work proceed. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 On furnaces full twenty bellows blew. 
 A manageable blast of every kind 
 They sent. And as he wrought it brisker grew 
 At times, or slack'd again, if so in mind 
 Hephaistos wilFd, and as the work inclined. 
 Untiring brass, and tin, i' th' fire he cast. 
 And precious gold, and silver eke, and then 
 The mighty anvil to its place he pass'd. 
 In hand took hammer huge, held tongs with th' other fast. 
 
462 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 And first he made the shield, immense and strong, 
 Adorn'd on every side. Bright border round, 
 Glist'ring threefold, and from it silver thong. 
 Five folds had shield itself, and in its bound 
 Quaint things his wise heart wrought with cunning bond. 
 Therein the earth, therein the sky and sea, 
 Untiring sun, full moon, and wherewith crowned 
 The heavens, constellations all made he. 
 The Pleiads, Hyads, eke Orion's strength ^^^ there be. 
 
 LV. 
 
 And Arctus, which men also call the wain. 
 Which there doth turn and watch Orion e'er, 
 But sole lacks Ocean's baths. ^^^ Good cities twain 
 Of part- voice ^ men he made. And weddings were 
 In one, and feasts. The brides from chamber fair 
 With lighted torches led they through the town ; 
 Rose " HymenaBus " high. Youths circled there 
 In dance, while pipes and harps among them soun ^^^, 
 And at their doors stood women, wond'ring every one. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Folk throng the market-place. Strife rose. Two men 
 For slain man's were-gild ^^^ strive. That all is paid 
 One tells the folk, one saith he nought hath ta'en. 
 Both wish 'fore judge thereof be trial made. 
 The folk cheer both as they would either aid. 
 The heralds still'd the folk. The elders sate 
 On polished stones, in sacred circle laid. 
 With high-voic'd heralds' wands ^^* in hands y*set, 
 The parties waving them, their cause alternate state. 
 
BOOK xviii. 54—59. 463 
 
 LVII. 
 
 And 'mid them tliere two talents lay of gold, 
 To give to him should cause the justest say. 
 The other town two hosts in leaguer hold, 
 Glist'ring in arms. Of two things one would they : 
 To lay it waste, or bear the half away 
 What pleasant town contain'd. Nor these gave ear, 
 But for an ambush them by stealth array. 
 The wall their wives and speechless children dear 
 Stand on, and keep, with men opprest by age severe. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 They went. Pallas Athene, Ares lead 
 Both gold, in golden raiment eke array'd 
 And comely, large, fuU-arm'd, like gods indeed. 
 On each side plain. The folk were smaller made. 
 And these when reach'd the spot for ambuscade 
 By river, cattle's wat'ring place, thereby 
 Y-clad in shining brass they ambush laid. 
 Two scouts apart fro' th' folk were set to spy 
 When thither sheep or trail-foot oxen came a-nigh. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 And soon they came with shepherds twain that play'd 
 On pipes, nor thought of snare. These see and run. 
 And herds of beeves, and white sheeps' fair flocks made 
 Quick prize, and shepherds slew. Who siege the town, 
 And sat in council then, when din and sown ^^^ 
 Of oxen heard, on toss-foot horses straight 
 They mount in chace, and quick on them come down. 
 These stand and fight by river's banks a flght. 
 And one another there with brazen spears they smite. 
 
4.Q4: THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 There Strife and Tumult, Fate pernicious, throng. 
 Held man fresh- wounded one, one wounded nought. 
 One dragg'd a corse by th' feet through fight along 
 In raiment clad, which stains from men's blood caught. 
 They mingled there like living men, and fought, 
 And mutual dragg'd ofi* corses of the slain.- 
 There fallow soft, rich fertile land he wrought 
 Broad, thrice-plough'd, many ploughers were therein, 
 That turn'd the teams, and thither drove and back again. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 As plough-land's end they turning reach, one came, 
 Plac'd in their hands sweet wine a cup. And they 
 To th' furrows turn, reach deep field's end their aim. 
 It blacken'd after them, like plough-field lay 
 Although of gold, 'twas wrought such wondrous way. 
 And royal deep-cropp'd field ^^^ he made, where men 
 Did reap. And in their hands sharp sickles play. 
 And thick along the furrow handfuls rain. 
 And some the binders of the sheaves in sheaves constrain 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Sheave-binders three there ply ; and boys behind 
 Up-take the handfuls in their arms in haste. 
 A king with sceptre silent, glad in mind 
 Stood by. Heralds 'neath oak prepare repast 
 Apart, 'bout ox em ploy 'd they 'd slaughter'd vast. 
 Much meaP^'' maids mix for workers in the field. 
 Heavy with grapes a vineyard eke he trac'd. 
 Fair, golden, that its clusters black reveal'd. 
 And propp'd on rows of silver poles appeared in the shield. 
 
BOOK xvrir. 60 — 65. 465 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 And azure fence around, and trench he drew 
 Of tin, with one sole path unwinding, where 
 The porters go, when they the vintage do. 
 And little maids and youths soft-thought ed there 
 The luscious fruit in woven baskets bare. 
 A boy witb harp sonorous them among 
 Harp'd sweetly, ' Linus ' ^^^ under-chanting fair 
 With slender voice. They burst in choruss'd song 
 And shout, and with their feet went tripping it along. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 A drove of straight-horn'd beeves he wrought. Of tin 
 And gold the beeves were made. These forth with low 
 From stall to pasture rush, where flow'd with din 
 A river, where the waving rushes grow. 
 And golden herdsmen four with th' oxen go. 
 And nine swift-footed dogs attend them do. 
 Dread lions twain 'mong foremost oxen show 
 That groaning ox have gripp'd. Him bellowing drew 
 They off, and hounds and youths then after them pursue. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 These twain indeed, uprending there the hide 
 Of that huge ox, lapp'd th' entrails and black blood. 
 And herdsmen all in vain pursued and tried 
 To halloo on the dogs, who bite not would, 
 But from the lions shrank. Though near they stood 
 Nathless, and bark'd, but still avoiding keep. 
 And Both-feet-Lame renown'd made pasture good 
 In pleasant forest glen for snow-white sheep. 
 Full broad, and stalls, and tents, and sheep folds roofed deep. 
 
 HH 
 
466 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 And varied dance wrought famous Both-feet-Lame, 
 Like that which Daedalus in Cnossus wide 
 Made erst for Ariadne fair-tress'd dame. 
 There youths and lovely maidens ^^^ dancing glide, 
 And join'd their hands with palm to palm applied. 
 Thin linen veils had these, those tunics don, 
 Y- woven well, and bright as oil beside. 
 And these did comely garlands soothly crown, 
 Gold swords had those which hung from golden baldric 
 down. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Sometimes they ^d circling run with feet of skill. 
 With ease as when a potter takes in hand 
 Fit wheel, and sits and tries if run it will ; 
 Sometimes run back in rows. While round the band 
 Of dancers fair a throng of people stand 
 Delighted. Tumblers twain there lead the song 
 Amid them twirling. There too wrought his hand 
 The force immense of river Ocean strong 
 That rim of quaint- wrought shield as border ran along. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 When shield he 'd wrought immense, and solid there, 
 He wrought him corselet more than fire-gleam bright, 
 And wrought him helmet, temples fitting fair. 
 Of dasdal art. Gold crest thereon y-pight. 
 And wrought him greaves of ductile tin and light. 
 Fam'd Both-feet-Lame all th' arms so finishing. 
 Set them before Achilles' mother's sight. 
 Like hawk did she from snow- Olympus spring. 
 With glist'ring arms that from Hephaistos she did bring. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 Morn, saffron- veil'd, from Ocean's streams arose, 
 That carry light to gods and men she mote. 
 Thetis to th' ships the god's gifts bearing goes. 
 And o'er Patroclus found her son stretch'd out. 
 Weeping aloud, friends many him about 
 Lamenting there. The goddess near him stood, 
 And clung t' his hand, spake word, and thus besought : — 
 " My child, }iim leave we, though in sorr'wing mood, 
 Who from the first by th' gods' contrivance was subdued. 
 
 II. 
 
 " But thou the bright arms take Hephaistos made 
 " So fair. Man such on shoulders wore yet none." 
 This said, the goddess 'fore Achilles laid 
 The armour down. The daedal things all sown 
 Fear seiz'd all Myrmidons. And look thereon 
 None durst, but quak'd. But in Achilles ire 
 Grew more as he beheld. His two eyes shone 
 'Neath eye-lids dread, and show'd like flaming fire. 
 The gods' bright gifts he glad doth handle, and admire. 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 When gladden'd soul these things beholding, he 
 Words winged to his mother straightway said : — 
 " Mother, these arms a god did give, and be 
 " Immortals' works, which mortal man ne'er made. 
 " Now I will harness me, though sore afraid 
 " Mencetius' valiant son meanwhile the flies 
 " Will enter by the wounds spear open laid, 
 " And worms there breed, and serve the corse in shame- 
 ful wise, 
 " Now life is fled, and so the flesh all putrifies." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then goddess Thetis Silver-foot replies : — 
 " Son, be not anxious thou for these. 1 11 try 
 " To drive from him the teasing swarms of flies 
 " That feed on men, who slain of Ares die. 
 " Yea, though the whole year round he there should ]' 
 " His flesh shall aye keep firm, or better e'en. 
 " But thou t' assembly call th' Achasans high, 
 " And wrath *gainst Agamemnon, king of men, 
 *' Renounce, for war quick arm thee, don thy valour then.'' 
 
 This said, she gave him force of daring high. 
 And in Patroclus' nostrils nectar red. 
 And eke ambrosia dropp'd that firm abye 
 His flesh. By shore of sea Achilles sped. 
 And stirr'd th' Acha3an heroes, shouting dread. 
 All erst who staid by th' ships, who steersmen be 
 And rudder wield, ship-stewards eke, who give out bread. 
 These went t' assembly then, him there to see 
 Achilles sooth, from woful war so long abstain'd had he. 
 
BOOK XIX. 3—8. 469 
 
 VI. 
 
 And limping went those Ares' servants twain 
 Tydides bide-fight ^^^, great Odysseus, these that on 
 Their spears y-leant, for still their wounds did pain. 
 They went and sat in front th' assembly down. 
 Men's sovran, Agamemnon, second one, 
 Came wounded too, whom smote in fierce affray 
 With brass spear Coon had, Antenor's son. 
 And when the Achaeans all were met, straightway 
 Among them rising did swift-foot Achilles say : — 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Atrides, sooth for both this better were 
 
 " For thee and me, when heart-vex'd rag'd we twain 
 
 " In gnaw-soul strife about a girl, if her 
 
 " r th' ships had Artemis with arrow slain, 
 
 " The day that I 'd Lyrnessus wasting ta'en. 
 
 " Achives so many 'd not 'neath hands of foes 
 
 " While I was raging bit the boundless plain. 
 
 " Hector and Trojans' boot it was ; Achives be those 
 
 Who '11 long my wrath and thine remember, I suppose. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " But pass we these as done, though griev'd we be, 
 " And soul in breast subdue we thorough need. 
 " Now sooth I '11 cease my wrath, for fits not me 
 " Aye obstinately rage. But come, with speed 
 " Bid comely-hair'd Achceans war-wards yede, 
 " That I may issue forth, and Trojans try 
 " If they'll pass night by th' ships. But some indeed, 
 " I think of them will bend knee joyfully 
 Who e'er from raging fight from 'neath our spear can fly." 
 
 H H 3 
 
470 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 He spake. Well-greav'd Achaeans sooth were glad 
 
 That Peleus' high-soul'd son did wrath remit. 
 
 *Mong them men's sovran, Agamemnon, said. 
 
 Nor 'mong them stood, but spake where he did sit : — 
 
 " Friends, heroes, Danai, ye Ares' servants, fit 
 
 " It is that him who stands ye hear. Nor should 
 
 " Ye interrupt. 'Twere hard for wisest wit. 
 
 *' 'Mid men's much clamour hear or speak who could ? 
 
 He 'd hamper'd be, although a speaker loud and good. 
 
 " I '11 to Achilles speak my mind, but ye 
 " The other Argives eke attend, and know 
 " Each one my speech. Achaeans oft to me 
 " Such speech have said, and me accus'd, although 
 " Not I to blame, but Zeus and Fate I trow, 
 *' Haunt-air Erinnys eke. Fell Ate they 
 " Did in my soul there at th' assembly throw 
 " When took Achilles' prize myself that day. 
 " What could I do ? The god's will hath through all its way. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Ate, Zeus' daughter dread, who injures all 
 
 " Pernicious. Soft her feet, which never set 
 
 " To ground doth she, but walk men's heads withai 
 
 " To injure men. One else she caught in net ; 
 
 " For Zeus of yore she hurt, the chiefest yet 
 
 " Of gods and men, they say. But him whilere 
 
 " Did Here, female-like, with craft out-wit, 
 
 " The day Alcmene was about to bear 
 
 The strength of Hercules ^22 j^ Thebes wall-cinctur'd fair. 
 
BOOK XIX. 9 — 14. 471 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Glorying to th' gods he spake : — ' Now hear me ye, 
 ''All gods and goddesses, the while I say 
 " What in my breast my spirit prompteth me, 
 " For hard-hirth Ilithya shall this day 
 " Show forth to light a man whose regal sway 
 " Shall over all his neighbours round extend. 
 " His race of men are of my blood,'' Straightway 
 " August spake Here, who did guile intend : — 
 '' * Thou Ht sure be false, nor crown thy speech with answWing 
 end, 
 
 xm. 
 
 " Swear me Olympius mighty oath, that reign 
 *' O^er all his neighbours round in sooth shall he, 
 " Who falls this day Hwixt loomarHs feet of men 
 " That of thy very blood and lineage be.'' 
 " She said. Nor Zeus her craftiness did see, 
 '' But swore great oath, whence mickle harm him grew. 
 " Quick Here left Olympus' top, and she 
 " Soon reach'd Achaic Argos, where she knew 
 " Was Sthenelus' Persides' noble consort true. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " With child of son in seventh month was she ; 
 
 " Him, short his month, she drew to light, but staid 
 
 " Alcmene's birth, and check'd th' Ilythi^. 
 
 " To Zeus Kronion came herself, and said: — 
 
 " ' Sire red-bolt Zeus, word in thy 7nind be laid 
 
 " Now born '5 a man of mark, shall Ar gives sway, 
 
 " Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, the Perseide, 
 
 " Thy race, who fitly govern Ar gives may.^ 
 
 She said, and deep in 's soul keen anguish smote its way 
 
 II H 4 
 
472 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " By bright-hair'd head he seized Ate in his ire, 
 " And great oath swore, t' Olympus and the starry sky 
 " Should ne'er return all-inj'ring Ate dire. 
 " He said, and whirling hurl'd from starry sky. 
 " She soon to men's works came. Through her still sigh 
 " Did he his dear son's shameful toil to view, 
 " Eurystheus' tasks. So while huge Hector high 
 ^' Helm-waving by their ship-sterns Argives slew, 
 " Th' Ate which harm'd me first forget I could not too. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Since Ate seiz'd and Zeus took sense from me, 
 " I 'd fain be reconcil'd, huge ransom pay. 
 " But rise to war and stir the folk with thee. 
 " I '11 give all gifts that promis'd yesterday 
 " Odysseus in thy tent. Or if thou 'It stay, 
 *^ Though prest for war, the gifts shall servants take 
 " From out my ship, and bring to thee away, 
 " To see what gifts for reconcilement's sake 
 " I '11 give." Then answ'ring him swift-foot Achilles 
 spake : — 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Atrides, king of men, most glorious thou, 
 " Agamemnon, gifts give or keep doth rest with thee 
 " As fit. But speedy fight let 's think of now ; 
 " Here fits not spni out time, or loit'ring be, 
 " For yet great work 's undone. When one shall see 
 " Again Achilles 'mong the foremost smite 
 " With brazen spear the Trojan columns, he 
 " Of you remember then with man to fight." 
 Him answ'ring spake Odysseus, craft-accomplish'd 
 wight: — 
 
BOOK XIX. 15 — 20. 473 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Not so, divine Achilles brave, while fast 
 
 " Th' Achaeans sons to Ilium them incite 
 
 " To combat Trojans. Time no little last 
 
 " The battle will, when men's phalanges join in fight, 
 
 "And spirit breath'd of god in both y-pight. 
 
 ^ " But bid by th' swift ships Achives feed anon 
 " Of bread and wine, for this is force and might. 
 " For man, indeed, all day till set of sun 
 
 " Against the foe contend withouten food can none. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " For though in soul he 'd fight, yet ere he knows 
 " His limbs grow heavy, thirst and hunger seize. 
 " His knees they waxen feeble as he goes. 
 " But who doth him with wine and food appease, 
 " Will battle it with foes all day with ease. 
 " For bold his heart within his breast, nor ere 
 " They all from fight retire do aught his knees 
 " A- weary grow. But do thou order there 
 " The people now disperse, and bid repast prepare. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " The gifts let Agamemnon, king of men, 
 
 " Amidst th' assembly set, so shall th' Achaeans there 
 
 " All see with eyes, and eke thy soul be fain. 
 
 " And 'mong the Argives let him stand, and swear 
 
 " That couch with her, or join embraces, ne'er 
 
 " Did he as men, king, with women do. 
 
 " Then be thy soul in breast serene and fair. 
 
 " And he i' th' tents with feasts shall sooth thee too, 
 
 Superb, that lacking nought there be of what 's thy due. 
 
474 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Atrides, thou t' another juster then 
 " Wilt be. Whom first he wrong'd should king appease." 
 To him spake Agamemnon, king of men : — 
 " I joy to hear thee, Laertiades, 
 
 " Thou 'st all well summ'd and spoke. I '11 swear to these. 
 " Prompts me my soul, I '11 not to th' god forswear. 
 " Achilles stay awhile, though war- ward he 's 
 " In haste. Stay, too, the rest, until they bear 
 " The gifts from out the tents, and firm we covenant there. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Thyself I bid best youth of Achives pick, 
 " From ships fetch gifts we promis'd yesterday 
 " T' Achilles. Bring the women too. And quick 
 " A boar for me, through th' Achive host, to slay 
 " To Zeus and Helios, Talthyb choose." Then say 
 Swift-foot Achilles did : — " Atrides, thou 
 " Kenown'd men's sovran Agamemnon may 
 " This better be when fight hath ceas'd, and so 
 " Doth not the ardour fierce within my bosom glow. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Now slain they lie, whom Hector, Priam's son, 
 " Subdued when gave him glory Zeus. Haste ye 
 ** To meat, I '11 now to war stir th' Achives on, 
 " Fasting, unfed. By sunset let there be 
 " Huge meal prepar'd, when insult veng'd have we. 
 " For sooner down my throat nor drink shall wend 
 " Nor meat, while dead within my tent doth he 
 " With keen edg'd brass lie pierced through, my friend, 
 " Whose feet are turn'd to th' porch, whom comrades 
 wailing round attend. 
 
BOOK XIX. 21 — 26. 475 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " Therefore it is of these I take no kepe, 
 '' But slaughter, blood, and warriors' grievous groan." 
 Him answ'ring spake then he of counsel deep, 
 Odysseus : — "0 Achilles, Peleus' son, 
 " Of all Achaeans far the strongest one, 
 " Better than I, at spear far stronger thou, 
 " Yet I in foresight cast much farther on^'-*^, 
 " For older I, and know more things, I trow. 
 " Bear with my speech, then, let thy heart within thee 
 now. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " Soon grows of fight ^^^ satiety to men 
 " Where brass most thickly stalks on ground doth pour, 
 " But scant the harvest when the scales incline 
 " Doth Zeus, who is men's arbiter of war. 
 " With stomach should th' Achaeans not deplore 
 " The dead. For all days thick and many they 
 " That fall. AVhen could we sorrowing give o'er? 
 " The dead we bury must, let die who may, 
 " And keep a constant mind, and mourn him for the day. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " And who are left of hateful war 'tis fit 
 " That we both drink and food remember do, 
 " The more 'gainst warrior- foes to battle-it 
 " Withouten cesse or stint. Our flesh thereto 
 " With brass indomitable round endue. 
 " Let none expecting other summons stay. 
 " Such summons soothly cause he '11 have to rue 
 " Who 's left in Argives' ships. Lets all away, 
 '' On tame-steed Trojans rush, and wake up sharp affray. " 
 
476 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 He said, and chose as mates high Nestor's seed, 
 And Meges, Phyleus' son, and Thoas, Merion 
 With these, and Creon's offspring, Lycomede, 
 And Melanippus. Tent of Atreus' son 
 They went to. Word was spoke, and deed was done. 
 From tent se'en tripods brought, which prorais'd he. 
 Ten caldrons bright, twelve steeds. Brought out anon 
 Se'en women fair, that skilPd in labours be. 
 And eighth Briseis brought, of cheeks so lovely she. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Gold having weighed full talents ten, Odysseus goes 
 'Fore th' Achive youths that presents bearing ply. 
 Which set mid-meeting, Agamemnon rose. 
 Talthyb, folk- shepherd, godlike- voic'd stood nigh. 
 Holding a boar. With hands ^'^ the knife, that aye 
 B' his sword's huge scabbard hung, Atrides drew ; 
 From boar first bristles cut, then, hands on high. 
 He pray'd to Zeus. While Argives all as due 
 There list'ning to the king in silence seated view. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 He pray'd and spake, and gaz'd at th' ample sky : — 
 " First Zeus now witness, gods' supreme and best, 
 " And Earth and Sun, Erinnes eke that aye 
 " 'Neath earth do men afflict who 've oath transgrest, 
 " I 've not the girl Briseis e'er carest, 
 " Or touch'd, be 't on her couch, or other way. 
 " Stainless and pure she in my tent did rest. 
 " If aught's forsworn in this, gods on me lay 
 ** All pains they cast on those who sin by perjury." 
 
BOOK XIX. 27—32. 477 
 
 XXX. 
 
 He said, and with fell brass slit throat of boar, 
 Which Talthyb to th' huge deep of hoary sea 
 Whirl'd, food for fish. Achilles, rising 'fore 
 The war-fond Argives, spake : — " Sire Zeus, from thee 
 " Dire woes on men, for soul in breast of me 
 " Had ne'er Atrides stirr'd, nor girl e'er ta'en 
 " In my despite with ill intent, but he 
 " Zeus will'd Achasans many should be slain. 
 " Now go to your repast, and we '11 to fight again." 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 This said, dismiss'd he meeting quick. And they, 
 Each one to his tent, dispers'd. To th' presents see 
 Did Myrmidons, and to Achilles' ship convey. 
 These set i' th' tents, and cause the women seated be. 
 While servants bright drove steeds to stud. But she 
 Briseis, like the golden Aphrodite there. 
 When pierc'd with brass she did Patroclus see, 
 On him she flung with piercing cry, and tear 
 With hands her bosom did, and tender neck, and face so 
 fair. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 That goddess-woman wept, and thus did say : — 
 " Patroclus, thou to wretched me most dear 
 " In soul, alive I left thee going away 
 " From tent, now dead, thou prince, I find thee here 
 " When I return ; so woe on woe career 
 " Doth aye with me. The husband gave they me 
 " My sire, and mother, slain I saw with spear 
 " Before our town, and dearest brethren three, 
 " Whom did same mother bear, all dead, alas ! they be. 
 
478 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Thou wouldst not suffer me to weep, when slew 
 " Achilles swift of foot my husband there, 
 *' And godlike Mynes' city overthrew, 
 " But of divine Achilles didst declare 
 " Thou 'dst make me virgin-spouse, to Phthia bear 
 " r th' ships, 'mong Myrmidons at wedding high 
 " Wouldst feast it. So I mourn thee dead, that e'er 
 " Wast gentle." Spake she weeping. Women by 
 Lament Patroclus seem, but o'er their sev'ral sorrows sigh. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Drew round Achilles th' Achive chiefs, and pray'd 
 Him eat. But he with groaning did denay : — 
 " If, friends, ye '11 hearken, do not me persuade 
 " With drink and food to sate my soul, I pray. 
 *' Sore grief hath reach'd me. I'll till close of day 
 " Endure." This said, kings else dismiss'd he here, 
 But both Atrides and Odysseus stay, 
 Nestor, Idomeneus, and Phoenix dear, 
 The horseman old. Him sorr'wing sore they fain would 
 cheer. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Nought cheer'd his soul ere battle's bloody jaws 
 He 'd enter'd. Sigh'd and spake rememb'ring he : — 
 " Thou hapless erst most dear of friends, it was 
 *' Thyself i' th' tent didst set sweet meat for me, 
 " Careful, and quick when Achives prompt would be 
 " 'Gainst tame-steed Trojans tearful war to bring. 
 " Now liest slain. Fast shall assuredly 
 " From drink and food, though both be here, sore lan- 
 guishing 
 " My heart for thee. I cannot suffer worser thing. 
 
BOOK XIX. 33—38. 479 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Not if I heard of father's dying, who 
 
 " In Phthia haply now sheds tender tear 
 
 " For such son's lack, that in strange country do 
 
 " For odious Helen's sake fight Trojans here ; 
 
 " Or him, in Scyros nurs'd, my son so dear 
 
 " If yet he liveth, Neoptolemus, 
 
 " Of godlike form. This hope did soul erst cheer, 
 
 " From steed-apt Argos I should sole of us 
 
 In Troas die, but thou return to Phthia prosperous ; 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " My boy with thee in swift black ship shouldst take 
 " From Scyros oif, and all things to him show, 
 " My wealth, and slaves, and house high roofed eke. 
 " For Peleus is already dead, I trow, 
 " Or scantly yet alive, from sorr'wing so, 
 " In drear old age expecting of me aye 
 " The tidings sad when of me dead he '11 know." 
 He spake and wept. The elders each thereby 
 Rememb'ring what they 'd left at home do groan and sigh. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Kronion pitied, who beheld them weep, 
 
 T' Athene wing'd words spake he presently : — 
 
 " My child from good man dost thou quite then keep ? 
 
 " Is not Achilles more a care to thee ? 
 
 " He sooth before the ships, that high-stern'd be, 
 
 " Sits mourning comrade dear. And while the rest 
 
 " Go to their meal, unfed and fasting 's he. 
 
 " But nectar and ambrosia sweet in 's breast 
 
 Go thou instil, lest he by hunger be opprest." 
 
480 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 So saying, he th' already willing one 
 Athene stirr'd. And like sea-eagle there 
 Of ample pinions, and of shrilly tone, 
 From Heaven sprang she down a-through the air. 
 Th' Achaeans through the host then arming were. 
 Dropp'd nectar in Achilles' breast with sweet 
 Ambrosia she, lest joyless hunger wear 
 His knees. She to her mighty father's seat 
 Keturn'd. And they pour'd forth apart fro' th' vessels 
 fleet. 
 
 XL. 
 
 As snow-storms thick and chill fly forth from Zeus, 
 'Neath blast of Boreas asther-born. So were 
 From ships the helmets glist'ring borne profuse, 
 Boss'd shields and arch'd-plate corselets, ash spears fair. 
 The splendour rose to sky, and earth all laughed there 
 'Neath gleam of brass. Sound rose men's feet beneath. 
 And midst them harness'd him Achilles rare, 
 The godlike. Gnashing was there of his teeth. 
 And his two eyes outshone, as when one fire-flame seeth. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 His heart in woe past suff"rance plung'd, and hot 
 'Gainst Trojans he the god's gifts did endue. 
 Which had for him Hephaistos lab'ring wrought. 
 Greaves first about his legs he buckled-to. 
 Fair greaves with" clasps of silver, fitting true ; 
 And next his corselet set his breast about ; 
 O'er shoulders falchion silver-studded threw 
 Of brass. Then grasp'd the shield enormous stout. 
 From which as from a moon a sheeny radiance glister'd 
 out. 
 
BOOK XIX. 39 — 44. 481 
 
 XLII. 
 
 As when at sea to sailors sheweth light 
 Of burning fire, in mountains blazing high 
 In lonely spot, while them in their despite. 
 Storms drive to fishy sea from friends away 
 So from Achilles' shield doth radiance fly 
 Through air, from comely daedal shield. His helmet stout 
 He rais'd, and set on 's head. Like star i' th' sky 
 Shone forth the horse-tail helm. Shook all about 
 The thick gold hair wherewith Hephaistos had the cone 
 set out. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 And of himself in arms then made assay 
 Divine Achilles, if they fit him true 
 And in them had his radiant limbs their play. 
 Folk shepherd lift, as were they wings, they do 
 From ground. Next father's spear from stand he drew. 
 Huge, heavy, strong. No Achive might aspire 
 To wield ; Achilles sole to wield it knew ; 
 A Pelion ash that Chiron cut his sire 
 In Pelion's top, to be to heroes slaughter dire. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 The horses there in sooth Automedon 
 And Alcimus preparing harness do. 
 And yoke -thongs lovely had the horses on, 
 And 'bout their jaws the bridles then they threw, 
 And reins to seat compact back tight'ning drew. 
 Bright hand-fit whip y-grasp'd, to car sprung stout 
 Automedon. Arm'd went Achilles too 
 Behind, and like a glist'ring sun shone out 
 In harness bright, who dire t' his father's steeds did 
 shout : — 
 
 II 
 
482 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Xanthus and Balius, ye renowned afar 
 
 " Podarges^ children, think another way 
 
 " How safe to bring the driver of your car 
 
 " Back to Danaians' host when slack we fray^^^, 
 
 " Nor like Patroclus leave him dead." Then say 
 
 'Neath yoke did swift-foot Xanthus, head hung low, 
 
 With inane that strewn on ground from yoke-ring 
 
 falling la}^, 
 Him white-arm'd Her^ goddess did endow 
 With speech : — " We '11 surely, strong Achilles, save thee 
 
 now. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " But near 's thy dying day, though we no wise 
 " To blame, but god and fate prevailing e'er. 
 "Nor did by slowness ours nor sluggard ize 
 " Arms from Patroclus' shoulders Trojans tear. 
 " But him that chief of gods, whom fair-tress'd Leto bare, 
 " 'Mong foremost slew, and gave to Hector fame there- 
 from. 
 " With blast of Zephyrus we 'd pace it yare, 
 " That swiftest is, they say. But 'tis thy doom 
 " Thyself by god and man to be by force o'ercome." 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 And when in sooth thus far he 'd spoken, stay 
 Th' Erinnyes did his voice. And anger'd high 
 To him did nimble-foot Achilles say : — 
 " Xanthus, to me death wherefore prophesy ? 
 " Not needed thee, for here m}^ doom to die, 
 " From sire and mother far, myself well know, 
 " Yet cease I '11 not till to satiety ^^^ 
 " Of war r ve Trojans drove." lie said, and so 
 'Mong foremost shouting made the whole-hoof d horses go. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XX. 
 
 I. 
 
 By th* ciirv'd ships so th' Achaeans arm^d round thee, 
 Peleus' son, insatiate thou of fight. 
 I' th' plain's high ground the Trojans their side be. 
 Zeus Themis bade t' assembly gods invite 
 There, on the many-val'd Olympus' height. 
 All ways she went to Zeus' house calling there. 
 Eivers, save Ocean, absent was no wight, 
 Nor nymphs, of whom are lovely groves the care, 
 And springs of rivers, and the grassy meadows fair. 
 
 11. 
 
 At mansion these arriv'd of drive^cloud 2eus, 
 
 I' th' polish'd porch they sat, the which Hephaistos did 
 
 For Zeus the Sire with wisest heart produce. 
 
 In Zeus' house met they. Shake-Earth too did heed 
 
 The goddess, and from sea to th' others yede, 
 
 And midst them sitting, aim of Zeus enquire : — 
 
 " Why, Lightning-one, dost gods t' assembly bid 
 
 " Again ? 'Bout Trojans and Achasans, Sire, 
 
 Hast some design? Nigh breaking out 's their battle dire." 
 
 II 2 
 
484 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 Him answering spake the drive-cloud Zeus : — " Thou 
 
 dost, 
 " Shake-Earth, know the counsels of my breast 
 " For whom you 're calFd^my care though die they must. 
 " I'll stay, and sit upon Olympus' crest 
 " And please my soul beholding. Ye the rest 
 " Go 'mong the Trojans and Ach^ans down, 
 " And aid ye either side as each thinks best. 
 " For Trojans, if Achilles fight alone, 
 " Will not for smallest space bear Peleus' swift-foot son. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Him erst beholding they were wont to quake. 
 " Now wroth his soul for comrade's death I fear 
 " He '11 wall itself 'gainst fate o'erthrow." So spake 
 Great Kronides, and kindled fight severe. 
 The gods, with minds oppos'd, no sooner hear 
 Than they to battle wend. To ship-fight down 
 Here, Pallas Athene eke career, 
 And Girder of the Earth, Poseidaon, 
 Luck-bringing Hermes eke, for soul of prudence known. 
 
 And there Hephaistos, too, with them along, 
 Kound glaring in his strength, and limping is. 
 Whom underneath him bear his legs not strong. 
 To th' Trojans wave-helm Ares went y- wis, 
 Phoebus th' unshorn, shaft-loving Artemis, 
 Leto and Xanthus, Aphrodite fond 
 Of smiles. And while the battle gods doth miss, 
 Th' Achseans much prevail, now 'mong them found 
 Achilles, who from woful war so long did stond. 
 
BOOK XX. 3 — 8. 485 
 
 VI. 
 
 Fear seiz'd the trembling Trojans* knees each one 
 When swift Pelides bright in arms they spy, 
 Like man-bane Ares. But to men's throng down 
 When came th' Olympians rose contention high. 
 By trench stir-folk Athene now did cry 
 Without the wall, and now by th' sounding shore. 
 And Ares, too, like whirlwind dark did ply, 
 From citadel to Trojans calling roar. 
 Or nigh Simois run, Callicolone o'er. 
 
 VII. 
 
 When both sides th' happy gods upstirred then 
 The battle join'd, and heavy strife out -brake, 
 And thunder'd dread the Sire of gods and men 
 From high. Poseidon, too, beneath did make 
 Vast earth and mountains' lofty peaks to shake. 
 All much-rill'd Ida's roots, and summits high. 
 And Trojans' town and ships Achaean quake. 
 Which king of nether world did terrify, 
 Aidoneus, who aghast from throne upstarted with a cry. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Shake-Earth Poseidon would, he fear'd, the earth him o'er 
 Break through, and unto men and gods disclose 
 The dire wide-stretch'd abodes which e'en the gods abhor. 
 So great the din of gods encount'ring rose. 
 For King Poseidon Phoebus did oppose 
 With winged shafts. 'Gainst Enyalius stout 
 The goddess azure-ey'd Athene goes. 
 'Gainst Here, Gold-shaft 2^^, she of hunter's rout. 
 Shaft-loving Artemis, Far-Darter's sister, fought. 
 
 II 3 
 
486 . THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 ^Gainst Leto Hermes strong, Luck-bringer, stood. 
 Oppose Hepliaistos that deep-eddying river, 
 Which gods call Xanthus, men Scamander, would. 
 So gods fought gods. Achilles though did ever 
 Find Hector, Priam's son, through throng endeavour; 
 For with his blood glut Ares, warrior strong. 
 His soul in its fierce purpose did persever. 
 Mneas there, Apollo Stir-the-throng 
 Straight rous'd 'gainst Peleus' son, and in him vigour flong. 
 
 In voice Lycaon seem'd he, Priam's son. 
 
 So 'guis'd Zeus' son Apollo him address'd ; — 
 
 " ^neas, Trojans' chief, threats whither gone 
 
 " By thee to th' Trojan kings o'er wine exprest, 
 
 *' Of fighting Peleus' son Achilles breast to breast?" 
 
 ^neas answ'ring spake : — " Wherefore hast thou, 
 
 " Priamides, me, though unwilling, prest 
 
 " 'Gainst Peleus' high-soul'd son to fight. Not now 
 
 First time I Ve 'gainst swift-foot Achilles stood, I trow. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " He 's me before with spear elsewhere made flee 
 
 " From Ida, where our beeves he drave away, 
 
 " Lyrnessus took, and Pedasus, but me 
 
 " Zeus sav'd, who gave my swift knees strength to play. 
 
 " B' Achilles and Athene quell'd that day 
 
 " I 'd been. She goes before him, making light, 
 
 " And him with spear bade Leleges and Trojans slay. 
 
 " Wherefore not man can 'gainst Achilles fight, 
 
 Some god's aye near, averting what him injure might. 
 
BOOK XX. 9—14. 487 
 
 XII. 
 
 " His dart besides doth aye fly straight, nor cease . 
 " Ere flesh of man it pierce. If god now fair 
 " Would hold the scales of war, me then with ease 
 " O'ercome he 'd not, how brazen all soe'er 
 " He boast him." Spake Zeus' son, Apollo, there : — 
 " Thou, hero, too, pray gods eterne ; for thee, 
 '' They say, Zeus' daughter, Aphrodite, bare, 
 *'• And from a god inferior sooth is he. 
 " For one 's from Zeus, and one from th' old man of the sea. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 '^ Th' unflinching brass bear straight, nor let him fright 
 " With big words thee at all, or threats." He said, 
 And breath'd in people-shepherd mickle might. 
 Who, arm'd in glist'ring brass, through foremost sped. 
 Anchises' son through throng of men, not hid 
 From white-arm'd Here, went 'gainst Peleus' son. 
 She call'd the gods, and word thus uttered : — 
 " Poseidon and Athene, think upon 
 These things within your minds, resolve what shall be done. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Gone 's that iEneas, arm'd and glist'ring he 
 In brass, 'gainst Peleus' son. But him incite 
 Phoebus Apollo did. But come now, we 
 Will turn him thence, or one of us, y-pight 
 B' Achilles' side, will give him mickle might. 
 That he of courage stint not when he knows 
 Love him the chiefest of immortals bright. 
 For profitless have hitherto been those 
 Who would in war defend the Trojans from their foes. 
 
488 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Let *s all Olympus leave, and mingle in 
 
 " This fight, lest hap him aught 'mong Trojans there 
 
 " This day. He 11 after take what Fate did spin 
 
 " At birth i' th' thread, when him his mother bare. 
 
 " But if from god's voice these he hear not scare 
 
 " It will Achilles when a god to th' fight 
 
 " Doth come. For when they show them, dreadful e'er 
 
 " Are gods." Then spake Poseidon, Shake-Earth 
 
 hight: — 
 Here, do not past reason rage ; in thee it is not right. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " I'd not drive gods to fight, not we. that are 
 " The stronger much. But let us go, on watch-place sit 
 " Away from road, and leave to men the war. 
 " If Ares 'gin, or Phoebus battling it 
 " Achilles to restrain, and will not fight permit, 
 " From us will instant there upkindle stour's ^^^ 
 " Fierce strife, and soon I think they '11 battle quit, 
 " And back t' Olympus to the other powers 
 " Of sky return, subdued beneath these hands of ours." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 So saying, Dark-Hair to the heap'd wall led. 
 Which high for Hercules, the godlike one, 
 Had Trojans and Pallas Athene made. 
 That he the sea-beast might avoiding shun ^^\ 
 When chacing him from plain to shore 'twould run. 
 There sat Poseidon, th' other gods also. 
 And breachless cloud did 'bout their shoulders don, 
 Sat facing, on Callicolonfe's brow, 
 Thou, bowyer Phoebus, town-destroying Ares thou. 
 
BOOK XX. 15 — 20. 489 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Thus they on each side seated pond'ring were, 
 Their counsels o'er, but hard-couch war would none 
 Begin. But them did Zeus, high throned stir. 
 With mortals all y-fill'd the plain, with brass it shone 
 Of men and steeds, and with their coming-on 
 Together earth did quake. Two men of might. 
 Their valiantest, forth to th' encounter run 
 I' th' middle space, and eager both for light, 
 Anchises' son, ^neas, and Achilles, godlike wight. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ^neas first doth threat'ning forth career, 
 And nods with helmet stout, while nimble shield 
 'Fore breast he held, and brandish'd brazen spear. 
 Pelides opposite rush'd forth a-field. 
 Like rav'ning lion, men would fain have kill'd. 
 And all the village hunts ; he goes, nor heeds 
 At first, but soon as smites him lusty chield 
 With spear, he turns with opening jaws. Foam breeds 
 About his teeth, and groans his heart that nothing dredes. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And flanks and haunches he doth soothly smite. 
 And scourge with tail, this side and that y-flong, 
 And doth himself to battle there excite. 
 And glaring fierce is borne by 's strength along, 
 To slay some man, or die in foremost throng. 
 So force and lofty soul Achilles stir 
 To go and meet stout-heart ^neas strong. 
 When these advancing near each other were. 
 Swift-foot divine Achilles first did speech prefer : — 
 
490 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " iEneas, wherefore passing through such folk dost 
 
 stand ? 
 " Does thee thy soul impel with me to fight, 
 " From hope the tame-steed Trojans to command 
 " With Priam's rank ? But me e'en shouldst thou smite, 
 " He 11 not for that place in thy hands such right ; 
 " For sons he hath, is firm, nor weak of will. 
 " Or that fair portion Trojans grant thee might, 
 " Vine-land and tilth to cultivate, if kill 
 " Thou dost but me ? But hard, I trust, thou 'It find it still. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " Thee erst, methinks, I Ve elsewhere made to fly. 
 " Hast thou forgot when thee by th' beeves alone 
 " Down Ida's mountains chac'd on swift-feet I 
 " With speed ? Thou, flying, turn'dst not then, but on 
 " Fledst to Lyrnessus thence. I took the town, 
 " Zeus and Athene aiding onset mine, 
 " Women I captive led, my booty won. 
 " But sav'd thee Zeus, and other powers divine, 
 " But will not now, although thou think it, I opine. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " I *rede thee back to th' throng, nor me abide 
 " Ere mischief come. When done one kens, although 
 " A fool he be." ^neas thus replied ^^^ ; — 
 " Pelides, me with words think not t' o'ercrow 
 " Like infant thus. For I myself could so 
 ^' Reproaches speak, and words that cutting been. 
 " Each other's birth and parents we do know, 
 " For mortal men's fam'd words we 've heard I ween. 
 " By sight not mine hast thou^ nor thine have I e'er seen. 
 
BOOK XX. 21 — 26. 491 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " They speak thee sprung from Peleus, faultless one, 
 " Thy mother fair tress'd Thetis of the sea. 
 '^ 1 boast me born high-soul'd Anchises' son, 
 '^ And Aphrodite mother is of me. 
 " One side this day a son will weeping be, 
 " For part and leave the fight by boy's words cow^d 
 " We '11 not, methinks. But since our pedigree 
 " Thou 'd-'t learn, that ken thou mayst what's known to 
 th' crowd, 
 '^ First Dardanus beget did Zeus, that driveth cloud. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " He built Dardania ; sacred Ilium yet 
 " I' th' plain not made of part-voice men^ a town. 
 " Their homes round much-rill'd Ida's foot still set. 
 " Of Dardanus king Ericthonius son, 
 " Who was of mortal men the wealthiest one. 
 " Whose steeds i' th' marsh three thousand grazed fair, 
 " Female with tender foals all proud they run. 
 " Boreas did love them as they feeding were, 
 " And with them lay disguis'd, as horse with dark-hued hair. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 '^" And these conceiving thence twelve foals did bear, 
 " Which, when on fruitful earth they sporting be, 
 " O'er ears of corn would run, nor break them e'er, 
 " And when they sport on ample backs of sea 
 '' O'er broken billows' hoary foam would flee. 
 " 'Gat Ericthonius Tros, should Trojans lead, 
 " And sovran Tros had son's reproachless^^ three, 
 " Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede, 
 " Which last did match with gods, in beauty mortal men 
 exceed. 
 
492 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Snatched him the gods that Zeus pour wine he might 
 " For ^s beauty's sake, and 'mong immortals wone. 
 " Ilus begat Laomedon, fam'd wight. 
 " Beget Tithonus did Laomedon, 
 " Priam, and Lampus, Clytius, and the one 
 " Hight Hicetaon, Ares' branch. But he 
 " Assaracus 'gat Capys, who for son 
 " Anchises had, and 'gat Anchises me. 
 ** Priam 'gat Hector. Blood and lineage such I boast 
 to be. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " Men's valour Zeus augments, and doth decrease- 
 " E'en as he will. Of all is strongest he. 
 " Let us this talking as of children cease, 
 " Thus standing 'mid th' array'd hostility. 
 " 111 words on each side many speak could we, 
 " Nor ship of hundred oars the weight could bear. 
 " Alert is mortals' tongue, words many be 
 " All sorts therein. Words' field is broad. Whate'er 
 " The word thou utterest, the like in turn thou 'It hear. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " What need we strife and wrangling ? Squabbling so, 
 " Like women, who with gnaw-soul strife irate 
 " Mid-street abusing one another go, 
 " Much true, much not, as anger doth dictate. 
 " My valour not with words will thou abate 
 " Ere we 've together fought. But come, draw near, 
 " That one another's spears we taste." With that 
 He drave on dreadful shield his brazen spear. 
 The mighty shield about the spear-point rung out drear. 
 
BOOK XX. 27—32. 493 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Pelides held with stout hand out aghast 
 The shield from him, and thought without a-do 
 Would lofty-soul'd Eneas' spear have past, 
 Nor, simple man, in mind and spirit knew 
 That gods' resplendent gifts not eath subdue 
 Can mortal men ; to them they '11 not give way. 
 Nor then war-skill'd iEneas' strong spear through 
 The shield did break. The gold, god's gift, did stay. 
 Two folds nathless it pierc'd, three yet behind there lay. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 For five folds on it Curved-feet o'erlaid. 
 Two brazen, two of tin, that inside went. 
 And one of gold, on which the brass spear staid. 
 Achilles next the spear long shad'wing sent. 
 Eneas' all sides equal shield ^^^ it hent, 
 A-top of rim, where thinnest brass doth run. 
 And leather on it thinnest. Through it went 
 The Pelion ash. Beneath it shield did sown. 
 jEneas bent aghast, shield from him held the stroke to shun. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The eager lance did o'er his back career. 
 And fix i' th' ground two circles bursting through 
 Of screen-man shield. He, shunning lengthy spear, 
 There stood, as in his eyes vast terror grew. 
 Fear-struck, the spear fix'd nigh. Achilles drew 
 His falchion keen, and rush'd all eager on 
 With fearful cry. Then in his hand, what two 
 Could carry not as men be now, a stone 
 iEneas took, and wield it could with ease alone. 
 
494 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Him rushing had jJEneas smote with stone 
 On helm or shield that fends destruction sad. 
 Him reft of life with sword had Peleus' son, 
 If not soon seen Shake-earth Poseidon had, 
 And word to th' gods immortal instant said : — 
 *' Gods sad hath me high-soul'd jEneas made, 
 " Who '11 soon to Hades, by Pelides sped. 
 " Whom did far-dart Apollo 's words persuade, 
 " The fool, for him he '11 nought from dire destruction aid. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " Why suffer woes now should this blameless one, 
 " Causeless for griefs we should on others lay ? 
 *' Good gifts aye gives he gods in sky that wone. 
 " But come, we '11 snatch him now from death away 
 " Lest Kronides, if him Achilles slay, 
 " Be wroth. 'Tis fated he escape, that die 
 " Not seedless Dardan's race from light of day, 
 '' Whom lov'd by far the most Kronion high 
 " Of all the children borne him mortal women by." 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " For now Kronion Priam's race doth hate. 
 " Now shall Eneas' strength ^^^ o'er Trojans reign 
 " And children's children born hereafter late." 
 Here large-ey'd august him answer'd then : — 
 " Shake-Earth, be with thy soul then counsel ta'en 
 " To save ^Eneas, or to leave hnn die, 
 " Though good, by Peleus' son Achilles slain. 
 " For we two many oaths have sworn on high, 
 " 'Mong all the gods, Pallas Athene, eke and I, 
 
BOOK XX. 33—38. 495 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " From Trojans ne'er their evil day to turn, 
 " Not when all Troy with fierce fire burnt appears 
 " A-blaze, when it th' Achaeans' brave sons burn." 
 This soon as Shake-the-Earth Poseidon hears, 
 Through fight he goes, and through the throng of spears 
 To where MnesiS and Achilles be, 
 And straight with darkness he the eyes enspheres 
 Of Peleus' son Achilles. Eke did he 
 Brass spear from lofty soul'd iEneas' buckler free, 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 And placVl it then Achilles' feet before, 
 But drave iEneas up from earth on high. 
 O'er many heroes' ranks, steeds many o'er. 
 Did by the godhead's hands iEneas fly, 
 And reach'd impetuous fight's extremity. 
 Where Caucons them to battle harnessM. 
 To him Shake -Earth Poseidon came a-nigh 
 And him addressing winged words he said : — 
 " iEneas, thee fool-hardy thus, what god e'er bade 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " To war and fight against Achilles, who 
 "Thy stronger is, to gods a dearer wight ? 
 " But thou retreat whene'er thou meet'st him do, 
 " Else thou 'It to Hades' house in fate's despite; 
 " But when Achilles meets his doom, then fight 
 " In foremost ranks do thou, in fearless wise, 
 " For thee despoil none other Achive might." 
 This said he left him there when ceas'd t' advise. 
 Then straight dispers'd strange darkness from Achilles' 
 eyes. 
 
496 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Out from his eyes look largely then did he, 
 And groaning to his soul stout-hearted say : — 
 " Ye gods ! what wonder 's this with eyes I see ? 
 " This spear lies on the ground, but I no way 
 " See him I sent it at, and wish'd to slay. 
 " ^neas dear t' immortal gods must be, 
 ^* Though I his speech to empty boast did lay. 
 " But let him go : to try again at me 
 " He 11 have no mind, who now from death doth joyful 
 flee. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " But come, war-fond Danaians urging on 
 " Forth will I go, and other Trojans try." 
 He said, and sprang to th' ranks, and bade each one : — 
 " No more from Trojans keep, Achaeans high ! 
 " But man to man go battle eagerly. 
 " Since hard it is for me, albeit stout, 
 " That chace so many, fight them all should I. 
 " Not Ares, who 's a god, n' Athene mote 
 " Go through such jaws of fight, and fairly work it out." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 " But what I can with hands, and feet, and might 
 
 " Not slack at all, methinks one jot shall I, 
 
 " But through their ranks I '11 go, nor will delight, 
 
 " Methinks, what Trojan comes my spear a-nigh." 
 
 So stirr'd he them. While did to Trojans cry 
 
 Bright Hector 'gainst Achilles urging he : — 
 
 " Brave Trojans fear not Peleus' son, for I 
 
 " With words could fight th' immortals, though 't 
 
 would be 
 " Full hard with spear, since they much stronger are than 
 
 we. 
 
