Heroicus

660. Vinedresser Are you an Ionian, stranger, or where are you from?

Phoenician A Phoenician, vinedresser, from the country around Sidon and Tyre.

Vinedresser Then why this Ionian dress?

Phoenician The clothes are native to us now; Ionian luxury has taken hold of the whole of Phoenicia, and a man might be indicted there, I think, for not living softly.

Vinedresser And where are you bound, walking with your head in the air and above everything at your feet?

Phoenician I have need, vinedresser, of a token and an omen for a good voyage; for they tell me they will be launching us out into the Aegean itself, and the sea, I think, is dangerous and not easy to sail. So I am walking the road opposite to the wind, since for a fair voyage we Phoenicians watch for just such a sign.

Vinedresser Clever you are, stranger, in matters of the sea; for it was you, I believe, who marked out the other Bear in the heavens and steer by her. But while your seamanship is praised, your trading is decried—you have the name of being grasping men and sharp dealers.

Phoenician And are you not grasping yourself, vinedresser, living among these vines and looking out, perhaps, for whoever will buy your fruit, paying you a drachma for the grapes,661. Phoenician and to whom you may sell your new wine or your vintage with its fine bouquet—the very wine, I suppose, you say you keep buried like Maron.

Vinedresser Stranger from Phoenicia, if there are Cyclopes somewhere on the earth, whom the land is said to feed in idleness, though they plant nothing and sow nothing, then what grows there might go unguarded—though it belongs to Demeter and Dionysus—and nothing would be sold off the land, but things would grow worthless and held in common, as in a market of swine. But where one must sow and plough and plant and do one task after another, devoted to the soil and obedient to the seasons, there one must also sell and buy. For farming too needs money; and without it you will feed neither ploughman nor vinedresser nor herdsman nor goatherd, and you will have no bowl to drink from or to pour libations with—for even the sweetest thing in farming, the gathering of the vintage, must be done for wages, or else the vines will stand wineless and idle, like figures in a painting. This, stranger, I have said about the whole round of a farmer's life; my own way is far more easygoing. For I deal with no merchants, and do not know what a drachma even is; I either buy or sell, an ox for grain or a goat for wine and the like for the like, after a few words spoken and heard.662. Phoenician A golden marketplace you describe, vinedresser, and one for heroes rather than men. But what does this dog want? He keeps circling me, fawning at my feet and offering his ear, soft and gentle.

Vinedresser He is telling you my character, stranger—that we treat those who come here so kindly and decently that we do not even allow the dog to bark at them, but to welcome them and crouch before them when they arrive.

Phoenician May I, then, set upon a vine?

Vinedresser There is no grudging it; we have grapes enough.

Phoenician What of the figs—may I pick them too?

Vinedresser That too is free; we have figs to spare. And I would give you nuts and apples and a thousand other good things; I plant them as a kind of side dish to the vines.

Phoenician Then what should I pay?

Vinedresser What else, Phoenician, but to eat with pleasure, take provisions, and go away rejoicing?

Phoenician But surely you are not a philosopher, vinedresser?

Vinedresser Yes, and along with the noble Protesilaus.

Phoenician What have you in common with Protesilaus—if you mean the one from Thessaly?

Vinedresser I mean the husband of Laodamia; for that is what he likes to hear.

Phoenician And what is he doing here?

Vinedresser He lives, and we farm together.

Phoenician Restored to life—or what?

Vinedresser He does not himself speak of what he has suffered, stranger, except that he died at Troy for Helen's sake and came back to life in Phthia, in love with Laodamia.

Phoenician And yet he is said to have died after coming back to life, having persuaded his wife to follow him.663. Vinedresser He says this himself; but how he ascended again after that, though I have long wished to learn it, he will not say, hiding, as he claims, some secret of the Fates. And his fellow soldiers, those in this Troy here, still appear in the plain, warlike in their bearing and shaking their crests.

Phoenician I disbelieve it, by Athena, vinedresser, though I wish it were so. But if you are not busy with your plants, and not channeling water, go through all this for me now—both these things and whatever you know of Protesilaus. For you would do the heroes a favor if I went away a believer.

Vinedresser The plants no longer drink at midday, stranger; it is autumn now, and the season waters them. So I have leisure to go through everything. For let not such great and divine matters escape men of refinement. And it is better to sit in a fair part of the place.

Phoenician Lead on, then; I will follow you even beyond the middle of Thrace.

Vinedresser Let us go into the vineyard, Phoenician; for there too you may find something to gladden you.

Phoenician Let us go; for there is a sweet breath that comes from the—

Vinedresser Sweet, do you call it? Divine! For of the wild trees the blossoms are fragrant, but of the cultivated, the fruits. And if ever you meet a cultivated plant with a fragrant flower, pluck rather its leaves, for the scent is in them.

Phoenician How varied is the season's beauty in your place, how cheerfully the clusters have come out, how all the trees flourish, and how like ambrosia is the fragrance of the spot! These walks you have laid out I think charming—but you seem to me to live in luxury, vinedresser, using so much land idly.

Vinedresser The walks are sacred, stranger; for the hero exercises in them.

Phoenician You shall tell me this when we have sat down where you are leading me. But now tell me this: do you farm this land as your own, or has it another master, while you, like the Oeneus of Euripides, tend one who is being tended?664. Vinedresser This one small plot is left to me out of many, and it feeds me not meanly; the other fields the powerful took from me when I was a complete orphan. And even this little plot, already held by Xeinis of the Chersonese, Protesilaus recovered for me by striking him with some apparition of his own, by which his sight was destroyed, so that he went away blind.

Phoenician A good guardian of your field you have got, then; and you fear, I suppose, no inroad of a wolf, with such a friend keeping watch.

Vinedresser You speak truly; for he allows no wild beast to come in, neither serpent here nor poisonous spider, nor does any informer attack us over the field. That beast is terribly shameless—it works its ruin in the marketplace.

Phoenician And your speech, vinedresser—how were you educated? For you do not seem to me to be one of the uneducated.

Vinedresser In the city, stranger, we first spent our life, employing teachers and studying philosophy. But my affairs went badly, for the farming was in the hands of slaves, and they brought us in nothing, so that I had to borrow on the land and go hungry. And so, coming here, I made Protesilaus my counselor; but he, having a just anger against me because I had left him and lived in the city, kept silent. When I persisted and said I would perish if I were neglected, he said: "Change your clothes." That day I heard this idly, but afterward, weighing it, I understood that he was bidding me change the whole pattern of my life. So I put on a leather jerkin, took up a mattock, and no longer even know the road to the city; and everything in my field flourishes for me. And if a sheep falls sick, or a beehive, or a tree, I use Protesilaus as my physician, being with him and devoted to the soil; and I grow wiser than myself, for he has wisdom too in abundance.

Phoenician Blessed are you in his company and in your field, if you gather there not only olives and grapes but also wisdom, divine and undefiled.665. Phoenician And perhaps I wrong the wisdom in you by calling you a vinedresser.

Vinedresser Call me so; for you would gratify Protesilaus by naming me farmer and gardener and the like.

Phoenician Is it here, then, vinedresser, that you keep company with one another?

Vinedresser Here, stranger. How did you guess it?

Phoenician Because this part of the field seems to me the sweetest and most divine. Whether anyone could be brought back to life here, I do not know, but he would live here most sweetly and free from grief, having left the crowd behind. For these trees are exceedingly tall, raised by time, and this water comes varied from springs, and you draw from it, I think, as if drinking now this and now that vintage of fine bouquet. And you plant arbors too, weaving the trees together and fitting them, so that no one could match such a garland even from an undefiled meadow.

Vinedresser And you have not yet heard the nightingales, stranger—how they sing in the Attic manner in this place, when evening comes and when day begins.

Phoenician I think I have heard them, and that they do not lament but only sing. But tell me the matters of the heroes; for I would more gladly hear these. You allow me, I suppose, to sit down?

Vinedresser The hero allows it, being kind and hospitable with these seats here.

Phoenician See, I rest; for the welcome is sweet to one who is about to hear a more serious tale.

Vinedresser Ask, stranger, whatever you wish, and you will not say you came in vain. For to Odysseus, when he was wandering far from his ship, Hermes—or one of the wise men sent by Hermes—came into fellowship of speech and earnest converse; this, I think, is what we should take the moly to mean. And you Protesilaus will fill with history through me, and make you happier and wiser. For to know many things is worth much.

Phoenician But I do not wander, my good man; rather, by God's will, by Athena, I have come here. For I now understand my dream.

Vinedresser And how does your dream stand? For you will be hinting at something divine.666. Phoenician I have been sailing from Egypt and Phoenicia now some thirty-five days, and when my ship put in here at Elaeus, I dreamed I was reading the verses of Homer in which he tells the catalogue of the Achaeans, and that I was summoning the Achaeans to embark on my ship as though it were large enough for them all together. And when I started up out of the dream—for a kind of shudder had come over me—I took it as meaning the slowness and length of the voyage, since visions of the dead are unprofitable to men in earnest. But wishing to use the dream as an omen—since the wind did not yet allow sailing—I turned aside here from the ship; and walking along, as you saw, I met you first, and we talk of Protesilaus, and shall talk also of the catalogue of the heroes—for so you say you will do. And the cataloguing of them onto the ship would be the gathering of the account about them and then the embarking.

Vinedresser By God's will you have truly come, stranger, and you interpret the vision soundly. Let us go through the account, then, lest you say I am being coy in keeping you from it.

Phoenician You understand, surely, what I long to learn. I wish to hear of your very fellowship with Protesilaus, what manner he comes in, and whether he knows anything that agrees with the poets, or that they have misunderstood, about the Trojan matters. By Trojan matters I mean such things as the mustering of the army at Aulis, and each of the heroes one by one—whether they were as handsome as they are sung, and brave, and wise. For the war that was fought over Troy, how could he describe it, since he neither fought it through nor lived, having died first of all the Greeks at the very landing, as they say?

Vinedresser This is naive of you, stranger. For to souls so divine and blessed the beginning of life is to be purified of the body. They know the gods, whose attendants they are, not then by worshipping images and conjectures, but by holding manifest fellowship with them; and they see the affairs of men, being free of disease and of the body, when indeed they are filled with prophetic wisdom and the oracular power runs riot within them.667. Vinedresser Whom, then, will you name of those who study Homer most rigorously as having read Homer's poems as Protesilaus has read them and sees through them? And yet, stranger, before Priam and Troy there was no recitation of epic, nor were things sung that had not yet been done; for poetry then concerned the oracles and the Heracles son of Alcmene, and was only just being established and not yet come of age. Homer was not yet singing; but some say he set himself to poetry when Troy was taken, others a few generations later, others eight. Yet Protesilaus knows all of Homer, and sings many Trojan events that happened after his own time, and many Greek and Median ones too; the expedition of Xerxes, at any rate, he calls the third destruction of men, after those that came in the time of Deucalion and of Phaethon, since most nations perished in it.

Phoenician You will fill the horn of Amaltheia, vinedresser, since your companion knows so much. For you will report it soundly and as you heard it.

Vinedresser By Zeus, yes—or I would wrong a hero who is a lover of wisdom and of truth, if I did not honor truth, which he is accustomed to call the mother of virtue.

Phoenician I think that at the very beginning of our talk I confessed my own affliction to you; for I say I am disposed to disbelieve marvels. And the reason is this: I have never been with anyone who saw them. One says he heard it from another, one supposes it, and a poet exalts the third. And the things said about the size of the heroes—that they were ten cubits tall—I think charming as mythology,668. Phoenician but false and unconvincing to one who measures them against nature, of which present-day men are the measure.

Vinedresser When did you begin to think these things unconvincing?

Phoenician Long ago, vinedresser, while still a youth. As a child I still believed such things, and my nurse used to tell me them charmingly, chanting them and even weeping over some of them; but when I became a young man, I thought I should not accept them without testing.

Vinedresser And the matter of Protesilaus, and that he appears here—did you ever happen to hear of it?

Phoenician How could I, vinedresser, when even hearing it from you today I disbelieve?

Vinedresser Then let the beginning of the account for you be the things you have long disbelieved. You say you disbelieve that men were ten cubits tall. When you have had enough of this, ask then for the account about Protesilaus and as much of the Trojan matters as you wish; for you will disbelieve none of them.

Phoenician Well said—let us do so.

Vinedresser Listen, then. I had a grandfather, stranger, who knew many of the things you disbelieve. He used to say that the tomb of Ajax was once destroyed by the sea against which it lies, and that bones appeared in it belonging to a man of eleven cubits; and he said the emperor Hadrian, coming to Troy, wrapped them up and fitted the present tomb around Ajax, and even embraced and kissed some of the bones.