BOOK XX. 39—44. 497 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " Achilles all his words not carries out 
 " This does, that cuts midway. I '11 meet him, though 
 " Like fire his hands, his hands like fire, red hot 
 " As iron be his soul." He urg'd them so. 
 Spears Trojans lift, join battle with the foe, 
 And tumult rose. Phoebus Apollo near 
 To Hector stood and spake : — " Ne'er battle mo 
 " 'Fore field Achilles but with throng y-fere^^^ 
 " Keceive him, lest with sword he smite thee, or with 
 spear." 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 He said. In men's throng Hector plung'd and dradde 
 Did god's voice speaking heard. Achilles on 
 The Trojans ran with soul in valour clad, 
 And shouted dire. First slew Iphition 
 Renown'd, that much folk led, Otrynteus' son, 
 Whom Naiad-nymph t' Otrynteus sack-town bare 
 'Neath snowy Tmolus Hyda's wealthy town. 
 Him as he rush'd divine Achilles there 
 Withspear smote middle-skull, which clave in two halves fair. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 "With crash he fell. Divine Achilles vaunts : — 
 " Lie there, Otrynteus' son, of men most dread, 
 " Die here, although thy race the lake Gyga3us haunts, 
 " Where father's lot by fishy Hyllus' bed 
 " And whirling Hermus." Vaunting thus he said. 
 Night veil'd the other's eyes. Th' Achaeans' steeds 
 r th' front rank him with wheels to pieces tread. 
 Next on fence-fight Deucalion he proceeds, 
 Antenor's son. On temple smote. Through brass-cheek'd 
 helm it yedes. 
 
 K K 
 
498 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Not brazen helm withstood, but did there through 
 The eager spear-point break the bone, and brain 
 All mar wilhln, and eager him subdue. 
 With spear Hippodamas in mid-back ta'en, 
 AVho leaving car fled 'fore him, smote he then, 
 Who soul breath'd out, and roar'd as bellow might 
 Bull dragg'd round th' Heliconian king ^^^ amain 
 By youths, in w^hom doth Shake-the-Earth delight. 
 So him there roaring left his bones his manly sprite. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 ^Gainst godlike Polydorus, Priam's son, 
 He went with spear. Him sire forbade to fight. 
 Because of all he was his youngest one 
 And dearest, all surpass'd with feet so light. 
 In 's folly then foot- virtue show'd to sight. 
 And front ranks cours'd till lost his spirit dear ; 
 For him swift-foot Achilles, godlike wight. 
 As on he rush'd, mid -back y-smote with spear 
 Where belt-rings golden join with cuirass folding here. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Out opposite came spear-point, navel through, 
 T' his knees he slid and shriek'd. Dark clouds his eyes. 
 He bends and draws his entrails him unto. 
 When Hector there his brother Polydorus spies, 
 Who on the ground his entrails holding lies. 
 Dark cloud his eyen bedims. He can ne mo 
 Keep oif, but straight against Achilles flies 
 Like fire, with brandish'd spear. Achilles though 
 When saw sprang up for joy, and spake exulting so : — 
 
I 
 
 BOOK XX. 45 — 50. 499 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Near is the man who 's most my soul 3'-stong, 
 " Who ^s slain my valued friend. Each other shun 
 " Through bridges ^^ of the war we shall not long." 
 And eyeing Hector fierce he said : — " Come on, 
 " So quicker meet thy doom." But frighted none 
 The wave-helm Hector bold address'd him so : — 
 " With words me like an infant, Peleus' son, 
 " Think not to scare. For I myself do know 
 " To utter galling speech, and sharp reproaches throw. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " I know thou Vt strong, superior far to me, 
 " But this upon the knees of gods doth lie ^^^ 
 " If, though thy worser, I thy soul from thee 
 " Spear-hurling take ; for point to spear have I." 
 He said and hurl'd the spear. Athene by 
 A breath it from Achilles turn'd away. 
 Soft breathing ; back to Hector made it fly. 
 And there before his feet the weapon lay. 
 Achilles eager rush'd with fearful shout intent to slay. 
 
 L. 
 
 But him Apollo snatch'd with ease thereout 
 As god, and him in mickle darkness dight. 
 Thrice did Achilles godlike, swift of foot. 
 With brass spear rush, and thrice deep darkness smite. 
 A fourth time rushing like a god in might. 
 Dire threat'ning, he then winged words did say : — 
 " Thou 'st death now 'scaped, dog. For near thee pight 
 " Was ill. Phoebus Apollo thee away 
 " Hath snatch'd, to whom thou must, ere spears en- 
 count'ring, pray. 
 
 KK 2 
 
500 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 " But thee I '11 surely finish by and by, 
 " Pursuing after, if will unto me 
 " One of the gods be also an ally. 
 " Now Trojans else I '11 chace, whoe'er it be 
 " I catch." This said smote Dryops mid-neck he 
 With spear, who fell at 's feet. Him there he left, 
 And lam'd with spear Demuchus in the knee, 
 Philetor's brave huge son, and then he cleft 
 h mighty falchion him, and so of life bereft. 
 
 LH. 
 
 Laogonus and Dardan, Bias' sons. 
 He rushing smote from steeds to ground both these ; 
 One smote with spear, one close with sword he wounds, 
 But met him Tros Alastor's son, and knees 
 Embrac'd to pity him, and living please 
 Dismiss, not slay, but of like age have ruth. 
 The fool, nor knew he 'd not persuade with ease. 
 In no sweet mood the man, nor soft-soul'd sooth. 
 But fierce exceedingly. So clasp'd his knees the youth, 
 
 LIII. 
 
 T* implore him fain. But he with sword did smite 
 His liver, which outslid, and bosom dear 
 With black blood fill'd. His eyes were veil'd in night, 
 Of life bereft. Next Mulius standing near 
 He smote i' th' ear with lance. Through th' other ear 
 The brass point came. Then in Agenor's son, 
 Echeclus, thrust he large-hilt falchion sheer, 
 Through midst of skull. Sword blood-warm grew 
 and on 
 His eyes red death and fate o'erpow'ring seiz'd anon. 
 
BOOK XX. 51 — 56. 501 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Deucalion then, where tendons do unite 
 Of elbow, there through arm ^^^ brass spear right out 
 Transfix'd. Arm-hamper'd he with death in sight 
 Awaited him, who there his neck y-smote. 
 And helm with head far flung. From spine-joints spout 
 The marrow did. And stretch'd on earth he lay. 
 But he went on 'gainst Peireus' offspring stout, 
 Rigmus, who 'd come from gleby Thrace away. 
 In midriff him he smote, in belly spear did stay. 
 
 LV. 
 
 From car he fell. Then smite his charioteer, 
 
 Hight Areithoiis, as steeds away 
 
 He turn'd, Achilles did, mid-back, with spear. 
 
 And push from car. The steeds were in effray. 
 
 As drives through vallies deep strange fire its way 
 
 From mountain parch'd, and burns t' its depths the 
 
 wood, 
 While all sides driving wind the flames doth sway. 
 So all about he raged like a god 
 With spear to chase and slay, and dusky earth ran blood. 
 
 
 LVI. 
 
 As when a man doth broad-brow'd oxen yoke 
 That they on level floor white barley tread. 
 Which soon 'neath lowing oxen's feet is broke. 
 So 'neath Achilles th' whole-hoof 'd steeds the dead 
 And bucklers trode. With blood was axle red 
 Beneath, and eke the rims round chariot twain 
 With gouts of blood from steeds' hoofs spattered, 
 And tires of wheels. But grasp his glory fain 
 Pelides still with gore did hands resistless stain. 
 
 K K 3 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XXI. 
 
 When ford of fair- flow river's whirling stream 
 Of Xanthus reach'd, from Zeus immortal sprong, 
 There severing drove he plainward part of them 
 To th' town, where scar'd th' Achaeans fled along 
 The former day when rag^d bright Hector strong. 
 There pour'd they flying. Here them before 
 For hindrance darkness spread. And half the throng 
 To deep-flow river silver-eddied bore. 
 There plung'd with din, deep waters sound, and echoing 
 banks do roar. 
 
 II. 
 
 With shrieks they swam about in eddies turning. 
 As locusts forc'd by fire uprise in flight 
 To th' river, when unresting fire is burning 
 With sudden drift, and plunge i' th' flood for fright. 
 So deep-whirl Xanthus' roaring stream did quite 
 With men and steeds, that fled Achilles, fill. 
 But left on bank his spear the Zeus-sprung wight 
 'Gainst tam'risk propp'd ^09, and like a god intill 
 The flood he leap'd with sword alone, and purpos'd doings 
 ill. 
 
BOOK XXI. 1 — 5. 
 
 III. 
 
 He smote on every side ; dire groanings be 
 Of sword-smit folk. With blood grew water red. 
 And as from dolphin huge the fishes flee, 
 And crowd safe harbour s nooks, since him they dread, 
 Who '11 eat whate'er he catch, so Trojans fled. 
 And crouch'd 'neath banks dread river's streams adown. 
 But he, when hands with slaught'ring wearied. 
 From river chose twelve youths alive t' atone, 
 For wight Patroclus dear, Menoetius' slaughter'd son. 
 
 IV. 
 
 These out he drew, like fawns all stupefied. 
 And then with well-cut thongs, which wear did they 
 On twisted coats, their hands behind them tied. 
 And gave t' his mates to th' hollow ships away 
 To take. Then back he rush'd, intent to slay. 
 There Dardan Priam's son he met, who flee 
 From river did, Lycaon. Former day 
 Him ta'en from father's land perforce had he 
 By night attack, who was with brass from wild fig-tree 
 
 Lopping young boughs, to serve for chariot-rim. 
 On whom Achilles came, a woe unthought. 
 And then in well-built Lemnos sold he him, 
 Ta'en in the ships. Whom son of Jason bought. 
 A guest-friend, paying th' high sum ransom raught, 
 Imbric Eetion, loos'd him thence and sends 
 T' Arisba the divine. Escap'd, he sought 
 His father's house. Eleven days he spends, 
 From Lemnos so return'd, rejoicing with his friends. 
 
 K K 4 
 
504 THE ILIAD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hirn on the twelfth, the god did cast again 
 
 Into Achilles' hands, that him should down 
 
 To Hades send, though go he would not fain. 
 
 When him divine Achilles, swift-foot one, 
 
 Saw, void of helm and shield, that spear had none, 
 
 (On ground he 'd flung them all, for toil and sweat 
 
 Of 'scaping river had his knees fordone) 
 
 To his high soul the hero spoke irate : — 
 
 Ye gods ! what wonder 's this before mine eyes is set ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 " The high-soul'd Trojans sure, whom I did slay, 
 " Will up from murky darkness rise again 
 " As this has come, w^ho 'd fled his evil day 
 " At sacred Lemnos sold. Not him detain 
 " Could hoar salt sea, which many 'gainst the grain 
 " Doth keep. But taste our spear-point sooth shall he, 
 " That I may so perceive in mind, and ken 
 " If thence he '11 come again, in like sort free, 
 " Or '11 keep him give-life earth as strong man keepeth she.'^ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 He pond'ring stood. Astound drew th' other near 
 To touch his knees, and fain would ill death shun 
 And dusky fate. Achilles lifts long spear. 
 Intent to smite. But he doth crouch, and run, 
 And take his knees. O'er 's back the spear y-gone 
 Fix'd in the ground, of man's flesh craving fill. 
 With one hand suppliant he his knees, with one 
 He grasps the pointed spear, nor leave it will 
 But winged words address'd him there beseeching still : — 
 
BOOK XXI. 6 — 11. 505 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Thy knees I clasp, Achilles, me regard 
 " And pity, suppliant thine, Zeus-sprung, to be 
 " Regarded. First ^^^ I tasted at thy board 
 " Demeter's fruit the day thou captur^dst me 
 " In well-till'd field. From sire and friends with thee 
 " To sacred Lemnos ta'en, didst sell me so 
 " For hundred beeves. At thrice I 'd ransom me. 
 " This day 's my twelfth in Ilium, much my woe, 
 " And in thy hands again doth me my hard fate throw. 
 
 " Zeus hates me sure, again t' have given thee me. 
 " My mother bare me short while here to stay, 
 " Daughter of Altes old, Laothoe ; 
 " Altes, who war-fond Leleges doth sway 
 " In Pedasus, where Satnio winds its way. 
 " His daughter Priam had; with many more. 
 " And two of us she bare, and both thou It slay. 
 " One 'mong the foremost foot thou quell'dst before. 
 When didst with sharp spear smite the godlike Polydore. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " And now will unto me be evil here 
 
 " Assuredly, for I thy hands to shun 
 
 " Expect not now the god hath brought me near. 
 
 *' But this I say. Think on 't, and slay me none, 
 
 " I 'm not of womb that Hector is, the one 
 
 " Who slew thy friend, the valiant and the meek." 
 
 'T was thus address'd him Priam's radiant son. 
 
 With words implor'd, but heard harsh voice : — " Not 
 
 seek 
 Thou fool ! to shew me this ; of ransom do not speak. 
 
506 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " For ere indeed Patrocliis followed 
 "His fatal day, 't was pleasanter to me 
 " Trojans somewhat to spare. I 've captured 
 " Many alive and sold. But death now flee 
 " Shall none, whom in my hands the deity 
 " 'Fore Ilium casts of all the Trojans more, 
 " And chiefly who of Priam's children be. 
 " So die too thou, my friend, why vain deplore ? 
 " Died e'en Patroclus,- who was thee so far before. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " And seest not me, who comely am and great, 
 " Of worthy sire, bare goddess-mother me ? 
 " Yet e'en on me will death and mast'ring fate 
 " At morning, or at dusk or mid-day be, 
 " When slays me one in battle ; smiteth he 
 " With spear or arrow from the string." He said. 
 The other sank unstrung both heart and knee. 
 Let go the spear, and sat with both hands spread. 
 And then Achilles drawing keen-edg'd falchion did 
 
 XIV. 
 
 By neck smite clavicle. The two-edg'd blade 
 All enter'd. Prone on earth he fell stretch'd out, 
 And black blood flow'd, and ground all wet it made. 
 Achilles him i' th' river flung, by th' foot 
 To 11 oat, and eke with winged words did flout : — 
 " There lie 'mong flsh, who '11 fearless lick for thee 
 " Thy blood from wound. Nor mother lay thee mote 
 " On bed and mourn. Thou 'It by Scamander be. 
 The whirling river, roU'd to bosom broad of sea. 
 
BOOK XXI. 12 — 17. 507 
 
 XV. 
 
 " Leaping through swell will fish dark ripple ^^^ shun 
 
 *' And eat Lycaon's fat. Consume ye so, 
 
 " Till Ilium blest I take. Ye 'fore me run, 
 
 " I slay behind. Not river's eddied flow 
 
 " Shall serve, to whom store bulls ye slay, and throw 
 
 " In 's eddies whole-hoof'd steeds alive. So may 
 
 " Ye die ill death, till pay it all of you 
 
 " Patroclus' death, and Achives' loss, whom slay 
 
 Ye did by th' hollow ships, the while I was away." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 He said. The river wroth at heart did weigh 
 How he should stop Achilles' work, and keep 
 The Trojans from their bane. Meanwhile to slay 
 All eager did Pelides with the sweep 
 Of long spear on Asteropseus leap, 
 Pelegon's offspring, broad-flow Axius' son 
 And Periboea's. Th' eddying river deep 
 Did lie with her, the daughter, th' eldest one. 
 Of Acessamenus. On him did then Achilles run. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 From river 'gainst him foe with two spears stood, 
 
 Whom Xanthus heart'ned, wroth for warriors slain 
 
 Achilles slew in 's stream nor pity would. 
 
 When on each other rushing near'd the twain 
 
 First spake divine swift-foot Achilles then : — 
 
 " What man and whence art thou durst me abye ? 
 
 " For hapless they ^^^ whose sons my force sustain." 
 
 To him did Pelegon's bright son reply : — 
 
 Of race then wherefore ask, great- soul'd Achilles high ? 
 
08 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 ^' Paeonia's far-off fertile land I 'm from, 
 " And long-spear Paeon warriors lead. 'T is now 
 " Th' eleventh morn since I 've to Ilium come ; 
 " My race from Axius that doth broadly flow, 
 " Axius that fairest water doth out-throw 
 ^' On earth. Who 'gat the spear-fam'd Pelegon ; 
 " He me, they say. Now let 's to battle go, 
 " Achilles bright." He threatening spake. Whereon 
 Achilles rais'd the Pelian ash. Two spears at Peleus' son 
 
 XIX. 
 
 AsteropaBUs' hero sent, for he 
 Was ambidexter. And with one spear smote 
 The shield but pierc'd not. Gift of deity. 
 The gold, held good. Where right arm elbow'd out 
 Graz'd th' other dart, and forth did black blood spout. 
 Dart fix'd in earth, and crav'd of flesh its fill. 
 Achilles straight-fly spear at second bout 
 Sent at Asteropaeus bent to kill. 
 But miss'd of him, and lofty bank it smote intill. 
 
 XX. 
 
 r th' bank Pelides sent th' ash spear mid- way, 
 And on him sprung with sword from thigh drawn out. 
 He did in vain Achilles' spear essay 
 From bank to pluck, with stalwart hand and stout ; 
 Thrice tried to pull by shaking it about. 
 Thrice fail'd his strength. A fourth time he did try 
 If ash spear of ^acides he mote 
 By bending break. But him Achilles nigh 
 First reft of life, his belly smote the navel by. 
 
BOOK XXI. 18 — 23. 509 
 
 XXI. 
 
 On ground gusli'd entrails out. Dark veil'd his eyes. 
 Achilles as he panteth sprang on *s breast, 
 And arms despoils, and vaunting thus he cries : — 
 " So lie. With strong Kronion's sons contest 
 ^' Was hard for thee, though River-sprung. Thou sayst 
 " From broad-flow River is thy race. But mine 
 " To be from mighty Zeus I do protest, 
 " 'Gat me a man o'er Myrmidons doth reign, 
 " Peleus JEacides. But iEacus from Zeus divine. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " As Zeus than sea-flow River 's stronger, so 
 " Zeus' race than rivers'. Thee is mighty River nigh, 
 " If aid he can. Fight Zeus Kronion though 
 " He '11 not. With him not Achelous high, 
 " Nor deep flow Ocean's mighty strength will vie, 
 " From whom all rivers are, and sea entire, 
 " And fountains all, and deepest wells' supply. 
 " E'en he doth fear the bolt of Zeus the Sire, 
 " And thunder dread, when out of heaven it crashes dire." 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 He said, and pluck'd the brazen spear from bank. 
 And left him there, when he his life had ta'en, 
 That lay i' th' sands in darkling water dank. 
 About him eels and fishes busy been. 
 And eat the fat, and gnaw the kidneys clean. 
 He went 'gainst Paeon horsemen- warriors on. 
 Who fled to eddying river when they 'd seen 
 In battle violent their bravest one 
 By force with falchion quell'd 'neath hands of Peleus' son. 
 
510 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Thersilochus and Mydon slew he theii, 
 
 Astypylus and Mnesus, Thrasius eke, 
 
 Q^neus and Ophelestes. Peeons slain 
 
 Had swift Achilles more, but wroth out-brake 
 
 Deep-eddying Eiver, guis'd as man, and spake 
 
 From *s depths ; — " Achilles, strongest art of men, the 
 
 worst 
 " For impious deeds, and gods thy side aye take. 
 " If Trojans all Zeus grant thee slay, yet first 
 " Drive them from me to th' plain, then do thy deeds 
 
 accurst. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " My pleasant streams do with the corses fill, 
 " Nor can I pour my flood to sacred sea, 
 ^* Chok'd up with dead, but thou destroy est still. 
 " Come cease. For seiz'd hath awe, folk-prince, on me." 
 Swift-foot Achilles answ'ring spake : — " 'Twill be 
 " As bidst, Zeus-nurs'd Scamander, by and bye, 
 " But I '11 haught Trojans cease not slay till we 
 " Do shut them in the town, and I do try 
 " With Hector face to face, if me he quell or him shall I." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 He said, and Trojans chaced like a god. Address'd 
 Apollo then the eddying River deep : — 
 " Ah, Silver-Bow, Zeus' child, Kronion's hest 
 " How 'st kept, that bade thee Trojans aid and keep 
 " Till sun-down come, and shade o'er rich earth creep ?" 
 He said. From bank Achilles plunging threw 
 Himself i' th' midst. Wroth River swell'd a-heap. 
 Did stir up all his waves, and dead out-spew 
 A many, he 'd enow of which Achilles slew. 
 
BOOK XXI. 24—29. 511 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 These on the strand he cast, and bellow*d loud 
 As any bull, but did the living save. 
 And in his deep and mighty eddies ^^^ shroud. 
 Dire 'gainst Achilles stood the swell'd-up wave. 
 Full on his shield the burly current gave. 
 Keep firm on feet he could not it before. 
 To huge and well-grown elm with hands he clave. 
 Which fell by th' roots, and bank all with it tore, 
 Fair stream with full boughs check'd, all falling in, and 
 bridg'd it o'er. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 From deep he sprang, on swift feet rush'd to flee 
 By th' plain aghast. Nor ceas'd the god, but rose 
 Dark cresting, that divine Achilles he 
 From work might stop, and Trojans screen from woe. 
 A spear-throw's length Pelides leaping shows 
 Black eagle's force, that hunter, and most strong, 
 And swift of birds. So he ; and as he goes 
 The brass about his bosom dread y-rong. 
 Oblique he fled, the flood behind him roaring sweeps along. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 As cutting trench from some black-water spring, 
 A man doth through his plants and gardens lead 
 A stream of water, spade in hand, and fling 
 The rubbish out from trench ; as stream doth yede 
 All pebbles roll beneath, but on with speed 
 It murm'ring flows adown the slope so well, 
 It doth o'ertake the man, and him precede. 
 So still o'ertook Achilles River's swell. 
 Albeit speedful he, for gods so mickle men excel. 
 
512 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Oft as Achilles stand and face it would, 
 To know if all tli' immortals of the sky- 
 Did will his flight, the Zeus-sprung River's flood 
 Wash'd o'er his shoulders. He with feet sprang high, 
 Perturb'd. Tiring his knees doth river ply 
 Swift -running 'neath, sweeps dust from 's feet away. 
 Pelides cried and gaz'd t' wards ample sky : — 
 " Sire Zeus, will wretched me no god this day 
 " From river save, hereafter hap to me what may ? 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " None so to blame of habitants of sky 
 " As mother dear, who sooth'd with lies, and said 
 " I should 'neath wall of armed Trojans die, 
 " By rapid arrows of Apollo sped. 
 " Would Hector 'd slain me, bravest here that 's bred, 
 " He'd valiant slain, despoil'd me 'd valiant one. 
 " Now die a woful death I 'm destined, 
 " By river huge enclos'd, as swine-herd ^^^ drown 
 " In crossing torrent might, when wintry floods come down." 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 He said. Poseidon and Athene near 
 
 Him stood anon, to men y-likened. 
 
 With hand each hand they take, with words they cheer. 
 
 And speech to them Shake-Earth Poseidon led : — 
 
 " Pelides, fear not much, do nothing dread, 
 
 *' 'Mong gods such helpers, Zeus approving, we, 
 
 " I and Pallas Athene to thy aid. 
 
 " Be quell'd by River is not fated thee. 
 
 But he '11 desist anon, as thou thyself shalt see." 
 
BOOK XXI. 30^-35. 513 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " Bat we would, if thou 'It hear, good rede propose : 
 " Slack not thy hands from war, of both sides bane, 
 " Ere dost in Ilium's famous walls enclose 
 ** The Trojan folk who 'scape. But, Hector slain, 
 " To th' ships return. We grant thee glory gain." 
 So saying these do 'mong th' immortals go : 
 But he, by th' gods' best stirr'd, did wend to th' plain. 
 Which flood outpouring all did overflow ; 
 Slain youths' fair arms and corses float a many to and fro. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Up sprang his knees 'gainst current rushing straight, 
 Nor stopp'd him River broad, such vigour gave 
 Athenfe him. Nor did Scamander bate 
 Of strength, but wroth 'gainst Peleus' son high wave 
 Upcrest, and shout, Simois' help to crave : — 
 '•' Let 's both, dear Brother, this man's force restrain ; 
 " King Priam's town he '11 soon o'erthrow, nor brave 
 " In fight will Trojans him. Come, help amain, 
 *'And streams and torrents flood with all thy springs contain. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " Uplift thy mighty flood, stir tumult high 
 " Of logs and stones, that this fierce man we stay 
 " Who now prevails, who e'en with gods would vie. 
 " His strength shall not avail, nor form, I say, 
 " Nor comely arms, which we in slime will lay 
 " In vortex deep conceal'd. We '11 roll him so 
 " In sand, much gravel pouring round, that they 
 " Th' Achasans to collect his bones not know, 
 " So deep he will be hid 'neath heap we '11 o'er him throw. 
 
 L L 
 
514 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " There '11 be his tomb, no need of mound to pour 
 " When th' Achives bury him." He soon as said 
 Wroth 'gainst Achilles rose, and swell and roar 
 In fury did, with foam, and blood, and dead. 
 The Zeus-sprung river's purple swell o'er 's head 
 Up-stood erect, and seiz'd on Peleus' son. 
 Here exclaim'd, and for Achilles dread 
 She did huge whirling river 'd sweep him down. 
 So to Hephaistos son belov'd she spake anon : — 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " Arise, my son, to battle, thou the Lame, 
 
 " For thee will whirling Xanthus meet in fight, 
 
 " Methinks. But help thou quick, show mickle flame. 
 
 " Of Zephyrus and South that waves doth white, 
 
 " I '11 go a tempest dire from sea excite, 
 
 " Shall Trojans' heads, and armour, burn withal 
 
 " With burning shrewd. By Xanthus' bank y-pight 
 
 " Burn up the trees, on him make fire to fall, 
 
 Nor yet with honied^vvords, nor threats be mov'd at all. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Nor cease thy strength till shouting I give sign, 
 " Then indefatigable fire ^^^ restrain." 
 She said. Hephaistos darted fire divine. 
 And first the fire y-kindled in the plain. 
 And burnt the dead, of which it did contain 
 A many that Achilles slaughter'd had. 
 The plain all dried, fair water check'd, as when 
 In autumn season Boreas blowing sad 
 Quick dries fresh-water'd garden, making gard'ner glad. 
 
BOOK XXI. 36—41. 515 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 So plain all dried, and burnt the corses were, 
 But he bright flame on river turning threw. 
 Burnt elms and willows eke, and tam'risks there. 
 Burnt lotos, rushes, and cyperus too. 
 Which round fair River's streams abundant grew. 
 The eels and fish in th' eddies were opprest. 
 That hither thither plung'd fair streams a-through 
 By wise Hephaistos' blast full sore distrest. 
 Burnt River's strength ^^^, spake word, and him by name 
 address'd : — 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Hephaistos, thee no god can match. Not I 
 
 " Will battle thee with flaming fire of thine. 
 
 " Cease strife. Drive Trojans let Achilles high 
 
 " Fro' th' town. For strive and help what business 
 
 mine ?" 
 Burning he spake, while boil'd his streams divine. 
 As cauldron heats within 'neath mickle sway 
 Of fire, while melteth fat of fatted swine 
 All bubbling up, as dry logs round they lay. 
 So heat fair River's streams and water boils away. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Flow on he 'd not, but check'd his course opprest 
 With wise Hephaistos' blast. Then much implore 
 Here he did, and winged words addrest : — 
 " Why, Here, does thy son afflict so sore 
 " My stream of all ? Than I be others more 
 " To blame of all who succour Trojans may. 
 " But if thou so command I '11 sure give o'er, 
 " But he too cease. I '11 further swear it, yea, 
 " From Trojans ne'er will I avert their evil day. 
 
 LL 2 
 
516 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLII, 
 
 " Not when all Troy 's with fierce fire waste, when they' 
 " Th' Achaeans' warlike sons shall burn it down." 
 This heard, did Here, white-arm'd goddess, say 
 T' Hephaistos son belov'd : — " Hephaistos, son 
 " Kenown^d, desist ; fits not for mortal one 
 " Immortal god thou vex." She said. Strange fire 
 Hephaistos quench'd. The river back did run 
 In 's channel fair. So, Xanthus quell'd, retire 
 From contest they ; whom Here stayed despite her ire. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 On th' other gods fell heavy strife, and sore ; 
 Their souls breath'd discord, and with tumult drear 
 To it they fell. And broad-stretch'd earth did roar. 
 And huge sky trumpeted, and Zeus gave ear, 
 That on Olympus sat. In 's spirit dear 
 He laugh'd for joy to see the gods contest. 
 Apart they stood no more. But with his spear 
 Of brass shield-piercing Ares forward press'd 
 Against Athene, and with chiding speech addressed : — 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " Why, dog-fly, dost thou set the gods to strive, 
 " Thou over-bold ? Thy proud soul thee hath sent. 
 " Forget'st how Diomed Tydides drive 
 " Thou didst to wound me ? Plain to see^^^ a javelin hent 
 " Thyself sent'st at me, comely flesh it rent. 
 *' So now I think to pay thee what thou 'st wrought." 
 He said, and smote fring'd segis eminent 
 And dire, not bolt of Zeus subdue it mote. 
 On this the blood-stain'd Ares her with long spear smote. 
 
BOOK XXI. 42 — 47. 517 
 
 XLV. 
 
 She, stepping back, with stout hand seiz'd a stone 
 That black, and rough, and huge, lay on the plain, 
 By men of yore a land-mark set, which thrown 
 Smote Ares' neck, limbs loosing. Acres se'en 
 In 's fall he cover'd, hair with dust did stain. 
 His arms resound. Pallas Athene there 
 Laugh'd out, and wing'd words spake in boasting vein : — 
 
 fool, aware 
 with me shouldst dare ? 
 
 ^^- V* VX^V, ^XXV^ ,,^X^^ v.. ,, W^V^K^ K^J^^XV 
 
 / " Not yet how much thy stronger, 
 " I boast to be, that thou to cope wit 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " Th' Erinnyes of thy mother so '11 be paid, 
 " Who anger'd means thee ill, since thou forsake 
 " Th' Achaeans wouldst, and break-truce Trojans aid." 
 She turn'd her lustrous eyes, as thus she spake. 
 Zeus' daughter Aphrodite him, that brake 
 In frequent groans, there led by th' hand y-ta'en, 
 Who scarce his scatter'd senses could retake. 
 Her soon as goddess white-arm'd Here'd seen 
 Quick to Athene spake these winged words the queen : — 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " Ye gods ! of aegis-holding Zeus thou child 
 " Indomitable, her the dog-fly view 
 " Again lead forth the man-bane Ares wild 
 " From raging war through throng. But thou pursue.'^ 
 She said. Athene, joying so to do, 
 Gave chace and rush'd. With stout hand smote her breast, 
 Her knees were loos'd, and eke her dear heart too. 
 So both there prostrate earth all-feeding press'd. 
 She gloried o'er them, and in winged words address'd : — 
 
 LL 3 
 
518 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Would all were such who with the Trojans hold 
 " And do against the arm^d Argives fight ; 
 " Were e'en as Aphrodite patient, bold, 
 " Who came in Ares' aid t' oppose my might, 
 " We long ago from war had ceased quite, 
 " And down had Ilium's well-built city kest." 
 She spake. Smil'd Here, white-arm'd goddess bright. 
 King Shake-t he- Earth Apollo thus address'd : — 
 Phoebus, apart why stand we ? Fits not now 've begun 
 the rest. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " 'T were sooth a shame withouten combat we 
 
 " T' Olympus Zeus' brass-paved house should go. 
 
 " Begin ! for younger thou, and 't were in me 
 
 " Not meet, who first was born, and more do know. 
 
 " Thou fool ! Hast thou a senseless heart that so 
 
 " Forget'st what bear for Ilium did we two 
 
 " Alone of gods, when we from Zeus did go, 
 
 " And serve Laomedon the whole year through 
 
 For hire agreed, who show'd and told us what to do ? 
 
 L. 
 
 " For Trojans town and wall I built indeed, 
 
 " Beauteous and broad, that town none break through 
 
 mote. 
 " Thou, Phoebus, trail-foot crook-horn kine didst feed 
 " The much-glen woody Ida's heights about. 
 " But term of hire when pleasant Hours had brought 
 " All payment fierce Laomedon denied 
 " To us, and, threat'ning there, dismiss'd with nought. 
 " And thee to sell he threaten did beside 
 In distant isles, thy hands and feet upon thee tied. 
 
BOOK xxr. 48—53. 519 
 
 LI. 
 
 " And crop the ears of both he would, he said. 
 
 " We back with anger' d souls ourselves betake, 
 
 " Wroth for the hire he promising not paid. 
 
 " Yet thou his folk dost grace, nor trial make 
 
 " With us how Trojans, that their covenant break, 
 
 " May with their babes and chaste wives perish quite." 
 
 To him the King far-dart Apollo spake : — 
 
 " 0, Shake-Earth, thou 'dst not say I was a wight 
 
 O'er wise were I with thee for mortals' sake to fight. 
 
 LII. 
 
 " Poor miserable things, that for their hour, 
 " Like to the leaves, all full of life and gay, 
 " Do flourish, and the fruit of earth devour, 
 " Then lifeless perish. But without delay 
 " Let 's fight surcease, while fight it out do they." 
 This said, he turn'd him back. For shame forbade 
 Meet father's brother hand to hand i' th' fray. 
 Him chode his sister sore, the wild beasts' dread. 
 The woodland Artemis, and word opprobrious said: - 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " Dost flee. Far-darter ? And Poseidon so 
 " All vict'ry leave, thee light triumphing o'er ? 
 " Thou fool, why dost thou bear in vain thy bow? 
 " In father's halls let me not hear thee more 
 " Boast 'mong th' immortal gods as heretofore, 
 " That 'gainst Poseidon battling thou 'dst abide." 
 She said. Nor spake Far-dart Apollo more. 
 But anger'd much did Zeus' majestic bride 
 With words opprobrious there the Arrow-loving chide 
 
 LL 4 
 
520 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " How 'dst thou now, shameless, like to stand 'gainst me? 
 " I 'm hard t' oppose, though bowyer thou. Y-pight 
 " Hath Zeus a lion unto women ^^^ thee 
 " To slay at will. 1* th' mountain better smite 
 " Wild beasts and deer, than with thy stronger fight ; 
 " But if thou 'dst battle try, that thou may'st know 
 " liow stronger I when thou 'dst oppose my might." 
 This said, both hands at wrist with left hand so 
 She grasp'd, and with her right from shoulders pluck'd the 
 bow. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Wherewith she smiling smote her on the ears, 
 Who writh'd and turn'd ; out fell the arrows fleet. 
 The goddess weeping fled, as dove that fears 
 A hawk doth fly to hollow rock's retreat, 
 Whose fate it is not to be ta'en that heat. 
 So weeping fled she, bow too leaving there. 
 Thus herald Argicide did Leto greet : — 
 " Leto, I w411 not fight thee. Hard it were^^^ 
 " Contend with Zeus the cloud-compeller's consorts fair. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " So freely boast 'mong gods immortal me 
 
 *' T' have quell'd by force and might." 'T was thus he 
 
 said, 
 And Leto bow and shafts collects that be 
 1' th' dusty whirlwind all sides scattered. 
 And ta'en th' artillery back t' her daughter sped. 
 Olympus reach'd Zeus' brass-pav'd house secure, 
 At sire's knees sit and weep the virgin did. 
 The veil about her shook. Then to him drew her 
 Sire Kronides, and sweetly laughing spake unto her. 
 
BOOK XXI. 54 — 59. 521 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " Who 's thee, dear child, of habitants of sky 
 " So serv'd as if thou 'dst open evil done ? " 
 Spake well-crown'd she, that stirs the hunters^ cry: — 
 ** Thy spouse did hurt me. Sire, that white-arm'd one, 
 " Here, from whom th' immortals' strife begun." ^^^ 
 To one another thus they talk'd withal. 
 Phcebus Apollo Ilium's sacred town 
 Enter'd, who fear'd for well-built city's wall. 
 Lest maugre fate that day it by Danaians fall. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 But they the ever-living gods beside 
 Do back t' Olympus wend. Some in their ire 
 And others much exulting in their pride. 
 And sat them by their cloud-compelling Sire.^^^ 
 Trojans and whole-hoof d steeds Achilles dire 
 Y-smote. As when the smoke to broad sky goes 
 Of burning town where gods' wrath sendeth fire, 
 So did Achilles cause the Trojans toil and woes. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Stood aged Priam on the sacred tower, 
 And saw Achilles huge, and 'fore him fly 
 The routed Trojans fugitive. Nor power 
 Was any there. The Sire then with a cry 
 Did to the ground from tower descending hie 
 And charg'd far-fam'd gate-keepers wall a-near : — 
 " Stretch'd wide hold gates in hand till town thereby 
 " Folk flying enter. This Achilles here 
 " Is nigh that route th them. There '11 be dread things I 
 fear. 
 
522 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LX. 
 
 " And when within the wall they breathe shut in, 
 " Then close the well-fit folds, for I 'm afraid 
 " This dreadful man the very wall will win." 
 He said. They op'd the gates, and bars undid. 
 A refuge gave the gates wide open laid. 
 Forth sprang Apollo, Trojans from their bane 
 To keep. For town and high wall straight they made, 
 All parch' d with thirst and dusted from the plain. 
 The fugitives, while he with spear pursued amain. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Huge rage aye held his heart, who 'd win renown. 
 Ta'en high-gate Troy had Achives' sons ere long, 
 Had not Apollo stirr'd Antenor's son. 
 Divine Agenor, faultless man^^^ and strong, 
 And in his heart a daring boldness flong. 
 And by him stood from death's rough hand to fend. 
 'Gainst beech he leant, much cloud about him hong. 
 Agenor, seeing sack-town Achilles wend 
 That way, did stand, and waiting much in heart perpend. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 T' his stout heart groaning spake he: — " Should I flee 
 " 'Fore strong Achilles, whither frighted fly 
 " The rest, he 'd catch and slay unwarlike me. 
 " And if now, leaving these be routed by 
 " Achilles, Peleus' son, on feet I ply 
 " Elsewhere from wall away to th' Ilian plain, 
 " Reach Ida's heights, and thickets enter I 
 " And wash at evening might in river fain, 
 " And so refresh'd from sweat, to Ilium wend again. 
 
BOOK XXI. 60—65. 523 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " But wherefore doth my soul such reas'ning make ? 
 " He 'd see me plain wards turning from the town, 
 " And chacing me with swift feet overtake. 
 " Then death and fate I could no longer shun, 
 " For he of men 's by far the strongest one. 
 " But if before the town I 'gainst him came, 
 " I might the first in 's flesh the sharp brass run. 
 " One soul he hath, men mortal him proclaim : 
 " But son of Kronos Zeus companions him with fame." 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 This said, he turned and fac'd Achilles, so 
 His stout heart long'd for fight. With such career 
 From deep glen panther doth at hunter go. 
 Nor shrinks, nor quails, though barking loud he hear ; 
 And though they 'forehand smite him far or near, 
 Not stints of vigour till he fight or die. 
 Albeit that he be transfix'd with spear. 
 So bright Antenor's son, Agenor high, 
 Then would not flee until he did Achilles try. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 With all-sides-equal shield before him pight, 
 He aim'd at him with spear, and shouted so : — 
 " Thou sure didst hope in mind, Achilles bright, 
 " This day the haughty Trojans' town t' o'erthrow. 
 " Fool I 'bout it will be wrought yet mickle woe, 
 " For many valiant men therein are we. 
 " For parents dear, and wives, and sons, I trow, 
 " We '11 Ilium 'fend. But here thy fate on thee 
 Will come, terrific though, and warrior bold thou be.'' 
 
524 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXVI. ^ 
 
 He spake, and hurPd with stout hand jav'lin keen, 
 Nor miss'd, but leg beneath the knee he hit. 
 About it greave of tin, new wroughten sheen, 
 Resounded dire. Back sprang from brass so smit 
 The dart, nor pierc'd, the god's gifts hind'ring it. 
 Pelides charg'd Agenor, godlike wight, 
 But glory win Apollo ^d not permit. 
 But snatch'd him out, in mickle darkness dight, 
 And sent him forth in peace to go away from fight. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 But Peleus' son by guile from folk he drew. 
 For 'fore him Far-Dart like Agenor stood. 
 And he did haste with feet and him pursue. 
 And while through wheat- sown plain he chace him would, 
 And turn'd towards Scamander's deep- whirl flood, 
 A little 'fore him did Apollo run, 
 Beguiling him, who thought he catch him should. 
 Meanwhile the frighted Trojans, thronging on, 
 Reach city joyful, where, shut in, they fill the town. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Nor durst they stay the town and wall before, 
 And one another wait, and know who flees, 
 Or who in battle 's dead, but eager pour 
 To th' city every one whom sav'd his feet and knees. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XXII. 
 
 So through the, city scatter'd these like deer 
 Cool'd off their sweat, and drank and thirst allay 'd, 
 'Gainst bulwarks fair reclin'd. Th' Achaeans near 
 The walls with shields aslope to shoulders laid. 
 But Hector fate pernicious chain'd, and made 
 'Fore Ilium there and Scaean gates abye. 
 To Peleus' son, Phoebus Apollo said : — 
 " Why, chacing me, Pelides, swift feet ply, 
 " Since thou but mortal art, and god immortal I ? 
 
 II. 
 
 " Thou know'st not I 'm a god, so ragest sheer 
 " Leav'st work with Trojans, whom thou didst affray, 
 " Who 're shut i' th' town, while thou hast turned here. 
 " I am not mortal, me thou can'st not slay." 
 Swift-foot Achilles wroth to him did say : — 
 " Me hast thou injur'd, Far-Darter, sore, 
 " Thou cruellest of all the gods, away 
 " From wall t' have turn'd me. Surely else before 
 " They 'd Ilium reach' d had bit the ground a many more. 
 
 *ll7 
 
626 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 *' And mickle glory now thou ^st ta'en from me, 
 " These saving eath that dost no vengeance dread. 
 " Had I the power I 'd venge me though on thee." 
 To th' town with high thoughts turn'd he when he 'd said, 
 And like a win-prize chariot-courser sped, 
 That straining runneth swift o'er plain. So plies 
 Swift feet and knees Achilles there. Whom did 
 The aged Priam first behold with eyes 
 Rush o'er the plain as bright as Autumn's star doth rise. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Whose clear beams ^mong a many stars outshine 
 At dead of night, Orion's dog by name. 
 And very lustrous 't is, and evil sign ; 
 Much fever to poor mortals brings the same. 
 So shone the brass on 's breast, who running came. 
 Cried out the Sire, and head did buffet rude 
 With uplift hands, and screaming loud, exclaim, 
 Imploring there his son belov'd, who stood 
 Without the gates, and eager fight Achilles would. 
 
 Speak piteous did the Sire, and hands extend : — ■ 
 " Hector, dear child, this man wait not alone 
 " Without the rest, lest quick thou meet thine end, 
 " Queird by Pelides, who ^s the stronger one 
 '' By far. The wretch, would gods him doated on 
 " As I. Soon dogs and vultures him stretch'd out 
 " Would eat, and from my heart sore grief be gone. 
 " Who me hath reft of many sons and stout, 
 " That he hath slain, or sold to far-off isles remote. 
 
BOOK xxir. 3—8. 527 
 
 VI. 
 
 " And now there are two children, Polydore 
 
 " And eke Lycaon, whom I cannot see 
 
 " 'Mong Trojans shut i' th' town. These to me bore 
 
 *' That prime of women, hight Laothoe. 
 
 " In camp, if living, ransom them will we 
 
 " With brass and gold. We have thereof at home. 
 
 " Much gave his child. Sire Altes, famous he. 
 
 " But if they 're dead, and gone to Hades' dome 
 
 To mine and mother's soul, their parents, woe will come. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " To th' rest o' th' folk 't will be less lasting woe 
 " If thou too die not, by Achilles slain. 
 '^ Enter the wall, my child, and save thou so 
 " Trojans and Trojanesses, nor let gain 
 " Great glory Peleus' son, thy dear life ta'en. 
 " Me too the woful, while I 've senses rue, 
 " Whom Kronides in old age causeth wane 
 " In bitter fortune, me the hapless, who 
 Must many woes of slaughter'd sons and ravish'd daugh- 
 ters view ; 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Chambers laid waste, babes slaughter'd,dash'd to ground 
 
 " Sons' wives by Achives' dire hands dragg'd away, 
 
 " And last myself before my front gates found, 
 
 " When smites me one with keen-edg'd brass that day, 
 
 '' Limbs reft of life, my own dogs eat me may, 
 
 " Fed in my house, that watch'd my doors, by board did 
 
 sit, 
 "Yet drink my blood with madden'd rage will they, 
 " And lie i' th' porch. The young doth not a whit 
 Uncomely lie, who 's slain in war, with keen brass smit. 
 
528 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " For all that ^s seen is fair in him though dead. 
 " But when hoar head and hoary chin withal, 
 " And what beside of old man slaughtered 
 " Dogs mar, to mortals 't is most sad of all." 
 Thus said the Sire, his hoary locks 'gan maul, 
 And pluck from head. But Hector's purpose wrest 
 Could not. Whose mother weeping on the wall 
 Her bosom bar'd, with other hand her breast 
 Held up, and, weeping, him with winged words addressed: — 
 
 " Hector, my child, respect thou these, and me 
 " Myself compassionate, if e'er have I 
 " This breast to sooth thy troubles profFer'd thee. 
 " Think on 't my son ; and this man raging high 
 " Within wall fight, nor champion him abye 
 " The fierce. For should he slay thee, scion sweet, 
 " Wail thee on bed should not who bare thee I, 
 " Nor yet thy rich-do wer'd wife ; but fierce dogs fleet 
 " Would thee far ofi^ from us by th' Argives' vessels eat." 
 
 XI. 
 
 So weeping these address'd their cherish'd son. 
 Imploring much, but mov'd not Hector's soul, 
 Who waited huge Achilles coming on. 
 As mountain-serpent waits a man in 's hole. 
 And, poison-fed, 'neath anger's fierce control 
 Looks forth terrific, coiling lair about. 
 So Hector, keeping quenchless courage whole. 
 Yields not, but 'gainst a tower, that jutteth out. 
 His bright spear leant, and spake perturb'd t' his spirit 
 stout : — 
 
BOOK XXII. 9 — 14. 529 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Ah me ! if wall and gate I pass, anon 
 " Polydamas his taunting on me throws, 
 " Who urg'd me lead the Trojans to the town 
 " The fatal night divine Achilles rose. 
 " 1 'd not. 'T was best, though, what he did propose. 
 " Now through my fault I Ve made the people die, 
 " Trojans and long-veil'd Trojanesses those 
 " I dread, lest one should say, a worse than I, 
 " * Hector ^s destroyed the folk for that he did on '5 strength 
 rely."* 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Thus will they talk. For me 't were best that I 
 " Achilles face and slay, returning so, 
 " Or, slain by him, 'fore city glorious die. 
 " But bossy shield, and massy helmet though 
 " Should I lay down, prop spear 'gainst wall, and go 
 " Myself and meet renown'd Achilles there, 
 " And Helen promise him, and with her too 
 ** The goods, yea, all that Alexander e'er 
 ** Brought in the hollow ships to Troy of treasures fair ; 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " All these with her who caus'd the strife give back 
 *' To Atreus' sons, and eke with Achives share 
 " What else this city hides. And Trojans make 
 " Swear solemn oath they '11 nothing hide whate'er 
 " This pleasant city holds, but halve it fair.^^^ 
 " Why reasons thus my soul ? If I go pray 
 " And sue to him, compassionate he '11 ne'er, 
 " Nor rev'rence me ; but so unarm'd will slay 
 * Light as a woman, when I've put my arms away. 
 
 M M 
 
530 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " No tryst by oak or rock with him, I trow, 
 " As maid and youth, as youth and maiden do. 
 " 'T were best we join in strife, so soonest know 
 " Whom glory gives Olympius of the two." 
 He pond'ring stay'd, while near Achilles drew 
 Like Enyalius shake-helm warrior-one. 
 And at right shoulder Pelion spear so true 
 Terrific shook. And brass about him shone 
 Like light of blazing fire, or of the rising sun. ^^^ 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Trembling seiz'd Hector when he saw, nor bide 
 There durst he more, but left the gates to flee. 
 Pelides rush'd, and on swift feet relied. 
 As mountain-hawk, of things that flying be 
 Most swift, eath chaceth fearful dove, while she 
 Obliquely flies : he near with shrilly cry 
 Darts frequently, for bent to seize her he. 
 So this flew eager straight, while trembling fly 
 Did Hector 'neath the Trojans' wall, and swift knees ply. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Past watch-tower and the wind-vex'd wild fig-tree, 
 Still underneath the wall they driving go 
 Along the wagon- road, until they be 
 At fair-flow springs arriv'd where fountains two 
 From eddying Scamander gushing flow. 
 One runs with water hot, from which there goes 
 A smoke around as burning fire would throw ; 
 The other cold as hail in summer flows, 
 Or chilly snow or crystal that from water grows. 
 
BOOK XXII. 15 — 20. 531 
 
 !XVIII. 
 
 Beside them close broad washing tanks there were 
 Goodly, of stone, wherein their costly gear 
 Erst wash did Trojans' wives and daughters fair 
 In peace, ere came th' Achaeans' sons. Past here 
 One flying, th' other chacing, they career. 
 Brave fled before, but chac'd him better one 
 Full swift. Since not for ox or bull's hide mere 
 They strove, men's prizes of a foot-race won, 
 But they for very life of tame-steed Hector run. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Round bounds as whole-hoof 'd steeds that oft win prize 
 Run swift, when some great stake is to be won, 
 Tripod or woman, for a man that dies. 
 So these did thrice encircle Priam's town 
 On rapid feet : the gods all looking on. 
 Gods' sire and men's 'gan speech upon this wise : — 
 " Ye gods ! a man belov'd there chaced run 
 " Around the wall I see with these mine eyes. 
 " My heart 's for Hector griev'd, who 's burnt me many 
 oxen's thighs, 
 
 XX. 
 
 " Yea, mickle-valed Ida's summits on, 
 " And also in the city's highest place. 
 " And now divine Achilles round the town 
 " Of Priam him on rapid feet doth chace. 
 " Come now, consult, consider, gods, his case, 
 " From death to save or him, though noble, now 
 " Beneath Achilles Peleus' son abase." 
 Spake goddess azure-eyed Athene ; — " How ! 
 ** Sire Lightning-darter, Cloud-compeller, what say'st thou ? 
 