Phoenician Not without reason, it seems, do I disbelieve such things, vinedresser; for you too say you heard something from your grandfather, and perhaps your mother or nurse, but report nothing of your own—unless you should speak of Protesilaus.

Vinedresser And indeed, if I were a teller of tales, I would describe the corpse of Orestes, which the Spartans found seven cubits long in Nemea,669. Vinedresser and the one in the bronze Lydian horse, which was buried in Lydia even before Gyges; when the earth split in an earthquake, it was seen as a marvel by the shepherds about Lydia, with whom Gyges then served as a hired man. For within the hollow horse, which had windows on each side, lay a corpse larger than a man would believe. And if these things are open to disbelief because of their age, yet to the things of our own time I do not know what you will say in objection. For Aryades—whom some called an Ethiopian, some an Indian—lying thirty cubits long in the land of the Assyrians, was lately revealed when the bank of the river Orontes split apart; and this Sigeum, less than fifty years ago, displayed on the projection of the headland the body of a giant whom Apollo himself says he slew as it fought against him on Troy's behalf. And I saw, stranger, when I sailed to Sigeum, both the affliction of the earth and the giant, how great he was. Many of the Hellespontians and Ionians sailed there too, and all the islanders and the whole Aeolian people; for two months the great body lay on the great headland, giving one account to one man and another to another, the oracle not yet making it clear.

Phoenician Could you then say something further, vinedresser, about his size and the joining of his bones, and about those serpents that the painters depict as grown together with the giants, which they sketch beneath Enceladus and those about him?

Vinedresser Whether those giants were monstrous, stranger, and compounded with beasts, I do not know; but the one at Sigeum measured twenty-two cubits, and lay in a rocky cavern, with his head toward the mainland,670. Vinedresser and his feet ending with the headland; and we saw no sign of dragons about him, nor was there anything in his bones that differed from a man's. And indeed Hymnaeus of Peparethus, being well disposed to me, sent one of his sons here four years ago to ask Protesilaus through me about a similar marvel. For on the island of Cos—which he owns alone—he happened to be digging up vines, and the earth gave back a hollow sound to the diggers, as if empty. So they opened it, and a corpse twelve cubits long lay there, and a serpent had its home in the skull. The young man came to ask us what he ought to do with it, and Protesilaus said, "Let us cover the stranger"—bidding him, I suppose, to bury the corpse and not to strip it bare willingly. He said too that it was a giant of those who had been struck down. And the one that appeared on Lemnos, which Menecrates of Steiria found, was very great; I saw it last year, sailing over from Imbros, for it was a short distance to Lemnos. The bones were no longer in order, for the vertebrae lay apart from one another, displaced, I suppose, by earthquakes, and the ribs were disjointed from the vertebrae; but considering them both together and one by one, the size seemed terrifying and not easy to picture. The skull, at any rate, when we poured wine into it, was not filled even by two Cretan amphoras. There is, toward the south wind, a headland of Imbros, Naulochos, beneath which lies a spring that turns the male animals into eunuchs and so intoxicates the females that they fall asleep. So a fragment of earth, broken off there, drew along with it the body of a very great giant; and if you disbelieve, let us sail there—for it still lies exposed, and the voyage to Naulochos is short.

Phoenician I would gladly go even beyond the Ocean, vinedresser, if I might find such a marvel anywhere,671. Phoenician but trade does not allow me to wander so far from itself; I must stay bound to the ship, like Odysseus, or else, as they say, both bow and stern will be lost.

Vinedresser But do not yet hold as credible, stranger, the things I have told you, until you sail to the island of Cos, where the bones of the earthborn are laid up—the first Meropes, they say—and until you see in Phrygia the bones of Hyllus son of Heracles, and, by Zeus, in Thessaly those of the Aloadae, that they were truly nine fathoms tall and just as they are sung. The Neapolitans who dwell in Italy have made a marvel of the bones of Alcyoneus; for they say that many of the giants were struck down there, and that Mount Vesuvius smolders over them. And in Pallene too, which the poets call Phlegra, the earth holds many such bodies of giants who encamped there, and many the rains and earthquakes uncover. No shepherd even dares to approach that place at midday, because of the phantoms that rumble there, which rave in it. To disbelieve such things was perhaps possible even in the case of Heracles; for which reason, having slain Geryon in Erytheia and being said to have met him as a creature of vast size, he dedicated the bones at Olympia, so that his labor might not be disbelieved.

Phoenician I count you blessed for your store of knowledge, vinedresser. I was ignorant of great things, and foolishly disbelieved. But how stand the matters of Protesilaus? For now, I suppose, is the time to come to those things that are no longer disbelieved.672. Vinedresser Hear of such things, stranger. Protesilaus does not lie in Troy, but here in the Chersonese, and a great mound holds him—that one, surely, on the left. These elms the nymphs planted about the mound, and they laid down this law for these trees: that the branches turned toward Ilium should bloom early but shed their leaves at once and perish before their season—this being the very fate of Protesilaus—while on the other side the trees should live and flourish. And whatever of the trees does not stand about the tomb—like these here in the garden—is strong in all its branches and thrives after its own kind.

Phoenician I see, vinedresser, and though I might marvel, I do not marvel; for the divine is wise.

Vinedresser And the sanctuary, in which the Mede committed his outrage in our fathers' time—on account of which they say the salt fish came back to life—take this, stranger, to be it; you see how little of it remains.673. Vinedresser But then, I suppose, it was charming and not small, as one may judge from the foundations. This statue here stands upon a ship—for the shape of the base is a prow—and he is set up as an admiral. Time has worn it down, and, by Zeus, those who anoint it and seal their prayers upon it have altered its appearance. But this is nothing to me; for I am with him myself and look upon himself, and no statue could be sweeter to me than he is.

Phoenician Will you then describe him to me and share his form?

Vinedresser Gladly, by Athena, stranger. He was about twenty years old when he sailed to Troy at that age, and he is in bloom with a soft down, and breathes a scent sweeter than the autumn myrtles. He has set a cheerful brow about his eye, for graciousness is dear to him. His glance, in earnest matters, is intense and vehement; but if we catch him at ease—ah, how charming and friendly his eyes appear! He has the right measure of fair hair, just enough to hang over his forehead rather than fall down it, and the line of his nose is square, as in a statue. His voice sounds clearer than trumpets, and that from a small mouth. To meet him naked is most pleasant, for he is well-knit and light, like the running Hermae. His height is perhaps ten cubits; and he would, I think, have shot up beyond even this, had he not died as a youth.674. Phoenician I have seen the young man, vinedresser, and I admire you for your companion. Is he armed, or how?

Vinedresser He has put on a cloak, stranger, in the Thessalian manner, like this statue. The cloak is sea-purple, of a divine bloom; for the bloom of the purple is beyond words.

Phoenician And his love for Laodamia, how does it stand with him now?

Vinedresser He loves, stranger, and is loved, and they are disposed toward one another like ardent newlyweds.

Phoenician Do you embrace him when he comes, or does he slip from you like smoke, as he does the poets?

Vinedresser He delights in being embraced, and allows me to kiss him and to take my fill of his neck.

Phoenician Does he come often, or at long intervals?

Vinedresser Four or five times a month, I think, I share his company, when he wishes either to plant some of these plants, or to gather the vintage, or to clip the flowers. For he loves garlands, and makes the flowers sweeter when he is among them.

Phoenician A cheerful hero you describe, and simply a bridegroom.

Vinedresser And a self-controlled one, stranger. For though fond of laughter from his youth, he does nothing in wantonness. He often takes up the mattock too, if I meet a rock while digging, and helps me with the hard tasks; and if I am ignorant of anything in farming, he corrects me. The trees—I, having half-heard Homer, used to plant tall, setting less of them into the ground than above—and when Protesilaus took me up on it and I used the words of Homer against him, he replied that Homer himself bids the opposite of what you are doing; for in his wisdom he knows deep things to be "long," 675. Vinedresser as somewhere he calls the wells "long," though they are deep. And he said the trees would take to the earth better if they stood by the greater part and were stirred by the lesser. And once, when he came upon me watering some flowers, he said, "My good man, the perfume needs no water"—teaching me, no doubt, not to wash out the flowers' scent.

Phoenician And the rest of the time, vinedresser, where does he live?

Vinedresser Sometimes in Hades, he says, sometimes in Phthia, and sometimes again in Troy, where his companions are; and after hunting boars and deer he comes here about midday and sleeps stretched out.

Phoenician And where does he keep company with Laodamia?

Vinedresser In Hades, stranger. And he says she fares most honorably among women, counted among those like Alcestis the wife of Admetus and Evadne the wife of Capaneus, and those equal to them in chastity and goodness.

Phoenician Do they eat together, or is it not lawful?

Vinedresser I have never yet met him eating, nor have I known him to drink. And yet I pour libations to him each evening from these Thasian vines, which he himself plants, and I set out ripe fruits at midday when summer comes and autumn is at hand; and when the moon is rounding to her circle in the springtime, I pour milk into this cooling-vessel and say, "Look, I offer you the season's stream; drink." Having said this, I withdraw, and the things are eaten and drunk faster than a man can close his eyes.

Phoenician And about the age at which he died, what does he say?

Vinedresser He pities, stranger, his own fate and the deity under whom he then was, and thinks it unjust and grudging that it did not allow him even to set foot in Troy; for he says he would have fallen short neither of Diomedes in fighting, nor of Patroclus, nor of the second Ajax;676. Vinedresser for he says he was left behind in war by the sons of Aeacus because of his age—he himself being a youth, while of them Achilles was a young man and Ajax a grown man. And he praises the verses Homer spoke about him, although he does not praise all of Homer—how he called his wife "with cheeks torn on both sides," his house "half-finished," and the ship in which he sailed "fought over," and called him "warlike." But he laments himself, that he accomplished nothing at Troy, but fell in a land on which he did not even set foot. And the scar is impressed upon his thigh, for he says the wound was wiped away together with his body.

Phoenician And how does he exercise, vinedresser? Since you said he practiced this too.

Vinedresser He exercises, stranger, in the things of war except archery, and in the gymnastic arts except wrestling; for shooting the bow he counts the mark of cowards, and wrestling of idlers.

Phoenician And how does he do the pancratium or box?

Vinedresser He exercises at these, stranger, against shadows, and throws the discus farther than a man could reach. For he drives the discus up beyond the clouds, and hurls it over a hundred cubits—and that, as you see, when it is twice the Olympic weight. And when he runs, you would find no trace, nor would his foot leave any mark on the earth.

Phoenician And yet great footprints are impressed in the walks, of the hero's ten-cubit size.677. Vinedresser Those footprints, stranger, are of him walking and exercising at something else; but when he runs, the earth is unmarked, for he is borne aloft, as it were riding the waves. He says too that Achilles outran the others at Aulis in the games, when Greece was training for Troy, and was lifted higher than his leap. The things of war he yields, as I said, to Achilles, except for the battle among the Mysians; for there he killed more Mysians than Achilles and carried off the prize of valor, and won also the contest over the shield.

Phoenician And what might the matter of the shield be, vinedresser? For it has not been told by any poet, nor does it enter into any of the Trojan accounts.

Vinedresser You will say this of many things, stranger; for the hero tells much about men and about deeds of war that is not yet clear to most. And the reason is this: he says that men, in their amazement at Homer's poems, looked only to Achilles and Odysseus and neglected good and noble men. Some they did not mention at all, while to others they dedicated a trireme of four verses. Achilles, he says, has been worthily hymned, but Odysseus excessively. And as for all that has been left out of Sthenelus and Palamedes and such men, I will go through it for you a little later, that you may not go away ignorant of any of these things. And the Mysian account, in which the shield occurs, we will presently complete; but since in mentioning the pancratium and boxing and the discus we were carried off to the shield, hear the hero's marvels in dealing with athletes who used him as a counselor. You have heard, I suppose, of the Cilician pancratiast whom our fathers called the Jumper, because he was small and far below his opponents.678. Phoenician I know him, judging surely from the statues; for he stands in bronze in many places.

Vinedresser This man, stranger, had skill in abundance, and spirit too in abundance, and the harmony of his body strengthened him greatly. So the youth came to this sanctuary—he was sailing straight for Delphi to contend in the judging—and asked Protesilaus how he might prevail over his opponents; and the hero said, "By being trodden." So despondency at once seized the athlete, as though he had been thrown by the oracle; but the trick of tripping by the heel, of which he was the first inventor in the contest, he understood afterward—that the hero was bidding him not to let go of the foot. For one who grapples must be trodden constantly upon the heel and lie beneath his opponent. And doing this, this athlete won a brilliant name and was beaten by no one. You have heard too, I suppose, of that clever Plutarchus?