 MM 2 
 
532 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " A man that 's mortal, long to fate decreed 
 " Wouldst thou again set loose from death severe? 
 " Do. But all other gods we 11 not accede." 
 Spake Zeus, the cloud-compeller : — " Never fear, 
 " Tritogeneia, thou my offspring dear ! 
 " Not willing spake I, but would thee toward 
 ** Be mild. Do what to thee doth fit appear, 
 ^^ Nor cease." So saying, he Athene stirred, 
 Already eager; down Olympus' tops she skirr'd. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Achilles swift doth Hector still pursue. 
 In hills as after stag's fawn foU'weth hound. 
 Starting from lair, through vales, and glens a- through, 
 And him though trembling hid by bushes round, 
 Yet tracking him he runneth till he 's found. 
 So Hector from Pelides swift not hid. 
 Oft as he would to th' gates Dardanian bound. 
 And rushing straight for th' towers well-builded made, 
 If him so from above they might with javelins aid. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 So oft did he him overrunning make 
 To turn away to th' plain. While he to th' town 
 Flew ever near. As in a dream o'ertake 
 One cannot him that doth before him run, 
 This cannot 'scape, nor catch him th' other one, 
 So this can 't catch, nor 'scape can th' other wight. 
 But how so long could Hector death's fate shun, 
 But that at last Apollo him in flight. 
 Drew near, and did his strength and rapid knees excite ? 
 
BOOK XXII. 21 — 26. 533 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 T' his folk Achilles sign'd with head, nor would 
 At Hector let fell darts be flung, lest fame 
 One hurling win, and he come second should. 
 But when a fourth time to the springs they came, 
 The Sire took golden scales, and put in same 
 Two fates of long-sleep-death. ^^^ Achilles' one 
 And one of Hector, who did horses tame. 
 Mid-ta'en he rais'd. Sank Hector's doom'd day down, 
 And went to Hades. Phoebus left him there alone. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 To Peleus' son blue-eyed Athene drew. 
 
 And wing'd words goddess spake, him standing nigh : — 
 
 " Now Zeus-lov'd bright Achilles, shall we two 
 
 " I hope, to th' Achive ships bring glory high, 
 
 " Slaying Hector, spite his battle-greed. For fly 
 
 " Us more he can't, though far-dart Phoebus might 
 
 " 'Fore Zeus, the aegis-holding, prostrate try. 
 
 " But thou now stand, take breath. I '11 to this wight. 
 
 And so persuade him face to face with thee to fight." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 So spake Athene. He obey'd full fain, 
 And stood, brass-headed ash-spear leaning on. 
 Him left, she godlike Hector doth attain ; 
 Deiphobus' strong voice, and form doth don. 
 And near him standing wing'd words spake anon : 
 " Brother, sore drives thee swift Achilles high, 
 " Chacing on rapid feet round Priam's town ; 
 " But come let 's stand, and fighting him abye." 
 To her did Hector huge of glancing helm reply : — 
 
 M M 3 
 
 V 
 
534 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Deiphobus, before of brethren thou 
 " Most dear, which Hecuba to Priam bare, 
 " But thee in soul do I more honour now 
 " That didst when saw'st with eyes for ray sake dare 
 " Come out fro' th' wall, the rest remaining there." 
 Spake then Athene goddess azure-eyed : — 
 " Brother, our sire and mother dear with prayer 
 " Embraced by turns my knees, and friends beside, 
 " There to remain besought, all were so terrified. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But vex'd my mind within me bitter pain. 
 " Now straight let 's eager fight, of spears no spare, 
 " And find out if Achilles, we two slain, 
 " Will bloody spoils to hollow vessels bear, 
 " Or be beneath thy spear subdued there." 
 This said, Athene guileful went before. 
 When on each other coming nigh they were, 
 First spake helm-glancing Hector huge : — " No more 
 ** From thee, Peleus' son, I '11 fly as heretofore. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Thrice fled round Priam's city huge have T, 
 " Nor durst thy coming wait. Now pricketh me 
 " My soul to face thee, slaughter thee, or die. ■ 
 " But let 's to th' gods appeal. They best will be 
 " Our witnesses, and compacts oversee. 
 " I '11 not misuse thee, if win battle now 
 " Vouchsafe me Zeus. 1 '11 take thy life away, 
 " But, when I 've stripp'd thy comely arms, allow 
 " Th' Achaeans take thy corse, Achilles. So do thou." 
 
BOOK XXII. 27—32. ^ 535 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Him eyeing askance swift-foot Achilles spake : — 
 " Hector detested, name not pact to me. 
 " As lions ne'er with men can covenant make, 
 " Nor ever wolves and lambs in soul agree, 
 " But still to one another hostile be, 
 " So thou and I be friendly never could, 
 " Nor truce at all subsist 'twixt me and thee 
 " Till one do fall, and satiate with his blood 
 *' Stout warrior Ares. Summon all thy hardihood. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " Thou 'dst need be spear-man, warrior bold this day. 
 *' Thou 'scap'st no more, thee '11 'neath my spear subdue 
 " Pallas Athene. Now thou 'It all repay 
 " My comrades' woes, with spear you raging slew." 
 He said and long-shade spear y-brandish'd threw. 
 Shunn'd it bright Hector, who did forward look. 
 And seeing crouch'd. The brass spear over-flew, 
 And fix'd i' th' ground, which up Athene took, 
 Back gave t' Achilles. Knew not Hector, shepherd of the 
 folk. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Then Hector spake to Peleus' faultless son : — 
 " Thou 'st miss'd, nor know'st, godlike Achilles bright, 
 " From Zeus my fate. Thou 'st said. But thou art one 
 u ^^Tqy^j ^jj^ craft of speech, would'st me afiright 
 " Strength to forget and valour. But in flight 
 " My back thy spear will pierce not, I opine, 
 " But meeting thee in bosom thrust it right, 
 " If gods so will. Now shun brass spear of mine. 
 " Would that receive it all thou might'st in flesh of thine ! 
 
 M M 4 
 
536 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " For war would then to Trojans lighter be, 
 " If thou wert kill'd, their greatest bane, I wot." 
 He said, and long spear whirling hurl did he. 
 Nor miss'd, but 'mid shield of Pelides smote. 
 Far shook from shield the spear. Grew Hector hot, 
 That rapid dart in vain from hand did fly. 
 Downcast he stood, for ash-spear else he 'd not. 
 White-shield Deiphobus he call'd, and high 
 Did shout, and long spear ask him. , He though was not 
 nigh. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Then Hector knew, and said : — " Call me to death 
 " The gods. Deiphobus I thought was here, 
 " But he's within the wall. Deceiv'd me hath 
 " Athene. Now fell death 's not far, but near, 
 " And no escape. This thing was aye more dear^^^ 
 " To Zeus, and Far-Dart, son of Zeus. Yet aid 
 " Me erst they willing did. Now fate severe 
 " Hath caught me. But I '11 not be basely sped, 
 ** But do great deed shall unto after times be said." 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 So saying, falchion keen he drew, that by 
 
 His side did hang, huge, strong, exceeding much. 
 
 And turning rush'd, as eagle soaring high 
 
 Doth swoop to th' plain through darksome clouds to 
 
 clutch 
 A tender lamb or fearful hare. E'en such 
 Did Hector rush and keen-edg'd falchion wield. 
 So rush'd Achilles too at his approach. 
 Dire anger fiU'd his soul. Before him shield 
 Comely and daedal-wrought his bosom all conceal'd. 
 
BOOK XXII. 33—38. 537 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Nods four-con'd gleaming helm. Shook gold hairs bright 
 Wherewith Hephaistos thick did crest supply. 
 As star 'mohg stars at milking time of night, 
 Yea Hesperus, the fairest star of sky. 
 So shone sharp spear-point, which Achilles high 
 In right hand shook, who Hector ill intending. 
 His fair flesh where to wound him best did spy. 
 His body else were brass arms fair defending 
 He gat Patroclus slaught'ring, and his armour from him 
 rending. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Where clavicle doth neck from shoulder part 
 Show'd place by throat where Ufe's destruction 's quick. 
 There eager in him drave Achilles dart. 
 The point went forward through his tender neck. 
 Nor yet did brass-charg'd spear the windpipe break. 
 So words in answer he could somewhat say. 
 r th^ dust he sank. Achilles boasting spake : — 
 " Hector, thou thought'st thee safe when thou didst slay 
 " Patroclus, spoiling him, nor fearing me away. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " Fool ! his avenger, stronger far than he, 
 " Still left was I in th' hollow vessels there, 
 " Who Ve loos'd thy knees. The dogs and vultures thee 
 " Shall rend. To bury him will th' Achives care." 
 Spake languid wave-helm Hector : — " 'T is my prayer, 
 " Yea, by thy soul, thy knees, and parents thine, 
 " Me by th' Achaeans' ships let dogs not tear. 
 " But thou shalt brass enough and gold full fine 
 " As gifts receive, which give thee '11 sire and honoured 
 mother mine. 
 
538 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 " Give home my corse, that so partake of fire 
 " Trojans and Trojans' wives may make me dead." 
 Him eyed askance swift-foot Achilles dire : — 
 " Dog ! knee not me nor parents name," he said ; 
 " I wish that me my rage and spirit led 
 " To eat thy slic'd flesh raw^^^, that me so sore 
 " Hast serv'd. So none shall keep from dogs thy head, 
 " No, not though gifts ten times, or e'en a score, 
 As many here they brought and weigh'd, and promised 
 more. 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Not thee thy weight in gold though Priam pay, 
 
 " Shall mother, who did bear thee, lay on bed 
 
 " And weep, but dogs and birds shall on thee prey." 
 
 To him helm-glancing Hector dying said : — 
 
 " I see thee as I knew, that thee persuade 
 
 " I should not. Iron sooth thy soul. Think stilP^^, 
 
 " With thee may gods through me be angered, 
 
 " The day that Paris and Apollo will 
 
 Thee by the Scaean gates, albeit valiant, kill." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 And him now final death as thus he spake 
 Did cover round. From limbs his spirit fled, 
 Its woful fate lamenting, to forsake 
 Its youth and vigour thus. And him though dead 
 Godlike Achilles thus addressed, and said: — 
 " Die thou. I '11 meet my fate when good appear 
 " To Zeus it shall, and deathless gods beside." 
 This said, he pluck'd from corse the brazen spear. 
 Laid it aside, and stripp'd from shoulders gory warrior-gear. 
 
BOOK XXII. 39—44. 539 
 
 XLII. 
 
 And other Achives' sons about him run, 
 And Hector's wondrous form and stature they 
 Admiring stand, and wound him every one. 
 And gazing thus, would each t' his neighbour say : — 
 " How easier Hector 's handled than the day 
 " He burnt the ships with flaming fire." So would 
 They talk, and stand, and wound him as he lay. 
 Him thus swift-foot Achilles did denude. 
 And then wing'd words address'd th' Achasans as he 
 stood : — 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " Friends, Argive chiefs, and princes, since 't is so 
 " The gods have given us this man conquer, he 
 " That more than all the others wrought us woe, 
 " Come round their city armed wend will we, 
 *' And Trojans try, and how they 're minded see, 
 " If they '11 quit citadel, now Hector 's slain, 
 " Or dare abide although no more he be. 
 " But why so reason ^^'^ is my spirit fain ? 
 " Patroclus by the ships a corse, unwept, unburied, doth 
 remain. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " And him I '11 not forget^as long as I 
 " 'Mong living am and stir my knees. Not though 
 " Forget they may in Hades those who die. 
 " I '11 there my comrade dear remember so. 
 " Now, Achives' sons, let 's PaBon chaunting go 
 " To th' hollow ships, and take this man. For won 
 " Much fame have we in Hector slain, I trow, 
 " Whom Trojans held as god a-through their town." 
 He said, and uncouth deeds 'gainst godlike Hector pon- 
 dered-on. 
 
540 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Of both feet tendons pierce from heel he did 
 To ankle, ox-hide thongs insert, and tie 
 From car, and let hang down, and drag his head. 
 Then car ascends, and bright arms lifteth high. 
 And whips the steeds, who not unwilling fly. 
 As dragg'd the corse a cloud of dust arose. 
 His dark hair shaketb, head in dust doth lie 
 So graceful erst, which Zeus now lets his foes. 
 There in his native land, in shameful wise dispose. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 So dust all foul'd his head. Then tore her hair 
 His mother, dazzling veil far from her thrown, 
 And shriek'd aloud, her son beholding there. 
 Cried piteously his sire. The folk with moan 
 Were seiz'd, and lamentation through the town. 
 And 't was as thouo^h all Ilium hio^h had been 
 With fire a-burning from its summit down. 
 The folk his sorrow-madden'd sire restrain 
 Scarce could, who issue forth from Dardan gates would fain. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 All he besought, and roll'd i' th' dust about. 
 And each man by his name he call'd upon : — 
 " Cease, friends, though anxious, me alone from out 
 " The city let to th' Achives' ships be gone. 
 " 1 '11 pray this man so fierce, who 'th dire deeds done, 
 " If years consider, pity age will he. 
 " For is indeed his father such a one 
 " Peleus, that him begat, the bane to be 
 " Of Trojans sure, but most of all woes laid on me. 
 
BOOK XXII. 45 — 50. 541 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " He 's slain me many sons y-flourishing, 
 " But all I not lament, though griev'd, as one 
 " For whom sharp sorrow '11 me to Hades bring, 
 " Hector. Would in these arms he 'd died ! Then moan 
 " And weep our fill we should : she, hapless one, 
 " His mother, that did bring him forth, and I 
 " Myself." So spake he, weeping there. And groan 
 With him his citizens for sympathy. 
 To Trojan dames led Hecuba lament with frequent sigh: — 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " Son, wherefore live should wretched I, and woe 
 " Endure now thou art dead ? By night and day 
 *^ I' th' town my boast, and gain of all wast thou 
 " Of Trojans and their dames, who thee alway 
 " Held as a god. In thee their glory lay, 
 " While thou didst live. But thee, alas ! detain 
 " Death and thy fate." Thus weeping she did say. 
 Nor Hector's spouse yet knew. For none had been 
 To tell her true her husband did without the gates remain. 
 
 L. 
 
 A web she wove in lofty house recess'd, 
 Bright twofold web, and flowers inweaving pight, 
 Through house she bade her maidens lovely tress'd 
 Set fire round tripod huge, that bath there might 
 Be hot for Hector 'gainst he came from fight. 
 Fool ! knew not him Athene, azure-eye. 
 From baths afar b' Achilles' hands did smite. 
 From tower she heard a wailing and a cry, 
 Her limbs did quake, her shuttle fell to th' ground thereby. 
 
642 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 She spake again V her maidens lovely tress'd : — 
 " Come, two attend me, I '11 what 's doing see. 
 " For, mother's voice I heard, and in my breast 
 " Leap'd to my mouth my heart. Knees under me 
 " Are stiff. Woe near to Priam's sons must be. 
 " Far from mine ear such word ! But sore I dread 
 " For valiant Hector mine, b' Achilles he 
 " Is sole cut off fro' th' town, and plainwards sped, 
 " And made to cease that fatal boldness that he had. 
 
 LII. 
 
 " In throng he 'd stay not, but run far before, 
 " In valour yield to none." She said, and through 
 The house, like maenad, heart-a-quaking, tore. 
 Her maids with her. When tower she came unto, 
 And throng of men, she stood on wall to view. 
 And saw him dragg'd 'fore th' town. In careless wise 
 Him towards th' Achseans' hollow vessels drew 
 The rapid steeds. Black night doth veil her eyes. 
 Backwards she falleth straight, and there a-swooning lies. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Far from her head the shining head-bands brave 
 Were pour'd, the snood, hair-net, and plaited tie, 
 And veil that golden Aphrodite gave. 
 The day that Hector brought her from the high 
 Eetion's house, who gave large gifts thereby. 
 Sisters-in-law about her stood enow. 
 Her 'twixt them held, that seem'd of grief to die. 
 She breath recover'd, sense returning so, 
 'Mong Trojan dames did speak, and weep^ and sighs out- 
 throw : — 
 
BOOK XXII. 51 — 56. 543 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " 0, Hector, woe is me ! Born both of us 
 
 " Like doom'd ; in Troy in Priam's palace thou, 
 
 " And I in Thebes, wood-grown Hypoplacus 
 
 " Eetion's house, who infant me to woe 
 
 " Bred woful. Would he 'd ne'er begot ! Now go 
 
 " Dost thou to Hades' house, in earth's depths down, 
 
 " And me, in heavy sorrow widow'd so, 
 
 " Leav'st in the house. Him, too, thine infant son. 
 
 Whom thou and I the hapless 'gat, thou 'It profit none, 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Now Hector thou art dead, nor thee will he. 
 
 " Though Achives' tearful war he 'scape, yet woe 
 
 " And toil will aye be his. His lands will be 
 
 " Bounds-shifted him.^^^ And orphanage doth so 
 
 " Strip child of playmates, make his head hang low. 
 
 *' Cheeks wet with tears. Seeks father's friends, poor 
 
 youth, 
 " Plucks this by cloak, and that by vest, who though 
 " They proffer him a little cup in ruth, 
 " It wets indeed his lips, but wets not palate sooth. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 *' And one, whose parents live, will him thrust out 
 " From feast, misuse with taunts, with hands will beat: — 
 " ^Plague on thee^ go; thy sire feasts with us not J 
 " Weeping the boy '11 1' his widow'd mother get, 
 " Astyanax, that on sire's knees did eat 
 " But marrow erst, and sleekest fat of sheep, 
 " And, tir'd with play, when took him slumber sweet, 
 " Then in the bed in nurse's arms he 'd sleep, 
 " On softest couch, his heart with pleasures fiU'd a-heap. 
 
544 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " Now much will suffer, father missing, he, 
 
 " Astyanax, whom Trojans that name call, 
 
 " Since sole thou guardedst gates and long-stretch'd ^^^ 
 
 wall. 
 " By th' curv'd ships now will far from parents thee 
 " The brisk worms eat when dogs are fill'd withal. 
 " Naked thou art, thy clothes in house uplaid, 
 Graceful and delicate, by hands of women made. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 " These all I '11 burn with burning fire, for thee" 
 " They '11 profit nought, since in them thou 'It not lie. 
 " From Trojans thence and Trojanesses be 
 " Some glory thine." She weeping spake. The women 
 groan and sigh. 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XXIII. 
 
 I. 
 
 So through the town they mourn. Th' Achaeans though 
 When to the ships and Hellespont they get, 
 The rest dispersing, each t' his tent they go, 
 But Myrmidons Achilles would not let 
 Disperse. T' his war- fond friends discourse he set : — 
 " Ye swift-steed Myrmidons, my comrades dear, 
 " Let's not from cars loose whole-hoof 'd horses yet 
 " But to the steeds themselves, and cars draw near, 
 " And o'er Patroclus weep, for such of dead 's the honour 
 here. 
 
 n. 
 
 " But when we 've sated us with mourning sad 
 " Then loosing steeds we '11 all here supper have." 
 He spake. They ail lament. Achilles led. 
 Thrice round the corse the well-man'd steeds they drave, 
 Weeping. And Thetis grief impassion'd gave. 
 Wet were the sands, and warriors' arms were wet 
 With tears, so miss they chace-foe warrior brave. 
 Pelides 'gan the full-sobb'd deep regret. 
 And man y-slaught'ring hands on comrade's bosom set : — 
 
 N N 
 
546 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 " Eejoice, Patroclus, e'en in Hades there, 
 " I Ve all fulfill'd that erst I promised, 
 " Dragged Hector here to give to dogs to share 
 " And twelve at pyre bright Trojans' sons behead 
 " Here will I, wroth for thee so slain." He said, 
 And plann'd 'gainst Hector most unseemly deeds; 
 Stretch'd him on 's face beside Patroclus' bed 
 In dust. Then doif his armour each proceeds, 
 Brazen and dazzling bright, and loose the neighing 
 steeds. 
 
 IV. 
 
 B' Achilles' ship sat myriads. Made them he 
 Fair fun'ral feast. White oxen stretch'd y-slain 
 With iron many, many sheep there be. 
 And bleating goats. Store white- tooth'd fatted swine, 
 Stretch'd 'fore Hephaistos' flame a-swaling been. 
 About the corse ran copious blood y-shed. 
 But him the king swift-foot Pelides then 
 Th' Achaean kings to Agamemnon led. 
 And scant prevail'd with him for comrade so heart-angerM. 
 
 V. 
 
 Eeach'd Agamemnon's tent they th' heralds bade 
 Set fire round tripod huge, if so from gore 
 They might Pelides wash himself persuade. 
 But stedfast he refus'd, and oath he swore : — 
 " By Zeus most high, that rules immortals o'er, 
 " No washings touch this head till on the fire 
 '* I set Patroclus, and his mound do pour, 
 " And shear these locks. For second woe so dire 
 " Ne'er '11 reach my heart while 'mong the living I respire. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 3 — 8. 547 
 
 VI. 
 
 " But now in sooth let 's yield to th' banquet sad. 
 *^ At morn, men's sovran Agamemnon, thou 
 " Bid wood be brought, and plac'd as fitting had 
 " For corse that hath 'neath darkness deep to go, 
 " That this one fire unresting burn up so 
 " Quick from our eyes^^^, and folk to work be gone." 
 He said. They hearken prompt withouten mo, 
 And quick preparing supper every one 
 They feast. And will to equal banquet wanted none. 
 
 VII. 
 
 When wish for drink and food they 'd ta'en away, 
 T' his tent each went to sleep. But on the shore 
 Of much-resounding sea Pelides lay, 
 ^Mid many Myrmidons y-groaning sore, 
 In open spot, where on the strand y-bore 
 Th' upwashing waves. When slumber seize 
 Him did, and loose his soul from cares, and pour 
 About him sweet, (for tir'd his radiant knees 
 In Hector's chace at Ilium, haunt of every breeze,) 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Came there the spirit of Patroclus sad, 
 In all things like, in stature, lovely eyes, 
 And voice, and body with like garments clad. 
 At 's head he stood, and spake him on this wise : — 
 " Thou sleep'st Achilles, me forgot. Misprize 
 " Me didst not living but now dead. But soon, 
 " That I pass Hades' gates, mine obsequies 
 " Perform. For souls, the ghosts of those who's labour 's 
 done^^^ 
 ** Drive me afar, and suffer me consort past river none. 
 
 N N 2 
 
548 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Tore broad-gate Hades' house T roam in vain. 
 " But give me now thine hand, I ask it thee 
 " Lamenting. For from Hades not again 
 *^ I come when mak'st of fire partaker me. 
 *' For not alive apart from friends shall we 
 " Together sit consulting. But mine heart 
 " Fell fate 's devour'd, that was from birth to be. 
 " Thou like the gods, Achilles, on thy part 
 " 'T is fated that to die 'neath noble Trojans' wall thou art. 
 
 " This else I '11 say, and urge if hear wilt me, 
 *' My bones from thine, Achilles, do not lay. 
 " As bred together in your house were we 
 " When brought me there from Opus young away 
 " Mencetius, through sad homicide the day 
 " That the son of Amphidamas I'd thoughtless slain 
 " Unwilling, wroth when we at dibbs did play. 
 " Me horseman Peleus, then in 's house y-ta'en, 
 " Did educate with care, and nam'd me servant thine. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " So also let the bones then of us twain 
 
 " The self- same vase, the golden Amphora 
 
 " Thine honour'd mother gave to thee, contain." 
 
 Him answ'ring did swift-foot Achilles say : — 
 
 " Why, cherish'd head, com'st here on me to lay 
 
 " Thine bests in each of these ? All shall take place 
 
 " As thou hast said. Thy bidding I '11 obey. 
 
 " But nearer to me stand, and let 's embrace 
 
 Each other for a while, and bitter grief solace." 
 
BOOK XXIII. 9 — 14. 549 
 
 XII. 
 
 He spake. His stretch'd arms nothing grasps, for goes 
 
 The spirit underneath the ground like smoke 
 
 With gibb'ring cry. Amaz'd Achilles rose, 
 
 Hands smote together, word of sorrow spoke : — 
 
 " Gods ! e'en in Hades' house then there 's a stroke 
 
 " Of soul, a phantom, heart though none there be. 
 
 " For by me 's stood all night, in sorrow broke 
 
 " And wailing, sad Patroclus' soul. And me 
 
 Each sev'ral thing enjoin'd. And wondrous like was he." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He said, and stirr'd in all impassion'd woe. 
 Eose-finger'd Morn appear'd while mourning stood 
 They round the corse. King Agamemnon so 
 Stirr'd mules and men to bring on all sides wood 
 From tents. And stirr'd them Merion, warrior good, 
 Servant of valour-fond Idomeneus. 
 They went with axe in hand, cut timber could. 
 And well-twist ropes. The mules precede, and thus 
 O'er many ups and downs they went, and forwards and 
 across. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 But when they reach'd the wooded slopes, indeed. 
 Of Ida many-rill'd, then straight they hew 
 With long-edg'd brass the high-hair'd oaks with speed, 
 Which fall with mickle din ; these splitting through 
 Th' Achseans fasten'd then the mules thereto. 
 These measur'd with their feet the ground, and glad. 
 And eager for the plain, through brush-wood drew. 
 The hewers all bare logs. So Merion had. 
 Servant of valour-fond Idomeneus, them bade. 
 
 N N 3 
 
550 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 By til* shore tliey flung them where designed huge mound, 
 For self and for Patroclus, Peleus' son. 
 When wood immense they 'd cast upon the ground 
 All sat and stay'd. Achilles bade anon 
 The Myrmidons to gird them every one 
 Their brazen armour, yoke to chariot steed. 
 These straight arose, and quick their armour don. 
 Cars warriors mount and charioteers. Precede 
 The horse, and cloud of foot innumerable after yede. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Mid them his friends Patroclus bore, and dead 
 Cover'd with hair they from them cut, and on him threw. 
 Behind godlike Achilles held the head. 
 And did bright friend to Hades sending rue. 
 And when to th' place Achilles bade they drew. 
 They set him down, and wood up-heap'd him store. 
 Swift-foot Achilles this resolv'd to do. 
 From pyre he stood, and auburn locks he shore 
 Which for the river Sperchius flourishing he ^d kept before. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Gazing on wine-fac'd deep spake groaning he : ~ 
 " Sperchius, in vain Sire Peleus vow'd mine hair 
 " To native land return'd he 'd shear to thee, 
 *' And holy hecatombs up-ofFer there, 
 " And slaughter fifty rams by th* fountains where 
 " Thy sacred field and fragrant altar lay. 
 " So vow'd the Sire. Thou 'st not fulfill'd his prayer. 
 " Since back to country dear no more I may, 
 ** These locks I '11 to Patroclus give, to bear upon his way." 
 
BOOK XXIII. 15 — 20. 551 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 This said in lov'd companion's hands the hair 
 He plac'd. Griefs passion stirr'd in all. And they 
 Till sun-light down had mourn'd, but sudden there 
 Achilles did to Agamemnon say : — 
 " Atrides, thou whose hest do chief obey 
 " The folk, though fit that grief we satisfy, 
 " Yet these to get them supper send away 
 " From pyre. We whom it most concerns will ply 
 " This task. But let the chieftains here with us abye." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Men's sovran Agamemnon, hearing this, 
 • Dismiss'd the folk to th' equal ships. But stay 
 The mourners there, and heap up wood y-wis. 
 And make a pyre of hundred feet each way. 
 And corse on top of pyre heart-griev'd they lay. 
 Much sheep, and crook-horn beeves of trailing foot 
 At pyre they skin and dress. From all away 
 Took fat, and wrapp'd the corse Achilles stout 
 From head to foot, and heap'd flay'd carcases about. 
 
 XX. 
 
 And jars he set of honey and of oil 
 
 'Gainst bier y-leant. Four long-neck'd horses flong 
 
 Quick on the pyre, and groaned sore the while. 
 
 Nine table-dogs did to the king belong ; 
 
 He casts on pyre two slain from them among. 
 
 Then cast twelve radiant youths, of high-soul'd Trojans 
 
 came. 
 With brass he 'd slain. For ill he purpos'd strong. 
 Fire's iron strength he set to feed on same. 
 Then cried aloud and call'd on comrade dear by name : — 
 
 N N 4 
 
552 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Rejoice, Patroclus, e'en in Hades' dome. 
 " All I perform, that erst I promised. 
 " Twelve noble youths from high-soul'd Trojans come, 
 " All these shall fire devour. But Hector dead, 
 " 1 '11 give not unto fire, but dogs to eat." He said, 
 Threat'ning. But dogs not plied round him their toil. 
 Zeus' daughter Aphrodite keep oiF did 
 Dogs day and night. Anointed him with oil 
 Roseate, ambrosial, she, that him none dragging mar nor^ 
 spoil. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 And over him did bring a darksome cloud 
 Phoebus Apollo, plainwards from the sky, 
 And all the place corse occupied enshroud. 
 For fear the force of sun should forehand dry 
 The body, and the nerves, and limbs thereby. 
 The pyre would burn not of Patroclus dead. 
 This else resolv'd swift-foot Achilles high : 
 From pyre he stood apart, and two winds pray'd, 
 Boreas and Zephyrus, fair holy gifts y-promised 
 
 XXIII. . , 
 
 Pouring from golden cup he mickle there 
 Implor'd them come, and quick burn corse with flame. 
 Make wood to burn. Swift Iris heard his prayer ^^^, 
 And to the winds his messenger she came. 
 At blustrous Zephyr's house were met the same 
 A-feasting. Iris running stood upon 
 The stony threshold. Soon as seen the dame. 
 All rose, and call'd her to him every one. 
 But she to sit refus'd, and speaking thus begun : — • 
 
BOOK XXIII. 21—26. 553 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " No seat. For back to streams of Ocean where 
 " In iEthiop's land with hecatombs they greet 
 " The gods I go the sacred things to share. 
 " But Boreas and Zephyr loud entreat 
 " Achilles doth, and promise off 'rings meet, 
 " To come, and pyre where doth Patroclus lie, 
 " Whom mourn all Achives, stir to burning heat." 
 She said, and went away. With tumult high 
 They rush abroad, and make the clouds before them fly. ^ 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And soon they come a-blowing on the sea. 
 Whose swell was stirr'd beneath their shrilly blore. ^^ 
 Arriv'd at fertile Troas when they be, 
 On pyre they fell. Strange burning fire doth roar. 
 All night the flame of pyre they vexen sore. 
 Shrill blowing. And Achilles swift all night 
 From golden vase with double cup doth pour 
 The drawn out wine on ground, and wetteth quite 
 The earth, Patroclus' soul invoking, hapless wight. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 As mourns a father, bones of son a-burning, 
 That bridegroom doth to parents' sorrow die. 
 So mourn'd Achilles, bones of friend a-burning. 
 He crept by th' pyre, and did incessant sigh. 
 When day-star came a-telling earth that light was nigh, 
 Whom foil' wing spread eth Morning safl^ron-veil'd the main, 
 Then slack'd the pyre, and ceas'd the flame. And fly 
 The winds returning to their home again, 
 Through Thracian sea, that groans and swells in high dis- 
 dain. 
 
554 THE ILIAD, 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Pelides from the pyre apart lay down 
 A-weary. Him sweet slumber sudden took, 
 But those were gather'd all round Atreus' son, 
 And coming him their noise and tumult woke. 
 He sat upright, and word to them he spoke : — 
 " Atrides, chieftains Panachsean ye, 
 " First all the pyre with bright wine let us soak 
 " And quench what fire there is. Collect then we 
 " Menoetius' son Patroclus' bones, discerning which they be. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " To know them 's eath. They lie 'mid pyre, while those 
 " Be at its edge apart steeds mix'd with men. 
 " In golden urn and folded fat enclose 
 " We them, till Hades' house me also screen. 
 " Large mound I bid not make, but in the mean, 
 " And after build it broad and high shall they, 
 " Th' Acha^ans that do after me remain 
 " In ships of many banks." Thus did he say, 
 And swift-foot son of Peleus sooth do these obey. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 First quench they pyre with wine all sparkling bright, 
 Where came the blaze, and deep the ashes fall. 
 Weeping their meek companion's bones so white 
 In golden urn, and folded fat withal 
 They gather, wrap in finest linen pall. 
 And set i' th' tents. Then mark'd the mound, and laid 
 Eound pyre the base, and pour'd earth heap'd up tall, 
 And mound so pour'd return'd. Achilles stay'd 
 The people there and session large them seating made. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 27 — 32. 555 
 
 XXX. 
 
 And from the ships he brought the prizes out, 
 Caldrons and tripods, steeds and mules y-pight, 
 And also sturdy heads of oxen stout, 
 And well-zon'd women eke, and iron white. 
 And first to horsemen fleet '^^^ set prizes bright 
 To win. Fair woman skill'd in works, and rare 
 Ear'd tripod meas'ring score and twain for wight 
 Who should be first. And set a six- year mare 
 Unbroke, with foal of mule, for who came second there. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 For third a caldron free from fire as yet. 
 Fair, holding measures four, without a speck ; 
 And for the fourth of gold two talents set. 
 For fifth did twin-ear'd, unfir'd phial stake ^^*, 
 Then upright stood, and word to Argives spake: — 
 *' Atrides, and Achseans buskin'd fair 
 " These prizes wait the charioteers to take. 
 " If for another th' Achives* contest were 
 " I sure should win, and to my tent chief prizes bear. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 "Ye know how much my steeds excelling be, 
 
 " For they 're immortal, them Poseidon gave 
 
 " Peleus my sire, who trusted them to me. 
 
 " But I will stay and eke the whole-hoof 'd steeds that 
 
 have 
 " Such vigour lost of charioteer so brave, 
 " Gentle, who liquid oil Avould on their mane 
 " Oft pour, and first with limpid water lave. 
 " But grieving now they stand, on ground y-lain 
 " Their hair profuse. There griev'd at heart now stand 
 the twain. 
 
556 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 " But ye the rest throughout the host prepare 
 " Whoever of Achaeans doth on steed 
 " Rely, and on his well y-joined car." 
 Pelides spake. The horsemen rose with speed. 
 Eumelus, king of men, did far precede, 
 Admetus' son, and well could chariot sway. 
 Next him Tydides rose, strong Diomede, 
 And harness'd Trojan steeds he 'd former day 
 Ta'en from ^neas whom Apollo snatch'd away. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Next him rose Menelaus, auburn-hair, 
 Zeus-sprung Atrides. Rapid steeds anon 
 He harness'd, Aithe, Agamemnon's mare, 
 And own Podarges. Gave her Atreus' son 
 Anchises' child, Echepolus, that on"] 
 To wind-vex'd Ilium he not with him go, 
 But there in pleasaunce stay. For he did wone 
 In Sicyon broad, and Zeus did him endow 
 With mickle wealth. This mare that long'd to run they 
 harness now. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Antilochus then fourth fair horses speeds, 
 Bright son of Nestor high-soul'd sovran, seed 
 Of Neleus. Pylos-bred his swift-foot steeds 
 Drew car. Nigh stood the Sire, and prudent rede 
 Discours'd to him, who also knew indeed : — 
 " Antilochus, though young thee 've cherish'd so 
 " Zeus and Poseidon, and such car-skill taught, that need 
 " There is not much to teach thee, who dost know 
 *^F ull well round bounds to make the horses featly go. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 33—38. 557 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " But slow thy horses run, whence harm I ween. 
 
 " Their steeds are swifter, though themselves they be 
 
 " Not shrewder than thyself at counsel keen. 
 
 " But come, dear son, and skill of all kinds see 
 
 " Thou bear in mind, lest prizes from thee flee. 
 
 " By skill than strength the woodman prospers more ; 
 
 " By skill the pilot on the wine-fac'd sea 
 
 " Doth steer swift ship, that winds do vexen sore ; 
 
 By skill so chariot-driver triumphs chariot-driver o'er 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " Who trusteth steeds and car unwise doth sway 
 
 " About. His steeds o'er course at random fly 
 
 " UncheckVl. But he that 's skill'd, though drive he may 
 
 " Worse steeds, still marks the bound, and turns it nigh, 
 
 " Nor 'scapes him tighten'd reign when first to ply, 
 
 " But steady keeps, him watching that 's before. 
 
 " Clear mark I '11 tell thee, will not 'scape thine eye. 
 
 ** Stands a dry stump, some fathom so or more 
 
 'Bove ground, of oak or fir, that rotteth not with shower. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " White stones, a pair, support it, where the way 
 
 " Doth narrow. Smooth is chariot course around, 
 
 ** Be 't dead man's monument of olden day, 
 
 " Or post that men of yore fix'd in the ground. 
 
 " Swift-foot Achilles makes it now the bound. 
 
 " This hugging close drive steeds and chariot nigh. 
 
 " Thyself in well- wove chariot ^^^ bending stond 
 
 " A little to their left. And right steed ply 
 
 With goad and cheer, and reins in hand let loosely lie. 
 
558 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 *' To bound let left-hand steed approach so near, 
 ^' That nave of well- wrought wheel shall seem to thee 
 <« To graze its top, but see that stone thou clear, 
 ^* Lest steeds thou wound, and shatter chariot, glee 
 " And sport for others, thy disgrace ^t will be. 
 " But if thou 'rt wise, my son, keep watchful eye. 
 " If once thou pass the bound then will not he . 
 " That follows overtake, or pass thee by, 
 Not though behind he did divine Areion ply, 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Adrastus' courser fleet, a god's its race, 
 " Nor those Laomedon's, here famous bred." 
 So spake Neleian Nestor, and in 's place 
 
 , Sat down, when sum of each t' his son he 'd said. 
 And Merion fifth fair horses harnessed. 
 They mounted cars, and lots in helmet threw. 
 Achilles shook. Out Nestor's son's lot fled, 
 Antilochus. The next Eumelus drew. 
 
 Whom did Atrides Menelaus, spear-renown'd, ensue. 
 
 XLT. 
 
 Next him ^t was Merion's turn to drive. And so 
 Was last, far best, Tydides, steeds to ply. 
 They stood in rank. Achilles bounds did show 
 In smooth plain far, and plac'd a watcher by. 
 The godlike Phoenix, father's squire, to eye 
 The race, and truth thereof report. And they 
 Together all o'er steeds lift whips on high. 
 And smite with thongs, with eager words inveigh. 
 These rapid scour the plain with speed from ships away. 
 
BOOK xxiii. 39 — 44. 559 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Dust 'neath their chests like cloud or tempest rose, 
 Manes toss'd i' th' breeze. Cars now on fertile ground 
 Would go, now spring up high. In seat did those 
 Who drave them stand. The heart of each did bound. 
 Eager to win. They urg'd with shout and sound 
 The steeds who flew, and dust stirr'd through the plain. 
 But when the rapid horses reach'd the bound 
 Of course, and turn'd to hoary sea again. 
 The worth of each was seen, when steeds their running 
 strain. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Swift then Eumelus' rapid steeds career. 
 Them Diomedes' Trojan steeds ensue. 
 Nor far apart were they, but very near. 
 And seeming as they ^d mount his chariot, drew, 
 And on Eumelus' back and shoulders blew 
 Hot breath. They fly with heads that him o'erhong, 
 And now had pass'd, or victVy twixt the two 
 Made doubtful, but 'gainst Tydeus' son was strong 
 Phoebus Apollo's wrath, who from his hands bright whip 
 y-flong. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Then from his eyes the tears in anger flow'd, 
 For those still faster coursing he doth view, 
 While hinder'd his do run withouten goad. 
 Apollo's harmful craft Athen^ knew 
 'Gainst Tydeus' son. Folk-shepherd quick pursue 
 She did, restore his whip, his horses rouse. 
 Then on Admetus' son the goddess drew. 
 And wroth brake horses' yoke. And each way those 
 ^ The horses start aside. To ground the car-pole goes. 
 
560 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Himself from chariot roird by wheel he lies, 
 Nose, mouth, and elbow torn, and forehead brave 
 Above the eye-brows bruis'd. And both his eyes 
 Did fill with tears. In 's throat his clear voice clave. 
 Tydides passing th' whole-hoof'd horses drave 
 Far 'fore the rest. Such strength Athene breeds 
 In those his coursers, him high glory gave. 
 Next him Atrides Menelaus yedes. 
 Of auburn hair. Antilochus exhorts his father's steeds : — 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " On quick, your utmost strain. I not indeed 
 *^ Bid you with steeds of war-skill'd Tydeus' son 
 *' Contend. For unto them Athene speed 
 " Hath granted now, bestow'd on him renown. 
 " But quick o'ertake the steeds of Atreus' son. 
 " Be not out-stript, lest shame pour on you she, 
 " Aithe the mare. Ye 're best, why be out-run ? 
 " But this, I say, which shall accomplish'd be, 
 *' Have care from Nestor, people-shepherd, shall not ye; 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " With brass he '11 slay you both if slack we bear 
 " The worser prize. On, then, at top of speed. 
 *' This I '11 contrive, by guile to pass him where 
 " Narrows the way. 'T will 'scape me not indeed." 
 He said. The king's rebuke they fear, and yede 
 Quicker a while. In hollow road soon spied 
 A strait Antilochus of battle-greed. 
 A cleft i' th' ground it was, where, winter-tide. 
 Had gath'ring water burst the way, deep place out hollow'd 
 wide. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 45 — 50. 561 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 There Menelaus shunning wheel-shock drew. 
 Drave whole-hoofd steeds Antilochus aside 
 From way, and somewhat swerving did pursue. 
 Atrides fear'd. T' Antilochus he cried : — 
 " Driv'st madly. Check thy steeds, the way 's not wide, 
 " Antilochus. Thou 'It pass in wider soon 
 " Lest both thou hurt if 'gainst my car thou ride." 
 He said. Antilochus drave fiercer on. 
 And urg'd his steeds with goad, as though he 'd heard him 
 none. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 As far as quoit from shoulder hurled goes. 
 That young man hurls to make of strength assay, 
 So far their steeds do run. But fell back those 
 Of Atreus' son, who did his driving stay 
 Lest whole-hoofd horses clash in narrow way. 
 And comely cars overturn, and fall they there 
 r th' dust, on vict 'ry bent. Then chiding say 
 Did Menelaus of the auburn hair : — 
 " Antilochus, than thou more baneful mortal ne'er. 
 
 " Away with thee ! Not truly judge thee wise 
 " Did we Achasans sooth. But bear away 
 " Thou shalt not yet withouten oath the prize." 
 This said, he cheer'd his steeds, and thus did say : — 
 " Stand not heart-grieving there, do not delay, 
 " For feet and knees they '11 tire in their career 
 " Sooner than you ; for both lack youth do they." 
 'T was thus he spake. The king's rebuke they fear, 
 And onwards swifter run, and soon to them were near. 
 
 o 
 
562 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 The Argives there in circus seated view 
 The steeds that dust through plain upflinging fly. 
 Steeds Cretans' chief Idomeneus first knew, 
 Who 'bove th' assembly sat on watch-tower high, 
 And driver yet afar he knew by 's cry, 
 And noted foremost steed did recognize, 
 Which all else red, yet did on 's forehead lie 
 White spot, and round as is the moon. Then rise 
 He did, and speech to th' Argives utter on this wise :- 
 
 LII. 
 
 " friends, that Argives' chiefs and princes be, 
 
 " Do I alone discern the horses here, 
 
 " Or see them also you ? Other to me 
 
 " In sooth the foremost horses do appear, 
 
 " And other seemeth too the charioteer. 
 
 *' Hurt, perhaps, i' th' plain, who were the best do lie, 
 
 " For first I saw them round the post career, 
 
 " But now I cannot them at all descry. 
 
 Though all the Trojan plain mine eyes do searching spy. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 " Sure slipt the reins, unable driver 's been 
 " Eound post restrain, and turn it with success ; 
 " But falling there hath broke the car, I ween, 
 " And they 've left road when rage did them possess. 
 " But rise yourselves and judge. For I confess 
 " I see not clear. But seems ^tolian-bred 
 " The man, a ruler 'mong the Argive race, 
 " Steed-taming Tydeus' son, strong Diomed." 
 Him scornfully rebuk'd Oilean Ajax swift, and said : — 
 
BOOK XXIII. 51 — 56. 563 
 
 LIV. 
 
 " Idomeneus, why prate so ? These be now 
 " Afar the toss-foot mares, through vast plain yede. 
 " Nor art so youthful 'mong the Argives thou, 
 " Nor in thy head thine eyes so sharp to heed. 
 '' But still thou prat'st with words when is no need 
 *' For thee to chatter, when thy betters by. 
 " These be the foremost steeds as erst indeed 
 " Eumelus owns, who holding reins doth ply." 
 Him answer'd then enrag'd the Cretans' chieftain high : — 
 
 LV. 
 
 " Ajax, best brawler, evil-tongu'd ; but last 
 " Of Argives in all else, of soul uncouth, 
 " Let 's tripod stake, or cauldron on this cast ; 
 " Atrides Agamemnon make we both 
 " The judge if mares be foremost. So the truth 
 '' By loss thou 'It know." He said. Oileus' son, 
 Swift Ajax, rose with words to answer wroth. 
 And strife between the two had farther gone 
 Had not Achilles' self upstood, and spoke to them anon :• 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " No more now bitter words exchange ye ill, 
 " Ajax, Idomeneus. ' T is fitting none. 
 " You'd blame another for't. But sit ye still 
 " I' th' cirque, and watch the steeds. They will anon 
 " Be here, on vict'ry bent. Ye then each one 
 " The Argives' steeds which last which first will know." 
 He said. And driving near came Tydeus' son. 
 Plying shoulders still with whip. The steeds up-throw 
 Their hoofs, and quick accomplishing their way they go. 
 
 o o 2 
 
564 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 With dust-drops aye they spatter charioteer. 
 Car deck'd with gold and tin doth steeds ensue^ 
 Nor mark of wheels behind doth much appear 
 In the fine dust, so swiftly sooth they flew. 
 Mid-cirque it stood. The steeds much sweat out-threw 
 From neck and chest to ground. Himself y-sprong 
 To ground from car, all glist'ring bright to view, 
 And whip 'gainst yoke he leant. Nor loiter'd long, 
 But eager take the prize did Sthenelus the strong. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 And woman gave t' his mates to lead, and tripod ear'd 
 To bear, then horses loos'd. Steeds next doth ply 
 Antilochus Neleian, who career'd 
 By guile not speed 'fore Menelaus high. 
 Yet Menelaus kept his swift steeds nigh. 
 As far as steed from wheel that king apace 
 Draws o'er the plain with car. Whose tail-hairs fly 
 And wheel-tire touch. So close he runs that space 
 There is not much as over mickle plain they race. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 So far was Menelaus distanc'd there 
 B' Antilochus. Quoit's cast at first but soon 
 Fetch'd up. Such force had Agamemnon's mare 
 The well-man'd ^Ethe. Had they further run 
 He 'd caught him, or made doubtful who had won. 
 Merion, Idomeneus' brave foll'wer though, 
 Was left of Menelaus of renown, 
 A javelin's cast. His fair-man'd steeds were slow, 
 And he the worst at race to make a chariot go. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 57 — 62. 565 
 
 LX. 
 
 And last of all the rest Admetus' son 
 Came trailing lovely car, and 'fore him did 
 The horses drive. And him the swift-foot one 
 Divine Achilles seeing pitied. 
 
 'Mong th' Argives standing, winged words he said : — 
 " Best man the last the whole-hoof 'd horses plies, 
 " Yet be to him as fit apportioned 
 *' Second, and Tydeus' son take chiefest prize." 
 He said, and all applaud the thing he did advise. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 He 'd given him sooth the mare as judg'd it good 
 Th' Achaeans, but Antilochus anon, 
 The high-soul'd Nestor's ojQPspring, there upstood 
 Answ'ring on right Achilles Peleus' son : — 
 " Achilles, thou wilt me if this be done 
 " Much anger. Thou my prize wouldst take away, 
 ** Since hurt his car and steeds, himself being one 
 " Of mickle skill. But then behoov'd him pray 
 ** Unto the gods, and then he 'd not drove up the last to- 
 day. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 ** If him thou pitiest, and mind so leads, 
 
 " There 's in thy tent much gold, and brass there lies, 
 
 ** And sheep thou hast, and slaves, and whole-hoof'd 
 
 steeds. 
 " Of these hereafter give him better prize, 
 *' Or now at once, that thee th' Achaeans praise. 
 " This mare I '11 not give up. For her contend 
 " With me who will with hands in manly wise." 
 He spake. Achilles smiling did attend, 
 Pleas'd with Antilochus who was his valued friend. 
 
 o o 3 
 
566 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 And him wing'd words address'd he in reply : — 
 " Antilochus, of things at home y-pight 
 " Thou bidst me give Eumelus. Do 't will I; 
 " And corselet, from Asteropaeus wight 
 " I took, will give, of brass, with pouring bright 
 " Of tin around ; rare gift and excellent." 
 This said, he bade from tent dear comrade hight 
 Automedon to bring it forth, who went 
 And brought and gave 't Eumelus, which he joyful hent.^^^ 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Heart-griev'd rose Menelaus, anger'd deep 
 Against Antilochus. The herald plac'd 
 Sceptre in *s hands, bade Argives silence keep. 
 Then spake the godlike man ; — " Erst wise what hast 
 " Thou done, Antilochus ? Thou hast disgraced 
 " My manhood, injuring my steeds, thine own 
 " Driving before, although far-slower pac'd. 
 " But come ye, Argives' chiefs and princes, on 
 ' This case between us judge, and favour neither one. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 " Let none of brazen-mail'd Achaeans say 
 " That Menelaus hath by fraud borne down 
 " Antilochus, and ta'en his mare away, 
 " Whose steeds were worse, but he the better one 
 " For force and skill. But I will judge, and none 
 " Methinks will blame me of the Danai, 
 " For right shall be. Antilochus, come on, 
 " Zeus-bred, as just. Stand steeds and chariot by, 
 *' And hold in hand the flexile whip, that erst didst ply. 
 
I 
 
 BOOK xxiii. 63 — 68. 667 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 u 
 
 " Touch now the steeds, by gird-earth Shake-Earth swear 
 
 " Not willing thou didst stop by guile my car." 
 
 Prudent Antilochus replied : — . " Forbear 
 
 ** Me now, King Menelaus, who am far 
 
 ** Thy younger. Older, worthier thou. What are 
 
 " Youth's trespasses thou know'st how they exceed. 
 
 " Too nimble mind, which counsel scant doth mar. 
 
 " So then thy heart forbear. I '11 give the steed 
 
 I took ; and if some greater thing thou wouldst indeed, 
 
 LXVIT. 
 
 " That I Ve at home, I '11 instant give it thee, 
 " Sooner than all my days, Zeus-bred one, 
 " Fall from thy grace, to th' gods a sinner be." 
 I So spake, and steed led high-sourd Nestor's son, 
 And gave to Menelaus' hand. Whereon 
 His heart grew glad, as dew doth corn-ears make, 
 When bristle all the fields with corn up-grown. 
 So, Menelaus, joy thy soul did take. 
 And him addressing then these winged words he spake :- 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 " Antilochus, I '11 yield, though wroth. Not mad 
 
 " Nor light wast erst ! 'T was youth sense master'd now. 
 
 " Best shun to cheat thy betters. Mov'd me had 
 
 '* None other of th' Achaeans soon, I trow, 
 
 " But much hast suffer'd, much hast toiled thou, 
 
 " And thy good sire, and brother eke, for me. 
 