Phoenician I have heard. The boxer, naturally, is whom you mean.

Vinedresser This man, going up for the men's contest at his second Olympiad, besought the hero to give him an oracle about the victory; and the hero bade him pray to Achelous of the contest.

Phoenician What then was the riddle?

Vinedresser He was contending at Olympia against Hermeias the Egyptian for the crown, and both had given out—the one from his wounds, the other from thirst, for the boxing stood at blazing midday—when a cloud burst over the stadium, and Plutarchus, being thirsty, drew off the water that the fleeces about his arms had taken up; and remembering the oracle, as he said afterward, he sprang up into courage and won the victory. You marvel, perhaps, at the blessed Egyptian for his endurance, if ever you were present at a boxing match.679. Vinedresser To this man, when he asked how he might not be defeated, the hero said, "By despising death."

Phoenician And he obeys the oracle, vinedresser; for by preparing himself in this way he seems to most men adamantine and divine.

Vinedresser And the athlete Helix has not yet sailed up to this sanctuary himself, but sent one of his companions and asked how many times he would win at Olympia; and the hero said, "You will win twice, if you do not wish for three times."

Phoenician Marvelous, vinedresser! For you will doubtless tell of what happened at Olympia. He already had one victory in hand—when as a man he had won the wrestling, having come up from the boys' class—and he stripped at that Olympiad for both wrestling and pancratium; at which the Eleans were vexed and intended to bar him from both, framing Olympic charges against him, but with difficulty they crowned him in the pancratium. And this was the very envy that Protesilaus had told him beforehand to guard against, knowing it would stand against him in the things he was denied.

Vinedresser Excellently, stranger, you have read the oracle.

Phoenician And of diseases, which does he cure? For you say many pray to him.

Vinedresser He cures all there are, but especially consumptions and dropsies and diseases of the eyes and those sick with quartan fever; and a lover too may find him a counselor. For he shares deeply in the pain of the unlucky in love, and suggests to them charms and arts that will win their beloved; but to adulterers he neither speaks at all nor suggests anything erotic, for he says he hates them, since they slander love itself. Indeed, when an adulterer once came here with the very woman whom he was seducing, and they wished to swear an oath against her husband, who was present but not yet aware—for he happened to be sleeping there at midday, while they were already standing at the altar and swearing—

Phoenician What then did Protesilaus do?

Vinedresser He sets on this dog—kind though he is, as you see—to fall upon them from behind and bite them while they were still swearing; and having thus confounded the oath, he stands over the husband and bids him take no thought for those two, for their bite is incurable, but to save now at least himself and his own household. For the gods, he said, know all things, but the heroes less than the gods and more than men.680. Vinedresser A great throng of such things would flood in, were I to recall them all—including those manifest to all in Phthia and Phylace, to as many as dwell in Thessaly. For the sanctuary there too is active for Protesilaus, and he gives the Thessalians many signs, kindly and gracious, but angry again if he is neglected.

Phoenician I am persuaded, by Protesilaus, vinedresser; for it is a fine thing, I see, to swear by such a hero.

Vinedresser Or you will do wrong by disbelieving, stranger. And Amphiaraus, whom the earth is said to hold in a wise sanctuary, and Amphilochus his son, you perhaps know better than I, not being far from the mainland of Cilicia. And Maron son of Euanthes you would wrong—he who haunts the vines in Ismarus and makes them sweet-wined, planting them and circling them; when indeed Maron is seen by the farmers, handsome and delicate and breathing a fresh and wine-like fragrance. And one must know too the matters of the Thracian Rhesus; for Rhesus, whom Diomedes killed at Troy, is said to dwell on Rhodope, and they sing many marvels of him. They say he keeps horses, bears arms, and takes to hunting; and the sign that the hero hunts is that the wild boars and the gazelles and whatever beasts are on the mountain come to the altar of Rhesus by twos and threes and offer themselves for sacrifice, held by no bond, presenting themselves to the knife.681. Vinedresser This hero is said also to keep plague away from the mountain; and Rhodope is most populous, with many villages about the sanctuary. From which I think Diomedes too would cry out on behalf of his own fellow soldiers, if we count this Thracian—whom he himself killed, though he accomplished nothing distinguished at Troy, nor showed anything there worth mention except white horses—as something, and sacrifice to him as we journey through Rhodope and Thrace, but dishonor those who wrought divine and brilliant deeds, thinking the renown about them mythical and boastful.

Phoenician From now on, vinedresser, I rank myself with you, and no one will any longer disbelieve such things. But those in the plain at Ilium, whom you said walk through it in warlike fashion—when have they been seen?

Vinedresser They are seen, Phoenician, they are still seen by the cowherds in the plain and by the shepherds, great and divine; and they are seen sometimes to the harm of the land. For if they appear covered with dust, they signify droughts for the country; if full of sweat, floods and rains; if blood appears about them or their arms, they send up diseases upon Ilium; but if none of these is seen about the phantoms, they then bring good seasons, and the herdsmen sacrifice to them—one a lamb, one a bull, one a foal, one some other of his flock. And all the destructions that come upon the herds they say come from Ajax, because of the story of his madness, when Ajax is said to have fallen upon the flocks and torn them apart, as though killing the Achaeans over the judgment; and no one grazes about his tomb, for fear of the grass, since it springs up diseased and bad for pasture. There is also a story,682. Vinedresser that some Trojan shepherds once committed outrage against Ajax, when their sheep had fallen sick, and standing about the tomb they called the hero the enemy of Hector, the enemy of Troy and of flocks; and one said he had gone mad, another that he was mad, and the most insolent of the shepherds recited at him the verse "Ajax no longer stood his ground"—taunting him as a coward. But Ajax said, "I did stand my ground," crying out from the tomb something terrible and shrill; and he is said to have clashed his arms too, as he used to do in battles. Now the suffering of those wretches is no wonder, if, being Trojans and shepherds, they were terrified at the onset of Ajax, and some of them fell, some trembled, and some fled to where they pastured; but Ajax is worthy of wonder, for he killed none of them, but only endured the drunken insolence they used, showing them merely that he heard. Hector, however, did not know this virtue, I think; for when a youth committed outrage against him last year—he was, they say, quite young and uneducated—Hector rushed upon the youth and killed him on the road, adding the deed to a river.