 " So to thy prayer I '11 yield, and steed also 
 
 " That 's mine will give ; that these too here may see 
 
 There 's no o'erweening soul implacable in me." 
 
 o o 4 
 
568 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 He said, and mare to lead Noeraon gave, 
 Friend of Antilochus. Bright cauldron then 
 He took. Gold talents twain did Merion have 
 Fourth as he drove. The fifth prize did remain, 
 Ear'd phial. Unto Nestor this up-ta'en 
 Achilles gave, through Achives session bore : — 
 " Take, father, this memorial-gift retain 
 " Patroclus burying, whom thou 'It no more 
 ** 'Mong Argives see. I give thee this without contending 
 for. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " For thou 'It not box nor wrestle, javelin-game 
 " Not try, nor race on foot. Harsh age doth weigh 
 " On thee." He said, and gave t' his hands, who same 
 Took glad, and winged words addressed him : — " Yea, 
 " All these, my son, thou dost most justly say. 
 " Not firm my limbs, my friend, nor feet, nor stir 
 " My arms at shoulders now with nimble play. 
 " But would that young, and whole of strength I were, 
 " As when th' Ep^ans mighty Amarynceus did inter, 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 ** There in Buprasium. Games the king's sons set. 
 ** Epei, Pylians bold, JEtolians none 
 " There match'd me. Enops' son at fist I beat, 
 ** Hight Olytomede ; and wrestling Pleuron-one 
 " Ancaeus who upstood. With feet out-run 
 " Iphiclus swift I did. With spear o'ercast 
 " Phyleus and Polydore. With steeds alone 
 " Actorion's sons by number me surpass'd, 
 ** Jealous of vict'ry, since best prizes left to last. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 69—74. 569 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 " Twins were they. One held reins, the reins held aye 
 
 " One whipp'd the steeds. Such was I once, but now 
 
 " Such works be younger men's. Sad age must I 
 
 " Obey, but then 'mong heroes shone. But go, 
 
 " Perform to friend the games funereal thou. 
 
 " This willingly I take, my heart is glad, 
 
 " Thou thinkest aye of me, well-wisher thine, nor how 
 
 " I should by th' Achives be in honour had 
 
 Forget'st. So give thee gods sweet recompense." He said. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Pelides pac'd th' Achaeans' mickle throng, 
 When praise all heard from Neleus' son he had. 
 Hard-boxing prizes set. A mule full strong 
 Six years, untam'd and hard to tame he lad 
 And tied i' th' cirque. And plac'd for vanquished 
 Kound cup, then stood, and Argives word address'd : — 
 " Atrides, and Achaeans buskin-clad, 
 " Two men from these we bid that are the best 
 " With fist uplifted high they striking here contest. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " To whom Apollo staunchness ^^^ gives, and all 
 " Th' Achaeans know 't, strong mule to tent shall lead; 
 " But vanquish'd shall round goblet take withal." 
 He said. Rose strong huge man who did exceed 
 In boxing- skill, Epeus, who was seed 
 Of Panopeus. Strong mule he touch'd, and cried : — 
 " Come near who goblet round will take indeed, 
 " Take mule, methinks, no Achive will beside 
 " Overcoming me. On being best myself I pride. 
 
570 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 " Is 't not enough I 'm worse in battle? None 
 " In every work a skilful man will make. 
 " But this I say, and sooth it shall be done ; 
 " I '11 flesh quite burst, and bones together break. 
 " His friends then stay together here to take 
 " Him hence away beneath my hands subdued." 
 He said. And all grew silent as he spake. 
 Sole godlike man Eurj^alus up- stood 
 The son of king Mecisteus who, Talaion's brood, 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 When (Edipus deceased, to Thebes did wend 
 To th' fun'ral games, overcame Cadmaeans all. 
 Whose son spear- fam'd Tydides now did tend. 
 And cheer with words, much wishing vict'ry fall 
 To him. First girdle 'fore him cast withal. 
 Then gave him well-cut thongs from wild-ox slain. 
 Mid-cirque these girded go, and fight install, 
 And lift oppos'd their mighty hands the twain 
 At once, and to it fell, stout hands commix'd amain. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Dire crash of jaws arose. Their limbs out-pour 
 On all sides sweat. Divine Epeus rose 
 And him round gazing smote on ear. No more 
 He stood. Limbs sank. As fish when Boreas blows 
 Up leaps to weedy shore, then o'er it close 
 Doth dark swell straight. So leap'd he up y-smote. 
 With hand high-soul'd Epeus rais'd him ; those 
 His friends around from circus led him out 
 With trailing feet, out-spewing blood, and rolling head 
 about. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 75 — 80. 571 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Him leading they among them set distraught, 
 And went and took round cup. Pelides though 
 Third other prizes for hard wrestling brought, 
 And there unto the Danai did show 
 For conq'ror tripod huge, on fire would go, 
 Of oxen twelve its worth th' Achaeans make. 
 The conquer'd man should woman, who did know 
 Works manifold, and worth four oxen, take. 
 Then up he stood, and 'mong the Argives word he spake : — 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 " Arise now, ye who '11 try this contest too." 
 He spake. Huge Telamonian Ajax rose. 
 Rose wise Odysseus eke, that cunning knew. 
 And, girding them, forth went mid-circus those, 
 And, grip'd with stalwart hands each other, close. 
 As rafters cross, which builder of renown 
 In high house sets against strong wind that blows. 
 And then their backs indeed, do creak and sown^^''. 
 By strong hands stoutly pull'd, and moist 'ning sweat ran 
 down. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 On sides and shoulders thick the whelks spring out, 
 Redd'ning with blood. So eagerly they long 
 For vict'ry there, for tripod cunning wrought. 
 Odysseus trip could not nor lay along, 
 Nor Ajax him. Odysseus' strength stood strong. 
 When well-greav'd Achives 'gan a- weary be, 
 Then spake huge Ajax Telamon : — " Zeus-sprong 
 " Son of Laertes, craft Odysseus, me 
 " Uplift or thee will I. And Zeus all these o'ersee." 
 
572 THE ILIAD. 
 
 - -^ 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 He said, and lifted him. Odysseus though 
 Forgat not guile, but smote at bend of knee 
 Behind, and loos'd his limbs, on back did throw. 
 On chest Odysseus fell. The people see 
 And are astound. Then second lifted he, 
 Divine Odysseus, that could much sustain ; 
 . Stirs him a-bit, from ground not lifts ; for knee 
 Did bend, and on the ground there fell the twain 
 By one another near, and them the dust doth stain. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Rising they 'd third time striven, but in troth 
 Achilles' self upstood, and did denay : — 
 " No longer strive, nor hurt yourselves. Of both 
 " Is vict'ry, equal prizes bear away. 
 " Go, that contend now other Achives may." 
 He said. They heark'ned, and full prompt obeyed, 
 Did wipe off dust, in garments them array. 
 And quick Pelides other prizes laid 
 For swiftness. Silver bowl elaborately made, 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Six-measur'd, earth's most lovely 't was, for wrought 
 It had Sidonians skill'd. O'er darksome sea 
 Phoenician men, in sooth, the same y-brought, 
 And set in port for Thoas gift to be. 
 This from Euneiis Jason's son to free 
 Lycaon Priam's son, Patroclus gat. 
 Which now Achilles set for 's friend, that he 
 Who fleetest was a-foot make prize of that. 
 For second prize he plac'd enormous ox, and fat. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 81—86. 573 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Half talent gold he set for last, and stood 
 Erect, and words to th^ Argives spake : — " Come on, 
 " Ye who this contest too adventure would." 
 Uprose Oilean Ajax swift anon, 
 And up Odysseus wise, then Nestor's son, 
 Antilochus, who did all youths out-speed 
 A-foot. In rank they stood. B' Achilles shown 
 The term, from lists they start. Quick takes the lead 
 Oiliades. Divine Odysseus next doth yede. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 And near as is to well-zon'd woman's breast 
 Leash-rod, which she with hands doth tighten aye, 
 From shuttle drawing woof, and near her chest 
 Still keepeth it, so ran Odysseus nigh, 
 And in his foot-prints trod, or ere could fly 
 The dust from thence dispersed. Pour'd on his head 
 Hot breath, still running, swift Odysseus high, 
 And shouted all Achaeans as he sped 
 On vict'ry bent, and eager him encouraged. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 When near the end of course, Odysseus prayer 
 In mind t' Athene, azure-eyed, preferr'd : — 
 " Hear, goddess, aid my feet." So praying there 
 He spake, and him Pallas Athene heard. 
 Did limbs, and feet, and hands, with swiftness gird. 
 But when at point to dart on prize the twain. 
 Then Ajax running slipp'd, b' Athene marr'd, 
 Where slaughter'd lowing oxen's dung y-lain. 
 Which for Patroclus had swift-foot Achilles slain. 
 
574 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 His moutli and nostrils fiU'd with oxen's dung. 
 So bowl up-took, that much enduring wight, 
 Divine Odysseus, who before him sprung. 
 And take the ox did he then, Ajax bright, 
 And stood with hands on horns of field-ox pight. 
 And dung out-sputt'ring spake ^mong Argives he : - 
 " Sure goddess marred my feet. As mother might 
 " Stands by Odysseus aye, and aids him she." 
 He said, and at him they all laughen pleasantly. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 Antilochus the last prize taketh so, 
 And smiling did to Argives words address : — 
 " I speak to you of what ye all do know, 
 " How yet th' immortals men more ancient grace. 
 " Than I whit older 's Ajax. But of race 
 " Preceding, and of former men this one, 
 " A crude old man, they say ; 't is hard to pace 
 " With him a-foot for Argives, save alone 
 " Achilles." Thus he said, extolling Peleus' swift-foot son. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Him answering then with words Achilles said : — 
 " Antilochus, for thee not spoke in vain 
 " This praise shall be. Half-talent gold I '11 add." 
 He spake, and plac'd in 's hands, who took it fain. 
 Pelides next a long-shade spear up-ta'en 
 Did bring, and in the midst of circus lay. 
 With shield, and helmet, armour erst of slain 
 Sarpedon, which Patroclus took away. 
 Erect he stood, and word did 'mong the Argives say : 
 
BOOK XXIII. 87 — 92. 575 
 
 xc. 
 
 " Two men for these we bid, who are the best, 
 " Their arms endue, take brass that flesh doth brast, 
 " And with each other 'fore the throng contest. 
 " To him that doth, at fair flesh making thrust, 
 " Through arms touch that within, and black blood first, 
 " I '11 give this silver-studded falchion fair, 
 " Thracian, which from Asteropseus erst 
 " I took. These arms let both in common bear, 
 " And goodly banquet eke I '11 cause for them in tent 
 prepare." 
 
 xci. 
 
 He said. Then rose huge Ajax Telamon, 
 Eose, too, Tydides, mighty Diomed. 
 Their arms each side from crowd apart they don, 
 And, battle-eager, at each other sped 
 With fiercest looks. Seiz'd all AchaBans dread. 
 When on each other running nigh they were. 
 Thrice sooth they rush'd, and thrice close onset made. 
 Ajax the all-sides-equal buckler there 
 Y-smote but reach'd not flesh, for inside fenc'd it cuirass 
 fair. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 Tydides o'er huge shield at neck would strike 
 With bright spear's point. Th' Achaeans fearing there 
 For Ajax, bade them cease, take prizes like. 
 The hero gave Tydides mighty falchion fair, 
 With scabbard bringing it, and well-cut baldric rare. 
 Pelides rough cast iron globe did lay, 
 W^hich wont Eetion's strength to hurl whilere, 
 Whom did swift-foot divine Achilles slay. 
 And this with other chattels brought in ships away. 
 
576 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 He stood and utter'd speech the Argives 'mong : — 
 " Arise who will this contest also try. 
 " Though fertile fields be his outstretching long 
 " He '11 have for use while five full years do fly, 
 *^ Shepherd or ploughman, he will have it nigh, 
 " Nor lacking iron need to seek the town." 
 He said. Rose bide-fight Polypaetes high, 
 Leonteus' mighty strength, gods' paragon, 
 And Telamonian Ajax, and Epeus godlike one. 
 
 xciv. 
 
 They stood in rank. Took globe, and rolling launch 
 It did Epeus. Th' Achives laugh thereon. 
 And second hurl'd Leonteus Ares' branch. 
 Third hurl'd it mighty Ajax Telamon 
 From stout hand past the marks of every one. 
 But when took bide-fight Polypaetes high 
 The globe, as far as stafi^ 's by ox-herd thrown, 
 Which whirling doth through herds of oxen fly, 
 So far beyond them all he threw. They utter cry. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Strong Polypaetes' comrades then arose, 
 With sovereign's prize to th' hollow ships they go. 
 For archers he doth iron dark propose, 
 Ten axes eke, half -axes ten bestow. 
 And ship's mast set of dark caerulean prow 
 Afar in sand. And timid dove by th' foot 
 Thereto with thin cord tied, and bade with bow 
 They shoot. And who the timid dove y-smote. 
 Take axes all, and bear them to his tent he mote. 
 
BOOK XXIII. 93—98. 577 
 
 xcvi. 
 
 " But whoso hits the string, and bird doth miss, 
 " Inferior sooth is he, and shall for prize 
 " The semi-axes have." When spake he this, 
 Then did King Teucer's strength ^^^ to this emprize," 
 And Merion eke, Idomeneus' good servant, rise. 
 The lots y-ta'en in helmet shaken were. 
 First lot had Teucer. Arrow straight he plies, 
 And sent it strong ; to th' King ^^^ though vow'd not there 
 Of firstling lambs a hecatomb to offer fair. 
 
 xcvii. 
 
 The bird he miss'd ; for Phcebus grudg'd the thing, 
 But cord he smote, where bird by th' foot was tied. 
 The bitter arrow sever'd there the string. 
 And up she flew to th' sky, and down did slide 
 The string to ground. Th' Achseans shouting cried. 
 And Merion hast'ning snatch'd from 's hands away 
 The bow. But shaft, he 'd ready kept, applied. 
 And to Far-dart Apollo, sans delay, 
 Yow'd firstling lambs a goodly hecatomb to slay. 
 
 xcviii. 
 
 Aloft beneath the clouds he there doth view 
 The fearful dove, and her y-circling round 
 He smote i' th' midst ^^^ beneath the wing, and through 
 The arrow went, and back unto the ground 
 Infix'd at Merion's feet. The bird doth stond 
 On ship-mast perch'd of the casrulean prow. 
 And droop'd her neck, and wings y-fiutter'd fond. 
 But life from limbs soon fled ; far thence below ^^^ 
 She fell. The people gaz'd astound to see it so. 
 
 p p 
 
578 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Up took Meriones all axes ten, 
 Teucer to tli' hollow ships th' half-axes bore. 
 Pelides sooth a spear long-shadow'd then, 
 And iireless cauldron setteth them before. 
 Of worth an ox, with Howers enamelFd o'er, 
 Mid-cirque he set. Rose spear-men, Atreus' son. 
 Great Agamemnon, of wide-ruling power, 
 Idomeneus' brave servant, Merion. 
 To them spake he Achilles swift-foot godlike one : — 
 
 ** Atrides, for full well we know thou art 
 " Surpassing all how far, in puissance how 
 " Indeed the best, most skill' d to hurl the dart, 
 " This prize to th' hollow ships take with thee thou, 
 " And spear to hero Merion give we now 
 '^ If thou in mind so will ; I but advise." 
 He said. Men's sovran Agamemnon so, 
 Yielding to Merion brazen spear, complies. 
 To Talthyb herald th' hero gave his lovely prize. ^^ 
 
THE ILIAD. 
 
 BOOK XXIV, 
 
 Dissolved th' assembly, and the people there 
 Disperse to th* ships that swiftly sail the deep, 
 'hese supper and sweet sleep t' enjoy prepare. 
 ^Achilles, friend rememb'ring dear, doth weep, 
 _^Nor taketh him the all-subduer sleep. 
 
 'oss to and fro he doth, and more and more 
 Patroclus' force and strength regretting keep ; 
 What things he 'd wrought with him, what sorrows sore 
 Endur'dj and wars of men, rough billows crossing o'er. 
 
 li. 
 
 Rememb'ring these, he plenteous tears doth pour. 
 On sides now lain, now back, now face ; then rose 
 And wander'd sad along the briny shore. 
 Nor unobserv'd of him the morning shows 
 O'er sea and strand. He doth swift steeds dispose 
 And yoke to car, to chariot Hector tie^ 
 To drag behind, and dragging thrice he goes 
 Round tomb of dead Men oe tins' offspring high. 
 Then rests in tent, but him in dust leaves stretch'd on face 
 to lie. 
 
 p p 2 
 
580 THE ILIAD. 
 
 III. 
 
 Him Phoebus kept from shame. 0* th' man he 'd ruth 
 Though dead, with golden a^gis screen'd, whereby 
 Not dragging tear him he, who, raging sooth. 
 Hector ill treats. Him gods with ruth espy, 
 And steal him urge scout Argeiphontes high. 
 This rede pleas'd all but Here not, nor strong 
 Poseidon, nor the Virgin Azure-Eye. 
 They kept as erst, blest Ilium all along 
 Detesting, Priam, and his folk, for Alexander's wrong, 
 
 IV. 
 
 Who goddesses that came t' his dwelling slighted, 
 Her praised who fatal joyaunce promised. 
 And when now thence had morn the twelfth uplighted, 
 Phoebus Apollo 'mong th' immortals said : — 
 " Hard are ye, gods pernicious ! Hector did 
 " Fair beeves and goats' thighs burn to you, who'll none 
 " Endure that he be rescued now, though dead, 
 " That him his wife and mother eke, and son, 
 " And father Priam, and his people look upon. 
 
 " Who 'd burn him soon with fire, each fun'ral rite 
 " Perform. But, gods, ye '11 aye this truculent 
 " Achilles aid, though neither just nor right 
 " His mind ; whose purpose stern in breast relent 
 " Doth ne'er. Like lion he, of savage bent, 
 " That stirr'd by strength and spirit high is fain 
 " Men's flocks t' invade, to feast him thence intent, 
 " So hath Achilles sooth all pity slain ; 
 " No shame hath he, which mickle mars or aideth men. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 3—8. 581 
 
 VI. 
 
 " For he that lose a dearer even should, 
 " A brother of same womb or son, yet when 
 " He had bewail'd him, 'bate his sorrow would. 
 " For soul for suff'rance fates have set in men ; 
 " But he doth Hector 'reave of life, and then 
 " To chariot tie, and drag round tomb of friend, 
 " Though small his grace or profit thence I ken. 
 " For though he 's brave he may ourselves offend, 
 ^* And senseless earth it is that he doth raging shend." 
 
 VII. 
 
 To him then white-arm'd Here anger'd spake : — 
 " ' T were as thou sayst, Silver Bow, if peer 
 " Thou canst then with Achilles Hector make. 
 " But mortal's Hector, breast of woman mere 
 " He suck'd. Achilles is a goddess' seed. I rear 
 " Her did, and consort her to man commend, 
 " To Peleus, who t' immortals was so dear ; 
 " The nuptials you, ye gods, did all attend, 
 " And 'mong them thou didst feast with harp, faithless 
 aye ill- doers' friend ! " 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Her answ'ring cloud- compelling Zeus address'd : — 
 " Her^, be not too wroth with gods. Not one 
 " Shall th' honour be to both. But Hector 's best 
 " Belov'd of gods 'mong men in Ilium wone. 
 " And so of me. Sweet gifts he stinted none, 
 " For ne'er mine altar miss'd of banquet fit 
 " Libation, or of fume ; which meed 's our own. 
 " Let 's thought of stealing Hector bold remit, 
 ^' Which may not be without Achilles knowing it. 
 
 p p 3 
 
582 THE ILIAD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " His mother aye^^^ doth watch him night and day. 
 " But if o' th' gods one Thetis call to me, 
 " I '11 shrewd word tell her how Achilles may 
 " From Priam presents get, and Hector free." 
 Rose storm-foot Iris messenger to be. 
 'Twixt Samos and rough Imbros did she spring 
 r th' darkling deep. The lake did groan, but she 
 Reach'd depth hke plummet on ox-horn, a thing 
 To greedy gulping fishes doth destruction bring. 
 
 X, 
 
 Thetis she finds in hollow cave, and round 
 Her sit the other goddesses of sea. 
 She in the midst deplores her son renowned, 
 For die in Troy from country far must he. 
 Stood near and spake then Iris, swift-foot she : — 
 " Up, Thetis ; calls thee Zeus, of deathless rede." 
 Spake Thetis goddess Silver-foot : — " Why me 
 *^ Calls the great god ? For 'mong th' immortals yede 
 " I am asham'd. My spirit's woes all count exceed. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Nathless I '11 go. Not vain what speaketh he." 
 The goddess took her veil, so having said, — 
 Black veil, a garment blacker could not be. 
 She starts. Swift wind-foot Iris 'fore her led. 
 Around them both the sea asunder fled. 
 The shore ascending rush they to the sky. 
 Loud Kronides they find where gathered 
 Sat th' other blessed gods that be for aye. 
 By Zeus the Sire she sat, Athene making way. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 9 — 14. 583 
 
 XII. 
 
 Here t' her hand gave goblet golden then, 
 And cheer'd with words. And Thetis' drank, and so 
 Gave 't back. 'Gan speech the Sire of gods and men : — 
 " Thou 'rt come t' Olympus, goddess Thetis, though 
 " In grief, and in thine heart forgetless woe. 
 " I know't; but why I call'd thee here I'll speak. 
 " Nine days doth discord 'mong th' immortals grow ; 
 " 'Bout Hector's corse, sack-town Achilles eke. 
 " To stir keen Argeiphontes on to steal 't they seek. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " But I '11 this grace Achilles grant, and so 
 " Regard and friendship past t'wards thee maintain ; 
 "But quick to th' host thy son commanding go. 
 " Say gods are wroth, and of immortals main 
 " I 'm wroth, that mad he '11 by curv'd ships detain, 
 " Nor ransom'd Hector loose. But fears he me, 
 " He '11 Hector loose. But Iris I '11 ordain 
 " To high-soul'd Priam go, that son he free, 
 " To th' Achives' ships with gifts to sooth Achilles going 
 he." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 'T was thus he spake. Nor soothly not comply 
 Did goddess Thetis Silver-Foot, but went. 
 And rushing down Olympus' summits high, 
 T' her son's pavilion came. Him in lament. 
 And groaning found, and 'bout him diligent. 
 His comrades busy dinner do prepare. 
 Huge woolly sheep was slain them in the tent. 
 Close to him sat his honour' d mother fair, 
 And sooth'd with hand, spake word, by name address'd 
 him there : — 
 
 p p 4 
 
584 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 " My child, how long y-griev'd, and sad wilt eat 
 
 " Thy heart ? Nor bread nor bed rememb'ring thou, 
 
 " Though good with woman have communion sweet? 
 
 " For thou 'It not live me long^^^, for near thee now 
 
 " At hand is death and mast'ring fate, I trow. 
 
 " But hear me quick. Zeus' messenger to thee 
 
 " Am I. The gods are wroth, he says, and mo 
 
 " Than all himself, that thou so mad wilt be, 
 
 As Hector keep by th' curved ships, nor ransom'd free. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " But free at ransom then the corse." Replied 
 Swift-foot Achilles : — " Come with ransom one, 
 " And take the corse, since so himself decide 
 " Olympius doth." So mother much with son 
 By th' gather'd ships in wing'd words talked on. 
 To Ilium KronideS doth Iris speed : — ■ 
 " Swift Iris, from Olympus' seat begone, 
 " And bid at Ilium high-soul'd Priam yede 
 " To th' Achives' ships, to have his son at ransom freed. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " And take t' Achilles gifts to pacify 
 " His soul. And go alone, nor man beside 
 " Of Trojans thither him accompany. 
 " But herald somewhat ag^d with him ride, 
 " That shall the mules and well-wheel'd wagon guide, 
 " And corse bring back, divine Achilles slew. 
 " Of death let him not think nor fear ; provide 
 " I will such consort Argeiphontes, who 
 " Shall him conduct, conduct Achilles' presence to. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 15 — 20. 585 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " And when he 's brought within Achilles' tent 
 " He 11 slay him not, but from all others fend. 
 " Not senseless wanton he, nor negligent 
 " Of right, but ruth to suppliant will extend." 
 He said. With message storm-foot Iris wend 
 To Priam's did. And iindeth wail and woe. 
 Sat children round their father reverend 
 I' th' hall, their garments wet with tears that flow. 
 Sire midst them wrapt in cloak close drawn that form did 
 show. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Much dirt did head and neck of sire, which heap 
 He did with own hands rolling in 't, display. 
 His daughters through the house, and sons' wives weep, 
 The many and the brave rememb'ring they. 
 That reft of life by hands of Argives lay. 
 The messenger of Zeus by Priam stood. 
 Whom trembling seiz'd, till she did whisp'ring say : — 
 " Fear not, Priamus of Dardan brood, 
 " To bode thee ill I come not here, but mean thee good. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " A messenger am I to thee from Zeus, 
 " Who far yet cares for thee, is touch'd with ruth. 
 " Olympius bids thee godlike Hector loose, 
 " And gifts t' Achilles take his soul shall sooth. 
 " Alone, nor with thee Trojan else in truth. 
 " An elder herald with thee wend, who may 
 " Drive mules and well-wheel'd wagon, and to th' town 
 " Bring corse, which did divine Achilles slay. 
 " Nor death be in thy mind, nor thee let aught efFray. 
 
586 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Such guide shall tend, yea, Argeiphontes thee, 
 " Who '11 bring thee to Achilles close. When tent 
 " Thou 'rt in of great Achilles, slay thee he 
 " Will not himself, but others all prevent. 
 " Not senseless wanton he, nor negligent 
 " Of right, but piteous suppliant man will spare." 
 This said, away the swift-foot Iris went. 
 He bade his sons mule- wain well-wheel'd prepare. 
 And on it wicker body fasten eke with care. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Himself to scented chamber did descend. 
 Cedar, high- roof 'd, where mickle wonders be. 
 Wife Hecuba he calFd, and said : — " My friend, 
 " Olympian herald 's been from Zeus to me 
 " To go to th' Achives' ships, and dear son free, 
 " And gifts to sooth Achilles take. But speak 
 " How in thy heart now seemeth this to thee ? 
 " For much myself doth mind and spirit eke 
 *' Impel th' Achseans' ships and ample host to seek.'* 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 He spake. The woman shriek'd, and answer'd then : — 
 " Ah ! where 's thy prudence fled for which time gone 
 " Wast fam'd 'mong subjects, and 'mong stranger-men? 
 " How wouldst to th' ships Achaean wend alone 
 " To that man's eyes, who many a valiant son 
 '* Has slaughter'd thee ? Of iron sure thine heart. 
 " If thee now catch, and set his eyes upon, 
 " That cruel faithless man he '11 not thy smart 
 " Pity or heed. In chamber sitting then let 's weep apart. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 21 — 26. 587 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 ** So from the first to him o'ermast'ring Fate, 
 " When bore him I, in natal thread y-sponne 
 " That he from parents far should swift dogs satiate, 
 " Through that strong man ; whom could I fasten on 
 " And liver eat, my deeds should quite my son. 
 " For him not playing coward did he slay, 
 " Who stood for Trojans and their dames, nor shun 
 " Him did, nor harboured thought to flee away." 
 To her again did god-shap'd aged Priam say : — 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " I 'd go ; not keep me, nor mine ill bird be 
 " In th' house. Thou 'It not persuade. If mortal bade, 
 "Were 't prophet, augur, priest, this thing to me, 
 " Pronounc'd it false, and kept aloof I had ; 
 " Now heard the god and seen, I go ; not said 
 " In vain that word ; but though it be my fate 
 " To die by the ships of th' Achives brazen-clad 
 " I 'm willing. Let Achilles slay me straight, 
 " So I my son embrace, and sorrow's longing satiate." 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 He said, and op'd of chests the lids so fair. 
 Thence took twelve veils, exceeding bright to view, 
 Twelve single cloaks, as many carpets there, 
 As many mantles, vests as many too. 
 Then gold he brought, and weigh'd twelve talents true. 
 Two tripods bright, four cauldrons eke, and one 
 Fair cup, the Thracians gave when there he drew 
 In embassage ; great gift, but spar'd it none 
 In th' house the sire. For he so long'd to free his son. 
 
588 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 He drove from porch all Trojans, roughly chode : — 
 " Hence, wretches vile ! Have ye at home then no 
 " Bewailment, that ye come and grieve me would ? 
 " Or think ye light Zeus Kronides such woe 
 " Gives me to lose my bravest son ? But know 
 " Will you, for easier to th' Ach^eans ye 
 " To slaughter now he 's dead. Before it, though, 
 " Or e'er the ravag'd city waste I see 
 " With these mine eyes, may I in house of Hades be." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 He said, and drave the men with staiF. They run, 
 By th' old man press'd. Who sons doth sharply twight^^^; 
 Helenus, Paris, godlike Agathon, 
 Pammon, Antiphonus, and, good at fight 
 Polites, and Deiphobus, and wight 
 Hippothoiis, and noble Dios high. 
 All nine the old man chideth in despight : — 
 " Make haste, ill children, shameful. Would that by 
 " Swift Achive ships in Hector's stead ye all did slaughter'd 
 lie. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " Ah, hapless me, who sons the bravest have 
 " In Troas broad begot, whereof there 's none 
 " I say now left me. Mestor, godlike brave, 
 " And Troilus, the chariot-fighting one, 
 " And Hector, like a god 'mong men, nor son 
 " Of mortal man in sooth appeared he, 
 " But of a god. These Ares hath fordone, 
 " The sheer shames left, that cheats and dancers be, 
 " Can tread a measure, lambs and kids among the people 
 plunder free. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 27—32. 589 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " Will ye the wain for me not ready make 
 " With speed, and these things all upon it lay, 
 " That we perform our journey ? " Thus he spake. 
 Fearing their sire's rebuke, his sons obey. 
 And mule-drawn well-wheel'd wagon forth convey. 
 Fair, newly made, and body on it strong 
 They tied, and drew from peg mule-yoke away 
 Of box, and boss'd, well set with rings. The thong 
 With yoke they brought out eke, and 'twas nine cubits lon< 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 And this, indeed, they maken featly fast 
 To end of well y-polish'd pole applied. 
 And on the peg of pole the ring they cast, 
 And fasten thrice to boss on either side. 
 Tie down, and end of thong thereunder slide. 
 From chamber bring, and heap on wagon fair 
 Yast price he did for Hector's head provide. 
 And then draught-mules strong hoofed yok'd, that were 
 Those erst the Mysians gave to Priam, presents rare. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 And Priam's horses eke 'neath yoke they led, 
 The which at well y-polish'd manger fair 
 The aged sire himself attending fed. 
 But these in mansion high yoke did the pair ^^\ 
 Herald and Priam, wise of rede they were. 
 And near them Hecuba a sorr'wing came 
 Soul-cheering wine right-hand in gold-cup bare, 
 To make libation ere they go. The dame 
 Before the horses stood, spake word, and call'd by name ; — 
 
590 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 '' Take, pour to Zeus the Sire, pray home again 
 " To come from foes, if soul so urge thee ply 
 '' To th^ ships, though I would not. But do thou then 
 " To th' Cloud-compeller pray, Kronion high, 
 " Idaean, who doth Troas all espy, 
 " And ask for bird, swift messenger, most dear 
 " To him of birds, of greatest strength, to fly 
 " To th' right, that thou with eyes perceive it here, 
 And, trusting it, to ships of swift-steed Danai career. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 " But if his messenger not granteth thee 
 " The wide- voiced Zeus, then bid thee go not I 
 " To th' Argive ships, though thou all eager be." 
 To her spake god-shap'd Priam in reply : — 
 " Woman, this urgent hest I '11 not deny. 
 " Lift hands to Zeus is good, who pity deigns." 
 This said, the sire urg'd stewardess hard by 
 On 's hands pure water pour. The servant stands 
 The basin holding eke, and pitcher in her hands. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 So having wash'd, from spouse he cup did take. 
 And mid-court standing pray'd, pour'd wine, the sky 
 Up-gazing at, and utt'ring word he spake : — 
 " Sire Zeus, from Ida ruling, glorious, high ! 
 " Grant that t' Achilles welcome, pitied^ I 
 " May come. Grant bird swift messenger, most dear 
 " To thee of birds, of greatest strength, do fly 
 " To th' right, that I with eyes perceive it here, 
 " And, trusting it, to ships of swift-steed Danai career." 
 
BOOK XXIV. 33—38. 591 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 So spake he praying. Zeus deep-counsell'd heard, 
 And straight an eagle sent, of birds most sure ^^^, 
 Dark hunter, Percnus eke they call the bird. 
 Wide as expands a lofty chamber's door 
 Of wealthy man, which key can well secure, 
 So were his wings on each side stretching far. 
 To th' right they see him city rushing o'er. 
 They see it glad, their souls delighted are. 
 In haste ascends the sire his well-y -polish' d car. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 From porch he drave, and sounding corridore 
 Preceding him the mules did pace, that drew 
 The four-wheel'd wagon. Drave these on before 
 Idaeus wise. Behind the steeds ensue, 
 Which swift the sire with whip drave city through. 
 His friends attend him all, and him amain. 
 As one to death departing, wail they do. 
 When down the city they had pass'd to th' plain, 
 To Ilium back return'd his sons and sons-in-law again. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Nor were the two from Zeus the wide-voic'd hid 
 There in the plain. Beholding, pitied he 
 The sire. To dear son Hermes quick he said : — 
 " Hermes, who chief dost love t' associate free 
 " With man, and hearest whom it pleaseth thee, 
 " To th' Achives' ships go guide thou Priam's way, 
 " That no Danaian else may know or see, 
 " Ere Peleus' son he reach." Thus did he say, 
 Nor did the guiding Argeiphontes disobey. 
 
592 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 And quick 'neath feet he tied Ms sandals fair, 
 Ambrosial, golden, which do him o'er deep, 
 And o'er the boundless land, with wind-blasts bear. 
 Took wand wherewith men's eyes he 's wont to steep 
 In slumber whom he will, or wake who sleep. 
 With this in hand, strong Argeiphontes flies 
 To Troy, and Hellespont doth swiftly sweep. 
 And onward went in princely youth's disguise. 
 Of that most graceful age, when beard's first down doth 
 rise. 
 
 XL. 
 
 These, when they drove past Ilus' burly tomb. 
 Did mules and steeds to drink at river stay, 
 For o'er the earth was coming evening's gloom. 
 Now herald sees from them a little way 
 Hermes, and did to Priam speak, and say : — 
 " Reflect, Dardanides, of thought there 's need. 
 " A man I see will us, I think, soon slay. 
 " Come, let 's with horses flee, or with him plead, 
 " And clasp his knees, if pity us he will indeed." 
 
 XLI. 
 
 T was thus he spake. The old man's senses were 
 Confused all, and he was sore afraid. 
 Upbristled on his bending limbs the hair. 
 Astound he stood. Nigh drew The-One-to-Aid ^^^ 
 And took the old man's hand, and ask'd, and said : — 
 " Where drivest, sire, the steeds and mules by night 
 " Ambrosial, when be mortals else a-bed? 
 " Dost thou not fear th' Achseans, breathing might, 
 That, foes to thee implacable, be near y-pight ? 
 
I 
 
 J300K XXIV. 39—44. 593 
 
 XLII. 
 
 " If one of these should chance to spy thee now 
 
 " Through swift dark night, that dost such treasures 
 
 bear, 
 " What wouldst resolve ? Not young thyself art thou, 
 " And old man eke is he thy foll'wer there, 
 " To fight a man, if one t' assault thee were. 
 " But I '11 not harm thee ; nay, 'gainst others aid. 
 " For thee to father dear do I compare." 
 Him god-shap'd aged Priam answer made : — 
 These things indeed, dear son, are even as thou 'st said. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 " But yet some god hath stretch'd his hand o'er me, 
 " Who sends to meet me opportune i' th' way 
 " A. guide of form and shape admir'd, like thee, 
 " Who 'rt wise of sense ; thy parents, happy they." 
 To him spake guiding Argeiphontes : — " Yea, 
 " All these, old man, thou speakest fit and fair, 
 '• But come now, tell me this, and truly say : 
 " Art sending much bright treasures anywhere 
 To men of other lands, for safer keeping there ? 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " Or leave ye now already every one 
 " The sacred Ilium in your mickle dread, 
 " Since slain such man the valiantest, your son, 
 " Second in fight to no Achasan-bred ? " 
 Him answ'ring aged god-shap'd Priam said : — 
 " Who art thou, kindest? parents who are thine, 
 " That speak'st so fair of hapless son that 's dead?" 
 Spake guiding Argeiphontes : — " Thou design 
 ' To try me dost, of Hector questioning divine. 
 
 Q Q 
 
594 THE ILIAD. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " Him oft in man-ennobling fight I 've seen 
 " With these mine eyes, when by the ships he smote 
 " The Argives, them with brass y-slaught'ring keen. 
 " We stood astound. Achilles us would not 
 " Let fight ; his wrath 'gainst At reus' son was hot. 
 " His servant I, in one good ship we came. 
 " I 'm Myrmidon. Polyctor me begat ; 
 " A wealthy man, and ag^d, e'en the same 
 " As thou. Six sons are his, and me the seventh name. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 *' Lots cast, 't was mine to leave. And now i' th' plain 
 " From ships I 'm come. At morn, will set th' array 
 " By th' town the dark-eyed Achives, who disdain 
 " The sitting idle here. Nor check them may 
 " Th' Achaeans' kings, for war so eager they." 
 Him answer'd aged Priam god-shap'd one : — 
 " If Peleus' son Achilles' servant, say 
 " The whole truth out ; is yet by th' ships my son ? 
 " Or, limb-meaP^^ torn, t' his dogs hath hhn Achilles 
 thrown ? " 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Spake guiding Argeiphontes in reply : — 
 " Sire, eaten him nor dogs nor birds obscene 
 *' Have yet. But he b' Achilles' ship doth lie 
 " V th' tents the very same. He hath so lain 
 ** Now morn the twelfth, nor yet his flesh doth rot, 
 " Nor eat him worms, that eat men war y-slain. 
 " Him sooth Achilles dear friend's tomb about 
 '' Doth ruthless drag when morn appears, yet mars him not. 
 

 BOOK XXIV. 45 — 50. 595 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 *' Thou 'dst wonder coming thou, so dewy there 
 " He lies, the blood all wash'd, from stain he 's free ; 
 " His wounds are clos'd, though many sooth they were 
 " The brass had gash'd him with. So tend for thee 
 " Blest gods thy son, though dead. Heart dear was he 
 " To them." He said. Rejoic'd, the sire replied: — 
 " My son 't is good t' immortals due gifts we 
 " Should give. For ne'er my child until he died 
 Forgat in 's house the gods that in Olympus bide. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " So him in death's fate self remember they. 
 " But come, from me this beauteous goblet take, 
 " Guard me, and with the gods conduct my way, 
 " Till tent of Peleus' son I reach." Then spake 
 Guide Argeiphontes : — " Sire, thou 'dst trial make 
 " Of me a youth ; thou 'It not persuade me though 
 " Without Achilles' knowledge gifts to take, 
 " For him I dread, and shrink in heart also 
 " From cheating, lest there come upon me after woe. 
 
 L. 
 
 " Thy careful guide, I 'd go to Argos bright 
 ■ "In vessel swift, or footing with thee yede. 
 
 " None would with thee, thy guide despising, fight." 
 This said, the Helper sprang to car and steed. 
 And seiz'd the whip and reins in 's hands with speed, 
 And breath'd in steeds and mules a vigour rare. 
 When at ships' towers arriv'd, and trench indeed. 
 Watchers had supper just begun prepare. 
 Pour'd sleep upon them all, the guiding Argus-slayer. 
 
 QQ 2 
 
596 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LI. 
 
 He straight op'd gates, and bars^ thrust back, and 
 
 brought 
 Priam within, and presents rich on wain. 
 Achilles' high tent reach'd, for king y-wrought 
 By Myrmidons with shaven firs, o'erlain 
 AYith downy reeds from meadows mown y-ta'en. 
 Round it they 'd made the king a huge court-yard. 
 With stakes thick set. One bar doth door restrain. 
 Of fir, the which Achaeans three up-barr'd. 
 And three it took to ope the door's enormous guard, 
 
 LII. 
 
 But close it could Achilles e'en alone. 
 To th' sire then helpful Hermes opened ; 
 Brought in bright gifts for Peleus' swift-foot son ; 
 And from the horses sprang to ground and said : — 
 " Sire, I 'm a god immortal, Hermes. Bade 
 " Me Zeus, the father, to companion thee. 
 " Now back I go again who 've thus far led, 
 " Nor meet Achilles' eyes ! 'T would blameful be, 
 " That thus immortal god grace mortal openly. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 ^^ Thou ent'ring clasp the knees of Peleus' son, 
 " And him by sire, and fair-tress'd mother pray, 
 " And son, to move his soul." This said, and on 
 To long Olympus Hermes went his way. 
 From car sprang Priamus. But there to stay 
 Ida3us left, with steeds and mules in care. 
 Straight went through house the sire without delay. 
 Where wont to sit Achilles was, the Zeus-belov'd, and there 
 He findeth him. Apart his comrades sitting were. 
 
I 
 
 BOOK XXIV. 51 — 56. 597 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Automedon and Alcimus sole wait. 
 He 'd appetite with food just ceas'd t' appease, 
 Eating and drinking. Near was table yet. 
 Huge Priam enter'd unobserv'd of these, 
 Stood near, and clasp'd with hands Achilles' knees, 
 And kiss'd those dread man-slaught'ring hands that slew 
 Him many sons. As man mischance doth seize 
 In 's land t' have slain a man, he cometh to 
 Strange folk to wealthy man's : amaze takes all who view. 
 
 LV. 
 
 So 'mazed Achilles Priamus divine 
 To see. The rest astound each other eye. 
 Implores him Priam : — " Think of father thine, 
 " Godlike Achilles, old and e'en as I, 
 " On threshold sad of age. Him dwellers-by 
 " May press, when woe and war to ward is none. 
 " Yet him that thou 'rt alive they certify, 
 " So joyeth he in soul, keeps hoping on 
 " To see from Troy return'd his much beloved son." 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " But wretched I, who 've best sons 'gotten me, 
 " In Troas wide. None 's left me. Fifty were, 
 " When came th' Achaeans' sons. Of one womb be 
 " Nineteen. The rest in th' house my women bare. 
 " Hot Ares knees of most hath loos'd whilere. 
 " My sole son, who did them and town defend, 
 " Thou 'st lately slain, for country battling there, 
 ^' Hector ; for whom to th' Achives' ships I bend 
 ' My steps to ransom him of thee,^ and gifts I bring 
 withouten end. 
 
 Q Q 3 
 
598 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 " Revere the gods, Achilles, pity me, 
 " Thy sire remembering. I though more to rue, , 
 
 " Who 've borne what none e'er did on earth that be, 
 " To lips raise hand of man, my son that slew.'' 
 This said, stirs grief for father in him who 
 Thrust gently back the sire. Rememb'ring those, 
 This 'fore Achilles stretch'd doth Hector now 
 Bewail, while mourns Achilles now the woes 
 Of father, now Patroclus. Through the house their wail 
 arose. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 When sated grief divine Achilles sooth. 
 And from his heart and limbs desire had fled, 
 He rose from seat, with hand rais'd sire in ruth, 
 Of his so hoary chin, and hoary head. 
 And winged words addressing him he said : — 
 " Ah, hapless ! that dost mickle woes endure, 
 " How hast to th' ships Achaean ventured 
 " To th' eyes of man, who many not obscure 
 " Of sons hath slaughter'd thee ? Thy heart is iron sure. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 " But come, sit thou on seat, and sorrow so 
 '"' In heart let 's suffer lie, though grieved we. 
 " For profit none there is of icy woe. 
 " Thus gods to wretched mortals did decree 
 " Sadly to live ; themselves from care are free. 
 *' For twain the casks that on Zeus' threshold lie, 
 " Of gifts he gives ; these good, those evil be. 
 " To whom commix'd gives Zeus the Thund'rer high ; 
 "He lights on ill at times, on better by and by. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 57—62. 599 
 
 LX. 
 
 " Whom from the ill he gives, a man forbid, 
 " Him hunteth rav'ning woe on sacred earth. 
 " He roams by gods and men unhonoured. 
 " So gods gave Peleus glorious gifts from birth, 
 " Who did all men in bliss and wealth out worth ^^^, 
 " Hul'd Myrmidons, for spouse he, mortal one, 
 " A goddess had. This ill thereto, a dearth 
 "Of reigning children gave the god. For none 
 " Had he but sole begot untimely doomed son. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 " Him old I tend not, but in Troas bide 
 
 " From country far, thine and thy children's bane. 
 
 " Thou, sire, we 've heard, wast rich in former tide. 
 
 " What Lesbos doth 'bove Makar's seat contain, 
 
 " And Upper Phrygia, Hellespontic main, 
 
 " These, sire, didst pass in wealth and sons, they say, 
 
 " But since this scourge the gods did thee ordain, 
 
 " Thy town man-slaught'ring doth and battle-fray 
 
 Begirt. But bear thou up, nor mourn in soul alw^y. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 " For grieving thou wilt nought avail thy son, 
 
 a j^Qj, YSiise him up, ere ill thyself abye." 
 
 Him answer'd aged Priam, god-sh^p'd one : — 
 
 " Nay, seat me not, Zeus-nurs'd, while Hector lie 
 
 '^ Doth in the tent uncar'd. Quick loose that I 
 
 " With eyes behold. Accept the gifts which we 
 
 " Have mickle brought thee. These may'st thou enjoy, 
 
 '* And reach thy native land since thou hast me 
 
 Myself first sufFer'd live, and light of sun to see/' 
 
 Q Q 4 
 
600 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Swift-foot Achilles frowning did exclaim ^^^ : — 
 " Vex me no more, old man. For Hector free 
 " Myself intend. From Zeus with message came 
 " Mother that bare me, child of sire of sea. 
 " I know thee, Priam, thou 'rt not hid from me. 
 " Some god thy guide to th' Achives' ships hath been. 
 " No mortal durst approach, though vigorous he, 
 " The host. He had not past the watch unseen, 
 " Nor 'eath undone the bars of these our doors, I ween. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 " Wherefore no more with sorrows trouble now 
 *' My soul, lest thee, old man, I not within 
 " My tent permit, albeit suppliant thou, 
 " And so against the bests of Zeus I sin." 
 He said. The trembling sire from speech doth lin.^^^ 
 From house Pelides, lion-like, from door 
 Out-sprang. Not sole, but follow'd servants twain, 
 Automedon, and Alcimus, whom 'fore 
 All friends Achilles honour'd, now Patroclus was no more. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 And these the horses then and mules unyoke, 
 And th' old man's calling-herald in they led, 
 And set upon a seat. And then they took 
 From out the wagon well-y-polished 
 The ransom infinite of Hector's head. 
 But left two cloaks, and tunic newly spun. 
 With which to wrap for carrying home the dead. 
 Calling the maids he bade them wash anon. 
 And him anoint apart, that Priam should not see his son, 
 
BOOK XXIV. 63—68, 601 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Lest haply he indeed heart-grieving may 
 His anger not restrain at sight of son, 
 And him Achilles heart-y-stirred slay 
 And hests of Zeus transgress. When maids had done 
 The washing and anointing him, and thrown 
 About him wrapping vest, and stately pall, 
 Achilles' self him lifts to th' bed. And on 
 To polish'd wain his mates lift corse withal. 
 Achilles cried aloud, by name did comrade call : — 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 " With me, Patroclus, be not wroth, if thou 
 " In Hades hear I Ve godlike Hector freed 
 *' T' his sire, who ^s brought fit price. I '11 thee endow 
 " With fitting share." This said, to tent doth yede 
 Achilles, sits in daedal seat indeed. 
 He 'd left against the wall. To Priam spake : — 
 " Thy son is loos'd, old man, as thou didst plead, 
 " And lies on couch, and soon as day doth break, 
 " Thyself shalt see, and bear him off. But now let 's 
 supper take. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 " For even Niobe, of tresses fair, 
 " Eemember'd food, to whom twelve children lay 
 " Dead in her house. And daughters six there were, 
 " Six comely sons. These did Apollo slay 
 *' With silver bow, enrag'd with Niobe. 
 " Shaft-loving Artemis slew those ; for fain 
 '' Their mother 'd fair-cheek'd Leto match, and say 
 " Herself had brought forth many, she but twain, 
 " And yet by those, although but two, were all y-slain. 
 
602 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 " Nine days in blood they lay. For none there were 
 " To bury them : transform the folk to stone 
 " Kronion did. But them the tenth inter 
 " Did verily the gods in sky that wone. 
 " She thought of food when wearied making moan. 
 " And now in rocks or desert mountains she 
 " In Sipylus (where goddess-nymphs are known 
 " To haunt, by Achelous footing free), 
 " There o'er her woes from gods she broods, though stone 
 she be. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 " Let us two think of food, old man divine, 
 " And then thy son to Ilium taking rue, 
 " For much thou mourn him must, that son of thine." 
 This said, Achilles rose, and white sheep slew, 
 Flay'd it his friends and trimm'd in order due. 
 In pieces skilful cut, and hang them did 
 On hooks and featly roast, and all withdrew. 
 Automedon at table set the bread 
 In baskets fair. Achilles meat distributed. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 To th' food that ready lay stretch hands did these, 
 And when with meat and drink they sated be 
 Then soothly Priamus Dardanides 
 Did at Achilles gaze admiringly ; " 
 
 Such and so great, so like the gods was he. 
 Achilles so at Priam, Dardan's son. 
 To hear his speech, his noble form to see. 
 When, at each other gaz'd their fill, they 'd done, 
 Plim first address did aged Priam, god-shap'd one : — 
 
BOOK XXIV. 69-- 74. 603 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 " To bed now me dismiss, Zeus-nurtur'd wight, 
 
 " As soon as possible, that, lying down, 
 
 " We may with slumber sweet ourselves delight. 
 
 " For 'neath their lids mine eyes have closed none 
 
 " Since lost his life beneath thy hands my son ; 
 
 " But still my many woes a-pond'ring o'er, 
 
 " And roird in court-yard dirt did constant groan. 
 
 " But now I taste of bread and dark wine pour 
 
 Adown my throat, which I had tasted not before." 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 He said. Achilles mates and maidens bade 
 Lay beds in porch. Thereo'er rugs purple cast 
 And carpets spread, place mantles wool-y-clad'^^^ 
 To cover them. The maids with torches pass'd 
 From house, and beds a pair they strawed fast. 
 Him gibing spake Achilles swift of feet : — 
 " Couch, sire, outside, for fear some council-class'd 
 " Achaean hither come ; for come and seat 
 Them here in council aye it is their wont as meet. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 " If see thee one of these through swift black night, 
 
 " Folk- shepherd Agamemnon tell would he, 
 
 " Whence grow delay of corse's ransom might. 
 