Phoenician You speak to one ignorant, vinedresser, and greatly amazed at the account; for I thought this hero appeared nowhere. And when you reported to me the matters of the Greeks, I grieved exceedingly for Hector, that neither ploughman nor goatherd says anything on his behalf, but he is invisible to men and simply lies there. About Paris I do not even think it worth hearing anything—through whom so many and such men fell—but about Hector, who was the bulwark of Troy and of the whole alliance, who managed four horses, which no other hero did, and burned the ships of the Achaeans,683. Phoenician and fought against them all together as they rushed upon him and arrayed themselves against him—about him I would not refrain from asking, nor would I gladly listen, unless you go through these things and tell them not carelessly.

Vinedresser Hear them at greater length, since you think this is to speak not carelessly. The statue of Hector at Ilium is like a demigod man, and shows many characters to one who looks at it with right reason; for it seems high-spirited and fierce and bright, and vigorous with grace, and his bloom is without any hair. It is so full of breath that it draws the beholder on to touch it. This statue is set up in a conspicuous part of Ilium, and works many good things both publicly and for individuals; for which reason they pray to it and hold games in its honor, when indeed it grows so hot and full of the contest that sweat drips from it. So an Assyrian youth, having come to Ilium, was reviling Hector, throwing in his teeth the draggings that he once suffered from Achilles, and the stone of Ajax by which he was struck and nearly died, and how he fled at first from Patroclus, and how he did not even kill him, but others did. And he was reassigning the statue of Hector, for he said it belonged to Achilles, after the hair he cut off over Patroclus. Having had his fill of this, he drove out of Ilium; and before he had gone ten stades, a river so small that its name was not even known in Troy rose great from small, and, as those of his attendants who escaped reported, a great hoplite led the river on, urging it in a barbarous and vehement tongue to turn its water onto the road684. Vinedresser by which the youth was driving on his team of four not-large horses; and the river, taking up the horses together with the youth, who was now shouting and understanding Hector at last, led them away into its own haunts and so destroyed them, so that it did not even allow the body to be recovered—for it vanished, I do not know where.

Phoenician One need neither marvel at Ajax, vinedresser, for enduring what came from the shepherds, nor think Hector a barbarian for not bearing what came from the youth; for to those there is perhaps even pardon, who, being Trojans still and with their sheep faring badly, leapt upon the tomb; but to an Assyrian youth making a procession of insults against the hero of Ilium, what pardon is there? For there was never any war between Assyrians and Trojans, nor did Hector ravage their herds, as Ajax did those of the Trojans.

Vinedresser You seem to have suffered something toward Hector, stranger, and I do not think it worth disputing. But let us return to the matters of Ajax, for from there, I think, we made the digression of the account.

Phoenician From there, vinedresser; and if you please, let us return.

Vinedresser Attend, then, stranger. Once when a ship had anchored at the Aianteum, two of the strangers were wandering before the tomb and playing at draughts; and Ajax, standing over them, said, "By the gods, change this game; for it reminds me of the deeds of Palamedes, a wise man and very dear to me. One enemy destroyed both me and him, finding an unjust judgment against us."

Phoenician I have wept, by the Sun, vinedresser; for the sufferings of both are alike and akin, fitted for goodwill. For partnership in good things sometimes breeds even envy, but those who share in misfortunes love one another, giving pity in exchange for pity. But could you say that anyone has seen a phantom of Palamedes at Troy?685. Vinedresser The phantoms that are seen are not yet clear as to whom each belongs, for there are many, now these and now those, and they differ from one another in form and age and arms. Yet I hear this too about Palamedes. There was a farmer at Ilium, once doing the same as I; this man had been affected by the sufferings of Palamedes and used to lament him, coming to the shore where he is said to have been stoned by the Achaeans; and all that men customarily do at tombs he did to the dust, taking out the sweeter of his vines and gathering a bowl for him, and saying he drank with Palamedes when he rested from his labors. He had a dog too, skilled at fawning and crouching to men; this dog he called Odysseus, and would beat for Palamedes' sake—this Odysseus hearing besides a thousand insults. It seemed good to Palamedes once to visit this lover and give him some good thing; and indeed the man was at a vine, healing its knot, when the hero, standing over him, said, "Do you know me, farmer?" "And how," he said, "should I, who have never seen you?" "Why then," he said, "do you love one whom you do not know?" The farmer understood that it was Palamedes; and the form pointed to a hero great and handsome and brave, not yet thirty years old. Embracing him, smiling, he said, "I love you, Palamedes, because you seem to me to have been the wisest of men and the most just athlete of the things of wisdom, and to have suffered piteous things at the hands of the Achaeans through the contrivances of Odysseus against you—whose tomb, if any were here, would long ago have been dug up by me, for he is foul and worse than the dog I keep on his account." "Let us spare Odysseus from now on," the hero said, "for I exacted justice from him for these things in Hades. But you, since you love the vines, tell me, what do you most fear about them?" "What else," he said, "but the hailstones, by which they are blinded and burst?" "Tie, then," said Palamedes, "a thong about one of the vines, and the rest will not be struck."

Phoenician Wise indeed is the hero, vinedresser, and always finding some good thing for men. And about Achilles, what could you say? For we hold him the most divine of all the Greeks.686. Vinedresser The matters in the Black Sea, stranger, if you have not yet sailed there, and all he is said to do on the island there, I will report to you later in the account about him, which is longer; the matters at Ilium are similar to those of the other heroes, for he converses with some, and visits, and pursues wild beasts. They infer that he is Achilles by the bloom of his form and by his size and by the lightning of his arms; and behind him a whirlwind of wind eddies, escorting the phantom. My voice will fail me, stranger, in recalling such things; for they sing something about Antilochus too—how a Trojan maiden, frequenting the Scamander, met a phantom of Antilochus and clung to the tomb, in love with the phantom; and how, when two cowherd youths were playing at knucklebones about the altar of Achilles, one would have killed the other, striking him with his staff, had not Patroclus startled them apart, saying (I think it enough to report it), "Not over knucklebones one drop of blood." And these things one may learn from the cowherds and all who dwell at Ilium; for we mingle with one another, dwelling as we do on the banks of the outlets of the Hellespont, having made the sea, as you see, our river. Come now, stranger, let us take up the shield, which Protesilaus says was unknown to Homer and to all the poets.

Phoenician You give the account about it to one who longs for it, vinedresser, and one rarely to be heard, I think.

Vinedresser Most rarely. Attend, then, and listen.687. Phoenician "Attend," you say? Not even the beasts gaped at Orpheus singing as I, hearing you, prick up my ears and keep my mind awake and gather everything into memory. I think I am even one of those who campaigned against Troy, so possessed am I by the demigods of whom we speak.