 " But plainly tell me this : what days would be, 
 
 " To bury Hector in, enow for thee ; 
 
 " That I refrain so long, and people too 
 
 " Restrain." Spake god-shap'd Priam old : — "If me 
 
 " Thou suffer godlike Hector's fun'ral through 
 
 Perform, Achilles, thou 'dst a thing most grateful do. 
 
604 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 " Thou know^st we 're coop'd i' th' town, and far the 
 
 wood 
 " To bring from mount, and Trojans sore afraid. 
 " Nine days bewail him in the house we should, 
 " The tenth inter, and feast for folk be made, 
 " And on th' eleventh mound be o'er him laid, 
 " And on the twelfth, if need, we '11 fight again." 
 Swift-foot divine Achilles answ'ring said : — 
 " These, Priam old, shall as thou sayst remain, 
 *' I '11 war so long a time, as thou hast bade, restrain." 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 So having soothly said, he then doth seize 
 The sire's right hand by th' wrist, lest hap he may 
 Within his soul be fearful. There then these 
 In porch of dwelling slept in such array, 
 Herald and Priam, prudent-minded they. 
 But in strong tent's recess Achilles slept, 
 And by his side fair-cheek'd Briseis lay. 
 The other gods and warriors steed-adept 
 Did sleep throughout the night, by gentle slumber kept. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 But sleep not aidful Hermes seiz'd, who weigh'd 
 In mind how Priam might from ships be brought 
 Unknown to th' sacred watch. He stood at 's head 
 And spake : — " Old man, hast thou of ill no thought, 
 " Who sleep'st mid foes, when thee Achilles nought 
 " Hath hurt ? Thou 'st loos'd thy son and gavedst 
 
 much, 
 " But thou 'dst alive at thrice that sum be bought 
 " By thy remaining sons from out their clutch, 
 " Should Agamemnon or Acha^ans know thee such." 
 
BOOK XXIV. 75—80. 60i 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 He said. The old man fear'd, wak'd herald there. 
 Yok'd Hermes steeds and mules, and drave with speed 
 Himself through th' host none knowing. When they 
 
 were 
 At ford of fair-flow river Xanthus, seed 
 Of deathless Zeus, to long Olympus yede 
 Doth Hermes back. Morn saffron-veil'd is spread 
 O'er all the earth. Steeds driving they proceed 
 To th' town with tears and groans. Mules bare the dead. 
 None else of men or well-zon'd women them discovered. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Cassandra, though, like Aphrodite golden. 
 
 Ascending Pergamos, hath father dear 
 
 On car with call-town herald ^^^ first beholden, 
 
 And him too seen by th' mules y-stretch'd on bier. 
 
 She shriek'd and call'd through all the town : — " Come 
 
 here, 
 " Trojans and Trojanesses, Hector see, 
 " If living his return from fight did cheer 
 " Tou e'er. Great joy to town and folk was he." 
 She said. None left i' th' town, or man or woman, be. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Came boundless grief on all. Him met they nigh 
 The gates with corse. First spouse and mother tear 
 Their locks, and on to well-wheel'd wagon fly 
 To touch his head. And weeping round them were 
 The throng. And all the day they 'd Hector there 
 Tore gates bewail'd, till sun had set i' th' sky. 
 But Priam did from car to folk declare : — 
 " Let me now pass with mules, then satisfy 
 " Yourselves with weeping, when y-ta'en him home have I." 
 
606 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 He spake. They part and make for wagon way, 
 
 And body to his splendid house they bring, 
 
 And then upon a pierced bedstead lay ; 
 
 Set singers by to lead lament, who sing 
 
 The dirge, women with groans accompanying. 
 
 Led whose lament white-arm'd Andromache, 
 
 And head of Hector man-y-slaughtering 
 
 Held in her hands : — "0 husband mine," quoth she. 
 
 Thou 'st young lost life, and widow'd left in mansion me. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 " And child so young, which thou and I ill-starr'd 
 " Begat. Eeach manhood he I think will ne'er, 
 ^' But town first fall since perish'd thou, its guard, 
 '' Who it, chaste wives, and speechless babes whilere ^^^ 
 " Didst fend. They '11 soon to th' hollow ships repair, 
 " And I with them. And thou, too, child, wilt go 
 " With me ; work works unseemly toiling there 
 " For master harsh. Or seiz'd by the hand will throw 
 " Thee from the tower to wofal death some anger'd foe. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 " Whose brother Hector slew, or sire, or son. 
 " 'Neath Hector's hands so many Achives hent ^^^ 
 " With teeth the ground. In fight no honied one 
 " Thy sire. So him through town the folk lament. 
 " Past speech giv'st parents woe and dreriment,^^^ 
 '' But chief on me hast. Hector, sorrows pight, 
 " Dying thou 'st not from bed thine hands extent^ 
 " To me, nor utter'd pregnant word, I might 
 " With tears be constant thinking on, by day and night." 
 
BOOK XXIV. 81—86. 607 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 So spake she weeping, and tlie women groan. 
 Then Hecuba the fierce lament did lead : — 
 " Hector, thou to my soul the dearest one 
 " By far of all my children wast indeed, 
 " When living. Dear thou wast to th' gods, who heed 
 *' Thee do in very death's extremity. 
 " Mine other sons, whom he of swift-foot speed 
 " Achilles spar'd, them sold 'yond fruitless sea, 
 " To Samos, Imbros, and inhospitable Lemnos he. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 " Thee reft of life with long-edg'd brass, he 'bout 
 " His friend Patroclus' tomb oft dragg'd in vain 
 " "Whom slewest thou. But him so rais'd he not. 
 " Now dewy thou, and fresh in th' house y-lain, 
 " Like one Apollo Silver-Bow hath slain, 
 " Coming with gentle shafts." So spake she word, 
 And wept, and rous'd unending sorrow's pain. 
 To them lament then Helen led the third : — 
 " Hector, thou to my soul 'fore brothers all preferred. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 " My spouse is god-shap*d Alexander, who 
 
 " Brought me to Troy. Would first I 'd died. This 
 
 year 
 " The ninth since I came hither, and withdrew 
 " From native land. Yet ne'er ill-word did hear 
 " Unkind from thee. But whoso chide severe 
 " Of brothers, sisters, brothers' veil'd wives would 
 " Or mother (for the sire 's aye kind as father dear) 
 " Thou still with words admonishing withstood 
 " With thy so gentlemindedness, and words so kind and 
 good. 
 
608 THE ILIAD. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 " So thee I mourn, and me unfortunate 
 " With grieved heart. In Troas broad I 've none 
 " Friendly or kind. For me they all do hate." 
 She spake and wept. The crowd immense do groan. 
 To th' folk spake Priam old : — " Bring wood to town, 
 " Ye Trojans now. Nor have in soul a fear 
 " Of Argives' ambush close. For Peleus' son 
 " Dismissing me from sable vessels here, 
 " Promised to harm us not ere morn the twelfth appear." 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 'T was thus he spake. They yoke to wagons there 
 The beeves, and mules, and quick assembled those 
 Before the town. And nine whole days they were 
 Collecting wood immense. And when arose 
 The tenth bright morn, that light to mortals shows, 
 Forth weeping bring they valiant Hector stout, 
 Set corse on lofty pile, and fire dispose. 
 "When dawn-sprung Morn, rose-finger'd, peepeth out, 
 The folk collect renowned Hector's pyre about. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 When met together these assembled been, 
 First all the pile, where force of fire extends, 
 Extinguish they with darkling wine, and then 
 White bones collect his brethren, and his friends. 
 Mourning, and many a tear their cheek descends. 
 And these, in softest veils of purple so 
 Enwrapt, their care to golden-chest commends. 
 And deep in hollow trench deposits low, 
 And over it a many mighty stones they strow. 
 
BOOK XXIV. 87—90. 609 
 
 xc. 
 
 Mound quick they pour'd, set watchers all around 
 Lest on them rush well-greav'd Achaaans might. 
 Then back they went so having pour'd the mound, 
 And full assembling banqueted a banquet bright 
 In house of Priam Zeus-y-nurtur'd king. 
 And thus they tended there the tame-steed Hector's burying. 
 
 END OF THE ILIAD. 
 
 RR 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note 1. Book I. stanza 1. Peleus.} 
 
 Throughout the following translation the sj^Uable ew5, in proper names 
 is, except where otherwise pointed, taken as a diphthong, and. pronounced 
 so as to rhyme with " use" the noun, ^^profuseP ^^ohtme^' «&c. Peleus, 
 therefore, will be a dissyllable, and Zeus a monosyllable, as in the original 
 Greek. 
 
 Note 2. Book I. stanza 1. Themselves thrown.'} 
 
 I incline to think that in the original this is meant emphatically " them- 
 selves ; " and the language of one who considered the body the principal, 
 and the soul but secondary ; a sentiment intimately connected with the 
 notions the ancient Greeks entertained of a future state. 
 
 To dogs a prey.~\ Dogs are mentioned, but all " the beasts of the 
 land " that prey on the dead, may very well be included, presenting a 
 picture identical with the Scriptural description :— ''The dead bodies of 
 thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the] air, and 
 the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the land." Psalm, Ixxix. 2. 
 
 Note 3. Book I. stanza 6. Skirred,~\ 
 
 " And make them skirr away, as swift as stones, 
 Enforced from the old Assyrian slings." '''"'^ .~ } 
 
 Henry V. Act. 4. so. 7. 
 
 Note 4. Book I. stanza 8. Or dreamer een.'] 
 
 Literally " dream-monger ; " dream interpreter does not answer the 
 idea ; for the party consulted, supplied both dream and interpretation ; 
 like the dreamer of dreams, mentioned in Scripture. Deut. xiii. 3. 
 
 Note 5. Book I. stanza 26. Yea, hy this sceptre.'] 
 
 The reader unacquainted with Greek, may not be displeased to learn 
 that our word « sceptre/' which we only know as an emblem of authority, 
 comes from that language, where its primary signification is " staff," from 
 (TKriTTTio to lean ; and its secondary, an emblem of authority, a sceptre. 
 Of the importance attached to which the passage before us is one 
 instance, and the elaborate account of that of Agamemnon, at Book II. 
 
 R R 2 
 
612 NOTES. 
 
 another. The word does not appear, in poetry at least, ever to have 
 lost its original simple signification of walking-stick or staff. Homer 
 employs it in both senses. Probably in those simple times the instrument 
 performed both functions, and the monarch's walking-stick was also his 
 sceptre ; and only a sceptre, because its owner was not a private man. 
 In the following passage, from the soliloquy of Adrastus in the late 
 lamented Mr. Justice Talfourd's noble tragedy of lon^ the two meanings 
 are marked with classic precision : — « 
 
 " He must full, | 
 
 Or the great sceptre, which hath sway'd the fears 
 
 Of ages, will become a common staff 
 
 For youth to wield, or age to rest upon, 
 
 Despoil'd of all its virtues." 
 
 Ion. Act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 Note 6. Book I. stanza 28. Part-voice men.~\ 
 
 Part-voice i. e. voice-dividing. M.epo\py a philosophic and distinctive 
 characteristic of the human race, as alone gifted with speech, properly 
 so called. For using the voice as a medium of communication is not 
 distinctive, since the lower animals do that, and with much variety of 
 tone. But with them the voice is rather emitted in a succession of cries, 
 in which the stream of sound is not broken up into short significant por- 
 tions or joints, as it were (articulos), as in the vast variety of human 
 tongues, through all of which, even to the most barbarous among them, 
 man still stands out conspicuous, as — 
 
 " The creature sole of speech articulate," 
 
 Note 7- Book I. stanza 30. As Peirithous.'] 
 
 The translator craves the reader's indulgence to pronounce Peirithous, 
 in this instance, as three syllables, with the second short. Exadius, may 
 be more easily accepted as three, as " 2z^5 " so readily melts into one. 
 The suppression of the final of Polyphemus is another licence, which will 
 perhaps be conceded in consideration of the stress of metre, and the 
 determination to give the proper names in the order of the original. 
 
 The mountain PhercB.'] These are said to be the Centaurs, a people, 
 as it is fabled, half horse, half man ; which those who rationalize the 
 ancient myths, explain as being a people who used to ride on horseback, 
 before that accomplishment was general. The Greeks, we must in that 
 case suppose, though using horses in chariots, were as little aware of the 
 real connection between the horse and his rider, even among their close 
 neighbours, as the Peruvians, to whom the animal was unknown, at the 
 first invasion of the Spaniards. Nothing, however, in Homer shows him to 
 have been acquainted with the poetic monster. Nor are the Pherse 
 
I 
 
 NOTES. 613 
 
 described as differing from other warriors. I have accordiiigly retained 
 the Greek appellation in preference to the usual translation of Centaurs, 
 as that would have seemed to be adopting the myth. 
 
 Note 8. Book I. stanza 35. Bade cleanse.'] 
 
 An historical instance of the religious ceremony of purifying an army, 
 not for plague, but under circumstances no less fatal to its well being, 
 viz. mutiny and mutual distrust, occurs in the Retreat of the Ten 
 Thousand: — TiapaivovvTOQ Ze !S^£vo(J)U)Ptqq kcu tCjv fxavreojv avnt>nvKEv6v- 
 TMV, fho'ie KoX KciOdpai to arpaTtv^a. kol kyevsTO Kadapixag. XeNOPHON, 
 Jnab. Lib. v. c. 7. § 35. 
 
 Note 9. Book I. stanza 38. Who se?it you for Briseis.] 
 
 I have left out Kovprjg, " the girl Briseis ;" and with the less scruple that 
 I do not attach that emphatic force to it that some do, as who should say 
 "sent such august messengers on so unworthy an errand as that of a 
 female slave." For I can see no disparagement of Briseis on the part 
 of Achilles throughout the poem, nor why there should have been. The 
 ground of his non-resistance to Agamemnon's demand of her is dis- 
 tinctly stated, that he treats it as a resumption by the Achseans of their 
 former voluntary gift. Disparagement of that gift would have answered 
 no purpose. 
 
 Note 10. Book I. stanza 39. By tK shore of hoary sea.] 
 
 The sea among the breakers would be covered with foam, and therefore 
 at the shore the sea is properly termed ctXoc TroXirjg. But troubled in 
 mind, Achilles, gazing out, as it were, to the ends of the deep, where the 
 appearance wsls more calm, the darker aspect of the element is aptly 
 expressed by oivoira -kovtov, " the wine-faced or purple deep." For the 
 accuracy of which latter epithet hear Mr. Warburton :— " It was blowing 
 very fresh as we ran out to sea under a close-reefed main- sail; but the 
 sun shone brightly, and the waves were of the purple colour that they 
 wore to Homer's eyes." The Crescent and the Cross, 8th ed. p. 222. ^. 
 
 Note 11. Book I. stanza 39. Pray with out-stretched hands.] 
 
 The posture of prayer among the ancient Greeks would appear to 
 have been after the Oriental fashion, so far at least as regards the position 
 of the hands, which were not closed together, as with us, but extended 
 and spread out. So among the Jews, among whom, as in Exodus, ch. 9. 
 vv. 29, 23. " spread abroad," the hands is expressive of the act of prayer. 
 And in that magnificent account of the dedication of the Temple, 
 2 Chronicles, ch. vi., we find at verse 5, that Solomon stood before the altar 
 in the presence of the congregation of Israel, and " spread forth his 
 
614 NOTES. 
 
 hands." Our opposite practice of joining the hands together in suppli- 
 cation, whence conies it? Is it derived from the form of homage of the 
 feudal system, in which the vassal, kneeling down before his Lord, joined 
 his hands together and placed them within his Lord's, repeating, " I 
 become your man," Jeo deveigne vostre home, &c. ? or were the 
 homage formulae borrowed from some earlier ceremonial in the religion 
 of the people who introduced it? 
 
 Note 12. Book L stanza 53. And cups did auspicate."] 
 
 I trust to be excused for coining a word by Anglicising the Latin 
 expression for the Greek. I know of no one word in our language that 
 answered it, and to have endeavoured to give it by way of paraphrase 
 seemed awkward, and involved dwelling longer on this, compared with other 
 parts of the affair, than our poet has done in the original, and so injuring 
 the symmetry of the narrative. The ceremony according to some (for 
 there is great difference of opinion upon the passage) appears to have 
 been to commence by pouring out a little by way of libation, in honour 
 of the gods, and then handing the cups round to the guests from left to 
 right. For this the Latin expression, it would seem, was " auspicari po- 
 culis," and the Greek £7ra'jO)(£o-0ai leiratcrm. Heyne, however, is against 
 the libation, observing that the guests performed that for themselves. 
 
 Note 13. Book I. stanza 55. Up they drew.] 
 
 It was customary with the ancients to draw their ships up on the 
 beach, much as fishermen do their smacks on our sea-coast. The 
 Achseans' ships, it may not be amiss to observe, were in the Iliad 
 drawn up high ashore, so that there was a space between them and the 
 sea, available in a way that would not be here with a tidal sea. 
 
 Note 14. Book I. stanza 67. Down driven.] 
 
 Observe ^^ driven " not ^^felV^ (pepofirjv, for Hephaistos might predicate 
 of himself and the other Olympians, like Moloch in the Paradise 
 Lost : — 
 
 " For in our proper motion we ascend 
 Up to our native seat ; descent and fall 
 To us is adverse." 
 
 The expression becomes highly significant of the force with which 
 the luckless deity was hurled through the air; a force that in a whole day 
 had not spent itself when he pitched in Lemnos. 
 
 Note 15. Book I. stanza 68. With wisest heart.] 
 
 This expression reminds one of the Scriptural characteristic of the 
 cunning workman, as in Exodus xxxvi. 2. : — "And Moses called Bezaleel 
 
NOTES. 615 
 
 and Aholiab, and every wise-hearted man, in whose heart the Lord had 
 put wisdom.'* 
 
 Note 16. Book II. stanza 1. Round the fieet.'\ 
 
 For the rhyme's sake I have said fleet, but must caution the reader 
 against supposing there is any such collective name in the original. 
 Their power of combined action in nautical affairs had not advanced to 
 the point of requiring such collective designation. Two ships or two 
 thousand, they were but so many single ships, and formed no aggregate 
 whole. 
 
 Note 17. Book II. stanza 1. Pernicious Dream.'] 
 
 The reader will observe that Dream, "Ore^poc? is a real entity in the 
 Homeri%mythology ; a god as individual as Sleep, Night, Aurora, or the 
 others. 
 
 Note 18. Book II. stanza 5. And to the dushy realm.~\ 
 
 This line is not in the original. Alas for the pressure of rhyme there 
 was no help for it. I have, however, in the addition preserved the per- 
 sonality of Dream, which Pope, not perceiving, has treated him as a dream, 
 and dissolved him like mist. 
 
 Note 19. Book II. stanza 6. Still the voice divine.] 
 
 " The voice divine" i. e, the voice of the god Dream ; another proof of 
 his personality. 
 
 Note 20. Book II. stanza 7. Olympus long,] 
 
 I have usually translated fiatcpog in its primary meaning of " long " 
 instead of " tall." The form of the mountain, perhaps, as a long range 
 or ridge, was what Homer had in view in this almost constant epithet, 
 and never, I think, its altitude, which he sufficiently designates by 
 " snowy " "of abundant snow," &c. To express the distinction, I should 
 say that to Teneriffe he would never have applied /xa/C|Oog, while of the 
 Hog's Back, Guildford, though it had out-topped the Andes, it would have 
 been an inseparable epithet. He applies the term to walls; but I 
 should say in the sense of " long walls," and to trees, but it is usually in 
 connection with the wood-cutter's craft, and therefore probably a 
 designation of length, as they lay along the ground, and not of altitude; 
 for which v\pri\6£ is his word. Accordingly, when he speaks of a lofty 
 wall, it is reix^oQ viprjXo'io, and when of a lofty house we have ^w/xaroc 
 v\pr}\o7o and not fxaKpov. And if he variously designate a ^vall by /.laKpos 
 or v^pr^Xoc, according to its length or altitude ; the towers, as admitting 
 but of one point of view, their altitude, he constantly designates as 
 TTvpyovg v\priXovg, the lofty towers. 
 
 R R 4 
 
616 NOTES. 
 
 Note 21. Book II. stanza 7. The elder men.'\ 
 
 The elders, yi^ovrtq^ those who with the sovereign were wont to form 
 the council, which, being composed principally of the elder chiefs, 
 would take its name from that circumstance, although including members 
 whose rank or prudence, notwithstanding their youth, entitled them to 
 a place in it. The case was the same with the senators of the Latin 
 polity, so called from the " senesj' or old men of which their assembly 
 was originally composed, and with the Ealdermen of the Anglo-Saxons 
 also, for a similar reason. 
 
 Note 22. Book II. stanza 15. O friends.'] 
 
 I find myself compelled to differ from Mr. Grote, in his estimate of the 
 relevancy of this speech, as well as from his view of the situation and 
 conduct of Agamemnon at this juncture. Hist, of Greece, vol. ii. 
 2 ed. p. 95. It is not necessary here to discuss the powers and influence 
 of the Agora, though I am inclined to rate its general importance higher 
 than Mr. Grote has done, in his able examination. For, however feeble 
 the influence of such an assembly in ordinary times, yet on occasions of 
 great emergency it would rise into an importance proportionate to the 
 monarch's need of its active and cheerful co-operation. And this is pre- 
 cisely the case here. Agamemnon, by the alienation of Achilles had 
 deeply off'ended the whole army, whose position had become very un- 
 palatable to those predatory warriors, by the withdrawal of so large a 
 force with the chieftain who had led them on so many profitable excur- 
 sions. For the predatory character of the war must not be lost sight of, for 
 an instant. Whatever the power of Agamemnon in collecting those 
 various chiefs in one common enterprise, he could only keep them 
 together as long as they found it profitable by the plunder it enabled 
 them to acquire. Accordingly, we find that the war had hitherto been 
 but a series of predatory expeditions by detached portions of the host, 
 which, under the conduct chiefly of Achilles, had been so successful as to 
 account for the troops not having hitherto been drawn from such profit- 
 able, and genial employment, in order to act with their united force in 
 prosecution of the more arduous, and less certainly attainable object of 
 their main enterprise. The importance of this predatory warfare in its 
 gainful aspect, and the prominence of Achilles as the main mover in it, 
 are pointedly dwelt on in the speeches of the latter in the First Book, and 
 in the Ninth where he enumerates the towns he had taken in these ex- 
 cursions, and reproaches Agamemnon with wanting the spirit to take 
 part in them, though ready enough to engross the largest share of the 
 booty, and concludes with the reflection that he would not get much in 
 that way, now that he had affronted the bravest of the Achaeans. For 
 Achilles well knew his importance, and the effect of his withdrawal. The 
 indignation of the Achaeans at the conduct of Agamemnon, or rather at 
 
NOTES. 617 
 
 its consequences to themselves, is accordingly intense, and that very in- 
 dignation it is which subsequently prompts the audacious attack of 
 Thersites on Agamemnon : — 
 
 Tw S &p Amatol 
 ^EKTrdyXoiis Kor4ovTO^ ve{xi(rffr]Qiv r iv\ ^vjx^. 
 
 B. 222. 
 
 The army is therefore in the worst possible temper to be called on 
 to do battle in a general engagement. Agamemnon feels the difficulty, 
 which in his case is twofold. How can he get the troops to act 
 at all ? and in the next place, what if he be defeated in the engage- 
 ment ? What will then be his position, wlio has first weakened the host by 
 the alienation of their bravest warrior and his adherents, and then forced 
 them to battle in the absence of the only one who could have rendered 
 victory secure ? He has but one resource therefore, he must contrive to 
 be urged to what he desires, and, feigning reluctance to fight, yield only 
 to the pressing entreaty of the host. This is the only way of attaining 
 his object, and at the same time escaping responsibility. The dream 
 does not remove his anxiety in this respect ; for, though it operates 
 to urge himself to battle, it fails to make any strong impression on the 
 secret council that he first summons to consult with upon it. Nestor, 
 indeed, seconds the monarch's design very heartily ; but not with the same 
 faith in the dream itself, which he would rather appear to treat as an inven- 
 tion of the sovereign. And in his blunt military freedom the old warrior 
 is at little pains to disguise it. " Had any else " he says, " told us this 
 dream, we had pronounced it a falsity, and kept aloof; but now affirms it 
 he who holds him chief amongst us. So let us arm the Achaeans' sons if we 
 can." The absence of any expression on the speaker's part of faith in the 
 phenomenon is remarkable. There is bare acquiescence in the design of 
 the king, and that with doubts of success. To have related this dream 
 to the Agora therefore, and still more to have ordered the troops 
 to march to battle on the strength of it, without taking steps to ascertain 
 their temper, would have been hazardous in the extreme. The necessity 
 of previously sounding them is shown by the result. He finds they are 
 heartily sick of the enterprise, and quite ready to re-embark. What 
 would have been the eflTect of ordering these troops to march against the 
 enemy? Whatever the authority of the monarch, the general must have 
 felt the thing was impossible. The speech is then a necessity. And the 
 conduct of it is no less artful and well devised. To troops that were at 
 all in a temper for his design that speech contained its own antidote. 
 For he counsels flight, indeed ; but suggests better reasons for remaining, 
 viz. the pledged promise of Zeus to their success, and the disgrace, after 
 so long a struggle, of being foiled by a feebler foe. The object of the 
 speech is so far answered in ascertaining the temper of the people, which 
 proves more discouraging even than he had anticipated, and in 
 
618 NOTES. 
 
 relieving himself from blame in the event of their Jbeing ultimately 
 brought to do battle, and its going against them. The chiefs on their 
 part work out his views, and, through the instrumentality of Odysseus 
 the people are brought back, and in the second assembly, restored by 
 the same wise agency to good humour, in the most natural way possible. 
 And the conclusion of all is that Agamemnon finds himself at the head 
 of a flourishing army, eager and urgent for battle. A state of things 
 which I am unable to conceive any more feasible method of bringing 
 about, than that in which it is effected in the poem. All the circumstances 
 grow out of the nature of the case so easily as almost to take away the 
 credit of invention from the poet, whose exquisite art makes choice at 
 every step appear a necessity. 
 
 Note 23. Book II. stanza 15. Fell mischief's net extends. ] 
 
 arr] kvi^rjae (3apeiri. Valde me irretivit errore. Damm. Similar re- 
 ference of disaster to the Supreme Power, and with a similar metaphor 
 occurs, Job xix. 6. : — " Know now that God hath overthrown me, and 
 hath encompassed me with his net." 
 
 Note 24<. Book II. stanza 19. Long waves at sea.2 
 
 Observe " long " not "high," as some translate it; for elevation is not 
 the feature of resemblance, but the extent of undulation, long, far- 
 stretching waves. Elevation of the waves above the general surface 
 could not characterize the oscillations of a crowd, which must, so 
 to speak, be all on the same plane. The second simile employed in illus- 
 tration appears to me conclusive on the subject ; for the successive undu- 
 lations of a field of corn, as the breeze sweeps over it, cannot with any 
 propriety be called high waves, though they are aptly designated 
 as long. See also Note 20. 
 
 Note 25. Book II. stanza 19. The West wind fierce. ~\ 
 
 In the original Zephyrus, which the classical reader will not require to 
 be cautioned against confounding with the gentle Zephyr of modern 
 poets. Zephyrus, true to its etymology, had little of the gentle about it ; 
 violent, turbulent, and overbearing, it was rather the " wild West-wind" 
 of Shelley's poem. 
 
 Note 26. Book II. stanza 23. Is't thus that home^ &c.] 
 
 Observe the conspicious position in which the poet places his favourite 
 Odysseus. Here directs Athene to stop the Achaeans' flight. Athene 
 delegates her office, ipsissimis verbis to Odysseus, in full confidence 
 of the mission being accomplished by this her alter ego. The handling 
 of Odysseus' character all through the poem, makes one feel that the 
 author of the Iliad would not be satisfied until he had achieved an 
 Odyssey also. 
 
NOTES. 619 
 
 Note 27. Book II. stanza 25. In council what reveal.'] 
 
 Odysseus alludes to the council called by Agamemnon, at which it was 
 determined to convoke the subsequent assembly, and sound their senti- 
 ments in the way proposed by Agamemnon. Odysseus was of course 
 known to be of that council. The drift of his observation, therefore, is 
 this: — "More took place there than you know of. Agamemnon in 
 advising flight was only sounding you.'* 
 
 Note 28. Book II. stanza 31. Sole contending.'] 
 
 In order to perceive the full force of the expression "sole con- 
 tending," as indeed of the whole of this speech of Odysseus, we 
 imist advert to the critical temper of the assembly. See Note 22. 
 For Thersites, with all his venom, is only uttering their sentiments. 
 For all the Achaeans, it is said, were exceedingly angered at Agamemnon. 
 The problem was to check this before it reached a more general ex- 
 pression, before some worthier mouth-piece of the popular indignation 
 were found. Odysseus accordingly loses no time, but is suddenly 
 at his side. And, not to run counter to the too manifest feeling of the 
 assembly, he cleverly isolates Thersites by addressing him as " sole 
 contending with the king." He relegates the main question of their 
 return as premature, and at once fastens on Thersites as abusing 
 Agamemnon for the presents made him by the Achaean chieftains 
 of their own free will. With this he safely threatens future, and inflicts 
 present chastisement on the helpless and unlucky orator, with whom the 
 audience no longer feel the necessity or inclination to make common 
 cause, but on the contrary grow exceedingly merry at their late 
 champion's expense. 
 
 Note 29. Book 11. stanza 66. With linen corselet clad.] 
 
 Heyne remarks on the seeming discrepancy between the offensive 
 weapons and the defensive, and appears to think it one proof of a 
 spurious line. It strikes the present translator as the reverse, and that 
 the thing stated was a fact, and handed down as remarkable, and 
 therefore properly adverted to. 
 
 Note 30. Book II. stanza 80. Like Zeus in council.] 
 
 Ati ixfJTiv aToKavTOQ. This, and similar phrases, imply no direct 
 comparison with the Deity, nor irreverent or light estimate in the poet's 
 mind of supernal power, but a mere expression of the confidence men 
 felt in the hero's advice, as if they had consulted an oracle. Much as the 
 sacred historian speaks of Ahithophel. " And the counsel of Ahithophel, 
 which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the 
 oracle of God." 2 Samuel xvi. 23. 
 
620 NOTES. 
 
 Note 31. Book II. stanza 85. Nireus.'] 
 
 Nireus is thrice named by way of emphatic introduction of a man 
 remarkable for his beauty alone, in order to notice the superiority of 
 Achilles in even that particular, and not, I think, for the reason sug- 
 gested by Cowper. 
 
 Th« epithet " faultless," applied in the succeeding line, and elsewhere 
 to the son of Peleus and others, is not meant of his moral qualities, but 
 of his form and bearing, on which the Greeks were wont to lay exceeding 
 stress. The epithet conveyed the same idea as the Hebrew account of 
 Absalom — " But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as 
 Absalom for his beauty : from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his 
 head there was no blemish in him." 2 Samuel xiv. 25. 
 
 Note 32. Book II. stanza 87. There grieving laij.~\ 
 
 Observe here the metaphor drawn from a sick bed, see note 120 to Book 
 XVIII. stanza 13. 
 
 Note 33. Book II. stanza 88. Protesilaus.'] 
 
 The reader M'ho may be unacquainted with Wordsworth's beautiful 
 poem in connection with this chief's history, will do well to read the 
 " Laodamia." 
 
 Note 34-. Book II. stanza 100. Saw never /.] 
 
 Colonel Mure, whose literature of ancient Greece with be found 
 a perfect treasure-house for the student of Homer, treats this account 
 of the Greek army as but an hyperbolical common-place, introductory to 
 the Trojan march from the city : to the present translator however, with 
 deference to so able an expositor of a favourite author, it seems otherwise. 
 It is probable that the Achasans had never before attacked with their 
 whole force, but only by detachments, some in one part and some in 
 another. Indeed during the first nine years of the siege, a considerable 
 portion of the army must have been employed on predatory and 
 collateral excursions. The account Achilles (Book IX. st. 38.) gives of the 
 towns he had taken, shows the important part these subsidiary expeditions 
 formed in their military doings. And one of these, in which Chryseis was 
 captured, could not have long preceded the application of her father for 
 the release of his child. If this view be correct, then there is peculiar 
 significance in the recommendation by Dream to Agamemnon to arm the 
 host, Traravdirj, implying that up to that time they had fought by detach- 
 ments only. See Note 22. 
 
 Note 35. Book III. stanza 13. Priam's strength.'] 
 Priam's strength, for Priam himself. See Note 122. 
 
NOTES. G21 
 
 Note 36. Book III. stanza 18. And like cicalas.'] 
 
 The insect alluded to is the cicala, well known in those parts. Pope has 
 rendered it grasshopper, and inadvertently adds, that thej-^ " send a feeble 
 voice ;" whereas the point of the comparison in the original is the reverse. 
 The old warriors* corporeal vigour was gone, but their voice was vigorous 
 enough, loud clear-voiced orators were they. The following notices will 
 not, it is hoped, be thought an improper extension of this note. The 
 word in the original is reVrt^, which Messrs. Liddell and Scott, in their 
 valuable Greek Lexicon explain as follows: — Tirn^, " a kind of ffrasshopper, 
 Lat. cicada, a winged insect fond of basking at noon on single trees or 
 bushes, when the male makes a chirping noise by striking the lower 
 membrance of the wing against the breast. This noise was so pleasant 
 to the ear of the ancients, that their poets are always using it as a 
 simile for sweet sounds, as II. 3. 151 ; Hes. Op. 580 ; Sc. 373 ; and Plato 
 calls them Movffojp -rrpocpfj-ai, Phaedr. 262 D : cf Voss, Virg. Eel. v. 77. 
 People kept them, as now in Spain, in rush cases, and fed them with 
 yj/reto^, Theocr. i. 52. Mel. 112. The Greeks ate their larvae.'* 
 
 Speaking of Estremadura, Mr. Ford in the matchless Hand-book informs 
 us that " all the tuneful tribe of Cicalas enliven the solitudes with their 
 rejoicings at heat, insomuch that the phrase indicative of their chirping, 
 canta la chicharra, is synonymous with our expression the ' dog-days.' 
 These shrill Cicalas that make their life one summer day of song, hide 
 in the pollard olives, heard not seen ; vox, as Lipsius said of the 
 nightingale, et prceterea nihil. It is affirmed that only the male makes 
 these noises ; and poets, for whom we do not vouch, assert that — 
 
 " ' The chirping cicad leads a merry life, 
 And sings because he has a voiceless wife.' 
 
 The Spaniards, like the ancients, delight in the Grillo. The first thing 
 Sancho gives his boy is una jaula de grillos, and this, a large black 
 cricket, is sold in the markets in small wire cages ; by one of these Cabeza 
 de Vaca, when sailing to the Brazils, was thus saved. The insect, bought 
 by a sailor, had been silent in the wide seas; but suddenly chirped, when the 
 vicinity of rocks was suspected, which, an instant look out being made, 
 were discovered close ahead." Ford's Hand-book for Spain, p. 520. 
 
 I have extended the above extract so as to include the black cricket, 
 on account of its similar character and position in the affections of the 
 Southern people. Hear now what testimony the author of Eothen bears 
 to the 'feeble voice' of our chirping friends : — " We entered the great 
 Servian forest. Through this our road was to last for more than 
 a hundred miles. Endless and endless now on either side, the tall oaks 
 closed in their ranks, and stood gloomily louring over us, as grim as an 
 army of giants with a thousand years' pay in arrear. One strived with 
 
622 NOTES. 
 
 listening ear, to catch some tidings of tiiat forest world within, some 
 stirring of beasts, some night bird's scream ; but all was quite hushed 
 except the voice of the cicalas that peopled every bough, and filled the 
 depths of the forest through and through with one same hum everlasting 
 — more stilling than than very silence." Eothen, p. 26. in Traveller's 
 Library. 
 
 In the following graphic description, with which I shall conclude this 
 note, the Italian poet would not seem to share in the southern taste for 
 the little minstrel's melody : — 
 
 " Percote il Sole ardente il vicin colle, 
 E del calor, che si riflette addietro, 
 In modo I'aria, e I'arena ne belle, 
 Che saria troppo a far liquido il vetro. 
 Stassi cheto ogni augello a I'ombra molle, 
 Sol la cicala col nojoso metro, 
 Fra i densi rami del fronzuto stele 
 Le valli, e i monti assorda, e '1 mare, e' cielo." 
 
 Orlando Furioso, Canto viii. st. 20. 
 
 Note 37. Book III. stanza 33. Atrides with his hands."] 
 
 I am tempted here to invite the reader's attention to the Epic manner, 
 which delights in painting to the eye ; and therefore, instead of stating, as 
 we might, that Atrides drew his knife, it is shown in the doing by 
 noting the members employed in the operation. The sacred writers 
 afford similar instances, *' And his hand fetcheth a stroke with the ax 
 to cut down the tree." Deut. xix. 5. "David took an harp, and 
 played with his hand." 1 Sam. xiv. 23. In the passage before us in 
 the text we have '* hands " in the plural ; because both hands probably 
 were used, as the knife would fit tight in the case, or else drop out 
 as it hung loose. One hand on the handle therefore, and one on the 
 sheath would be employed in disengaging it. And as a painter would 
 represent both hands, the painter-poet names them. This pictorial 
 style is characteristic of all ancient writers in what may be styled an Epic 
 state of society, in which men love to have everything told out to them, 
 and nothing left to conjecture. And this is imitated by subsequent 
 writers, who desire to represent their manner, as Virgil, for instance, 
 than whom none better understood in what Epic excellency consists. And 
 the non-Epic character of the iEneid, in spite of all his. eflTorts, was 
 probably the real ground of its illustrious author's reported dissatisfac- 
 tion with it. He appreciated Homer, and desired to produce a noble 
 epic poem upon his model, and felt that he had failed, but probably laid 
 the fault on himself, when it was partly in his age, and partly in his 
 subject, which lay in unknown and shadowy ground, too remote from 
 
NOTES. 623 
 
 his own experience, which with everj' one is shaped by the age in which 
 he lives. For the poet who undertakes to write as though in an age 
 remote from his own, is at a disadvantage which no amount of genius 
 will compensate. The experience of his life is all but thrown away, and 
 the myriad inappreciable links that connect him with his own age and 
 country, are broken, and it is impossible for him to supply their place in 
 the field he has chosen, for the very reason that they are inappreciable, 
 and therefore not transmitted so as to enable later generations to 
 realize them with any thing like the unerring, and unconscious accuracy 
 of a contemporary. He has all to conjecture and realize from his own 
 imagination at work on alien matter, or make out by painful research, 
 with no experience to aid him, while the contemporary poet he imitates 
 had but to transcribe his own feelings, and what everywhere lay in and 
 around him. 
 
 Note 38. Book III. stanza 35. With ruthless brass.'] 
 
 Brass rather than iron appears to have been the staple material for 
 cutlery in the Homeric age, and that for offensive weapons, as well as 
 defensive. There seems an impropriety, therefore, in refraining from 
 using the proper word, and substituting steel, as more familiar to modern 
 ears. 
 
 Note 39. Book HI. stanza 41. Shield it sir ooke.] 
 
 "With that he drew his flaming sword, and strooke." 
 
 Spenser, Faerie Qneene. 
 
 Note 40. Book IH. stanza 48. Part-voice men.'] 
 See ante. Note 6. 
 
 Note 41. Book III. stanza 51. The handmaids.] 
 
 These are the two that accompanied her when she left the house at the 
 summons of Iris. 
 
 Note 42. Book III. stanza 51. Smiles-loving Aphrodite.] 
 
 " Smiles-loving," not "laughter-loving." Smiles enhance the beauty 
 of the countenance, which mickle laughter might discompose. 
 '* Laughter-loving " is rather characteristic of a romp, and hath its charms 
 also ; but, however ringing and silvery, is not of that higher order of 
 beauty and demeanour, that mingled tenderness and dignity, which was 
 Homer's ideal, and Shakespeare's also I doubt not, when it is noted of 
 one of his heroines that — 
 
 " Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, 
 An excellent thin^ in woman." 
 
624 NOTES. 
 
 Note 43. Book III. stanza 53. But be ive reconciled.^ 
 
 ^iXornQ of the original may stand for friendship, or sexual connection. 
 The former, if it refer, as I think, to their misunderstanding ; the latter, 
 if to what succeeds : in which sense the word undoubtedly occurs 
 towards the close of the speech. 
 
 Note 44. Book IV. stanza 1. With tannting wordsy &c.] 
 
 I find myself again under a necessity of differing from Mr. Grote, who 
 in his valuable history, vol. ii. p. 254. instances this speech as betraying 
 a purpose at variance with that of the First Book. His words are as 
 follow : — " Forgetful of his promise to Thetis in the First Book, Zeus 
 discusses nothing but the question of continuance or termination of the 
 war, and manifests anxiety only for the salvation of Troy, in opposition 
 to the miso-Trojan goddesses, who prevent him from giving effect to the 
 victory of Menelaus over Paris, and stipulated restitution of Helen ; in 
 which case of course the wrong offered Achilles would remain unexpiated." 
 To myself, I confess, this speech has always appeared highly subtle, 
 and characteristic ; and like the speech of Agamemnon in the Second 
 Book, intended to produce a result at variance with the seeming design 
 of the speaker. For Zeus, like Agamemnon in the Second Book, chooses 
 here to be urged into what he had previously determined on, but was 
 opposed in before. For Zeus, it will be observed, is speaking here with 
 no serious expectation of acquiesence, but only to irritate and anger 
 Here. eTreipdro Kpoinorjg Ep£dii^ei.i€p"Hpr)y. And for what purpose ? In 
 order, by alluding to his known partiality for the Trojans, to bring her^ in 
 combating it, to become prime mover in renewing hostilities, and making 
 compromise between the belligerents impossible. The wile succeeds, 
 and she., that in the First Book reprehended his purpose of favouring the 
 prayer of Thetis, now urgently asks to do what will bring about a state 
 of things which will work out to the full the designs of Zeus, 
 
 " How best to work Achilles honour meet, 
 And slaj Achreans many round their fleet." 
 
 Iliad, Book II. st. 1. 
 
 The result is that in prosecuting her own designs. Here is furthering 
 the will of Zeus, which she had so stoutly opposed, and is bringing that 
 will to accomplishment by the very thing she is now asking in apparent 
 opposition to him. Atoc 3' IreXeUro (jovXij. And the counsel of Zeus 
 is accomplished, as announced in the exordium of the poem. I will not 
 insist on the parallelism between this speech and that of Agamemnon in 
 the Second Book, nor between the quarrel of the two principal heroes on 
 earth, and that of the two principal deities in Olympus in the First Book ; 
 but I do think that the passage before us strikingly exhibits the 
 
NOTES. 625 
 
 tendency of the Greek mind to depict itself in its notions of Deity. 
 For there was nothing from which the Greek mind so instinctively 
 recoiled as from the exertion of brute force. And it is accordingly by 
 subtlety and superior intelligence that the supreme Zeus performs his 
 decrees in preference to force ; to which, or the threat of it, he only 
 resorts in the last extreme, when outraged a I'outrance, as in the first and 
 eighth books. It is the knowledge, also, more than the force of the Gods 
 of Olympus, that regulates their scale of rank. The supremacy of Zeus 
 over the powerful Poseidon is ultimately referred to his knowing more 
 (kul TrXeiova y^rj. II. N. 355.) and Ares the strong is always quelled by 
 the wise Athenb. This leaning sprang from the leading character- 
 istic of the Greek mind, "the spontaneous movement of Grecian 
 intellect," as Mr. Grote has well expressed it, " sometimes aided but 
 never borrowed from without, and lighting up a small portion of a world 
 otherwise clouded and stationary." For originality is ever creative 
 while the instinct of force is approprialion. The former is self-sufficing, or 
 at least is not driven out of itself by hungry necessity, but can revel in 
 riches all its own, while the latter exists but in controlling alien wealth 
 and alien energy. 
 
 Note 4^5. Book IV. stanza 1. Aidful staunch Athene."] 
 
 'A.\a\KO}iEvr]iQ^ staunch defender, which rendering I think preferable 
 to that which would make the word an epithet of Athene from the Boeotian 
 town Alalcomenae. The apparent congruity of the latter, as answering 
 to the local epithet applied to Here in the same line, is only apparent. 
 There is an appropriateness in suggesting the local designation of Here, 
 from the connection of the Atrides family with the place alluded to, 
 which is altogether wanting in the other case. For it is difficult to see how 
 Athene's worship at Alalcomenae, more than any other locality in Greece, 
 connects her with Menelaus. But, taken the other way, every thing 
 falls to its place, and the comparison, the Trapa^Xrjdrju character of the 
 speech, is complete. Here are two deities on the side of Menelaus, viz., 
 Her^j who as the tutelar deity of Argos is peculiarly called on to be 
 alive to the interests of the Argive chief, and Athene, from whom, in her 
 character of " staunch defender and ally," we look for no remissness in 
 the cause of her "protege" and yet they sit at their ease and look on, 
 while the other one's sole protectress, smiles-loving Aphrodite, from 
 whom such earnestness was less to be expected, never leaves him, but is 
 ever at hand to succour and defend, and has now delivered him when at 
 the point of destruction. 
 
 It would be quite in the taste of the old allegorical expounders of 
 Homer, expositors whose conclusions the bard would have repudiated 
 with some impatience, to harp here upon the same string, and observe, 
 
 S S 
 
626 NOTES. 
 
 that -where the resources of wealth and valour and wisdom have failed; 
 love alone has often succeeded. 
 
 Note 46. Book IV. stanza 2. This one.'] 
 
 /. e. Paris. Bear in mind that gods have him in sight, and Zeus is 
 pointing to him. 
 
 Note 47. Book IV. stanza 11. Faultless.] 
 
 This is spoken of the form, and not of the mental or moral qualities 
 of Lycaon. See ante, note 31. 
 
 Note 48. Book IV. stanza 13. Stripped his boiv.~\ 
 
 The original is eavXa, in which the scholiast curiously enough perceives 
 an expression of the sacrilegious character as well as the stealthiness of 
 the act, lavXa : on rjavyi] 'ifieWe KXeirreiy Tr/v irpa^iv nai \velv rrjv rwy 
 ^eiov Tvia-Lv mq lepocrvXog. The translator, however, can discern no such 
 allusive reflection here on the moral quality of the action, but rather the 
 poet's usual painter-like manner of placing the action " coram oculis/^ 
 as it were before you. 'Eo-uXa means "stripped," and " stripping his bow** 
 would be taking off the covering or case in which it was kept, when not 
 required for immediate use. And the fact of its being in its case brings 
 pointedly before one's eyes the peaceful posture of the two armies, and 
 their little expectation of hostilities. Had they been ready for battle, 
 the bow would have been out of its case. We have "stripped " because 
 the case was probably of a flaccid, wrapping form, and so would betaken 
 off the bow, as armour might be off a warrior. Accordingly we have in 
 the original the same word to express that and the stripping a man of 
 his armour. The French word " depouiller " answ^ers it precisely. 
 
 Note 49. Book IV. stanza 18. l^ut seeing striiig and barb.] 
 
 The string with which the arrow-head was bound to the reed. The 
 sight of this and of the beard of the arrow reassured him, as to the depth 
 the weapon had pierced, that the wound was not mortal. 
 
 Note 50. Book IV. stanza 37. Who from his car, &c.] 
 
 This obscure passage has given rise to much conjecture among com- 
 mentators ancient and modern. The various views taken of it by the 
 former are noted by Clarke from Eustathius, and commented on. 1st, 
 That Nestor bids him, who captures an enemy's chariot, not to lose time 
 in driving off the prize, but go on fighting the foe. 2ndly, That he who, 
 ousted of his own chariot, ascends a comrade's, should not presume to 
 drive, as the horses are strange to him, but fight with the spear. 3rdly, 
 That if one be ousted from his own chariot and wishes to mount that of a 
 comrade, the latter should stretch out his spear for the other to belp 
 
-NOTES. 627 
 
 himself up by. 4thly, That instead of helping him, up the comrade is in 
 such case directed to thrust him off with his spear, that he may not 
 disturb the array. Clarke concludes in favour of the last construction. 
 Against it, however, it may be urged that unless you translate ope^daQu) 
 in the passive, " let him be poked at with a lance," the construction of the 
 sentence is opposed to it. For the one who leaves his own chariot is 
 the one who is the subject of the verb. I should much incline to Heyne's 
 rendering, that the charioteer is directed to aim at his foe with the out- 
 stretched spear, understanding the direction to point in that case at the 
 superiority of close-fight charging with spears over that of relying on 
 missiles, as hurling the lance at a greater distance. The force of the 
 chariot's motion being thrown into the tight-grasped spear, the foe could 
 not stand before the shock ; but the weapon, if it snapped not, must either 
 pass through him, or thrust him from his car. And here it is observable 
 that opelaQai '^yx^L seems to have been the term for thrusting with the 
 spear, as contradistinguished from hurling it. The Abantes (//. B. 54?3.) 
 are described as such warriors. Heyne's interpretation, however, is 
 open to this objection, that Nestor appears to be giving an instruction 
 against a casualty, common indeed, but still a casualty, that might 
 happen to a charioteer apart from his companions, viz. that of leaving his 
 chaiiot, from whatever cause — a broken axle suppose, or slaughtered 
 steed, and having to mount the chariot of one of his comrades. Such a 
 casualty is appropriately described by the language of the text oq hi k 
 avr)p, in the singular, which would not be so appropriate of a general 
 direction as to what, when it happened, would happen to all, viz. the 
 rencontre with hostile chariots. I agree with Heyne that the charioteer 
 leaving his chariot is the party directed to use the spear, and that against 
 his foe. But whether the erepa apjjara designate a hostile or a friendly 
 chariot is the point. I incline to the latter ; in which case the direction 
 is identical with the 2nd in Clarke's above-mentioned summary from 
 Eustathius. The dismounted warrior taken up into another's chariot is 
 directed to confine himself to the character of combatant, and not take 
 the reins, where the horses being strange are less likely to obey his voice 
 than that of their owner; — a caution the more necessary, as it would 
 seem to have been a usual courtesy for the owner of the car to give the new 
 comer the option of driving or fighting, where the parties were of equal 
 rank. See E. 229. 232. where Lycaon declines driving on this very ground 
 of being stranger to the steeds. But where an inferior ascended the car, he 
 would be expected, but for this direction, to take the reins. With this con- 
 struction the airodoffLQ of the passage seems more complete, the positive 
 injunction bearing a significant relation to the negative, as both rest 
 upon the same caution, not to rely upon the iTnToavvrj, or horsemanship, 
 of the warrior. 
 
 s s 2 
 
628 NOTES. 
 
 Note 51. Book IV. stanza 42. Teeth's fence.'] 
 
 "Eo/coe ohovTiov^ fence of teeth, i.e. the lips, as fencing or covering the teeth 
 when silent; but this of course on the supposition of teeth being the 
 subject-matter screened or guarded, but not if teeth be the material of 
 which the fence is composed. For in that case epnoq o'^ovTuyv would be a 
 poetic periphrase for the teeth themselves, and allude to their fence- 
 like arrangement in rows within which the tongue lies enclosed. 
 
 Note 52. Book IV. stanza 42. Telemachus' loved sire.'] 
 
 This style of self description by Odysseus is something so peculiar, 
 and so unlikely to have suggested itself to the poet, that one is disposed 
 to regard it as historical in its character, and really customary with 
 Odysseus, and so rank it among the minor evidences of the reality of the 
 dramatis personcB of this magnificent epic. The phrase occurs before, 
 as the reader will recollect, in the objurgation Odysseus bestows on 
 Thersites in the Second Book, — a link, by the way, connecting that Book 
 in authorship with the present. 
 
 Note 53. Book IV. stanza 44. War-hridges.~\ 
 
 Intervals between the columns, which, serving to pass to and fro> 
 suggest the notion of bridges. Not merely the space dividing the* two 
 hosts, but the intervals that separated the several portions of each host 
 within itself. 
 
 Yede.] Yede, past i/od, yode^ to go. 
 
 Then bade the knight his lady yede aloof, 
 And to an hill herself withdraw aside. 
 
 Faery Queene. 
 
 Note 54. Book IV. stanza 57- Such Simoisius.] 
 
 Here by way of note the translator takes leave to transcribe the follow- 
 ing from Col. Mure*s valuable work: — 
 
 *' The comparison of the fall of Simoisius to that of a poplar tree shows 
 the antiquity of the practice still common in Southern Europe, of 
 trimming up the stem of that tree to within a few feet of the top. The 
 resemblance between this tuft and the plumy helmet of the warrior here 
 forms the main point of the figure.*' — Col. Mure's Critical History of the 
 Language and Literature of Ancient Greece. 
 
 Note 55. Book V. stanza 25. And 'tis true.] 
 
 Here drpeKeg is rendered as an adverb with Damm, rather than as an 
 adjective with Clarke and Pope. For, notwithstanding the explanation 
 about stained armour, an emphatic assertion of its being true blood wou\d 
 be very trivial. But stating that though it is true the arrow drew blood, 
 
NOTES. 629 
 
 y t't it only irritated the chieftains, appears more to the point, as making 
 out the leading proposition of Lycaon, viz. the failure of his bow. 
 
 Note 56. Book V. stanza 26. High-roofed house.'] 
 
 The point of the epithet would seem to lie in the command of prospect 
 to be obtained from the top of the house, a prominent feature in oriental 
 architecture; and not that the roof of the house was higher in proportion 
 to the building than other houses ; and certainly not, as it might be with 
 us, opposed to flat-roofed, for all the roofs were flat. 
 
 Note 57. Book V. stanza 27. Or thou take this.] 
 
 " Take this," probably pointing to the spear as he spoke. 
 
 Note 58. Book V. stanza 30. On our steeds.] 
 
 The reader, who may need the information, is requested once for all 
 to remember that the Greeks of Homer's time did not back their steeds. 
 So that '* climb or mount their steeds " really meant ascend their chariots, 
 and horseman meant charioteer ; and in the latter case, with no violence 
 to language, meaning one that had to do with horses, though not using 
 them in the same way as the term implies with us. 
 
 Note 59. Book V. stanza 32. Wide-voiced Zeus.] 
 
 I fear that " wide-voiced " is the proper rendering of evpvoTra, although 
 one could have been better pleased with the suggested intellectuality of 
 " broad-browed." " Wide-voiced," however, denotes the impression 
 made on the senses by the god's thunder, leaping from end to end of 
 heaven's broad cope ; and being a more tangible appeal to the sense is, 
 therefore, more likely to have been the poet's meaning than the other. 
 
 Note 60. Book V. stanza 34. Tough-skinned Ares.] 
 
 For so I render raXavpiyog with Damm, rather than " invictus " with 
 Clarke, Heyne, and others. The former rendering points to Ares' 
 imperviousness to mortal weapons, and is peculiarly significant here as 
 enhancing the subsequent feat of Diomed, who, with his Pallas-guided 
 spear, pierces that tough skin, and sends its owner roaring to Olympus. 
 Should, however, the common version be preferred, the line would run 
 by substituting ^' unconquered Ares " for " the tough-skinned Ares." 
 
 It has also been rendered " with shield of tough bull's hide." See 
 Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, 3rd ed., ad vocem ; but this would seem to 
 be scarcely warranted by the etymology, which includes neither " shield" 
 nor " bull." A " shield of tough bull's hide " was, moreover, too common 
 an accoutrement of the warrior to make the epithet distinctive. And 
 although the latter feature be not conclusive, it may yet rank as an 
 ingredient of preference for the other version. 
 
 6 s 3 
 
630 NOTES. 
 
 Note 61. Book V. stanza 40. Her soft arms^ extremifi/.'] 
 
 *' Arm^s extremity,^* i. e. the hand; for x^^'p of itself oftener designates 
 the entire limb from the shoulder to the fingers. For want of adverting 
 to this, Cowper, in translating the passage at Iliad xxiii. 626-7., has 
 mistaken a very natural account that Nestor gives of the effect of age in 
 impairing his activity, viz., that his arms no longer move so nimbly at 
 the shoulders as in his youth. Cowper, taking x^^P^e for the hands, and 
 puzzled probably to connect their motion with the shoulder, would 
 appear to have conceived them to be drawn back to that part, and then 
 darted forward. For he makes Nestor say, that they 
 
 No longer, darted from the shoulder, spring 
 At once to battle. 
 
 This could be but an occasional movement of the hands or hand, for 
 it is scarcely applicable to the shield-arm, and would be very arbitrarily 
 and vaguely put for that general use of them adverted to by Nestor, 
 who, as I understand it, simply meant that his spear-arm and his shield- 
 arm (aijL(})OTepu)dEy) no longer moved so nimbly at the shoulders as in his 
 youth. For at the shoulder, be it remembered, weariness in the play of 
 the weaponed arm would first be felt. 
 
 Note 62. Book V. stanza 48. Papa him.~\ 
 
 The reader is requested to accept " papa " as a verb, and he will then 
 have, with a change of tense, the exact English of the original 
 7ra7r7ra<^ou<rt. 
 
 Note 63. Book V. stanza 78. Divine Odysseus.^ 
 
 I have mostly rendered IIoq by " godlike," or " divine," instead of 
 '' noble," because nobility in the Homeric age, and long after, being 
 grounded on a supposed descent from the gods, the term '' godlike " or 
 " divine," seemed better to preserve the Greek idea on the subject. And 
 to do this where possible I conceive to be a translator's duty, rather than 
 to substitute a supposed equivalent drawn from modern manners, and 
 so lead to resemblance being inferred where none exists. This supposed 
 divine origin of kings and heroes was a prominent feature of the heroic 
 age, and, inseparably linked with their mythology, has little that re- 
 sembles it in our times. The nearest approach was perhaps the now 
 almost equally fossil notion of the right^'wre divino in kings to govern. 
 
 Note 64. Book V. stanza 86. Would scarce require.'] 
 
 Scarce require, i. e. it was large enough to furnish material for helmets 
 of the foot soldiers of a hundred cities. 
 
NOTES. 631 
 
 Note 65. Book V. stanza 103. Had any other god.~\ 
 
 " Had any other god begotten thee^' &c. This part is pointed at 
 Ares' strictures on the partiality of Zeus for Athen^^ on the score of 
 parentage. Zeus answers in substance, that Ares has to thanii that 
 parental partiality for not being expelled Olympus altogether. Ares' 
 own expression cudrjXog, which he applied to Athene, is in the original 
 retorted on him. I have rendered the word by '' pest." 
 
 Note 66. Book VI. stanza 15. Of war-cry clear.'] 
 
 The original Borjv a'yaOoc, literally " good at war-shout," is variously 
 rendered, according as the shout is referred to the individual, or the host. 
 If to the host, then it may characterize his demeanour at the period of 
 its taking ^lace, and the phrase designate him as good at a charge or 
 onset, or generally of valiant bearing in battle, pugnd strenuus. But if 
 the shout be understood of the individual, then it may denote a charac- 
 teristic of no mean importance for a warrior in those days, in the 
 absence of military instruments of music, viz., that of being loud and 
 clear-voiced in giving the various military directions, and able to sound 
 a charge where there ivas neither trumpet nor drum as substitute for the 
 human voice. In the present translation the phrase has not always 
 been rendered the same. Voss, in this passage and elsewhere, translates 
 it Rufer im Streit, but whether uniformly I have not observed. 
 
 Note 67. Book VI. stanza 18. For as of leaves.] 
 
 " As the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall, and some grow, so is 
 the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is 
 born." — Ecclesiasticus xiv. 18. In observing the coincidence of ideas in 
 the two writers, it must not be forgotten that Homer is the more 
 ancient. 
 
 Observe, also, what appears to be an expression of botanical truth in 
 our poet's account; for the connection of the falling of the leaf with the 
 pushing forth of the bud of the new one, by cutting off its supply of sap, 
 a fact of comparatively recent observation among the moderns, would 
 seem to be here alluded to, and that pointedly. For the buds are said 
 to put forth in the place of the falling leaves, which is an autumn 
 operation ; but the growth or expansion of the bud is expressly referred 
 to the spring, as distinguished, it would seem, from its putting forth. 
 
 Note 68. Book VI. stanza 20. He'd writ down.] 
 
 The translator believes writing was not unknown in the Homeric age, 
 nor to the poet, and that Bellerophon's were written credentials. For 
 the information of the unlearned reader, however, it is but just to 
 observe, that the original may apply either to hieroglyphic, or painting, 
 
 s s 4 
 
632 NOTES. 
 
 or writing, and, therefore, not of itself conclusive on the question. In 
 translation the necessity of choosing a meaning causes the ambiguity to 
 disappear. 
 
 Note 69. Book VI. stanza 24. When hate Bellerophon.'] 
 
 This phraseology must not be understood to imply any known anger 
 of the gods against Bellerophon, but to express the inference drawn 
 from his calamity, melancholy madness probably, which, according to 
 ancient notions, would only fall on one with whom all the gods were 
 displeased. This reference of calamity to divine infliction as a mark of 
 divine displeasure, would seem to have been a very prevailing notion. 
 The friends of Job inferred sin from his visitation. And our Saviour's 
 disciples enquired what particular crime of himself or his parents had 
 caused the blind man's calamity. Prosperity was regarded as the sole 
 test of divine favour. How " sweet " may be " the uses of adversity " 
 was pre-eminently a Christian revelation. 
 
 Note 70. Book VI. stanza 29. With woe fixed many a one."^ 
 
 The meaning of the two lines is this : — He bade all in succession 
 implore the gods in this the hour of public peril ; and the news he 
 brought from the field was matter of private sorrow to many a one, at 
 hearing of a brother, friend, or husband fallen in the battle. 
 
 Note 71. Book VI. stanza 48. City's kmg.'\ 
 
 Pressure of rhyme has induced me to insert a translation of Astyanax. 
 
 Note 72. Book VI. stanza 51. Wlw reigned.'] 
 
 This would seem to be the only instance in the Iliad of a woman 
 described as reigning. 
 
 Note 73. Book VI. stanza 63. Cup of liberty.'] 
 
 Cup of liberty, i. e. the cup or bowl filled to celebrate the liberation 
 of their city from its perils. 
 
 Note 74. Book VII. stanza 15. Glad bend knee.] 
 
 I. e. glad to sit down and rest. Observe the epic tendency to depict 
 instead of mentioning merely, and here with the poet's usual discrimi- 
 nation. We have '^ bend knee" for *' sit down," as the knees bend in 
 that posture ; but it is noticed here because the knees, the seat of 
 strength, first show fatigue. The firm-braced knee marks the fresh 
 warrior ; the bent knee the warrior fatigued ; while the knees of the 
 warrior slain are said to be " loosed.'' 
 
NOTES. 633 
 
 Note. 75. Book VII. stanza 28. Rank-shatter err\ 
 
 " Rank-shatter er,^' breaking the enemy's ranks, and not '* Deserter,^' 
 breaking away from his own, as some, whose opinion is entitled to great 
 consideration, would render it. Ajax is not disparaging Achilles, but, 
 on the contrary, admitting frankly and freely his superiority, and post- 
 pones himself and his comrades to that rank-shattering lion-hearted hero, 
 but says that '* such as we are there are plenty of us, Hector, both able 
 and willing to encounter thee." 
 
 The word prj^rjv^p occurs elsewhere, as at 11. xiii. 324'., and xvi. 146. 
 575., not in disparagement, however, where none could have been 
 intended, but always expressive of warlike prowess ; an epithet, in fact, 
 which Nestor had paraphrased in his account of the club-wielding 
 Lycurgus, aLdrjpelr] Kopvvr] pr'jyvvffKe (jiaXayyag. — II. VII. 141. 
 
 Note 76. Book VII. stanza 37. The^ parting, this.j 
 
 So ends this combat between Hector and Ajax, the epic value of which, 
 inter alia, is to show, coram oculis, that, as Hector and Ajax fought 
 without victory declaring for either, Ajax is inferior to Achilles, with 
 whom such equal contest had been impossible ; but that he is superior 
 to all the Achaeans beside is shown by their praying that the lot might 
 fall upon Ajax. Who does not see the Achilleid character denied to 
 these very books, where, in the absence of Achilles, attention is constantly 
 drawn to him? 
 
 Note 77. Book VII. stanza 41. Lest storm-like hurst.'] 
 
 The epic significance of the wall-building is to enhance the value of 
 Achilles, whose absence had made it necessary. And from the extent 
 of Hector's subsequent success with the wall, we may well suppose he 
 would have entirely succeeded without it; and so the wisdom of Nestor 
 is shown in advising its erection. As to choosing this juncture for 
 building the wall, it appears to me natural enough. The wall is built 
 when the Greeks are victors, and so able to build it, but not until the 
 secession of Achilles, because they had not needed it before. The 
 Greeks, indeed, were victors ; but it was apparent to them that the 
 victory was not of that decisive overwhelming character that they were 
 used to while Achilles was with them, whose prowess it was that kept 
 the foe from venturing far beyond their walls — narrow limits, within 
 which the first day of his reappearance in the Achaean host again 
 reduced them. 
 
 Note 78. Book VII. stanza 42. Hear me, ye Trojans.] 
 
 The epic value of this scene is its showing, coram oculis, the injustice 
 
634 NOTES. 
 
 of Priam and his sons in this reiterated refusal to do right, and end the' 
 war, so depriving them of the reader's sympathy. 
 
 Note 79. Book VII. stanza 4-7. Virgin-spouse.'] 
 
 Virgin-spouse, Kovpi^lrjv ciXoyoy, i. e. the wife he married when a 
 virgin, as opposed to one who had been the wife of another. 
 
 Note 80. Book VII. stanza 48. Let none take goods,] 
 
 Those who think this book languid and adding nothing to the action, 
 would do well to observe that in it the Trojans and Achaeans assume a 
 position which they had not done during the whole war, viz., that all 
 possibility of accommodation is now at an end, for the Acliseans will not 
 now accept what at any other period they appear to have been open to, 
 the restoration of Helen herself. It is henceforward war to the death. 
 This confidence and resolve on the part of the Achaeans, and their 
 expectation of ending the war by their own strength, without the aid of 
 Achilles, make their subsequent disastrous position, and the necessity of 
 his intervention for their deliverance, the more striking. The book that 
 puts this state of things clearly before one's eyes cannot be considered 
 other than epically necessary to the conduct of the poem. The epic 
 value of the combat of Ajax and Hector, and of the building of the 
 wall, as enhancing the importance of Achilles, has been alluded to in 
 former notes. 
 
 Note 81. Book VIII. stanza 1. O'er all the earth was spread.] 
 
 Pope has translated it ^'•sprinkled with light," but Milton felt the 
 reality of the beautiful phenomenon far better : — 
 
 Pleasant the sun, 
 When first on this delightful land he spreads 
 His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower. 
 
 Pai^adise Lost, book iv. 
 
 Note 82. Book VIII. stanza 6. ^ Turns tvith no wiUing mind.] 
 
 This part of the speech of Zeus Pope has altogether omitted. I treat 
 Toi as a particle, and not as a pronoun, differing from those who think 
 that Zeus' expressed desire to deal mildly was limited to Athene. On 
 the contrary, he seems to me to be expressing his general reluctance to 
 swerve from his usual course of mild indulgence, and I accordingly 
 translate it "with no willing mind," instead of " not in earnest;" for 
 he was in earnest, though reluctantly so. Calm serenity, difficult to 
 disturb, is characteristic of Zeus. Hence, when he is roused, the gods 
 are described as not only awed, but amazed as at a thing unusual. 
 
NOTES. 633 
 
 Note 83. Book VIII. stanza 10. While upwards jiy r^ 
 
 This ascent or descent of the scales, for which Eustathius somewhat 
 fancifully accounts, presents no difficulty on examination. At first sight 
 indeed, it would seem that the ascending scale should denote the loser. 
 And Milton, accordingly, in his magnificent application of this classic 
 image, to which as usual he adds tenfold lustre, makes Satan's scale 
 kick the beam. But observe here what are weighed. It is not the 
 Trojans and Achaeans themselves, actually or symbolically, nor their 
 good fortune, but the two destinies of death respectively attached to 
 them. When that of the Achaeans, therefore, weighed down the scale, 
 then did their evil destiny literally preponderate. And so far then the 
 sinking scale became the "sequel of fight." These Kr\pEQ, I incline to 
 think, were real beings in Homer's mind, and not mere avoirdupois 
 weights. Dark and shadowy there they sit, not unconscious of their 
 mysterious functions. The whole machinery may possibly belong to an 
 earlier and more eastern mythology. For a mention of them consistent 
 with supposing them living beings, see II. ii. 302. 
 
 Note 84. Book VIII. stanza 25. Xanthus and thou PodargusJ] 
 
 These are significant names in the original, and mean respectively 
 Gold-coloured, Swift-foot, Bay-coloured, and Lightning. This address of 
 Hector to his horses, which may seem too lively a stroke for our habits, 
 would not be thought exaggerated by a Spaniard. See Mr. Ford's 
 inimitable Hand-Book of Spain, where the muleteers are described as 
 talking to their animals by name in a manner that relieves Homer from 
 any imputation of travelling out of his ordinary literal truth in the 
 present instance. 
 
 Note 85. Book VIII. stanza 44. Each praying loud.~\ 
 
 This their praying aloud each for himself, instead of one of them as 
 usual leading, strongly marks their consternation and confusion. 
 
 Note 86. Book VIII. stanza 52. Lift thy ponderous spear.'] 
 
 This leaving a sentence unfinished is what the rhetoricians style 
 aposiopesis, and is said to mark emotion or awe. See Quinct. ix. 2. 
 To whatever use the figure may have been ultimately put, I am inclined 
 to think it originated in superstition, and that it was in the Greek mind 
 intimately connected with their aversion to utter the ominous. Of this 
 we have a remarkable instance in the exordium of Demosthenes' Oration 
 De Corona, where the orator, on the point of alluding to the possible 
 adverse decision of his audience, checks himself, and declares that he 
 will utter nothing ominous at the outset of his harangue : aXX' kjxoi 
 jjisy , ov ftovXofiai de dv<rx^pf^e elTrelv ovdev dpyoiievoc tov Xoyov. The 
 
636 NOTES. 
 
 figure, it will be remembered, occurs in the first book of the Iliad, at 
 stanza 65., of the present version, where Hephaistos cannot bring him- 
 self to utter out what Zeus could do with the gods if he had a mind. 
 Some such classic recollection was probably in Milton's mind when he 
 made Belial characterise Moloch's speech as casting *' Ominous con- 
 jecture on the whole success." — Par. Lost, b. ii. 1, 123. A similar spirit 
 doubtless dictated the courtly epithet of Eumenides, or gentle-minded, 
 which the Greeks applied to the Furies. 
 
 This dread of uttering certain phrases from fear of some unknown 
 consequences would appear not to have been confined to ancient times, 
 nor to classic ground. Mr. Layard, in his " Nineveh and its Remains," 
 speaks of the Yezidis as nervously shrinking from the utterance of 
 certain words remotely allusive to the " Gentleman in Black." " So far," 
 he says *Ms their dread of offending the evil principle carried, that they 
 carefully avoid every expression which may resemble in sound the name 
 of Satan, or the Arabic word for * accursed.' Thus, in speaking of a 
 river, they will not say ' Shat,' because it is too nearly connected with 
 the first syllable in * Sheitan,' the Devil, but substitute Nahr. Nor for 
 the same reason will they utter the word Keitan, thread or fringe. 
 Naali a horse-shoe, and Naal-band, a farrier, are forbidden words, 
 because they approach to Naan, a curse, and Maloun, accursed." 
 
 Note 87. Book VIII. stanza 59. In ocean fell."] 
 
 This expresses the suddenness of the transition from day to night in 
 those latitudes, which we in our part of the world do not appreciate, 
 being more accustomed to the stealing twilight, so charming a feature in 
 our more northern sky. And Milton chose for the nonce to ignore in 
 that particular the natural features of the site usually assigned to 
 Paradise, when Eve is made to say. 
 
 Sweet is the coming on 
 Of grateful evening mild. 
 
 In this local peculiarity of climate perhaps we are to look for the 
 appropriateness of *' swift," or *' sudden," as applied to night, Qoriv l\a 
 vvKTa ixiXaivav, II. X. 394^. An epithet truly which, in the absence of 
 twilight or gloaming, well belongs to it ; for swift, indeed, in that case, 
 is both her coming and departure. 
 
 Note 88. Book IX. stanza 2. Goat-baffling.'] 
 
 So have I rendered alyiXixpy literally "left of the goats," i. e. too sheer 
 and steep for even their nimble clambering. 
 
 Note 89. Book IX. stanza 15. Ne'er had fire.'] 
 
 L e. never used. I should have written neWf but that involves their age, 
 
NOTES. 637 
 
 and they might have come from Achaia, and so been nine years old. Cowper 
 seems strangely puzzled with the epithet, which he renders "unsullied by 
 fire" and in a note asks how it was that these were yet unsullied ? The 
 epithet clearly negatives any notion of Agamemnon presenting Achilles 
 with his old pots and pans that might have been in use simmering 
 on the fire any time during the nine years of the siege. 
 
 Note 90. Book IX. stanza 17. Withouten dowry take.'] 
 
 I. e. without the gift made by the bridegroom to the parents of the 
 bride. There is no disguising the fact, however decorously veiled, that 
 the daughters of those days were parted with for a consideration. To 
 modern notions the transaction was not perhaps distinguishable from a 
 sale, just as the Circassians and Georgians part with their pro- 
 geny in these days, though not so indiscriminately as to the purchaser ; 
 the purchaser or husband being ascertained, and the position of the 
 bride very different. One uses the word dowry, but the unclassic reader 
 must of course keep in mind that it was not what the wife brought with 
 her, but what was paid for her, and that, although resembling the 
 modern dower, as being out of the property of the husband, it differed in 
 the material point of not being for the benefit of the wife. We read, it is 
 true, of the rich-dowered Andromache in a different sense, but Hector's 
 was an exceptional case probably, like this of Achilles. The rule was, 
 that the father of the bride should receive the presents, except where 
 the high eligibility of the bridegroom reversed or relaxed it. By the 
 laws of Solon the sale of daughters or sisters into slavery was forbidden; 
 a *' prohibition which," as Mr. Grote ((Greece, vol. iii. p, 186.) observes, 
 " shows how much females had before been looked upon as articles of 
 property. " 
 
 Note 91. Book IX. stanza 34. Wrath will put away.] 
 
 Here ends the repetition of Agamemnon's message. The rest of his 
 speech, which he had probably meant to be also conveyed to Achilles, 
 Odysseus prudently suppresses, as doubtful how it might affect his 
 sensitive auditor. See next note. 
 
 Note 92. Book IX. stanza 44-. Of higher regal dignity.] 
 
 Literally "more kingly," (iaaiXevrepoc. The consideration which 
 attached to the regal dignity being among that strong-handed people 
 based upon the reality of power, and wealth and command of resources 
 of the monarch, was proportioned to that power and wealth, irrespectively 
 of his personal qualities. In modern Europe, heraldically speaking, and 
 by diplomatic courtesy, all kings may be of a rank without reference 
 to their power ; but the practical-minded Greeks squared their theory 
 with their practice and the actual state of things. The king of a large 
 
638 NOTES. 
 
 territory and great resources therefore, as his power was greater, so also 
 was he more of a king (BaaiXevrepoQ) than his inferior in those particulars, 
 however august the lineage of the latter, and however transcendent 
 his personal qualities. But, amid this general appreciation of what may 
 be called the dignity of outward circumstance, there would always 
 be some impatient of its claims, whenever they trenched on what 
 the mind is wont to consider the more intrinsic merit of personal 
 excellence ; and in drawing the line between the rd e^' ijjjlTv and the 
 TO. ovK tif Yijiiv their disposition to emphasise the distinction in favour of 
 the former would be no whit the less that their own claims were 
 involved in it; and the higher the claims to distinction in every other 
 respect the more would an emulous mind feel and fret at the one point 
 iji which its consideration was impaired. And this would appear to have 
 been the position of Achilles. Transcendent in all things save one, viz. 
 the accident of superior power and dominion, he finds that one sufficient 
 to outweigh all his services, and all his merit with his companions in arms, 
 who allow his adversary to have his way on a critical occasion, and to 
 outrage and insult him in a quarrel occasioned by his advising for the 
 general good. And Nestor, in his very anxiety to reconcile the chiefs, had 
 unconsciously touched the sore point of the young warrior in urging him 
 to yield on account of the superior rank and power of his opponent ; an 
 argument of such common acceptance, that its unpalatableness to the 
 individual was not suspected by the well-meaning old man at the time, nor 
 by Agamemnon afterwards, who uses here the very same argument 
 (though Nestor by this time would appear to have dropped it) in his 
 instructions to the ambassadors. 
 
 Kal yiol viroa-rriru oirffou Paai\€vT€p6s clfii. 
 
 Iliad, ix. 160. 
 
 Odysseus wisely omits this recommendation. See preceding note. 
 But, though the thing is not alluded to at this interview, we see all the 
 more how it rankled with Achilles by the sneering emphasis with which 
 he recommends that Agamemnon provide himself with a son-in-law more 
 suited to him, one that would be more of a king. 
 
 '6aTis ol T eirioiKe, Kal 6s fiacnXevTepos iariu. 
 
 Iliad, ix. 392. 
 
 Note 93. Book IX. stanza 46. Fence of teeth.'] 
 See note 51. 
 
 Note 94?. Book IX. stanza 52. My angered sire.'] 
 
 The four verses which follow here in the original were struck out of 
 the text by Aristarchus. Pope has restored them in his translation, and his 
 
NOTES. 639 
 
 example has been followed by Cowper and by Mr. Sotlieby. I have 
 omitted them in the present version; for, with deference to such 
 authorit}^, I confess to thinking the Greek critic was right in rejectino- the 
 lines, though not in the reason ascribed to him by Plutarch. It is less 
 the atrocity of the contemplated crime than its utter improbability 
 and want of motive that would make me consider them spurious. 
 
 Note 95. Book IX. stanza 52. Infernal Zeus."] 
 
 Infernal Zeus, L e. Pluto or Hades, who is called the Zeus of the 
 infernal regions. Persephoneia is the Proserpina of the Latins. 
 
 Note 96. Book IX. stanza 55. Out sputtering wine.'\ 
 
 Pope in a note on this passage has the following: — "In the original 
 Phoenix tells Achilles that, as he placed him in his infancy on his lap he 
 has often cast up the wine he had dru7ik upon his clothes. I wish I had 
 an authority to say these verses were foisted into the text ; for, though 
 the idea be natural, it must be granted to be so very gross as to be 
 utterly unworthy of Homer: nor do I see any colour to soften the 
 meanness of it : such images in any age or country must have been too 
 nauseous to be described." Pope's disgust was very natural, but it was 
 founded on mistake. He evidently thought the little Achilles was in 
 the habit of being made drunk by Phoenix, and vomiting in the bosom 
 of his tutor. A filthy image indeed, without even the redeeming quality 
 of *•' natural " that Pope would concede to it. But, happily, there is no 
 foundation for it in the original, which simply speaks of blurting wine upon 
 his tunic, without a word of that wine coming from the stomach of the 
 infant, or having been tasted by him. It only mentions, at line 485. of 
 the original, that Phoenix proffered it, olvov £tvl(tx^v. Repletion, with its 
 unseemly consequences, is not once hinted at throughout the description. 
 The animal propensities which it would imply are, on the contrary, 
 distinctly negatived, the voracious child being described as refusing food 
 at the hands of any but Phoenix himself. The whole passage is indeed 
 one of those exquisite pictures that stamp Homer the poet of mankind, 
 and shows the universality of his sympathies, which seized the relations 
 of life with a grasp for which nothing was too extensive, nothing too 
 minute. To my mind this picture of Achilles' infancy starting up amid 
 the rough doings and perplexities of adult warriors is unspeakably beau- 
 tiful ; and its intrinsic truthfulness any one, in any age or country, I suppose 
 could verify. The attachment of an infant to grown up manhood is of 
 itself a beautiful thing; nor will those who have once witnessed it require 
 any other key to the meaning of this passage. The child's loving 
 confidence in the beloved object is manifested by a thousand little pranks 
 in which those who love not children see but the expression of wanton freak ; 
 but in which others, with more probability, discern a faith as large as 
 
640 NOTES. 
 
 the love that prompts it; for children do nothing by halves, like or dislike, 
 it is " totus in illis" with them. They love with their souls, and think 
 there is no bottom to that love in themselves or others ; and they love to 
 show how much they are loved, and will, in their way, play more trying 
 freaks with their big friend before others than when by themselves, if 
 only to show the extent of their influence; and it is a churlish mistake to 
 ascribe any graver motive to their little trespasses, and a grievous damage 
 of their young dream to roughly awaken them to a sudden sense of what 
 may be conventionally due on the score of years. Phoenix was not of 
 that cast. And when the wayward boy, who would eat nothing from any 
 hand but his, did, in roguish waggery, instead of drinking from the 
 proffered cup, blow into it and spirt the contents over the tunic of his 
 friend, the warrior would laugh out lovingly at his adopted son's vivacity, 
 and theguests would laugh, and the little Achilles be beside himself for very 
 glee ; and, as they were a good-humoured people, the " inextinguishable 
 laughter" would have reached its height had any then suggested that old 
 Phoenix was one day to figure as a monster that made his young charge 
 drink till he vomited. Our bard himself, however, might take it more 
 seriously ; he would feel indeed that Pope had done him justice in 
 being reluctant to ascribe to him a coarseness of which he was incapable ; 
 but what would the old Chian have thought of Chapman, who had no 
 compunction in fathering him with the following burlesque bestiality: — 
 
 " My bosom lovingly sustained the wine thine could not bear." 
 
 Note 97. Book IX. stanza 60. Forest bred,~\ 
 
 So have I translated x^ovj/ryj/, assuming it to be an epithet of the boar 
 without being at all satisfied that it is the proper rendering of this dis- 
 puted passage. 
 
 Note 98. Book X. stanza 2. Fires fore Ilium were."] 
 
 I trust that the suppression of the relative here and elsewhere, so 
 convenient for the translator, will not be deemed inadmissible by the 
 reader, when he considers how often we resort to it in such familiar 
 phrases as "■ The way we went," *' We took all he had," " The man we 
 spoke of,*' " The man we met." 
 
 Note 99. Book X. stanza 37. Of Trojans none,"] 
 
 This solemn asseveration was fulfilled to the letter, though not 
 in the sense of the speaker ; no other Trojan did mount those steeds, 
 but Hector little thought he would be shortly dragged at their heels. 
 These passages, in which the speaker unconsciously touches on what is 
 connected with his own fate, have much pathos, and are quite in the 
 Greek style. Sophocles has turned it to wonderful account in the 
 
NOTES. 641 
 
 celebrated passage in the Oedipus Tyrannus, where the Theban king, in 
 pronouncing the ban on the unknown murderer of Laius, is imprecating 
 curses on himself. 
 
 Note 100. Book X. stanza 53. Athene Azure-eye.'] 
 
 *' Azure-eye," for " Azure-eyed," will not, I trust, be considered 
 strange or uncouth ; such epithets being in perfect accordance with the 
 genius of our tongue as " Edward Long-shanks," and not "long-shanked." 
 
 Note 101. Book X. stanza 55. CEnides^ son.'] 
 
 CEnides' son, i.e. son of the son of OEneus, viz. Diomed, whose father 
 Tydeus was the son of QSneus. 
 
 Note 102. Book X. stanza. 62. Neleian Nestor <^c.] 
 
 A modern's answer would probably have been direct, passing from the 
 first to the fourth line of the stanza, but religious feeling in accordance 
 with those timesj and the character of Odysseus required him to pay the 
 preliminary homage to the god's power of giving good gifts, lest he 
 might appear to disparage them by not noticing Nestor's speech in that 
 respect. 
 
 Note 103. Book XI. stanza 1. Eris go.] 
 
 Eris, Strife, a goddess like the rest. The Greek name is here retained, 
 but elsewhere I have not scrupled to translate it Strife, which we have 
 as little difficulty in personifying as Sleep, Death;, &c., and are therefore 
 not driven to retain the original nomenclature. 
 
 Note 104. Book XI. stanza 3. Cinyras gave.] 
 
 Cinyras, I have made here a dissyllable by elision of the middle one, 
 Mr. Sotheby, in his translation of the same passage, is an authority for 
 so using it. 
 
 Note 105. Book XL stanza 14. Hippolochus Keep-field.] 
 
 " Keep-field," is Chapman's happy rendering of the epithet fxevexnpjJiVQ 
 or fxEVETTTuXefio^ in another place, to which I am unable to refer the 
 reader. 
 
 Note 106. Book XI. stanza SO. Th' IlytUcB.] 
 
 I have found it convenient to adopt Pope's spelling and quantity for 
 this word, pronouncing it as a trisyllable with accent on the second. 
 The word is properly of four syllables, Ilithyae, with accent on the third. 
 
 Note 107. Book XI. stanza 43. And vaunting spaker] 
 
 Observe that there is no vituperation or disparagement in the speech 
 
 T T 
 
642 NOTES. 
 
 of Paris, which, on the contrary, is highly complimentary to his antago-^ 
 nist. Indeed, there is a polish about all that falls from the graceful 
 Alexander, which makes his character very interesting for the period 
 and state of society. From his influence over the Trojans, there must 
 have been a greater amount of sympathy between them than appears at 
 first sight, and would seem to disclose a more advanced state of refine- 
 ment than prevailed among the Achseans, with whom he would with 
 his character have held no place at all. For they Avere too rough to 
 appreciate, and would have condemned him as eff'eminate. We are apt 
 to underrate him from the nature of the offence connected with his his- 
 tory, the running off with another man's wife ; but in so doing, we judge 
 him by a standard not recognised by his contemporaries, whether 
 foes or friends. Hector blamed his abduction of the wife, whose 
 husband he has not afterwards the courage to encounter in fight. It 
 is the cowardice that he blames, and the consequences to his 
 country of the escapade, and not any breach of the marriage law. The 
 Achseans' sentiments are expressed by Menelaus, and the gravamen of 
 the charge against Paris is violated hospitality. Had he eloped with the 
 daughter of Menelaus, without paying the usual dowry to the father, his 
 guilt in the Achaeans' eyes had probably been the same, neither more nor 
 less. 
 
 Note 108. Book XI. stanza 44. Birds ''bout him more.'] 
 
 Chapman strangely enough translates it thus : — ^^ And leaves limbs 
 more embraced with birds than ivith enamoured dames,'' thereby giving a 
 coarseness and want of aptness to a comparison, which in the original is 
 singularly to the point. For yuvcuKsg here signifies not "wives,^' but 
 " women" and alludes not to the loves of the warrior, but to the depriva- 
 tion of funeral rites, of which the women wailing round the corpse formed 
 a principal feature, — much like the Irish wake. Hector, in speaking of 
 the disposal of his body in the event of falling in the combat with Ajax, 
 alludes to the part the women take in the ceremony. 
 
 2aJ/ia Se o^KaV iij.hv Sofxeuai iraXiv, 6(ppa Trvpos fie 
 Tpwes Kul Tpdowu 6.\oxoi AeXaxcccj Oavoura. 
 
 Iliad, Book VII. 79. 
 
 Note 108. Book XI. stanza 62. With sorrowing mind,"] 
 
 These terms we are scarcely in the habit of applying to the animal 
 creation, but with the ancients it was different. To the level of humanity 
 they made no scruple of lowering their gods, or of raising the inferior 
 creation. The same terms are employed in the original to denote the 
 sentiments of Ajax, and the sensations of the animal. 
 
NOTES. 643 
 
 Note 110. Book XI. stanza 70. Bread of sacred barley meal.'] 
 
 Trap V a\(fiTov lepou aarip'. There is a difference of opinion as to the 
 precise meaning of the original, upon which the classic reader will of 
 course consult the authorities, and judge for himself. Suffice it for 
 others to observe that the original might bear a construction not incon^ 
 sistent with a " parraitch " refection. As to the epithet " sacred," it 
 may not be superfluous to warn some of my readers against inferring 
 that " consecrated " bread was set before our heroes. Such epithets, be 
 it observed once for all, were among the ancient Greeks of constant 
 application to every object on which they set a value, whether the produce 
 of nature or of art, applied however to the object in kind, and not to the 
 particular portion before them ; spoken for example of corn, wine, oil, 
 in the general, as who should say he partook of that sacred thing, corn, 
 that divine substance, wine, and not that the particular portion before 
 the speaker was hallowed in the sense, for instance, of the shew bread of 
 the Jews. The custom sprang from their constant habit of referring 
 all things, good or evil, to the agency or inspiration of the gods. Even 
 their very crimes ' and follies they shouldered off upon their deities. 
 Between their gods and themselves the practical difference, in their 
 minds, seemed to have turned upon power and longevity. Life in 
 Olympus among the immortals, and life on the earth among their wor- 
 shippers, mutually reflected each the other. So that religion and the 
 business of life went on together with very little of that setting apart 
 which characterises modern life amongst us. Every-day life was mixed 
 up with every act of religion, and religion with the doings of every- 
 day life : the course of which it impeded the less, that there was hardly 
 a])assion it thwarted, or an action it forbade, against which any society in 
 any age or country would not have risen, on the bare instinct of self- 
 preservation. We must not therefore mistake the observances of an easy 
 faith for piety in the modern sense. All formal religions have a 
 tendency in their votaries to allow the substance and spirit to evaporate 
 in outward observances. And the religion of ancient Greece was purely 
 formal, destitute alike of spirit and substance. Influence on the mind, to 
 form, to purify, to elevate, it neither possessed nor aimed at. What 
 influence in this way could a religion have in which self-restraint as a 
 duty nowhere appears? Or what self-restraint could be imposed by a 
 faith, that gave such latitude to men's passions and propensities ? St. 
 Paul's picture of paganism was true to the letter. The crimes in that 
 frightful catalogue the pagan religion no where forbade, and in many 
 parts, on the contrary, incorporated in its worship. Those who slight 
 the influence of Christianity on tlie world's history, cannot have sufficiently 
 dwelt on the state of society which preceded it. What we call moralitv 
 as a popular possession has risen and spread with the rise and progress 
 
 T T 2 
 
644 KOTES. 
 
 of revealed religion. Civilisation will not account for the higher tone 
 amongst us. For where society had reached its highest pitch in this 
 respect, there all that we most abhor flourished the most. Abstract 
 from the civilisation of modern Europe Christianity and its influence's, 
 and who will guarantee the moral superiority of our civilisation to that 
 of the age of Pericles, or of Augustus? The problem of man's existence 
 here and hereafter, and his position as a moral agent, appear to have 
 been objects quite beside the pagan scheme, which as a guide was worse 
 than nugatory. And if society in the Homeric age were free from the 
 vices of later times, the cause will be found in the simple and unartificial 
 life of that period, and not in the religion. 
 
 Note 111. Book XI, stanza 84. Shield-like plain.'] 
 
 It will be seen that I have followed Clarke's text hC acnndiog instead 
 of ^ih (TirilioQ, but not his adopted translation of '^ stratum clypeis," 
 " shield-strewn," which as an epithet seems open to the objection of not 
 being characteristic. For amid that general wreck of warlike imple- 
 ments, and the dead and the dying, horses and men and chariots, the 
 attention would probably not be particularly detained by the " strewn- 
 shields." But "shield-like" presents a significant feature peculiarly 
 characteristic of that battle-field, fought on a plain where the eye ranging 
 on all sides could find no limit but the visible horizon, which circling 
 round would give it the appearance of the convex surface of a shield. 
 The epithet therefore at one stroke brings before one the nature of the 
 ground and its vast extent. The truthfulness of the description, and its 
 significance, any one may verify for himself the first time he is out of 
 sight of land in a smooth sea, still sailing and still the centre of seem- 
 ingly the same circle. If this rendering be correct, and it is one 
 suggested by the ancient critics, then we have another among the 
 countless instances of Homer's appealing to the eye, which perhaps he does 
 in preference to the imagination more than any other poet. I mean that 
 he takes one to the spot, as it were, touching off" his pictures so as to 
 make that prominent, which would be so were we present, and saw with 
 the bodily instead of the mind's eye. Poets, on the other hand, whose 
 descriptions appeal more to the imagination, may choose certain 
 features of the scene, and the reader's imagination will accept and 
 dwell on those, to the exclusion of other features suppressed by the 
 poet, but which might however thrust themselves on the notice of 
 one who saw the reality. This eclectic manner has its uses, and is by 
 modern poets turned to great account ; but it is not in Homer's 
 manner, nor I think in the manner of any ancient poet in the earlier 
 periods of society, but altogether the growth of a later age, when 
 men's minds embody a vast amount of experience and information 
 more extended in the aggregate, but withal for the most part taken at 
 econd hand and less personal than in those early times, when the 
 
NOTES. 645 
 
 narrower cycle of knowledge was more easilj' travelled over by the 
 individual. 
 
 Of any man's sum of knowledge at the present day how little is other 
 tlian historic. What does the lawyer, the physician, the soldier, the 
 farmer, and the priest, the naval man and the statesman, know from 
 personal experience beyond his own calling ? Historically they all know 
 something of each, and listen with more or less of interest to narratives 
 that turn upon litigation, or accidents to the human frame, on battles, 
 by land and by water, rustic scenes and employment, disputes of 
 theologians and strokes of policy, ocean's doings and of those that " go 
 down to the sea in ships." But how few, beyond their own line, could 
 appreciate the actual truthfulness of what is presented to them, or who 
 would not take for matter of course things that the technical man knows 
 to be as impossible as the wildest fiction of the middle-age romances. 
 A poet dealing with such an audience has therefore a latitude of selection, 
 of making features prominent for his purpose which are not so in the 
 reality, by suppressing in the narrative what could not be sunk before 
 the eye had the party been present. And though his battle displease 
 the soldier, his shipwreck the literal mariner, and his horseman, like the 
 statue of King Charles at Charing Cross, offend the groom, who all 
 carry the impressions of their bodily eye-sight with them, in what 
 pertains to their calling, too predominately to make allowances, yet the 
 bulk of his auditors, who have no such experience to violate, will be 
 content. But it was not so in the early state of society, where, as in the 
 Homeric age, one individual would often unite all functions in his own 
 person. So that the painter-like character of the poet was probably a 
 result of necessity, and the law of probability as existing in the minds of 
 his audience rather than of choice. The difficulty that painters lie 
 under in this respect is strikingly illustrated by Raphael's cartoon of 
 the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. There the problem was to deal with 
 the scenery, the sea, the ship, the actors and the action. The action, the 
 miraculous draught, and its effect on the minds of the dramatis personce 
 were to be shown ; but the play of countenance of the actors could not 
 be seen at a distance, which would enable the eye to take in the boat 
 and the scenery. Nothing was left the painter therefore but to select 
 one feature to the disparagement or suppression of another. He has 
 accordingly suppressed the boat, artistically reducing it to the symbol of 
 a boat. The most inexperienced eye perceives at once that for a literal 
 ship it is wholly inadequate, that it could not for an instant sustain the 
 weight of human life upon it, let alone the draught of fish. And 
 accordingly it affords a topic of easy criticism to numbers who go away 
 wondering at such a blunder in the great painter, without reflecting that 
 ivhat a child must detect could hardly have escaped a Rafaelle's atten- 
 
 T T 3 
 
()46 NOTES. 
 
 tion. Something of the restriction thnt the painter lies under, viz., of 
 correction by eye-sight experience, lay, though in a less degree, on the 
 poet in those times, among that out-door people, who were in the habit 
 of seeing all that he saw. From which I would draw this corollary, that 
 what would contradict the senses, and appear uncouth to an actual 
 spectator, could not be the true construction in any disputed passage of 
 our poet. 
 
 Note 112. Book XII. stanza 19. Slaughter or be slain.'\ 
 
 Clarke translates it until they " be slain or taken," " vel interficiantur vel 
 capiantur." But not correctly. See Heyne's note ad. loc. An additional 
 reason against Clarke's rendering may be suggested, viz. that it 
 conveys a statement rather unusual in the heroic speeches, viz. the alter- 
 native of death or capture, whereas they seem always to have dwelt on 
 slaying their foe, and in no one instance do I recollect that the possible 
 capture is hinted at. They made prisoners, but never talked of it 
 beforehand, but rather of the anticipated feast the vultures and dogs 
 would have of their adversary's carcase. With the interpretation 
 of Clarke, however, the versions of Chapman, Cowper, and Mr. Sotheby 
 are accordant. 
 
 Note 113. Book XII. stanza 20. Strange fire of stone. ~\ 
 
 The original of this is an exceedingly difficult passage. Chapman 
 treats the fire as supernatural, relying on dEcnndaeg, and gives it very 
 spiritedly, 
 
 The Trojans fought not of themselves, a fire from heaven was thrown, 
 That ran amongst them through the wall, mere added to their own. 
 
 But this is not supported by the original in the connection of Xaivou 
 and TTvp, nor I think sufficiently grounded on that basis of real and literal 
 thtit forms the substratum out of which Homer's highest passages appear 
 to grow. Cowper and Mr. Sotheby treat it as a shower of missiles, or 
 as Mr. Brandreth renders it, " a ceaseless fire of stones arose" So, 
 Voss, " stieg schrecklicher Feuerorkan auf, Prasselnder Steine." But 
 this rendering, if it deal witli XcuVov, leaves the meaning of Trvp untouched, 
 unless by the lurking anachronism of referring the later metaphorical 
 use of the term " fire," as denoting any brisk discharge of missiles, to a 
 period anterior to the use of fire-arms. Pope, who not often grapples 
 with a difficulty, does here as usual take the suggestion that the words 
 singly offer, and we have " stony showers," *' a blaze of flames " '' and 
 the flash of arms," but nothing to help us in connecting Xairov with Trvp, 
 Ileyne balances the difficulties rather feebly, and in his usual surgeon-like 
 
NOTES. 647 
 
 fashion grasps at the knife. Damme would connect \airov with teIxoc, 
 and so render it "stone wall." Against whose authority I would with 
 diffidence observe, 1st. That the distance between them is not in Homer's 
 usual manner, especially where the postponed word is not made the 
 cushion of a fresh clause, but breaks off dead, as in this place. 2nd. 
 That " stone wall" injures the graphic character of the description, and 
 very much abates the alarm we should otherwise feel, by connecting 
 the mischief with its antidote ; for whatever we anticipate from the 
 S'eo-TTt^aec Ttvp or strange fire, we take comfort when reminded that it 
 falls on a wall of stone, and are inclined to think that, for the nonce, it 
 could scarcely have lighted on a better place for the Acheeans. 
 
 Upon so obscure a passage it is with anything but confidence that I 
 add my own opinion, that ttv^ literally means fire, and not metaphorically, 
 and suggest the possible alternative of Xdlvov designating either : — 1st. 
 Some bituminous substance by which the fire was produced, and which 
 when not ignited, resembled a stone, a descriptive epithet in that case 
 like our name for sulphur, brimstone OYhurnstone. And, who knows ? may 
 have been the forerunner of the Greek fire, and then ^eaTnlakq indeed. 
 Or 2nd. That the ignited substance was attached to a stone, and 
 so hurled at the wall's defenders. The fiery missiles in either case might, 
 by an easy metaphor, be styled a stony fire, \alvov nvp. 
 
 Note 114. Book XII. stanza 23. Flew with the breeze along,~\ 
 
 Heyne has a long note in which the meaning of the phrase in the ori- 
 ginal is discussed. To the present translator it seems clear enough, not 
 that the eagle flew swift as the wind, but that in his wounded state he let 
 himself be floated down the breeze. 
 
 Note 115. Book XII. stanza 31. Hisiveapons bring to sight.'] 
 " Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow ? Or hast thou 
 seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of 
 trouble, against the day of battle and war ? " — Job. xxxvii. 22, 23. 
 
 Note 116. Book XII. tanza 32. Winds lull asleep.] 
 
 In the original we have a snow-piece, not sketched, but painted ; the 
 distinct enumeration of the several features of which suggests the 
 gradual snowing up of the landscape,— snowing up to a certain point, 
 when the painter-poet pauses to take a glance at the whole, and perceivcg 
 that all else is covered up, save the sea, whose up-washing wave borders 
 the mantle of white on that side. By gradual snowing up, I mean 
 getting deeper and deeper, but all over simultaneously alike, and not first 
 one part of the landscape, and then another, as Pope renders it : — 
 
 And first the mountain-tops are covered in 
 Then the green fields, and then the sandy shore. 
 T T 4 
 
648 NOTES. 
 
 Heyne suggests a suspicion of the autlieiiticitj' of lines 285, 6, of the 
 original {an fcetus rhapsodi sint), although he admits that they may have 
 been thrown in by tlie poet himself for ornament's sake. The reader* 
 however, will perhaps agree with the translator in thinking that the 
 picture had been incomplete without them, — especially if we take 
 Homer's manner into account. Our poet, as I have had occasion 
 to observe before, always takes you to the spot, and omits nothing that 
 on the spot would force itself on your attention. But what eye could 
 contemplate such a scene, and fail to be struck with the absence 
 of snow on the water ? The lines in the original have to my mind the 
 poet's stamp upon them. Adaptation of sound to sense is open to dif- 
 ference of opinion, but I think the dullest ear must perceive the 
 floating flow of the 285th line, 
 
 Kvjxa Se yiLV irpoa-nKa^ov ipvKerai, &Wa re Travra, 
 
 and the peculiar beauty of TrporrirXa'Cov, which, with its sibilants and their 
 collocation and its own position in the line, is so imitative of the plashing 
 swell of sea. The surge runs up in the initial dactyl, swells to its 
 height in the succeeding spondee, and, discharging itself in the next 
 long syllable, runs off in the dactyls that follow. Conceive a spondee 
 at the beginning of the line, or the last syllable of TrpoaicXaiiov made 
 long by position, and the effect would be lost. 
 