Vinedresser Then, since you are so minded, let us set out from Aulis, stranger; for that they mustered there is true. Let the embarking-songs of the account be vowed to Protesilaus. That the Achaeans, before Troy, ravaged Mysia, which was then under Telephus, and that Telephus, fighting for his own people, was wounded by Achilles, you may hear even from the poets—for these things are not left out by them. But to believe that the Achaeans, in ignorance of the country, thought they were carrying off the goods of Priam, discredits the account Homer sings of Calchas the seer; for if they were sailing under prophecy and made the art their guide, how could they have anchored there unwillingly? And how, having anchored, could they have been ignorant that they had not come to Troy—and that after meeting many cowherds and many shepherds? For the country is grazed down to the sea, and it is the custom, I think, for those who put in to ask the name of the foreign land. And even if they met none of these and asked nothing of the kind, yet Odysseus and Menelaus, who had already come to Troy and served as envoys and knew the battlements of Ilium, would not, I think, have overlooked this, nor allowed the army to mistake the enemy's land. The Achaeans, then, plundered the Mysians willingly, an account having reached them that they fared best of the mainland peoples,688. Vinedresser and also, somehow, in fear, lest the Mysians, being neighbors of Ilium, should be summoned into partnership of the dangers. But to Telephus, being a Heraclid and otherwise noble and ruling an armed land, these things seemed not to be borne; whence he arrayed many a shield, many a horseman. He led some from the Mysia under him—he ruled, I think, all of it that lies on the sea—and others from the upper Mysians fought as allies, whom the poets call the Abii and herders of horses and drinkers of their milk. For the design of the Achaeans, by which they made their circuits, not being unknown, and Tlepolemus having sent a messenger on a Rhodian merchantman, as to a brother, and bidden him signify by word of mouth all that he had perceived of the Achaeans at Aulis—for writing had not yet been discovered—the whole interior had come down into alliance, and the Mysian and Scythian nations surged upon the plain. And Protesilaus says that this became the greatest of their contests, both of those in Troy itself and of all that were afterward fought to the end against barbarians by Greeks. For Telephus' alliance was of good repute both in numbers and man for man; and as among the Achaeans the sons of Aeacus and the Diomedes and Patrocluses were sung, so there were the name of Telephus and of Haemus son of Ares, and most renowned were Helorus and Actaeus, sons of the river Ister in Scythia. The Mysians would not allow the landing, shooting from the land and hurling javelins; but the Achaeans, even with them refusing, forced their way, and the Arcadians even ran some of their ships aground, being then first at sea and not yet trained in seafaring.689. Vinedresser For Homer says, as you know, that the Arcadians were not seamen before Ilium, nor laid hold of works of the sea, but Agamemnon brought them onto the sea in sixty ships, himself giving the ships to men who had never sailed. Whence they furnished all the warlike skill and strength for land fighting, but at sea were neither good hoplites nor good rowers. So through inexperience and daring they ran the ships aground, and many of them were wounded by those drawn up on the surf, though few died; but Achilles and Protesilaus, fearing for the Arcadians, as if at a signal both together leapt onto the land and drove back the Mysians, appearing the best-armed and fairest of the Greeks, and to the utterly barbarous they seemed even deities. When Telephus led his army back into the plain and the Achaeans sailed up at leisure, they at once leapt from the ships—all except the helmsman and the rowing-crew that the ship carried—and were arrayed for battle, keeping order and silence in their hearts. For Homer rightly said this of them, praising the character of Greek fighting, of which he says Ajax son of Telamon was the counselor. For when Menestheus the Athenian, the most skilled in tactics of the kings, came to Troy and was teaching the whole army at Aulis how they should be fitted together, not rebuking those who used a war cry, Ajax did not allow it, but censured it, declaring it womanish and disorderly. For he said the cry too interprets the spirit badly. He says he himself and Achilles, together with Patroclus, were arrayed against the Mysians; against Haemus son of Ares, Diomedes and Palamedes and Sthenelus; and against those who came from the Ister, the sons of Atreus and the Locrian and the rest were arrayed.690. Vinedresser But Ajax the great considered those who killed the multitude to be reapers harvesting nothing great, and called those who overcame the best men woodcutters, and thought himself worthy rather of this kind of battle; and so it was that he rushed upon the sons of the river, though they were not of his portion and fought, in Hector's manner, from a team of four horses. Stepping proudly with his spear toward their shield, he clashed upon it to throw the horses into confusion; and the horses at once went mad and reared upright, whence the Scythians, losing faith in the chariot, leapt from it as it ran out of order and fell upon Ajax, and both, fighting worthily of mention, died. Protesilaus recalls also the deeds of Palamedes as great, by which he and Diomedes and Sthenelus killed Haemus and those about him; yet Palamedes did not think it right to receive the prize of valor, but conceded those to Diomedes, since he knew that all he did was for the sake of warlike honor and glory, whereas if Greece should set forth any crown for wisdom, he would not yield it to another, being from the beginning a lover of wisdom and a practiser of it. With Telephus, Protesilaus says he himself grappled and tore away the shield while he lived, and that Achilles, falling upon him bared, wounded him straightway in the thigh and afterward became the healer of the wound at Troy; but then Telephus fainted from it and would have died, had not the Mysians rushed together and carried him from the battle—when indeed many of the Mysians are said to have fallen over him, by whose blood the Caicus ran red. He says too that Achilles disputed with him over the shield, since he had wounded Telephus, but the Achaeans voted that the shield belonged rather to Palamedes, since Telephus would not have been wounded had he not been bared of it. And he says that Mysian women fought on horseback alongside the men, like Amazons, and that the leader of this cavalry was Hiera, the wife of Telephus.691. Vinedresser Her, then, Nireus is said to have killed—for they set the boyish and not-yet-renowned part of the army against the women—and when she fell, the Mysian women cried out and, throwing their own cavalry into confusion, were swept away into the marshes of the Caicus. This Hiera, Protesilaus says, was the greatest of women he ever saw, and the most beautiful of all who have won a name for beauty. For he says he did not see Helen, the wife of Menelaus, at Troy, but now he sees Helen herself and does not blame the dying on her account; yet if he considers Hiera, he says she surpasses Helen as much as Helen surpasses the Trojan women. And not even she, stranger, got a Homer to praise her; rather, to gratify Helen, he did not bring into his own poems a divine woman, over whom the Achaeans are said to have suffered something, and over whose fall the elder men urged the younger not to despoil Hiera, nor to touch her as she lay. In this battle, stranger, many of the Achaeans were wounded, and baths were given by oracle to the wounded—hot springs in Ionia, which the people of Smyrna still call the springs of Agamemnon. They are, I think, forty stades from the city, and captured Mysian helmets were once hung upon them.