 Always keeping to my main purpose in a literal translation, I must here 
 observe to those unacquainted with the original that TrpoaitXaCov means 
 "approaching" " coming to " though humouring the verse, I have rendered 
 it " up washing wave." And further that Kv^ia does not mean precisely 
 " wave," viz. a portion of the water that rises above the rest, and 
 of which a great number present themselves at once, but rather a swell 
 of the sea before it breaks into waves. At least I fancy so, for, in fact^ 
 I liave often felt at a loss to realize to my mind the precise idea the poet 
 meant to convey on various occasions by this word. It has not been 
 my good fortune to have visited the Mediterranean, but those who have, 
 and especially that part off the coast of Asia Minor or the Levant, would 
 probably find an appropriateness in his account of the motion of 
 the waters, as well as other particulars which must escape one who has 
 never seen other than a tidal ocean. The circumstance of there being 
 no tides in the Mediterranean, but only a current always setting one 
 way, would, I suppose, cause it under the action of the winds to present 
 phenomena quite different to seas^ where the sweep of the winds 
 is crossed by tides setting in one direction, and after a time returning in 
 another. The expression Kvfxa may have a significance, therefore, in the* 
 Mediterranean, which would be wanting in the broken surface of the sea 
 in other parts. " The Levantine Sea," says Mr. Warburton, *' is seldom 
 without a swell." 
 
NOTES. G49 
 
 Note 117. Book XII. stanza 39. Tempest down."] 
 
 ijipiaav, '' weighed down." The word in the original is so repeatedly 
 employed in describing a tempest, that I cannot help thinking the asso- 
 ciation entered into the poet's meaning here ; and I have rendered it 
 accordingly, by giving expression to what may be called a latent metaphor 
 in the original. 
 
 Note 118. Book XII. stanza 43. With words o'er craw.'] 
 
 The reader familiar with Spenser will not require a note, which is only 
 meant to fortify the translator's use of the word by that poet's 
 authority. 
 
 Then 'gan the villein him to over- craw 
 
 Faerie Queene, B. 1, c. 9, st. 50. 
 
 Note 119. Book XIII. stanza 2. Thracian Samos.'] 
 
 Literal accuracy is so characteristic a feature of Homer's poetry, that 
 1 trust to be excused for so frequently impressing it on the attention of 
 those readers who, accustomed to the license of modern poets in 
 this particular, might fail to observe what they were not expecting. To 
 that truthfulness so graceful a homage is paid by the author of Eothen, 
 as to this very passage, that I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of 
 transcribing his words for the reader's benefit : — " And now it was that 
 my eyes were greeted with a delightful surprize. Whilst we we were at 
 Constantinople, Methley and I had pored over the map together ; 
 we agreed that, whatever may have been the exact site of Troy, the 
 Grecian camp must have been nearly opposite the space betwixt the 
 islands of Inibros and Tenedos. 
 
 Mecro-7J7us TereSoiO Ka\ ''l/x€pov ■KanraXoevros 
 
 But Methley reminded me of a passage in the Iliad in which Neptune is 
 represented as looking at the scene of action before Ilium from above 
 the island of Samothrace. Now Samothrace, according to the map, 
 appeared to be not only out of all seeing distance from the Troad, but to 
 be entirely shut out from it by the intervening Imbros, a larger island, 
 which stretches its length right athwart the line of sight from Samothrace 
 to Troy. Piously allowing that the dread Commotor of our globe might 
 have seen all mortal doings, even from the depths of his own cerulean 
 kingdom, I still felt that, if a station were to be chosen from which to see 
 the fight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse from all 
 haziness and exaggeration, would have meafit to give the god for his station 
 some spot within the reach of men's eyes from the plains of Troy. I 
 think that this testing of the poet's words by map and compass may have 
 shaken a little of my faith in the completeness of his knowledge. Well, 
 
650 NOTES. 
 
 now I had come, there, to the south, was Tenedos, and here, at my side, 
 was Imbros — all right, and according to the map but aloft, over Imbros — 
 aloft, in afar away heaven — was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Neptune ! 
 So Homer had appointed it, and so it was : the map was correct 
 enough, but could not, like Homer, convey the whole truth. Thus vain 
 and false are the mere human surmises and doubts which clash with 
 Homeric writ I " Eothen, chap. 4. 
 
 Note 120. Book XHI. stanza 13. Souls of brave men heal.'] 
 
 Their instinctive love of the beautiful would appear to have led the 
 Greeks to treat as morbid every deviation from that balanced condition 
 of the passions and faculties in which beauty resides no less than in 
 the just proportion of the ^parts that make up our physical frame. 
 Tranquillity and repose would seem to have formed the basis of their 
 ideal of beauty, from which violent perturbations of mind and contortions 
 of body were alike excluded. This dictated the expression of suppressed 
 agony in the principal figure of the Laocoon, where perhaps an 
 inferior artist, or among a different people less austere in their notions, 
 would have indulged in contortions natural perhaps to the situation, but 
 pre-eminently distasteful to the Greek mind. A similar feeling marked 
 their oratory, which in the highest fervour of eloquence never lost its self- 
 possession, and always, I believe, subsided towards the close of the speech 
 into a comparatively equable and tranquil tone, most agreeable to a 
 Greek audience, though a modern might think it flat and flagging and, 
 prefer an oration that ends with a burst. To return, however, to the 
 subject of this note, violent anger appears to have been uniformly 
 treated as a disease, a deviation from the healthy or normal condition, and 
 designated accordingly. Hence the reluctance of the Greeks to fight is 
 here, in the text, attributed to their wrath against Agamemnon, a condition 
 from which, it is said, from their superior nature, they will soon heal. So 
 Achilles is elsewhere represented as lying " sick of his wrath," keIto — 
 y^wufiEvoQ. (3.6S8. KE~ir ciTrojurjviaacy /3 772. This habit of treating any 
 deviation from the perfect or normal condition of mankind, bodily and 
 mental, led to the indulgence with which want of courage would seem to 
 have been regarded, asif it were a morbid state of the individual over which 
 he had no control, and from which he could not recover ; recovery from 
 their besetments being only for the well-conditioned and nobler natures — 
 uK€(TTai TOL (ppivEQ iad\oJv*'N. 115. From the less happily constituted 
 less was expected. 
 
 / ovS &j/ eyarye 
 
 ^Av5p\ fiax^ro-alfxr^u Sans noXifioio fxedeiriy 
 i\vyf)hs idv. — N. 117. 
 
NOTES. 651 
 
 Note 121. Book XIII. stanza 14. Gird- car lh.'\ 
 
 ran;o)(«Ci girding or grasping the earth; an epithet of Poseidon 
 or Neptune. 
 
 Note 12'2. Book XIII. stanza 17. Strength of Idomeneus.~] 
 
 Strength, or might, of Idoraeneus, for Idomeneus was a very common 
 Hellenism, which I have occasionally retained in the translation. We 
 have something which at bottom is near akin to it, in such titular ex- 
 pressions as Her Majesty, His Grace, His Highness, which manifestly 
 mean the Majesty of the Queen, the Grace of the Duke, the Highness 
 of the Prince. For Majesty, Grace, Highness, substitute " Strength," 
 and for Queen, Duke, Prince, the name of each, and we have the Greek 
 idiom at once. 
 
 Note 123. Book XIII. stanza 29. And therefore spears.^ 
 
 Therefore, i. e., in consequence of fighting close-hand instead of at a 
 distance, he was enabled to despoil his foe, a great point in the warfare 
 of those days. Something of the intrepid character of the speaker is 
 shown by his quietly accounting for the store of arms he had, without 
 seemingly thinking of the personal risk incurred in the method of 
 acquiring them. The sensitiveness of Merion, however, took it otherwise, 
 and he accordingly vindicates himself from a reproach as undeserved as 
 it was foreign to the intention of the unconscious speaker. 
 
 Note 124. Book XIII. stanza 39. And more he knew.'] 
 
 A curious illustration of the early acceptance of the aphorism, "know- 
 ledge is power." 
 
 Note 125. Book XIII. stanza 44. Stay-fight or hide-fight."] 
 Epithet like Beau-clerk, Long-shanks, Lion-heart, &c. 
 
 Note 126. Book XIII. stanza 53. Deipyrus.] 
 
 The reader is requested to pronounce Peipyrus as a trisyllable, by sup- 
 pression of the y. 
 
 Note 127. Book XHI. stanza 60. Ami's e?id.] 
 See note 61. 
 
 Note 128. Book XIII. stanza 67. Sheep's ivooL] 
 
 Sheep's wool, the material of a sling, or its lining. See, further on, 
 stanza 79, where " twisted sheep's wool ^ is put for the sling itself. 
 
 Note 129. Book XIII. stanza 75. Hard mulct shunned.] 
 
 Hard mulct, i. e., blame. With this sensitive and high-spirited people 
 the heaviest mulct or fine, far transcending all pecuniary penalties, 
 
652 NOTES. 
 
 was loss of estimation among their fellows. How nervously they shrank 
 from blame we have an instance in this very Book, wliere Idomeneus, 
 conversing with his officer Merion, concludes their conversation with 
 observing on the chance of some of one blaming them severely. The 
 Greeks, however, of a later age had so far outgrown the feeling, that 
 the Scholiast, not noticing the significance of the expression, takes the 
 vord to have been used in its ordinary and literal sense, and, as if its 
 meaning had altered with the lapse of years, intimates that in his time 
 they used the word * blame' — ^' Ou)}jy: vvv r;)r jueyui/zir." Schol. A. 
 
 -Note 130. Book XII I. stanza 79. Well-twist wool'] 
 
 Well-twist wool, i. e., slings made of that material. 
 
 Note 131. Book XIII. stanza 81. Which many taster] 
 
 The 734-. line presents one of the few obscure passages in the original. 
 Heyne, as usual, suspects interpolation, and the construction certainly is 
 not in Homer's usual transparent manner. But, if I rightly understand 
 the verse, it is quite in keeping with the speech of Polydamas, and the 
 ambiguity perhaps intended. For, half warning, half sarcasm, while de- 
 livering a moral sentence it points at the source of Hector's being so 
 *' hard to persuade,'' viz., his lack of that wisdom which its possessor is 
 never slow to recognize in himself or another. And, so understood, 
 it links admirably with the succeeding line ; while the whole, if de- 
 corum had allow^ed of his speaking to his impetuous chief in full 
 freedom, would have run thus: — '^Divers gifts to divers persons. To 
 one, warlike deeds, ^c., meaning Hector, to another, dance ; another, 
 song and harp, meaning perhaps Paris; to another wisdom, of which 
 wisdom many enjoy the fruit, but which he is the chief one to recog- 
 nize by whom it is possessed. You are not that one, and therefore may 
 disregard my advice, as on a former occasion. (See Book XII. stanza 
 26.) Nevertheless I will utter forth what to me seems the best." 
 
 The sentiment, in its contrast of those who enjoy the fruits of wisdom 
 with those who recognize herself, reminds one of the poor wise man 
 who by his wisdom delivered the city (Eccles. ch. 9. v 15.); and that 
 *'wisdoni is justified of her children" (Luke ch. 7. v 35.) 
 
 I am as little inclined to reject the 731st line — " A\Xw V6^yr](TTv\\ In 
 Polydamas there seems a vein of sarcasm and subtlety with his undoubted 
 wisdom. He cares not to refrain from a fling at his antagonist in 
 council. Hector; but yet will not do it coarsely. The rough contrast of 
 military prowess with wisdom might have proved too much for the 
 stomach of his auditor. So he gives the question a broader scope, and 
 breaks what might be offensive in his denial of a quality, to which 
 his auditor might not be content to forego some claim, by interposing 
 
NOTES. 653 
 
 other points of excellency to which he had neither claim nor inclination, 
 viz., those points for instance, in which Paris excelled — dancing, and harp, 
 and song. Here, again, in glancing from one brother to another, he 
 indulges his vein of sarcasm against the family, with which it would 
 seem that he was not on the best of terms. Polydamas, it will be 
 remembered, is more than once brought forward as opposing the over- 
 weening influence of the Priam family to the public detriment, and may 
 be considered, if not as the mouth piece of the people, yet as expressing 
 the sentiments of a considerable section. The speech seems to me very 
 subtle, just verging on the offensive, which it approaches but to recede. 
 So that Hector, had he the time to have weighed the matter, could 
 scarcely have determined its character, and yet must have had a feeling 
 that the acuter intellect of Polydamus was having a hit at him. But here, 
 as usual, the manner is so plausible, and the advice itself so sound, 
 though at Hector's expense, that he could scarcely take umbrage. 
 
 Eustathius, it is true, snubs the line as an interpolation, unsuited to the 
 sense of the passage and the poet^s drift, who was simply companng 
 valour and prudence. Judicium verissimum, OfFendit versus quoties- 
 cunque attenta mente legi, saith Heyne, who has at all times a Wolffish 
 appetite for destruction in these matters. 
 
 Note 132. Book XHI. stanza 83. For one's hy tJi ship."] 
 
 Observe the allusion to Achilles, like a cloud looming in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Note 133. Book XHI. stanza 84'. Like snowy mount.~\ 
 
 This simile is meant to denote the stature of Hector. A snowy or snow- 
 capt mountain must necessarily be lofty, and its summit often shows above 
 the mountains not so covered. In like manner Hector's white plumes 
 towered above the rest of the host he was passing through. The reader 
 will recollect that Hector's gigantic stature is often mentioned. 
 
 Note 134. Book XITI. stanza 86. Now safe V thy ruin.'] 
 
 Our English idiom corresponds with the Greek, for we say '' He is safe 
 for a reprimand," meaning he his sure to get it. 
 
 Note 135. Book XIII. stanza 88. Cebrion.'] 
 
 I venture on this contraction for Cebriones, by analogy with Merion 
 for Meriones, the loss of the final syllable in both eases naturally 
 drawing the accent back to the first — a great convenience for the verse. 
 Should the license however be considered too much, I must excuse 
 myself on the hard-case plea — the difficulty of the verse, and the 
 scrupulousness with which I avoid deranging the order of the names as 
 
654 NOTES. 
 
 given in the original : point to which none of the metrical translators 
 have I believe attended. 
 
 Note 136. Book XIV. stanza 5. Promontories twain.'] 
 Rhaetium and Sigoeum. 
 
 Note 137. Book XIV. stanza 5. Affrighted.] 
 
 The chieftains vfere alarmed, because they knew that extreme indeed 
 must be the urgency that should withdraw Nestor from the heat of the 
 battle. 
 
 Note 138. Book XIV. stanza 17. Her oicn and husband's brother.] 
 
 Zeus, Here, and Poseidon being children of Kronos, Here, on marrying 
 Zeus, would stand in the twofold relation to Poseidon of own sister and 
 brother's wife. 
 
 Note 139. Book XIV. stanza 19. The scent through shy.] 
 
 Among the German critics there are who have suspected these lines 
 to be spurious, because of the hyperbole. But v/hat hyperbole ? Celestial 
 odours may well transcend eau de Cologne^ of which it might indeed be 
 hyperbolical to say, that shaking a bottle of it on the banks of the Rhine 
 would transmit the fragrance to the sky. But this was better than 
 Farina's best. The pleasant scent, moreover, of the fresh-mown hay, 
 even in this dull clime of ours, shall commend itself to the nostrils of the 
 homeward bound, who is yet miles from the shore. Shall not, then, the 
 full flush odours of the South spread through space like the air itself? 
 Assuredly. And here again we have, after all, but another of Homer's 
 literal terrestrial experiences ajoplied to matters celestial. 
 
 Note 140. Book XIV. stanza 25. And in thy bosom lay.] 
 
 The commentators seem perplexed about this direction. For the 
 girdle, say they, is not worn in the bosom, but, at most, below it, round 
 the waist. Heyne concludes that iyKaradeadaL koXttw is irepidicrdau I 
 confess to seeing no necessity for such construction of a passage which 
 seems to me plain enough. The difficulty arises from supposing 
 Aphrodite was performing such a work of supererogation as to instruct 
 Her^ on what part of her person she was to wear an article of female 
 attire. Nothing of the kind, I conceive, was intended. Here was neither 
 directed to put, nor did put on the girdle immediately she received it ; 
 but put it by, snug and safe, until she should presently require it. And 
 this was not surely in her visit to Sleep, w ho needed not the exercise of 
 those fascinations which were better reserved for Zeus. Nor am I sure 
 that her putting on the girdle thus early might not have grounded a 
 suspicion of setting her cap at old Hypnos himself, and given occasion 
 
NOTES. 655 
 
 for chatter to the scandal-mongers of Olympus. We may conclude, 
 therefore, that Homer tells us true, and that she did not then put on the 
 girdle, but carefully deposited the same in her bosom. By which it 
 would appear, that the women in his time, like little girls as well as 
 grown women of the lower order in more modern times, were given to 
 entrusting there little valuables to that part of their person, which, with 
 little girls, would seem to have been, before the present style of dress, 
 something like the schoolboy's pocket, though not quite such an omnium 
 gatherum. In Here's time they probably wore no pockets, and as yet 
 reticules were not ; so how could the goddess have better disposed of the 
 precious loan than in the way suggested ? 
 
 Note 141. Book XIV. stanza 26. Death's brother sleep.'] 
 
 In these, and similar personifications, I have not thought it necessary 
 to retain the Greek names, because we have the ideas and the personi- 
 fication they represent in our own tongue. And I saw no advantage to 
 the English version in writing Oneiros, Hypnos, and Thanatos, instead 
 of Dream, Sleep, and Death. 
 
 Note 142. Book XIV. stanza 31. Nor white armed Here.] 
 
 These epithets are not employed at random, but, where they are not 
 rather titular than qualificative, have usually some significant relation to 
 the action or situation of the person at the time. And here, accordingly, 
 as in the act of touching Earth with one hand and Sea with the other, the 
 arms of Here would be very conspicuous ; the painter-poet, by a single 
 stroke, directs attention to them by the epithet " white-armed." He 
 says nothing here of her large eyes, nor of her august presence ; we 
 have neither Trorvia nor (3ou)7riQ, though we had both at the conclusion of 
 the 29th stanza ; for there the majestic goddess, taking umbrage at Sleep's 
 hesitation to comply with her request, those large eyes, fixed on him 
 with a haughty eloquence, not less forceful than her tongue, were as 
 proper to be mentioned as they are here properly left out. And there 
 would have been no point in speaking of her white arms at that time, 
 when they would probably fall within the folds of her drapery as she 
 stood, although here they challenge notice, when the action and attitude 
 expose them. 
 
 Other instances abound of this discriminative character in the epithets, 
 which the reader may find for himself. To enable him to do so, I have 
 striven hard to give the exact epithet of the original, and when several 
 epithets or appellations occur together, without my being able to express 
 them all, I have endeavoured, to the best of my judgment, to retain the 
 significant one. As, for instance, here, where the original runs, "goddess 
 white-armed Here," I have rejected " goddess," and retained the other 
 epithet, not being able to preserve them both. It will be seen, then, that 
 
656 NOTES. 
 
 this scruple deprives me of the convenient license of applying an epithet 
 in one place because it had been used in another. 
 
 Merely titular epithets, however, are excepted from the scope of this 
 note, such as ^' Swift-foot, ' so constantly applied to Achilles. These 
 epithets rather class with such as William Rufus, Athelstone the Unready, 
 Edward Long-shanks, Charles the Bold, &c., and are, of course, not 
 amenable to the same poetic law for their use. 
 
 Note 14^3. Book XIV. stanza 32. Which Chalcis gods yclepe.~\ 
 
 What if this difference of appellation, of which such frequent mention 
 is made by Homer, should point at difference of races, whose tongues 
 respectively, as the language of the conquerors and the conquered, the 
 ruling race and the subordinate, are designated as the language of gods 
 and of men ? And if so, it would be something in the stj'^le of the Hebrew 
 appellation *' gods," to designate their magistrates and judges, as in the 
 following passages: — "Then his master shall bring him to \h^ judges ^^ 
 Exod. xxi. 6. " The master of the house shall be brought to the 
 judges^ Exod. xxii. 8. " Thou shalt not revile the gods^ nor curse the 
 ruler ot thy people," ibid.., v. 28. In all which passages the word in italics 
 is the rendering for one and the same word, D^C?^., with one and the 
 game signification, although in the last instance our translators have 
 expressed its literal meaning rather than its English equivalent. In the 
 sense of "judges" you have the dual enunciation so frequent in Scripture. 
 The same Hebrew word occurs Psalm Ixxxii. 1, where, if rendered 
 "judges" instead of " gods," the passage would have a significance not 
 so apparent in its present form, and, expressed at length, would run 
 somewhat thus, — *' Among men the judges decide, but the judges them- 
 selves are judged of God:" a reference to the supreme divine govern- 
 ance in the affairs of men which does not so distinctly appear in the 
 present version. As the passage now stands, it might be quoted as 
 authority for the existence of the false gods involved in the assertion of 
 their subordinate character, even as Josephus interprets the above- 
 quoted passage — Exod. xxii. 28. " thou shalt not revile the gods," — as con- 
 veying a command to respect the idols of the heathen. BXao-^r/^e/rw U 
 l^rjheiQ Qeovg, ovg iroXeiQ ciWai rofxii^ovori ' firj avX^v iepd ^eviKa, fxrj I' ixv 
 k-rrijivofxaaixivov y tlvl Gew KELp.i]Kiov Xafx^aveir. Antiq. IV. 8 & 10. Kai 
 TTspi yt rov ixriTEXyXivai^eiv uijre (3\a(T(prjiJE~iy rovg vofu^oixivovQ deovQ Trap* 
 ETEpoig, avTLKpvg ijfTiv 6 rofjLoOETrjg aTtEipr]KEv, avrijg EPEKa TrpoarjyopUig rov 
 Qeov. Con. Apion. II. 33. 
 
 Note 144'. Book XIV. stanza 39. That even Helws:'] 
 
 Helios, i. e. the Sun, for it must be borne in mind that Apollo had not 
 yet come to be considered the Sun-god, as he was afterwards. 
 
NOTES. 657 
 
 Note 145. Book XIV. stanza 41. Men^ s famed tribes.'^ 
 
 KXvTci (f)vX avdpojiriov. The passage has attracted the attention of the 
 ancient commentators without eliciting much in the way of satisfactory 
 explanation. The suggestion, however, with which Eustathius concludes 
 his note^ viz. that KXvra may be in contradistinction to the lower 
 animals, is not unlikely : Xiyoi 3' av "ktioq KXvra (pvXa apdpafTrioy u)q TrpoQ 
 diaarroXrjv tu)v tov aXoyov Cf^ov tthibv. The explanation of the Villoison 
 Scholiast, BL. I do not profess to understand, nor its application, as it is 
 merely declaratory of the functions of Hypnos when he gets among the 
 kXvtu 0i/\a, without touching the real difficulty of the epithet kXvtci. 
 There can be no doubt but that kXvtU (j>vXa is distinctive, either of men 
 as compared with the lower animals, suppose, as Eustathius suggests, or 
 of men as between themselves. Against the former there is this, that 
 the distinction was as applicable to the people he was leaving as to any 
 other tribes he could go to. But if the distinction be of men as among 
 themselves, then who are the kXvtci (])vXa ? In the absence of anything 
 better, I would suggest that perhaps our old friends the Ethiopians are 
 intended, who seem to have kept a sort of open house for the deities 
 It is to be hoped, however, in that case, for the credit of their activity, 
 that they were not in the habit of entertaining Hypnos for the orthodox 
 period of twelve consecutive days. 
 
 Note 146. Book XIV. stanza 44. Impei^ious hlore.'\ 
 
 Blore^ the act of blowing, a blast. Chapman employs the word in his 
 translation. 
 
 Note 147. Book XIV. stanza 45. High-haired oaks."] 
 
 'YxpiKOfiOQ, high-haired, lofty-foliaged. This epithet perhaps denotes 
 not so much the actual loftiness of the tree as the disposition of its 
 foliage, of which the bulk grows nearer the summit than in some other 
 trees. Thus the broad head of the oak contrasts with the poplar. 
 'YxpiKoixoQ might indeed refer to the fashion of trimming up the trees to a 
 head by lopping the lower branches to within a few feet of the top, as 
 is common in those parts to this day. See Note 54. But there are 
 passages as at Iliad XXIII. 118., where of course the high-haired oaks 
 could not have been artificially dealt with. 
 
 Note 148. Book XIV. stanza 50. Satnio.'] 
 
 Cowper is authority for the word. Chapman has made a curious 
 blunder here in making the Naiad feed the herds of Enops. 
 
 Note 149. Book XIV. stanza 55, were-gild.'] 
 
 *' Were-gild, the price or fine set on a head for the murder of a man.'* 
 
 U U 
 
658 NOTES. 
 
 Bailey's Diet. " Every man was valued at a certain sum, which was 
 called his werey and whoever took his life, w as punished by having to pay 
 this were. The were was the compensation allotted to the family or 
 relations of the deceased for the loss of his life. But the Saxons had so 
 far advanced in legislation, as to consider homicide as public as well as 
 private wrong. Hence, besides the redress appointed to the family of the 
 deceased, another pecuniary fine was imposed on the murderer, which 
 was called the wite. This was the satisfaction he rendered to the com- 
 munity for the public wrong, which had been committed." — Turner's 
 Anglo-Saxons, 7th ed. vol. 2., p. 438. It is the compensation to the 
 relatives alone that is in question in the original, and therefore, though 
 not fixed on beforehand by general law, but a matter of agreement, I 
 believe, between them and the offender afterwards, it is yet sufficiently 
 expressed by were-geld or wer-gild, a word which is omitted indeed by 
 Johnson^ and other modern lexicographers, but should, I think, be re- 
 tained ; for although the legal idea it represents has passed for ever 
 from our laws and manners, the historic value remains. 
 
 Note 150. Book XV. stanza 9. In Zeus^ house met,'] 
 
 I know not if the grandiloquence of any will take umbrage at my pre- 
 ferring where I can to translate lofxoQ, "house" in preference to "palace,** 
 "mansion," &c, although it belong to a god, a prince, or a noble. Such 
 rendering seems to me nearer to the original. For in those days of sim- 
 plicity they had not yet come to have a separate name for the habitation 
 of the prince, and the private man. Indeed such distinctions do not so 
 readily spring up in homogeneous and original languages as in tongues 
 more mixed and derivative. The richness of the latter in such ex- 
 pressions results from the people borrowing of a foreign tongue a word, 
 which haply means the same thing and in no higher sense than the word 
 they have already in their own, and which in favour of the new comer they 
 often degrade to a lower signification. The Germans, for instance, are 
 content to seat Pharaoh on a stool (stuhl) while we grace him with a 
 throne, but borrow the word from the Greek, where it has no exclusively 
 royal application, but is a plain seat that may serve prince or peasant. 
 Our word "mansion " again for a gentleman's residence, is a borrowed 
 term, which in its literal meaning no way differs from our vernacular 
 " abode. ' —This denization of foreign terms to express ideas we had 
 no word for, or to give greater precision to those we have, is undoubtedly 
 a source of great wealth to the language, but we must not grow too fasti- 
 dious to the neglect of our more homely and familiar expressions. Still 
 less, I think, should we insist on importing them into translations from a 
 language or work, which does not present the distinctions they convey, 
 and so make the original author say what he did not say, and lead readers 
 
NOTES. 65 9 
 
 to suppose distinctions like those amongst us to have prevailed in early 
 times whether they did or not. And this is no trivial matter for the 
 higher purposes of translation. For if a people have, for instance, no 
 separate designation for the abode of those who hold rule among them 
 and those who do not, it may perhaps arise from the line of de- 
 marcation between the two classes being less distinctly drawn than in 
 countries where such designations are found, or it may arise from the 
 peculiar character of the language — in either case forming a character- 
 istic which it seems careless and unphilosophic to lose sight of. In con- 
 clusion, as an illustration of the permanent influence of religious ideas 
 in resisting changes in language, I may be permitted to allude to one 
 case, in which the usual designation for the abode of potentates is 
 nobly rejected. For all, from the prince to the peasant I suppose would 
 concur in refusing any similar substitute for the "■ House of God.'' How 
 poor and trivial, if not irreverent, would "palace" read in comparison. 
 " Temple," even with all its noble associations, comes not up to this house- 
 hold, endearing, and vernacular phrase. 
 
 Note 151. Book XV. Stanza 22. TIi Erinnyes follow.'] 
 
 Follow, i. e. attend on the eldest born to avenge any injury done to his 
 birth-right, or detraction to his claim to consideration on the part of 
 the junior members of the family. Such was the admitted character of 
 the ' droit (Tainesse ' in Olympus and among the ancient Greeks. The 
 argument of Iris is in other words as follows: — *^ Noble minds change 
 their purpose when reflection shows they would be wrong in persisting, 
 and you will reflect that in the capacity of your elder brother, Zeus 
 has claims on your respect, the violation of which the Erinnyes that 
 guard them will not fail to resent." 
 
 Note 152. Book XV. Stanza 41. Pray aloud did every ivight.'} 
 
 Note the confusion they were in. The prayer was usually led by one, 
 but here in their consternation each prays for himself. 
 
 Note 153. Book XV. Stanza 49. hs loosed been.] 
 
 The constant reference to the visible which marks the epic manner 
 gives point to this and similar expressions which have less signi- 
 ficance for us. " He loosed his strength," " his limbs were loosed," Xvae 
 [jievoQ, XvvTo ^e yvla. To us they stand as a paraphrase for death, which, 
 though a consequence of it, they depict less vividly than to the ancient 
 Greeks. Fancy, however, the attitude of the eager warrior, his every 
 muscle braced to tension with vigour and military ardour, and then of a 
 sudden the whole muscular fabric relaxed before the death stroke, and we 
 shall find the Xvae fjitvoQ and Xvvto de yu7a have indeed a significance 
 that tells to the eye^ 
 
 u u 2 
 
660 NOTES. 
 
 Note 154. Book XV. Stcanza 6. With brazen wall.'] 
 
 With brazen wall, i.e. with phalanx of warriors clad in brass. 
 
 Note 155. Book XV. Stanza 70. So scant scaped death.~\ 
 
 I do not think any general peril of sea is here alluded to, as the 
 Scholiast would seem to suggest in quoting the saying of Anaeharsis, the 
 Scythian, who asking one of the sailors *^ How far are we from the water,"^ 
 and learning it was four finger-breadths, added " Then so far also from 
 death." A clever saying, but applicable to every boat in water of 
 drowning depth, however calm the element ; while here on the contrary, 
 as I think, the particular and momentary danger of the blast of wind and 
 a large wave simultaneously striking the ship to the risk of its capsizing 
 is alluded to, — a situation to which the expression tvtOop of the original 
 is peculiarly applicable, for narrow indeed is their escape. The force of 
 eic-(j)epovTai also points the same way, for they are borne out of it for that 
 bout, however liable to a recurrence of the danger. The force of vtto, 
 immediately preceding, I take to be '* from under" the huge wind-inflated 
 wave that has burst over the vessel, covering it with foam» 
 
 Note 156. Book XV. Stanza 7a Of the shoulders.'] 
 
 The sword in its scabbard hung by a belt which was slung over one 
 shoulder. Hence the frequent expression of " the sword on shoulders ** 
 " or about the shoulders hung," &c. 
 
 Note 157. Book XV. Stanza 79. But stern end kept.] 
 
 The word in the original is licpXatTToy, aplustre^ and was the specific 
 name for the curved end of the stern with its ornaments. This is an 
 instance of Homer's directness, who called things by their proper names, 
 and never shrank from a technical designation, or took refuge from it 
 in a paraphrase or supposed poetic substitute. Technical terms are, as 
 a general rule,avoided inpoetry, and Falconer's " Shipwreck,"for example, 
 has been censured for too liberal a use of them. But on this subject I 
 think a distinction should be taken. Technical terms which designate 
 single objects or incomplex operations are best expressed by the term 
 appropriated to them, as "stern," "bow," "rudder," "steer," "tack," "furl,'* 
 &c. where no poetical purpose can be gained by a circumlocution such as 
 " the hinder part of the ship," " the front of a ship," " that wherewith a ship 
 is swayed," &c. Such handling might furnish middling conundrums, but 
 it is not poetry. But technical terms which designate processes involving 
 several subordinate operations may be very profitably dismissed on occa- 
 sion, and the operations themselves be described in detail for the sake of 
 bringing them more prominently before the eye, or on other occasions 
 a» properly retained. The difference in the two cases may be instanced 
 
NOTES. 661 
 
 by the word '' launch," which is a technical term, the use of which would 
 hardly be denied to a poet, nor yet the liberty of enumerating, if it 
 answer his purpose, the subordinate operations, such as placing the 
 rollers, adjusting the ropes, &c. which concur in producing the result. 
 
 Note 158. Book XVI. Stanza 1. Goat-shunned rockr\ 
 
 Goat-shunned, i.e, so steep that the very goats cannot climb it. Observe, 
 too, a little before, the aptness of the other epithet, fxeXawdpog, black 
 water, and its harmony with this; for the rock is so sheer and steep 
 that it presents no inequalities for the nimble goat to clamber by, and 
 therefore no jutting projections to break the water into whitening foam, 
 or into many surfaces, flashing light from every point, but smooth and 
 sheer the water glides adown it in one unbroken sheet, transparent and 
 dark, from the rock that shows through it, and from its own smooth 
 surface, that like a mirror reflects the light but at a particular angle. 
 
 Note 159. Book XVI. stanza 5. Danaans' light became.^ 
 
 Light, i.e. assistance, succour, deliverance, — " That I may become their 
 deliverer. I have rendered it literally to preserve the metaphor, which is 
 identical with the favourite one of the Hebrews, who constantly use dark- 
 ness for tribulation and distress. 
 
 Note 160, Book XVI. stanza 9. With raging fire, &c.] 
 
 Col. Mure, in Lit. Hist. Greece, vol. 1., impugns the authenticity of 
 these lines in the original. 
 
 Note 161. Book XVI. stanza 11. Made it Light:] 
 
 Note the resemblance to the Hebrew manner of using light and 
 darkness respectively as metaphors to express trouble and deliverance. 
 
 Note 162. Book XVI. Stanza 11. No longer Ajax stayed. \ 
 
 The narrative of the battle is here resumed from where it broke off" at 
 the conclusion of the preceding book. 
 
 Note 163. Book XVI. stanza 15. O'er shoulder.'] 
 
 O'er shoulder, i. e. the belt suspending the sword, and that by which the 
 shield was supported, were passed over the shoulder. 
 
 Note 164. Book XVI. stanza 16. JEacides^ spear."] 
 
 The original of these four lines, Heyne, with his wonted alacrity, would 
 join Zenodotus in rejecting, although for a diff'erent reason. I can 
 subscribe to neither. The elder commentator is reported to have 
 inquired what kind of spear that could have been which heroes even 
 were unable to move or lift. To which the answer is patent. Homer has 
 
 u u 3 
 
662 NOTES. 
 
 not so described it. Lift the spear many doubtless could. (Tlie strength 
 of Ajax was not inferior to that of Achilles.) But shake the spear, 
 ttciWeli' — wield it as a spear should be wielded, and bring out its capa- 
 bilities, that is what Homer says Achilles alone knew how to do. That it 
 wasnota mere question of thews and sinews only, but of skill, perhaps the 
 very expression k-rriaraTo itself would show. And if Achilles excelled 
 his contemporaries in gymnastic vigour and agility, he might wield a 
 weapon suited to his capabilities, though it surpassed theirs. Especially 
 would this be so, did it happen to be one with which he had opportunities 
 of practising from boyhood. In superior practice possibly lay the supe- 
 riority, the opportunity of acquiring which with that particular weapon 
 is suggested in the passage itself, which states the spear to have been his 
 father's and the gift of Charon, so that the matter falls strictly within 
 the range of the probable, the limits of which the sober-minded Greek 
 always evinces an instinctive aversion to transcend. And one object of this 
 note was to draw the reader's attention to that quality of the poet as being 
 conspidous even where he has been called to account for a seeming want 
 of it. 
 
 Heyne's reason for repudiating the lines, is that they occur at Book 
 XIX. 1. 388. (stanza 43. of the present version), where they are appro- 
 priate, and have been, he says, transferred here, where they are useless 
 in a negative sense I In substance, that though it is very proper to state 
 further on that Achilles took down this spear, yet in this place, when 
 you are told that Patroclus took Achilles' arms, enumerating greaves, 
 cuirass, helmet, sword, shield, &c., all which were subsequently captured, 
 it was useless to add that he did not take the spear also. The reader, 
 however, will perhaps agree with me in thinking that such mention was, 
 on the contrary, imperative here, in order to account for the presence of 
 the weapon in the tent of Achilles by and by. Indeed, the whole is in 
 perfect keeping, and shows the poet's usual thought and dexterity in 
 meeting objections without appearing to do so. For what more natural, 
 in recounting the weapons taken, than to mention the one weapon left 
 behind ? But why left? Because he could not have wielded it; and no 
 disparagement either to Patroclus, for no Achaean could but Achilles 
 only, who had that skill, acquired probably at his father's, whose spear it 
 was, presented him by Chiron. 
 
 This matter of the spears is one among the many minuter points that, 
 to my mind, have a smack of the historical in the legend. The facts as 
 known had probably associated Achilles and his spear, which none but 
 himself could wield, and therefore the poet's glorious fiction of arms 
 wrought for his hero by the god Hephaistos himself was not allowed to 
 embrace this; for I suppose none will accept the childish solution, that 
 the god, being a worker in metal and with fire, did not achieve a spear 
 because of the wooden part of it. 
 
NOTES. 663 
 
 On the subject of wielding the spear of Achilles, how far it was a 
 matter of practice and address may be illustrated by an anecdote of our 
 Henry VIII. and his long sword ; of which the following account is given 
 in the Athenaeum, for January 15th, 1853, in reviewing vols. 6. to 11. of 
 the State Papers. "Henry the Eighth had sent the young Francis the 
 First a sword, — one of those weapons of tremendous length and weight, 
 of which examples are shown in the Tower, and in the use of which 
 Henry was peculiarly dexterous. Francis received the weapon with 
 astonishment. He who, it will be remembered, threw Henry the Eighth 
 in wrestling, tried to wield the cumbrous instrument in vain. He 
 thought it impossible for any man to use it ; but one of his courtiers, 
 who had been in England, assured him that he Had seen King Henry 
 handle a sword heavier than that as nimbly as could be. But the feat, 
 as we learn, was one of dexterity, or even of trick, rather than of strength. 
 Henry had disclosed to the Frenchman that he managed it by means of a 
 peculiar gauntlet, and proud of his success, had taken his hearer's pro- 
 mise not to reveal the secret." 
 
 Whatever allowance be made for the specific device of the gauntlet, a 
 handsome balance will still be left to the account of dexterity acquired 
 by practice with the particular weapon. 
 
 Note 165. Book XVI. stanza 17. To Zephyr.'] 
 
 Observe that Zephyrus was not, as with us, a gentle wind, but a strong 
 west wind violent and swift. 
 
 Note 166. Book XVI. stanza 21. With love enfold.'] 
 So have I rendered aix^ayawa^o^tvoQ, 
 
 Note 167. Book XVI. stanza 37. Amisodarus.] 
 
 Pope accentuates the penultimate, while the Greek has the antepenul- 
 timate long. 
 
 Note 168. Book XVI. stanza 41. As order needs.] 
 
 Heyne observes, that the prediction of Polydamas, at Book 12. (stanza 
 25 of this version), is here fulfilled. 
 
 Note 169. Book XVI. stanza 88. Thij end of death.] 
 
 Note the transition to the apostrophe, and again the return to the third 
 person. 
 
 Note 170. Book XVI. stanza 89. Ins hands.] 
 In his hands ; viz. of Patroclus. 
 
 u u 4 
 
66 1 NOTES. 
 
 Note 171. Book XVII. stanza 3. Hyperenor.'] 
 
 Hyperenor's death is mentioned at the latter end of the 14th Book, 1. 
 516. of the original, and stanza 59 of this version. 
 
 Note 172. Book XVII. stanza 6. All wasped.'] 
 
 The exact signification of ka^riKiovTo, literally " wasped," has been the 
 subject of much discussion: see Heyne ad. loc. Some resemblance to 
 the appearance of a wasp was probably alluded to ; the pinched appear- 
 ance of part of its body, as some suppose, or perhaps also as I am inclined 
 to think, the speckled appearance of gold and silver wire entwined with 
 it, probably in rings. 
 
 Note 173. Book XVII. stanza 15. And corse in triumph drawn.'] 
 
 Eustathius and Heyne agree in regarding this as an anticipatory jus- 
 tification of Achilles' treatment of Hector himself. The knowledge of 
 his intentions is brought to our hero's knowledge by Iris. See stanza 20. 
 of this book. 
 
 Note 174. Book XVII. stanza 19. Eyes in — battle see.~\ 
 
 This I am inclined to think means standing so close as to see the 
 colour of his eyes — and reminds one of the officer's charge to his troops, 
 to hold their fire until they were so close on the enemy as to see the 
 colour of their eyes. 
 
 Note 175. Book XVII. stanza 26. Rase.'] 
 
 To rase, to pluck, Douglas. Germ, reissen. Alem. razen, rapere. 
 Rasshe is used in the same sense in old English, " I rasshe a thing from 
 one, I take it from him hastily. He rasshed it out of my hands or I 
 was ware.'* Palsgr. Jamieson's Dictionary abridged by Johnstone, 
 1846. 
 
 In the above quotation, Rasshe, whatever its original, must have come 
 to us immediately from the French arracher. 
 
 Note 176. Book XVII. stanza 36. Sweet counsel knew.] 
 
 Sweet counsel, ^/Xa <ppEa\ fxriha. *< Our souls took sweet counsel 
 together," Psalm Iv. 14. 
 
 Note 177. Book XVII. stanza 44. Drunk with/at.^ 
 
 Drunk with fat, fxedvovcray a\oi(py. This bold metaphor calls to mind 
 the expression in Isaiah, xliii. 24., " Nor hast thou made me drunk with 
 the fat of thy sacrifices," as it is rendered in the margin of the authorised 
 version according to the literal and primary meaning of the Hebrew ^]']. 
 
NOTES. 665 
 
 The same word occurs Isaiah, xxxiv. 7., and again so rendered in the 
 margin, and at Lamentations, iii. 15., and there so rendered in the text 
 of our version. 
 
 Note 178. Book XVII. stanza 57. On knees of Gods."] 
 
 A similar expression, Cowper has remarked, occurs in the Proverbs of 
 Solomon. *' The lot is cast into the lap, but the disposal thereof is of 
 the Lord." But Col. Mure in the following extract from his valuable 
 work, gives a different turn to the metaphor: '' The Greeks in every age 
 were in the habit of writing on their knees. In various classical texts, 
 comprising what is perhaps the earliest technical allusion to the habits 
 of the literary profession, this custom is specified in terms almost iden- 
 tical with those employed by Homer: — 
 
 fiveK aoidrjs 
 V f^ov iv 84\Toi(nv ifxo7s iirl yoiiva<n S^/co 
 
 Batrochom 2. sq. 
 
 Still more immediately in point is a passage of the Republic of Plato, 
 where the philosopher, in alluding to the judgment of mortals after 
 death, describes Lachesis as holding on her knees the written reports of 
 their past lives and future destinies : 7rpo^f]Tr}y Xa^ovTu ek tCjv rfiQ 
 Aa^^ecewe yovvarwv K\r]povQ re Koi /3twv Trapadeiyfxara. Add to this the 
 ancient proverb where Jupiter is described as consulting, literally looking 
 down into his parchment roll of fate : 6 Zevg KarsldE ^P^^^-OQ Ete rag 
 oi^depagj' 
 
 Lit. Hist, of Greece, Vol. iii. p. 487- 
 
 Note 179. Book XVII. stanza 61. Changed his purpose.'] 
 
 Not that his purpose had changed, in the sense of altering his mind, 
 but that his original plan was now taking this turn, and coming to its 
 second or sequel part, which gave victory to the Danai, as the first part 
 subjected them to defeat. 
 
 Note 180. Book XVII. stanza 80. Unarmed.'] 
 
 The original is yvfxvog, naked, which, applied to a warrior, means that 
 he is without armour, and not stark-naked as a modern would under- 
 stand it, and bare-skinned as in the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park. 
 
 Note 181. Book XVIII. stanza 7. Run up.] 
 
 Run up, avthpafie. Observe the similarity of the idioms, which would 
 have led me to retain the English phrase, even were I averse to its 
 familiarity. For, as I have said before, I do not think that epic dignity 
 in Homer's notion was at all concerned in eschewing familiar phraseology. 
 Some passages in Aristotle might seem to favour a different opinion, but 
 it should be remembered that he was speaking to a people of remarkable 
 
66& NOTES. 
 
 simplicity of diction, whose tendencies, as the Anthology shows, were 
 quite in the opposite direction to the grandiloquence of some moderns. 
 Aristotle would hardly have considered cautions against too familiar 
 speech were requisite in an age that could relish Hervey's Meditations, 
 and much else that used to win applause under the designation of 
 ''sublime language." 
 
 Note 182. Book XVII. stanza 17. They dight.'] 
 
 Dightj i. e. clothed themselves with the water by plunging into it. 
 By this word I have attempted to give some notion of the original 
 Uvaar, moved thereto the rather, be it confessed, that the rhyme was 
 convenient. 
 
 Note 183. Book XVIII. stanza 27. 77i' untiring Sun.'] 
 
 Helios. The reader will observe that in those cases in which we have 
 the word, and where the original is not important to the personification, 
 1 have not thought it necessary to give the Greek name. It will be re- 
 membered also that the identification of Apollo with the sun had not 
 obtained in Homer's time, but that the sun-god was a distinct personage, 
 viz. Helios, though Eustathius and other Greek commentators them- 
 selves confound the distinction, and refer the ideas that prevailed in 
 their own day, to earlier periods without regard to the chronology of 
 their introduction. To this we owe the anachronism of explaining the 
 pestilence in the first Book as arising from the Greeks' unhealthy en- 
 campment in a swampy ground, and the sun drawing up the exhalations 
 and producing a plague : whereas Apollo, the agent of their visitation, 
 is so represented as the god of healing, who could bring on or remove at 
 pleasure the diseases which were so entirely under his control. 
 
 Note 184. Book XVIII. stanza 33. Moeonie.^ 
 
 For this convenient form of Maeonia Chapman is my authority. 
 
 Note 185. Book XVIII. stanza 34. Who for s goods.'] 
 
 This is aimed at Polydamas, who was very wealthy, and who. Hector 
 would insinuate, had given counsel with a view to preserve his wealth. 
 
 Note 186. Book XVIII. stanza 35. Emjalus.] 
 
 Enyalus, another name for Ares or Mars. The sentiment is equi- 
 valent to saying that the fortune of war favours sometimes one party and 
 sometimes another, and that although Achilles had hitherto been 
 victorious, it did not follow that he would continue to be so. Observe the 
 artistic effect of this speech, the vaunt and the insult, which make it 
 impossible for him to draw back and shun Achilles subsequently, which 
 
NOTES. 667 
 
 but for this he might have done, and that without contravening the code 
 of honour of those days, which was not so exacting as to require a 
 warrior to fight one that overmatched him. How far he was influenced 
 by the remembrance of this incident appears in his soliloquy before the 
 walls, when he is debating if he shall stand and face Achilles or take 
 refuge within the gates. The thought of being reproached by Polydamas 
 for neglect of this very counsel is uppermost. 
 
 noAv5cJ/ttts /xoi -irpooTOs i\cyx^h^ auaO-fjcrci. 
 
 II. xxii. 100. 
 
 This dialogue therefore of Hector and Polydamas, that rises so 
 naturally from the situation, is also indispensable to the subsequent 
 catastrophe, the death of Hector. 
 
 Note 187. Book XVIH. stanza 36. Meaning hunt the stag that day.'] 
 
 So have I ventured to paraphrase eXacpri^oXog which literally means 
 stag-hunter, though commentators, loosely as I think, treat it as syno- 
 nymous with (cvj^T/yoc, i. e. hunter merely. The epithet (stag-hunter) has 
 peculiar significance here, and I think points at Hector. The man in 
 the simile is stag-hunting, and therefore neither expects, nor is weaponed 
 to encounter the lion, though, profiting by the occasion he steals the 
 lion's young. So Hector, as little fitted to encounter Achilles as the 
 ill-appointed hunter the lion, achieves fortuitously, and in Achilles' ab- 
 sence, the exploit of slaughtering the previously enfeebled Patroclus. 
 This disparaging of his doings comes in with effect after his boast to 
 Polydamas, who had counselled him for the best, viz. to sheer off 
 before worse came of it. 
 
 Note 188. Book XVIII. stanza 44. Both-feet Lamed.] 
 
 ' Afi(j)iyvri£ig, a designation that may rank with Long-shanks, Beau-clerk, 
 Strong bow, &c. 
 
 Note 189. Book XVIII. stanza 45. Back /lowing Ocean.] 
 
 a\poppoov, might this hint at the tidal character of the Ocean as opposed 
 to the current of the Mediterranean ? It is true that Ocean is a river, 
 but perhaps only so thought from ignorance of its breadth across. 
 
 Note 190. Book XVIII. stanza 49. Prisner he.] 
 
 I have so rendered the much disputed aprjfjiivoe of the text, following, 
 it will be perceived, the Etym. Mag. : aprj^ivoy, KaTeiXrjfiuivov kuI napa- 
 -KtTTolKr^ivov, &c. a passage quoted by Ernest, Odyss. vi. 2., though its 
 purity is questioned by Sylburgius. 
 
668 NOTES. 
 
 Note 191. Book XVIII. stanza 52. Him conceal.^ 
 
 Eustathius very justly perceives in this a graceful allusion to the service 
 Thetis had rendered Hephaistos in concealing him from Here. 
 
 Note 192. Book XVIII. stanza 55. But sole lacks Ocean's baths.'] 
 
 Oir) ^' cifjijjiopog eari Xoerpwr 'QKeavo7o, This passage has given rise to 
 some discussion among the commentators. Terrasson, the French critic, 
 crows a bit {gallice) at having caught out Homer in the serious blunder 
 of asserting that the Great Bear is the only constellation which never sets. 
 Among the ancients Aristotle took it to be a figure of speech, meaning 
 that it is the most notorious only of those constellations which never set : 
 TO yap yvu)pifxu)TaTov ixovov. Strabo thought the whole Arctic Circle was 
 meant, but Clarke pertinently asks how can the Arctic Circle be said 
 to face Orion, and concludes with approving the suggestion that by 
 oit] 3' (ififxapoQ iari, &c. is meant, not that Arctos is the only one of all 
 the constellations which never sets, but the only one of the constellations 
 here enumerated. Heyne adds little to the substance of Clarke's 
 note. 
 
 To the present translator, but for the doubts of such grave authorities, 
 the passage would have appeared plain enough. It seems to him that the 
 comparison is even narrower than Clarke would make it, and is limited 
 to the two constellations here presented in a state of relation to each 
 other, viz. Arctos and Orion. Arctos is said to be always watching 
 Orion, yet though Orion sets, Arctos does not. Alone of the two she 
 shares not Ocean's baths, oli] S' (ifXfxopoQi &c. as who should say, though she 
 ever watches Orion she does not, like him, go into the ocean. 
 
 Note 193. Book XVIII. stanza 55. Among them soun.] 
 
 Soun is an old word for sound, familiar enough to the readers of 
 Chaucer and Spencer. Its direct form is evidently from the French son, 
 sonner. 
 
 Note 194. Book XVIII. stanza 56. Heralds' wands.] 
 
 The lines 505 to 508 of the original, of which the concluding lines of 
 this and the first two of the succeeding stanza are a translation, have 
 been variously rendered. I have supposed that the heralds placed wands 
 or sceptres in the hands of the litigants, which the latter receiving used 
 by way of gesticulation in pleading each his cause alternately before the 
 judges, and that the two talents lay in the midst to be given to the one 
 who prevailed in the suit. 
 
 Most of the translators, and the commentators also I believe, except 
 Heyne, treat the whole passage as referring to the judges, and not to the 
 
NOTES/ 669 
 
 disputants, even to the destination of the two talents, which, according 
 to them, are to be given to the best judge. Pope has a strange note in 
 which he sees nothing but a provocation to dissension in awarding the 
 talents to the successful litigant, and only a great encouragement to 
 justice in awarding them to the judge. An opinion in which it appears 
 he was " confirmed by the ablest judge as well as best practiser of equity, 
 my Lord Harcourt, at whose seat he translated the book," but which 
 may not the less perhaps remind one of Boileau's fable of Justice and the 
 oyster with the shell a-piece for the litigants. Heyne's note, 1. 506, one 
 of the most satisfactory I think in his whole commentary, appears 
 to me conclusive of the words applying to the litigants, and not to the 
 judges. 
 
 I understand aia-aovraL not of the rising up of the parties, whether 
 judges or litigants, but of the motion of the wands in gesticulation. On 
 thesubject of gesticulating with the wands Eustathius has the following: — 
 Kal TO. (TKriTrrpa 3e, &(nrep to. twv ^affCKiwv, ovtu) koI to. tCjv hiKaaroJp, riojg 
 jjLEV E^EiVf kv fcatjow ^e \eipii^eiy avrolg * Kal oi ^tKaaTCti 3e crK^izTpoiQ aier- 
 covaiy, a>c to. (XKfJTrTpa toIq \6yoiQ (Tvvdia(f>epot^reg' ovttw yap avihrjv y^eTpag 
 tKivovv. Ecr-)(r]fxa.Til^ov ovv rolg (TKrjTTTpoig, wc Kat fjfieig yjEipovofAOV^itv ttoWclkiq 
 kv rio Xiyeiv, OdvaaEvg ovv kirel ^rjfioyopibv rrore aKLvr]TOV tiye to aKfJTrrpov, 
 afxadiaQ ho^av vTri^aXe toIq Tpuxrl Kal i^uKorog edo^e. Eustath. Ed. Bas. 
 p. 1214. 1. 50. 
 
 With this testimony to the use made of the aKyjirTpov to enforce the 
 speaker's language, I go farther than my authority in understanding 
 aiffffovrat of the brisk motion of the wands in such gesticulation. 
 Eustathius further on more explicitly interprets aia-aovreg by aviaTai.iEvot, 
 and ascribes it to the judges. He is, however, evidently at a loss to 
 account for the heralds' wands being handed to the judges, who must have 
 been already furnished with their own, and he discharges his dissatisfaction 
 by snubbing the expression as uncouth. His words are to de aKfiTTTpa 
 K7]pvtc(jjv kv yeprrXv e'xov, (TTpv(f>vojg Tricppaa-Tai • ^jpri jxev yap, (TKfJTTTpa 'ej(eiv 
 Tovg diicaaTag' KaQi]fXEVu^t ^e, TzavTuyg ovk 'i-^ovffiv, atacrovTeg yap, 6 kcTTiv 
 aviffTajj-Evoi, KpaTOixnv avra. E^ovaiv ovv to. tovtiov (TKriwTpa, TrEpuaTutTEg ot 
 Kr]pvKEg. eI Toivvv oi KrjpvKEg to. EkEivwv avayKaiiog kaTOJTEg KpaTOvrnv, e\ovmv 
 apa ot diKacrTal to. acpCJv ffKtjTTTpa kv X^P*^* KrjpvKiov. Kal dfjXop- ojg aWu) g fXEv 
 'i^ovffLV avTO. EffTTfKOTECy KpaTOVffi yap avTol yEipiConEvoiy aXXojg Se E^ovai tu 
 ToiavTa kv X^P'^'- '^^P^'cw^'* KEKTrjVTat yap Cjg oiKE'ia ovtu. Ibid. p. 1215, 
 1. 22. 
 
 In the good Bishop's perplexity I find an additional reason for 
 ascribing what is said of the wands to the litigants, and ataaovTat 
 to their brisk motion of them in declamation. It would seem that a 
 person could not in those days address an assembly without holding a 
 wand or sceptre in his hand, which was, as it were, putting him in pos- 
 session of the ear of the court. Menelaus at the funeral games rising to 
 
670 NOTES. 
 
 arraign the conduct of Antilochus. II. xxiii. 1. 568., has a sceptre handed 
 to him by the herald before speaking. So Telemachus in the Odyssey, 
 lib. ii. 1. 37, addressing the Agora, has a sceptre cast into his hands by 
 the herald Pisenor. 
 
 Note 195. Book XVIII. stanza 61. Roijal deep-cropped Jield.~\ 
 
 So have I rendered re^EvoQ, which was a portion set apart by the 
 people for their sovereign's use. We have no word for it. In its etymo- 
 logy it means cut off or set apart. Such setting apart took place for 
 their divinities also, and for men other than their rulers whom they in- 
 tended to honour. The Tabu of the islands in the Pacific would seem 
 to have been something of the same kind. That Tenevog is here 
 properly taken for a portion of land set apart for royal use is further 
 confirmed by the mention of ftaoriXevg with heralds for his servants. For 
 I am not aware that private individuals were waited on by heralds. Taken 
 then in this sense the passage presents an agreeable picture of the simplicity 
 of those times, when royalty attended to what would now be relegated 
 to a meaner hand. 
 
 By ** deep-cropped " of course is meant that the corn grew high 
 and thick. 
 
 Note 196. Book XVIII. stanza 62. Mitch meal.'] 
 
 This may be reckoned among the glimpses we get in the poem of the 
 condition of the lower classes in those days, when it would appear they 
 were not better off, even for mere animal comforts, than in our times. 
 For the difference of diet between the farm servants and their betters is 
 here curiously marked. For the latter the ox is slain, while for the 
 former abundance of porridge is prepared. 
 
 Note 197. Book XVIII. stanza 66» Lovely maidens.'] 
 
 Literally " maidens bringing much oxen," i. e. to their fathers from 
 their suitors, d\(f)ecrt€oiai. The note of the Scholiast would seem to 
 imply that this alluded to the presents given during the courtship, 
 irrespectively of its being successful. But it probably refers to the 
 dower itself, which it was customary for the future husband to give to 
 the father of his bride, and which was often given in the staple com- 
 modity oxen, or, if not, its value, like everything else, was appraised at 
 so many oxen's worth. So that d\((>etTi€oiai is expressive of the high 
 price the daughters would bring their parents — a price regulated by 
 their beauty principally, like that of the Circassians to this day. For 
 like them the early Greeks considered their daughters and even sisters 
 as property. See Note 90. 
 
NOTES. 671 
 
 Note 198. Book XIX. stanza 6. Tydides, hide-Jight.] 
 
 The word in the original /uevcTrroXsjitoc, which Chapman has elsewhere 
 happily rendered by " keep-field," I have generally rendered " bide- 
 fight," as being more literal in the first place, and in the next because I 
 incline to think that the expression '' battle-field," may belong to a more 
 advanced period of strategy than Homer's time, when the collective 
 operation of masses of men was not so frequent, nor had reached such 
 skill, as to earn an appropriate designation for the locality of their 
 manoeuvres. My memory does not help me to an expression of Homer's 
 which properly answers to our '^ battle-field." If there be none, then 
 the absence of such expression may be among the marks of antiquity in 
 the poem, and, therefore, proper to be retained. Indeed the term 
 "bide-fight," as the distinctive epithet of an individual almost argues a 
 nation of skirmishers, and a state of things anterior to regular warfare, 
 which can only be carried on where "bide-fight" has become a 
 prevailing quality among the combatants, and the individual distinction 
 grown impossible. For if his regiment run what oflflcer could stay, 
 though more jjLevETVToXEjxoQ than Diomed himself? There is, in truth, a 
 chronology in these expressions, which is best preserved by rendering 
 them literally. 
 
 Note 199. Book XIX. stanza 94. Cast much further on."] 
 
 TTpo^aXoifxriy. I seem to perceive in the double meaning of the 
 original a play upon the words, " You cast with spear and I with fore- 
 sight — forecast, &c. 
 
 Note 200. Book XIX. stanza 25. Soon grows of sight,'] 
 
 This passage has been the subject of various comment. Cowper styled 
 it an opprobrium criticorum. His solution however can scarcely be 
 accepted, viz. that hungry men get weary of slaughter, and if the battle 
 turn against them, a probable result of their going to fight fasting, the 
 slaughter of the enemy is at an end. For certainly the possibility of 
 the day going against the Achaeans, when Achilles was once more 
 amongst them, would not have been entertained for an instant. Not to 
 embarrass the reader with the various opinions on the subject, I will 
 state my view of it. The speech is meant to answer the two prominent 
 features of that of Achilles, viz, grief for his slaughtered friend and his 
 thirst for vengeance on the enemy, which the impetuous hero was so 
 bent on prosecuting that he would not have given the troops time for 
 refection. The speech of Odysseus accordingly is in substance this, 
 *' First the revenge you propose to yourself in slaughtering the foe will 
 be frustrated if our troops go out fasting. For remember that men soon 
 get enough of the regular stand-up fight where there is most chance of 
 
672 NOTES. 
 
 slaughtering the enemy in heaps, and as soon as the fortune of the day- 
 is against them take to flight, in which latter case our troops will, from 
 exhaustion and hunger, be utterly nnable to overtake the fugitives. And 
 in the next place going without food is not the way the Achaeans should 
 mourn the dead, for numbers die every day ; how then could such a 
 mode of mourning be carried out by them? We must bury the dead, 
 and bear the loss with constancy and mourn him for the day." 
 
 Such appears to me the scope of the speech, the former portion of 
 which is set forth in the noble metaphor of a harvest-field, which the 
 sight of an embattled host with its bristling spears would aptly suggest. 
 And the men standing in their ranks are boldly and well denoted by the 
 stalks of corn. We are familiar with a similar train of thought when 
 we talk of " troops being mown down." 
 
 Note 201. Book XIX. stanza 45. slack we pray,"] 
 
 So have I ventured to render the disputed ItD/iev TroXefioio, 
 
 Note 202. Book XIX. stanza 47. to satiety, &c.] 
 
 So rendering alr]v eXatrai. 
 TTpiv TjOtJJac ali)v eXdaai TroXijxoio. Sch. B. ddpoiog Kopecrai Kai irXrjpiSjffai, 
 Recte : sed ex his nemo vocis rationem perceperit. Est eXdcrai tovq 
 IpQag elg adrju, eig Kopov, tov fia^eB^au ^ Heyne. 
 
 Note 203. Book 20. stanza 8. Gold-shaft.'} 
 
 Gold-shaft, i. e. she that hath the golden shaft, she of the gold shaft, 
 a designation ranging with Strong-bow, &c. It will be seen that the 
 common rendering of xP^^^^«fcaro<,« has been followed. Against which 
 indeed it has been urged that ^XaKarri never signifies arrow in Homer. 
 Another objection might be made on the score of tautology; Gold-shaft 
 in that sense being too near " shaft-loving " as both refer to her skill in 
 archery. I incline nevertheless to think that the common rendering is 
 correct. Gold-distaff*, the suggested substitute seems not very charac- 
 teristic of the habits of Artemis the huntress. The golden arrow here 
 mentioned may moreover have been used to fasten up her hair, and if so 
 it is characteristic enough that she should use one of her weapons as a 
 hair-pin, and then the tautology disappears. On this supposition how- 
 ever it is to be understood of a single arrow only, and not of her arrows 
 generally; *«she of the golden arrow" and not "she who carrieth 
 golden arrows." 
 
 Note 204. Book XX. stanza 17. avoiding shun.'] 
 
 The scholiast's account of the story is as follows : — Poseidon and 
 Apollo, being commanded by Zeus to serve Laomedon, built the wall at 
 a fixed price. But Laomedon, violating his oath and agreement, gave 
 
NOTES. 673 
 
 them no reward, but drove tliem away. Poseidon in his rage sent a 
 sea-beast, which destroyed the men it encountered and the fruits of the 
 earth as they came up. Laomedon inquiring of the oracle was told 
 that he should expose Hesione his daughter as food for the beast, and so 
 be delivered from the monster. Exposing his daughter, he also pro- 
 claimed that to him who slew the sea-beast he would give the immortal 
 horses which Zeus had given to Tros as the price of Ganymede. 
 Hercules happening to be there undertook to achieve the adventure, and 
 Athene having made him a rampart (the so-called round-heaped wall 
 dij,(i)i')(yToy TElyoQ of the text), he, rushing through the mouth into the 
 belly of the beast, tore its flanks asunder. But Laomedon substituted 
 mortal, for the immortal, horses and gave him. On discovering which 
 Hercules besieged and overthrew Ilium and drove off the promised 
 steeds. 
 
 Note 205. Book XX. stanza 23. JEneas thu& replied.'] 
 
 The artistic requirements of the poem rendered the combat of Achil- 
 les with ^neas indispensable. The incontestable superiority of 
 the former might else have been open to question. iEneas being 
 rej^resented as dividing opinion with Hector, when the latter had fallen, 
 it might yet be doubted what would have been the result of a combat 
 with the other. It is true that, on a former occasion, prior to the date 
 of the action of the poem, he had narrowly escaped with his life from 
 the hands of Achilles. But that would have been only told. The Epic 
 manner required it to be shown, that there was no standing against 
 Achilles, which is done by descriptions of actual combats with each, 
 besides allusion to former narrow escapes of both the Trojan heroes. 
 But though the combat could not be dispensed with, there are circum- 
 stances in the conduct of it, that I confess appear to me very unsatis- 
 factory. It is the only instance in which we have pointless and 
 redundant dialogue. And that character I fear must be ascribed to 
 nearly the whole of the speech of ^Eneas. His account of his genealogy 
 is so manifestly lugged in head and shoulders, that one is inclined to 
 agree with those who think it an interpolation. There is one supposi- 
 tion alone upon which it might be in some degree accounted for, viz. 
 that Homer intended to show up the "bavardage" of the Trojans, in 
 contrast to the terseness and point of his hero's speech, who had come 
 forth to do, and not to babble. But this exposure at the expense of an- 
 otherwise dignified character, is as painful in an artistic point of view as 
 the other, and indeed so utterly unsatisfactory as to throw us back upon 
 the original supposition of there being a very large interpolation here. 
 The speech up to the account of the pedigree is to the point and worthy 
 a warrior, but the remainder is very inapposite. For Achilles had not 
 asked his pedigree; with which he was doubtless welf acquainted. It was 
 
 X X 
 
674 ijiOTES. 
 
 not as in the case of Diomed and GlaucuSj from which it is perhaps 
 correctly suggested to have been borrowed, and where the warriors had 
 met for the first time. But Achilles knew all about JEneacs, and had 
 asked, not who or whence he was, but why he stood to oppose him when 
 he had narrowly escaped with his life on a former occasion, and had no 
 adequate motive for incurring the same danger now. There is more- 
 over neither intemperance nor surplusage in what Achilles says, and 
 consequently nothing to ground the exhortation against loquacity and 
 squabbling in the answer of i^neas. 
 
 Note 206. Book XX. stanza 31. All sides equal shield. "] 
 
 A periphrase for circular; for that which superficially measures the 
 same every way is a circle. 
 
 Note 207. Book XX. stanza 45. Heliconian king.'] 
 
 Poseidon is meant; but whether so named from Mount Helicon, or 
 from the Achaian city Helice, is a matter of dispute which those who 
 care about the matter will find discussed in Heyne's note ad locum. 
 
 Note 208. Book XX. stanza 54. Through arm.] 
 
 This is usually translated "hand," manus. But to me there seemed a 
 difficulty in transfixing the hand and elbow of the same arm ; a difficulty 
 which is removed, if we translate it "arm" instead of "hand." And for 
 this there is good warrant, as ^c'p stands for the whole arm, from shoulder 
 to finger. See Note 61. 
 
 Note 209. Book XXI. stanza 2. 'Gainst tamarisk propt.] 
 
 A characteristic stroke, which shows the utter consternation of the 
 Trojans, and the confidence of Achilles. The point is lost by Pope and 
 Chapman, who speak of the lance as hid. 
 
 Note 210. Book XXI. stanza 9. Demeler's fruit.~\ 
 
 Demeter's fruit ^rjfxrjrepog aicrriy, bruised cor?i or bread made of it. 
 Demeter, the Latin Ceres, being the goddess of agriculture. From the 
 perplexity of the scholiasts, one of whom has not hesitated even to diet 
 the Trojans to meet his views, I was tempted to take refuge in the 
 rendering suggested in Heyne's note ad loc. and read it as Trpwrw for 
 Trporepov, antea; but shrank from dealing with a stubborn text. Cowper 
 boldly incorporates one view and translates as follows ; — 
 
 " For the first Grecian bread I ever ate, 
 I ate with thee," &c. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the vrpwrw may refer to the day of his capture, which 
 being probably before daybreak, as the attack is styled a night attack, 
 Lycaon might have eaten nothing since his last meal until he breakfasted 
 
NOTES. 675 
 
 with Achilles on the morning of his capture. The drift of his appeal, in 
 any sense is, that having eaten with Achilles in his tent, the latter should 
 not now slay him. He endeavours to fix Achilles with the relation of 
 guest and entertainer, just as if his own presence on that occasion had 
 been voluntary. 
 
 Note 211. Book XXI. stanza 15. Dark ripple shun.~\ 
 
 The original of this has occasioned more than the ordinary amount of 
 discussion among the scholiasts, two of whom, Philetas and Callistratus, 
 curiously enough interpret <pp~ix V7ra\u|£t by the fact, that fat and well 
 fed fish are able to bear the cold without injury, and that by feasting on 
 Lycaon they will arrive at that happy condition. This view, however, 
 it is right to observe, has met with no encouragement from their brother 
 scholiasts. They take (ppil not for "cold," but for the ripple of the water 
 as the wind passes over it, and seem for the most part agreed that (pff-x 
 v7ra\vL,ei is expressive of escape from the ripple of the water, and its 
 chilly consequences (very chilly indeed, says one, when the wind is east- 
 erly); and with some difl'erence as to the exact manner of that escape, 
 seem to conclude for the fish diving under the water to nibble at Ly- 
 caon, and while so under water, escaping the rippling or ruffled surface. 
 I confess to entire ignorance of how fish deal with floating substances on 
 which they feed. It is a point, however, that any fisherman upon our 
 coast could probably solve, in a trice, from his own experience and obser- 
 vation. The following exjDlanation is offered for want of abetter: — Op/^is 
 expressive of the ruffle or ripple, literally shuddering, of the water, as the 
 wind passes over and darkens it. But this ripple, if I be not mistaken, 
 would be interrupted by any floating body, so as to leave under the lee of 
 the latter a space of smooth water proportioned to its length and bulk. In 
 this smooth space I fancy the fish would be seen nibbling at the carcase, 
 sheltered by which they would thus literally " dark ripple shun." Nor 
 would they do this, I think, on the score of temperature, as the scholiast 
 suggests, but rather that feasting on the windward of the floating body 
 would be inconvenient, as the roughening water would be driving them 
 on to it, and so disturb a repast which they could take more tranquilly 
 on the lee side, where the water would smoothly slide from under them. 
 If I be correct in this view, then the whole takes place, as it were, 
 coram oculis, and so in accordance with Homer's usual manner of paint- 
 ing to the eye. There is unusual bitterness in the speech of Achilles^ 
 considered with reference to the notions the ancients entertained of the 
 forlorn condition of the departed, until the last rites were paid to the 
 body. 
 
 Note 212. Book XXI. stanza 17. For hapless they.'\ 
 
 For hapless they whose sons, dva-r^viov 3e re Tra'ideg. For this expres- 
 
 X X 2 
 
(576 NOTES. 
 
 sion, which often occurs, a modern would probably have substituted 
 *' hapless they who " encounter me, and fixed the calamity on the com- 
 batant which is here referred to his parents. But the text is in perfect 
 accordance with those times. The calamity pointed at is not so much 
 the natu-al grief of the bereaved parent for a beloved object, as the 
 unprotected condition in which the aged were left in those rude times, 
 who had no sons to enforce respect and protect them from violence. 
 And in the numerous allusions by Achilles to his own death, the stress 
 is always laid on the unprotected and forlorn condition of his father. 
 This feature of security measured by offspring is often referred to in 
 the Scriptures; the most prominent instance being Psalm cxxvii. 5, 6. 
 " Like as the arrows in the hand of a giant ; even so are the young 
 children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them : they 
 shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate." 
 
 Note 213. Book XXI. stanza 27. Mighty eddies shroud.'} 
 
 It must not be supposed the river saved the Trojans by submersion, 
 for a miracle would have been required in that case to keep them from 
 exchanging one death for another. And Homer, even with his deities, 
 is chary of trenching on the miraculous or transcending the probable. 
 Nor has he done so here. When Achilles leaped into the river, and was 
 djleur-d'eau with the fugitives, the ridges of the troubled waters would 
 naturally conceal from his sight those that were swia\ming in the cups 
 of the whirling eddies. 
 
 Note 214. Book XXI. stanza 31. Swineherd.} 
 
 Heyne observes that the reason of a swine-herd, (Tv<pop€6g, above others, 
 being mentioned, is to be sought in the fact that the swine were fed in 
 the woods towards the end of autumn. 
 
 Note 215, Hook XXI. stanza 38. Indefatigable Jire.} 
 
 " I should be unwilling," says Heyne, " to refer the combustion of 
 the plain to any particular causes ; but it is competent to say that the 
 poet has drawn his fiction from what might have been sometimes seen 
 to happen ; grass and shrubs burning by accidental fire." 
 
 Note 216. Book XXI. stanza S^. Lion unto women.} 
 
 This alludes to the frequent slaying of women, whether married or 
 single, by Artemis, of which there is frequent mention in this poem. 
 The instances that readiest occur to the translator are both in the Sixth 
 Book ; viz., of the mother of Andromache, at stanza 51 of the present 
 version, and Laodamia, the aunt of Bellerophon, at stanza 24. 
 
 Note 217. Book XXL stanza 65. Hard it were.} 
 
 Eustathius would seem to see an allusion here to the fate of Tityus, 
 
NOTES. 677 
 
 wlio was condemned to have his liver continually eaten out by a pair 
 of vultures, for offering violence to Leto, the glorious wife of Zeus, as 
 she was going to Pytho, through the pleasant Panopeus. See Odyssey, 
 B. xi. 575. 
 
 Note 218. Book XXI. stanza 57. Strife begun.~\ 
 
 Eustathius here observes upon the characteristic accusation of quar- 
 relsomeness in the mouth of Artemis. She, like Ares on a former occa- 
 sion, accuses her opponent of the very thing she has herself been guilty 
 of. 
 
 Note 219. Book XXI. stanza 58. Cloud'CompeUing sire.~\ 
 
 So ends the battle of the gods, the whole passage regarding which is 
 rejected by Heyne and his school, as interpolation, and chiefly on the 
 ground of its imperfection as a ^eo/jid^ia. In substance, that there is 
 very little fighting between them, and that fighting purposeless. On 
 which it is to be observed, that as to the amount of fighting, it is in- 
 accurate to say that little took place, but rather that it is not described 
 in all its details. For that there was severe contest, is told by a few 
 master-strokes, of the earth echoing to the roar of it, and the heavens 
 trumpeting while Zeus is looking on. A detailed account of the en- 
 gagement would have resulted either in an unworthy theomachy, or in 
 one which must have eclipsed the exploits of Achilles, In nothing do 
 I see the art of the great poet more subtly at work than in the handling 
 of this part. It is touched on sufficiently to give a general impression 
 of its grandeur, and so enhance the estimation of the hero whose 
 exploits made it necessary, and stops short of the detail which would 
 have lessened that estimation. 
 
 Note 220. Book XXI. stanza 61. Faultless man.'\ 
 
 Faultless, as before observed, applies to the corporeal and not the 
 moral condition. See Note 31. 
 
 Note 221. Book XXII. stanza 14. Halve it fair.'] 
 
 These would seem to have been not unusual terms of capitulation 
 with a leagured town. See account of Achilles' shield, where the armies 
 are depicted fighting for the city. 
 
 Note 222. Book XXII. stanza 15. Rising sunr\ 
 
 The rising and not the mid-day sun is selected; for the latter had been 
 too high up in the heavens, and so not presented the point of resem- 
 blance to the advancing Achilles, who is seen as you look along the 
 earth to the horizon, even as the sun just rising is seen. The blazing 
 fire has the same point of resemblance, meeting the eye as it ranges 
 along the ground. A meteor would have ill expressed it, not in point 
 
 XX 3 
 
678 NOTES. 
 
 of lustre, but for its motion along the sky, instead of comparatively 
 stationary appearance on the earth. For it will be observed ihat 
 Achilles, advancing in a straight line upon the eye of the spectator, would 
 have as little apparent motion for a time as the objects to which he is 
 compared. 
 
 Note 223. Book XXII. stanza 24. Two fates of long-sleep death.'] 
 
 For this weighing of the fates, and the preponderance of the disastrous 
 scale, the reader is referred to Note 83. of a former Book, where the fates 
 of the Achseans and Trojans are weighed. 
 
 Note 224. Book XXII. stanza 34. More dear.'] 
 
 " More dear," a common phrase for " more agreeable." The occa- 
 sional retention of an easy Greek idiom will not, it is hoped, be 
 considered a blemish in the translation, while the convenience to the 
 translator is obvious. 
 
 Note 225. Book XXII. stanza 39. Sliced flesh raw.] 
 
 " That this barbarity was not unknown to that age is proved," says 
 Heyne, " both by this passage and the one at Book IV. 11. 34, 35" (stanza 
 5 of the present version), *' and the words of Hecuba in the Book XXIV. 
 212, 213 "(stanza 24th of this version). " Notorious, too, is the cruelty 
 of Tydeus against Melanippus in the combat at Thebes." 
 
 Note 226. Book XXII. stanza 40. Think still,] 
 
 In this and some other passages the prophetic character ascribed to 
 the words of the dying, would seem to be shown. And this perhaps is 
 what is meant by the ttvklvov ettoq of which Andromache, in her lament 
 over the body of her husband, regrets the loss. 
 
 Note 227. Book XXII. stanza 43. Sut why so reason.] 
 
 Note the art of Homer here, first observed by Eustathius, acknow- 
 ledged by Pope, and grudgingly so by Heyne, ad loc. 1. 385 of the 
 original. The general is eager to prosecute the advantage; but the 
 friend suddenly checks himself at remembrance of his loved companion, 
 whose promised funeral rites are unperformed. And so the poet's plan 
 is saved from derangement, in a way worthy the hero and in perfect 
 accordance with the usual course of things. The tender regard for his 
 friend comes out the more conspicuous, that to it he makes the sacrifice 
 of stopping short in the full career of victory. And his first impulse 
 shows the vehement character of the man, who abates nothing of activity 
 for success, but is for following hot upon the foot prints of Fortune. 
 We see, therefore, how he came to capture so many cities. It was by 
 not letting the foe recover from the first consternation of defeat. Do 
 
NOTES. 679 
 
 we wonder at Alexander's fondness for the character of Achilles? The 
 eager Macedonian and the Epic hero were of one spirit. 
 
 Note 228. Book XXII. stanza 55. Bounds-shifted him.~\ 
 
 ^AitovpiaaovaiVi remove his boundaries. In those days the boundary- 
 marks or stones would be the chief evidence of the limtts of the land, 
 and their removal consequently the readiest mode of unjust acquisition, as 
 the measurements were probably neither exact nor easy of proof. That 
 it was a common phase of wrong doing, and therefore presenting some 
 features of facility that would not belong to it in these days, may be 
 inferred from the vehemence with which it is denounced by the divine 
 legislator. ''Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark." 
 Deut. xxvii. 17. 
 
 Note 229. Book XXIII. stanza 57. Long-stretched wall.'} 
 
 I have rendered fxaKpoQ "long" rather than " high," because the former, 
 I believe to be the more usual sense in Homer (see Note 20.), and in 
 this place the more appropriate. For "long walls" require briskness in 
 defence from presenting more points of attack. The length was there- 
 fore of itself a weak feature in the wall, while height was joer se, a point 
 of strength in ancient warfare, and held to be so until late in modern 
 times when artillery and Vauban taught us better. 
 
 Note 230. Book XXIII. stanza 6. Quick from our eyes.'} 
 
 Observe the resemblance to the Scripture expression, "^ that I may bury 
 my dead out of my sight." Gen. xxiii. 4. In both cases the expression 
 probably grew out of the necessity of early burial in warm climates, 
 where they had not the practice, as in Egypt, of embalming, and not 
 from any impatience of the presence of the dead. 
 
 Note 231. Book XXIII. stanza 8. Whose labour's done.~\ 
 
 I.e. whose work of this life is over, viz. the dead. " Turn from him 
 that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day." 
 Job xiv. 6. 
 
 Note 232. Book XXIII. stanza 23. Swift Iris heard his prayer. ~\ 
 
 The winds are considered as deaf, and therefore could not hear 
 Achilles, whose prayer is on that account brought to their notice by a 
 personal visit of the goddess, who does not disdain to grace the hero 
 so far. 
 
 Note 233. Book XXIII. stanza 30. To horsemen fleet.'] 
 
 By horseman is meant by charioteer, as they did not back their steeds. 
 
 Note 234. Book XXIII. stanza 31. Unjired phial stake.} 
 
 Athenaeus asserts it to have been a vessel for warming water. Heyne 
 
 X X 4 
 
(580 NOTES. 
 
 instances this among the cases where the later Greeks had lost the 
 meaning of the word, and tried to make it out by the etymologj% 
 
 Note 235. Book XXIII. stanza 38. Well wove chariot^ 
 Made of wicker, and so woven. 
 
 Note 236. Book XXIII. stanza 74. Staunchness.'] 
 
 Staunchness Kanjuoinriy. This expression shows, what was otherwise 
 apparent enough, that the boxing, unlike that of the present day, had 
 little of skill in it, but turned more upon brute strength and endurance. 
 The csestus with which they were armed, would probably have made the 
 modern parrying of little avail. 
 
 Note 237. Book XXIII. stanza 79. Soun.] 
 
 Soun for sound will be familiar enough to the readers of Chaucer. 
 
 Note. 238. Book XXIII. stanza 98. T ill midst.] 
 
 In the middle of the bird, not of the wing, as another reading gives it 
 fiiffor. For she dies presently of the wound, and a shot in the wing 
 would not have been mortal, and it would have prevented her perching 
 on the mast and fluttering her wings. 
 
 Note 239. Book XXIII. stanza 18. Far thence below.] 
 
 In the original rfjXe B' aTr'avrov. I am not sure that avrov does not 
 refer to ^vjj-oq instead of larur, as is generally taken, and as 1 have 
 rendered it. If so, there is a foundation for Pope's " Left her life in air.'' 
 
 Note 240. Book XXIII. stanza 100. Gave his lovely prize.] 
 
 Gave i.e. gave to take to the ships, and not, as Eustathius has it, to keep 
 for himself; for that^ as it has been well observed^ would have been a 
 slight on Achilles. 
 
 Note 241. Book XXIV. stanza 9. His mother aye.] 
 
 The word in the original Trap^e^tXtoKtv is clearly figurative, and de- 
 notes a vigilance which Thetis could as well exercise from her hollow 
 cave in the sea-depths, as if she were bodily present with her son. So 
 taken we need neither with the scholiast understand it of Achilles, and 
 describe him as watching like a mother over the corpse of his foe ; nor 
 are we on the other hand reduced to agree with Heyne, who, more suo, 
 would dismiss the verse as spurious. To the present translator the line 
 appears indispensable to the congruity of the speech. For it is difficult 
 to see how Hermes, who had deceived Argus with all his eyes, and at 
 an earlier period even Apollo himself (viduus pharetra risit Apollo) 
 would not have been equally successful with Achilles, whose nature had 
 not that forecasting suspicion to lead him to suppose a god was bent on 
 'filching the corse. But the suggested impediment, a mother's vigilance, 
 
NOTES. 681 
 
 and that mother the wise and subtle Thetis, whose whole thoughts were 
 then centred in her son, we feel, as soon as named, to be insuperable. 
 And so the propriety of taking her to counsel becomes apparent. 
 
 Note 242. Book XXIV. stanza 15. Not live me long.~\ 
 
 I am quite aware that the pronoun, in cases like the original, is often 
 all but expletive, like our, "If me no ifs." "He whips me out a knife 
 from his pocket, and cuts the cord in an instant." But though almost 
 expletive, I am inclined to think it is never entirely so, but that there is 
 a shade of appropriation attaching to the pronoun, more or less distinct 
 according to circumstances. And here one is inclined to look for some- 
 thing of the kind, to difference the mother's address to her son from 
 what a stranger might have said on the subject. And so the pronoun 
 may suggest, if not by force of syntax, yet by the occasion, something 
 like the following: — "I shall not have you alive long." Whatever sug- 
 gestive force in this way the original may be thought to possess, I have 
 endeavoured to preserve by retaining the word in the translation. 
 
 Note 243. Book XXIV. stanza 28. Sharphj twightr\ ■ 
 
 " And evermore she did him sharply twight, 
 For breach of faith to her, which he had firmly plight." 
 
 Spenser's .Faerie Queene. 
 
 Note. 244. Book XXIV. stanza 32. Yoke did the pair. "] 
 
 Cowper adopts Clarke's suggested reading o^ i^u)vvvaQr]Vy that Priam and 
 his herald girded their loins. A reading for which Heyne very properly 
 sees no necessity. As to Cowper's objection to the horses being yoked 
 in the house itself, it should be observed that in house we may include 
 the precincts — the court-yard, the ep/coc, shortly after mentioned when 
 the old man takes the cup. So that in the house means only not outside 
 the premises. As to what Clarke objects, that the sons had already 
 yoked the steeds, we may observe that it is not so said. Lead the horses 
 under the yoke, which is the expression, may not literally express the 
 whole process of yoking them, but only bringing the horses out and 
 placing them on each side the pole, and then leaving their father and 
 the herald to do the rest, while they went on with packing the things on 
 the waggon, &c. ; operations which may very well have gone on simul- 
 taneously, although of necessity related one after the other, and here 
 conveniently so, as affording an easy transition to the introduction of 
 Hecuba with the wine. That the old men should yoke the horses when 
 brought out for them, is consistent with the urgency of the occasion 
 and Priam's impatience, and with the character of his sons, whose care 
 in harnessing his favourite steeds he might very well distrust, on this 
 critical night journey. Nor was there any reason for the old king 
 
682 NOTES. 
 
 standing idle. In the heroic times princes and heroes were not abov6 
 •harnessing their own chariots. And his not doing so here v;ould, in the 
 eye of a contemporary, have appeared strange and inconsistent with his 
 eagerness to be gone. 
 
 Note 245. Book XXIV. stanza 36. Of birds most sure,"] 
 
 Most sure, i. e. of most certain augury ; literally, " most complete or 
 accomplished of birds," or " of auguries," if that be preferred. 
 
 Note 246. Book XXIV. stanza 41. The one to aid.'] 
 
 'EpiovrioQ The Helper, an epithet of Hermes which in the text is put 
 absolutely, and I have therefore made bold to do the same. 
 
 Note 247. Book XXIV. stanza 46. Limb-meal.] 
 
 Limb-meal fxeXe'lari. No authority, I presume, will be required for 
 the use of this word, especially by those who remember Shakespeare's 
 line, — 
 
 " O that I had her here, to tear her limb-meal ! " 
 
 Cymbeline. 
 
 Note 248. Book XXIV. stanza 63. Frowning did exclaim.] 
 
 " Mortified to see his generosity, after so much kindness shown Priam, still 
 distrusted, and that the impatience of the old king threatened to deprive him 
 of all opportunity to do gracefully what he could not be expected to do will- 
 ingly " — COWPER. 
 
 Note 249. Book XXIV. stanza 64. From speech doth tin.] 
 
 Lin, — cease, give over. — Spenser. 
 " Thrise shall he fight with them, and twise shall win ; 
 But the third time shall fayre accordaunce make : 
 And if he then with victorie can lin, 
 He shall his dayes with peace bring to his earthly In." 
 
 Faerie Queens, Book iii. canto 3, § 30. 
 
 Note 250. Book XXIV. stanza 73. Mantles wool-y-clad.] 
 Wool-y-clad, i. e. with rough wool on them. 
 
 Note 251. Book XXIV. stanza 79. Call-town herald.] 
 
 The office of herald was one of dignity, and yet we moderns, such is 
 the change of time and manners, would find it hard to associate that 
 quality with the functionary designated in the text aorv^owr/jcj literally 
 town-crier. The town-crier, retaining his functions, has lost his consi- 
 deration in modern times, while another relic of ancient days, retaining 
 the name, has lost the functions and dignity of its proud original, and 
 wide is the difference between a consul of ancient Rome and a consul at 
 Tunis. 
 
NOTES. 683 
 
 Note 252. Book XXIV. stanza 82. Whilere.'] 
 
 *' Helpeth now as I did you whilere 
 Put in your bond, and looketh what is there." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Note 253. Book XXIV. stanza 83. Hent, dreriment^ extenf] 
 " What hellish fury hath at earst thee henty 
 
 Spekser's Faerie Queene. 
 
 " Full of sad feare and ghastly drerimenC — Ibid. 
 
 Extent for extended, I think, is also to be met with in Spenser, but 
 cannot refer to the passage. Hent is the preterite and participle of 
 Hetid, to take, i. e., lay hold of with the hand. The contrary of it is 
 familiar enough — "unhand me." Dreriment, sorrow, lamentation, 
 grief. 
 
 Note 254. Book I. stanza 7. Folk-mote.'] 
 
 Folk-mote, a general assembly of the people. This good old Saxon 
 word is too significant, I think, to be left in its obsoleteness without re- 
 gret. The following is from Spelman : — " Folkesmote, Foikmote, et 
 Folkesmoth. Conventus populi a Saxon, \.o\c, populus ; mote and gemote, 
 conventus. Dicitur autem de majori conventu, puta in civitatibus non 
 unius wardae seu curiae, sed omnium wardarum ; in comitatibus, non unius 
 hundredi, sed omnium hundredorum : hie quasi Shiregemotus, id est, con- 
 ventus comitatus ; illic velut Burgemotus, id est, conventus civitatis, 
 seu burgi." — Spelman : Gloss. Of which passage the general reader 
 is requested to accept the following translation : — Folkesmote, &c., an 
 assembly of the people ; from the Saxon j:olc, people ; mote and gemote, 
 assembly. It is said of the larger assembly, in cities for instance, not 
 of one ward or court, but of all the wards ; in counties, not of one hun- 
 dred, but of all the hundreds : in the latter case, as it were, a Shirege^ 
 mote, i. e. a meeting of the county ; in the former a Burgemot, i. e. a 
 meeting of the city or burgh. 
 
 The entire article in Spelman, like everything that falls from that 
 stout scholar, however we may differ from some of his conclusions, will 
 well repay perusal. The passage there given, from the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor, on the method, and time of holding, and of the business 
 of the Foikmote, is interesting and curious. 
 
 Note 255. 
 
 The translator must crave indulgence for the clumsiness of introducing 
 here the following words, which he fears he has not elsewhere explained. 
 Authorities for their use have been added, where they readily occurred 
 to his recollection. 
 
684 NOTES. 
 
 Derring-do, an old knightly phrase for a feat of arms. 
 
 " Drad for his derring-doe and bloody deed." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Drad, y-drad. Dread, dreaded. 
 
 " Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.^' 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Han, for Have, 3 p. pi. Pres. Ind. 
 
 " Though some there were who would not further pass, 
 And his alluring baits suspected nan. 
 The wise distrust the too fair-spoken man." 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 Pight, y-pight, placed, pitched, fixed. 
 
 " Therein an hundred raunges weren pight, 
 An hundred furnaces all burning bright." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 " His dwelling was low in a hollow cave, 
 Far underneath a craggy cliff y-pigM^ 
 
 Ihid, 
 
 Haught. Pret. of reach. 
 
 " He to him r aught a dagger sharp and keen." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Rede. Word, counsel, advice, precept. 
 
 " Such mercy He by His most holy rede 
 Unto us taught, and to approve it trew 
 Ensampled it by His most righteous deede." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Rue, rewe, to pity, compassionate. 
 
 " And God so wisely on my soule rewe. 
 As I shal even juge ben aud trewe." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Sowne, sown, for sound. 
 
 " And through thy dronken nose seemeth the soun 
 As though thou saidest ay, Sampson n, Sampsoun." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 Stoure, fight, battle, trouble. 
 
 " And she that helmed was in starke stoures 
 And wan by force tonnes stronge and toures." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Swink, to labour, drudge. 
 
 " Honour, estate, and all this worldes good. 
 For which men swinck and sweat incessantly." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
NOTES. 685 
 
 Tine, teene, tyne, trouble, vexation, grief. 
 
 "From that day forth I lov'd that face divyne ; 
 From that day forth I cast in careful mynd. 
 To seek her out with labor and long tyne, 
 And never vow to rest till her I fynd." 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Yfere, together, in company. 
 
 " In this faire wise they traveil'd long yfere 
 Through many hard assayes which did betide, 
 Of which he honour still away did beare. 
 And spred his glory through all countryes wide." 
 
 Spensek. 
 
 Whilere, some time ago, erewhile. 
 
 " That cursed wight, from whom I scapt whileare ; 
 A man of hell-, that calls himself Despayre." 
 
 Spesseb. 
 
 Note 256. Book VII. stanza 2. The7i slew they, this*'] 
 
 On reading over for press, I fear a note will be necessary to meet an 
 ambiguity occasioned by too close adherence to the original. The 
 stanza commences with asserting the collective slaughter made by the 
 Trojan pair on first rejoining the host, and then distributively assigns his 
 respeciive victim to each of the brothers. " They^' therefore, means 
 Hector and Alexander, and '* this^^ means Alexander alone, who slays 
 Menesthius, the son of King Areithous, while Hector for his part slays 
 Eioneus. 
 
 On the subject of the proper names also it will be necessary to detain 
 the reader. " Areithous^'' he is requested to read with Pope, as a word 
 of four syllables, with accent on the third, contracting ous into one 
 syllable, which Mr. Sotheby carries a step further and compresses the 
 word into three by removing the diaeresis. The word in the original 
 extends to five, as Cowper gives it, Areithoiis. Menesthius, is to be 
 read as four syllables, with accent on the second and fourth, and not, as 
 the translator has sometimes claimed licence to do, reading ius, as two 
 shorts, fusing them into one long. Pope, Cowper, and Mr. Sotheby give 
 the word Menestheus through inadvertence I presume, as the original is 
 not so. Philomeduse is a metrical convenience for which I may quote 
 Mr. Sotheby's authority. Eioneus I read with Pope and Mr. Sotheby 
 as a trisyllable, accentuated on the second. Cowper profits by the 
 greater facility of blank verse to preserve the Greek form at length, 
 Eioneus. Jphinous is to be read as three syllables, with accent on the 
 second and contracting ous into one syllable. 
 
68G NOTES. 
 
 Note 257. Book X. stanza 3. Cydnus.'] 
 
 It is not positively known what substance is designated by this word, 
 in the original Kvavog, but it is conjectured to have been blue steel. In 
 this uncertainty, therefore, I have judged it more in accordance with the 
 present translation to retain the word itself, only taking the licence of 
 accentuating one of the short syllables of which it is composed. The 
 reader is accordingly requested to pronounce it with the a long, cyanus. 
 
 Note 258. Book XVI. stanza 4. Better be.'] 
 
 A noble sentiment is this to which Patroclus gives expression. And 
 it argues high elevation in both the heroes that they so quietly without 
 a cavil, accept the principle of our being responsible to posterity for the 
 use we make of our advantages. 
 
 Note 259. Book XXI. stanza 44. Plain to see.~] 
 
 I have rendered Travo-^Lov visible^ plain to see, instead of fulgidus, 
 shining. Ares would seem to be alluding to Athene's putting on the 
 helmet of Hades to conceal her when she assisted Diomed against him 
 (Book V. St. 97), and in that case the force of the epithet would be 
 equivalent to saying that he was well aware of her doings with the lance 
 that pierced him in that encounter, for all she thought herself so secret. 
 
 Note 260. Book XII. stanza 23. Forlore.'] 
 
 Forlore, lost. Will the reader accept the revival in this form of the 
 prseterit of the Anglo-Saxon fopleopan, to lose, with the participle of 
 which forleoren ot forlorn we are sufficiently familiar ? 
 
 Note 261. Book XXIII. stanza 96. To th' King,] 
 
 I. e. to Apollo. 
 
 Note 262. Book XXIV. stanza 60. Out-ivorth.] 
 
 The lover of Shakspeare will not ask for an authority for this expres- 
 sion when he remembers the passage — 
 
 " A beggar's book 
 Outworths a noble's blood." 
 
 Heiiry VIII. 
 
 Note 263. Book XVI. stanza 7. Land-louping one.] 
 
 Land-loper. Dutch, land-looper. Danish, land-lober. Germ, land- 
 Idufer. Lat. erro, vagus, vagabundus. Qui court le pays. A vagabond 
 or, in our old law phrase, a loiterer. This old word, land-loper, which 
 I believe is still current in the north of England as it is in Scotland, has 
 no reference to saltatory feats on the terra firma on the one hand, as the 
 venerable Minshew would seem to have thought, from giving it Land- 
 haper B. Landt-looper, a leader of lands, for the etymology, though 
 
NOTES. 687 
 
 the meaning he renders correctly erro^ vagus ; nor on the other hand 
 does it imply any comparison with maritime matters, as Johnson sup- 
 posed, who interprets it "a landman; a term of reproach used by 
 seamen of those who pass their lives on shore." That notion doubtless 
 enters largely into our jack-tars' use of the word '^ land-lubber," which 
 in form is directly taken from the Danish landlober, but not in meaning; 
 for in that language the word, like its congeners in Dutch and German, 
 designates, not one who passes his life on the land, but one who is with- 
 out any fixed habitation there, one who is running over the country and 
 constantly changing his abode, a wanderer. This word, therefore, 
 adequately represents the ixeravaarrjQ of the Greek text, both meaning 
 wanderer^ and with the same shade of territorial contempt for '^ landless 
 resolutes," and I am happy to find the precise word suggested by Messrs. 
 Liddell and Scott in their valuable lexicon. For the adjective land' 
 louping, I find it in Jamieson, who gives it from the " Antiquary." I have 
 followed his orthography without however being able to account for the 
 presence of the u. The ou cannot be meant to represent the Dutch oo ; 
 for the latter is equivalent to our one long o mbone. Land-loper, there- 
 fore, as Johnson gives it, would yield the Dutch looper exactly. 
 
 The passage in the text is significant of the dreary condition in those 
 days of " a stranger in the land." The normal state of such must have 
 included liability to outrages like that of which Achilles complains, or there 
 would be no point in the comparison. What glimpses we get of the 
 heroic times sufficiently show that, on the score of security of the 
 person and property, they were much on a footing with the middle ages, 
 in which there were weak laws for the natives, and none at all for the 
 stranger. A state of things which leaves little ground for the regrets of 
 the nimium laudatores temporis acti. This precise feature is among the 
 revelations of the state of ancient society given us by Scripture, which 
 in its prohibitions to the Jewish people records the practices of the 
 surrounding nations. Few readers of the Pentateuch will forget the 
 lawgiver's earnest and aff'ectionate injunctions not "to vex a stranger 
 nor oppress him." 
 
 Note 264. Book XVI. stanza 74. The sacred scales,~\ 
 
 The scales in which the fate of the Trojans and Achaeans with respect 
 to the battle was weighed. Described in Book VIII. stanza 10. where, 
 however, it is taken literally, though here as a metaphor merely. 
 
 Note 265. Book XVIII. stanza 63. * Linus.'^ 
 
 There is a diff'erence of opinion as to the meaning of this word in the 
 original. The translator agrees with those who take it for a dirge on 
 the death of Linus, who, according to the scholiast, was the first to sub- 
 
688 NOTES. 
 
 stitute catgut strings for the hempen theretofore in use. For this he 
 was slain by Apollo, less perhaps from jealousy than to vindicate the de- 
 corum of the Olympians, which, it should seem, forbade the use of catgut 
 in the divine songs addressed to them. Their primitive worshippers 
 were accordingly careful to use flax instead of the offensive material. 
 Ou)( oaiuVf says the scholiast, ovBt S^eolg dpeardv elyai v-Koka^t,a.vovTeQ hiii 
 TO EK ytvpwv neTroirjfTdaif aW Ik Xiyov TreTrotjyjutVov. A.D. Bekker. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 My task is ended, and the looking back upon it seems like the retro- 
 spect of a life ; not for the space it covers, for some six years, reckoning 
 back from the 28th of April, 1853, when the last stanza was written, 
 would suffice for that; but from the recollections that crowd within it: 
 with all of which is associated one, who is now no more, and in whose 
 Society it was for the most part composed. To her solicitude it is owing 
 that this work, as it now stands, and which seems to me as her property, 
 was ready for press, even to the transcription of all but the few last 
 notes, when she was taken from me. To the task of publication, which 
 now seems a melancholy duty, as carrying out her wishes, I address 
 myself, but with feelings how different from those with which the work 
 was begun ! But I have felt it a duty, and its discharge in this case, as 
 in most others, has not been without its benefit, for the mechanical 
 labour of passing it through the press, at a time when I am not ashamed 
 to confess myself to have been little fit for ajiy higher occupation, has 
 beguiled some heavy hours and heavy thoughts. And now it is done, I 
 look to the result with very mingled sentiments, as one who feels that 
 on this side the grave he shall see no more that face, which would have 
 brightened at its success, and which its failure, on the other hand, can 
 now no longer cloud. 
 May 1 5th, 1854. 
 
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