Phoenician What then, vinedresser, shall we say—that Homer left these things out willingly or unwillingly, sweet and poetical as they are?

Vinedresser Willingly, perhaps, stranger. For wishing to hymn Helen as the best of women in beauty, and to praise the Trojan battles as the greatest of those fought to the end elsewhere, and to remove the divine Palamedes from all account because of Odysseus, and to attribute the most warlike of the deeds to Achilles alone—so that692. Vinedresser the other Achaeans are forgotten when Achilles fights—he composed no Mysian verses, nor did he set down a memorial of this deed, in which both a woman fairer than Helen would have been found, and men not far short of Achilles in manliness, and a most renowned contest. And had he mentioned Palamedes, he would not have found any way to hide the reproach of Odysseus against him.

Phoenician How, then, does Protesilaus think of Homer? For you said he tests his poems.

Vinedresser He says, stranger, that Homer, as in a musical harmony, struck all the poetic modes, and surpassed all the poets who lived before him, each in that wherein each was strongest; for he practiced grandeur of speech beyond Orpheus, surpassed Hesiod in sweetness, and so each one in another way. He set forth a Trojan story, into which fortune brought together the virtues of all Greeks and barbarians, and introduced wars—some against men, some against horses and walls, some against rivers, some against gods and goddesses—and all the works of peace, dances and songs and loves and feasts, and the works that farming engages in, and the seasons that signify what must be done to the land, and seafaring and the forging of arms in Hephaestus, and kinds of men and varied characters. All these Homer wrought divinely, he says, and those who do not love him are mad. He calls him also the founder of Troy, since it won renown from Homer's laments over it. He marvels too at how Homer reproves his fellow craftsmen, that he corrects them not harshly but as though unnoticed: Hesiod in many places and not a few, and, by Zeus, in the matters of the engravings on shields; for Hesiod, when describing the shield of Cycnus, sang the form of the Gorgon supinely and not poetically, whence Homer, correcting him,693. Vinedresser "upon it the grim-eyed Gorgon was crowned, glaring terribly, and about her Terror and Fear"—thus he sings the Gorgon. Orpheus he surpassed in many points of theology, and Musaeus in songs of oracles; and indeed Pamphos, who wisely conceived that Zeus is the life-giving power through whom all things rise from the earth, yet used the conception too crudely and sang base verses to Zeus—for the verses of Pamphos are: "Zeus most glorious, greatest of gods, wrapped in dung of sheep and horses and mules"—Homer, Protesilaus says, sang a hymn worthy of Zeus: "Zeus most glorious, greatest, dark-clouded, dwelling in the upper air"—as though he dwells in the purest region and makes living the things beneath the air. And the battles—all that took place between Poseidon and Apollo, and Leto and Hermes, and how Athena fought Ares and Hephaestus the water—these, he says, Homer treated in the manner of Orpheus, and they are not to be blamed for amazement and are divine, like the verse "And Aïdoneus leapt up from his throne" as the earth was shaken by Poseidon. But he blames these things in Homer: first, that having mingled gods with men, he said great things of men but small and base things of the gods; second, that, knowing clearly that Helen came to Egypt, carried off by winds together with Paris, he yet leads her to the wall of Ilium to look upon the evils in the plain—she who, even if these things were happening for the sake of another woman, would likely694. Vinedresser have veiled herself and not looked upon them, her race being defamed. And since not even in Troy itself was Paris praised for the rape of Helen, he says that neither would Hector, the most self-controlled, have endured not giving her back to Menelaus when she was in Ilium, nor would Priam have allowed Paris to live luxuriously when so many of his sons had already perished, nor would Helen have escaped being killed by the Trojan women, so many of whose husbands and brothers and sons had already perished—and perhaps she would even have run away to Menelaus because of the hatred in Troy. Let the contest, then, be removed, which Homer says Paris fought with Menelaus over a truce of the war; for Helen was in Egypt, and the Achaeans, knowing this long since, bade her farewell and fought for the wealth in Troy. Nor does Protesilaus praise this in Homer, that, having set forth a Trojan story, he leaps away from the story after Hector, as though hastening to the other of his stories, the one he entitles after Odysseus, and sings in the songs of Demodocus and Phemius the sack of Ilium and the horse of Epeus and Athena, but goes through these things cut off from the story and assigned rather to Odysseus—through whom a race of Cyclopes was invented for him, born nowhere on earth, and Laestrygonians were fashioned, whom no one knows where they came to be, and Circe was made a deity wise in drugs, and other goddesses fell in love with him, though he was already advanced into raw old age, when he is shown still having the hyacinth locks that bloomed for him toward Nausicaa.695. Vinedresser Whence Protesilaus calls Odysseus the plaything of Homer; for not even the girl loved his so-called wisdom—for what wise thing did he either say or do to Nausicaa? He calls him Homer's plaything in his wandering too; for sleeping he perishes in many places and is carried off the ship of the Phaeacians as though dead at the Fair Voyage. And the wrath of Poseidon, through which no ship was left to Odysseus and the men who filled them perished, he says was not on account of Polyphemus—for neither did Odysseus come to such haunts, nor would Poseidon, even if a Cyclops had been his son, ever feel wrath over such a son, who, like a raw lion, ate men—but on account of Palamedes, who was his grandson, he made the sea unsailable for Odysseus, and when he had escaped his sufferings there, destroyed him in Ithaca itself later, giving, I think, a sea-spear against him. He says too that the wrath of Achilles fell upon the Greeks not over the daughter of Briseus, but that he too was wrathful over Palamedes. And let this account be reserved by me for the deeds of Achilles; for I am going through the heroes one by one, reporting all that I heard of them from Protesilaus.

Phoenician You have come to the sweetest of accounts for me; for now the din of horses and men strikes my ears, and I foretell that I shall hear some great good.696. Vinedresser Listen, stranger—and may nothing escape me, O Protesilaus, nor may I forget what I heard from anyone. He says, then, that the oldest of the Greeks to come to Troy was Nestor son of Neleus, trained in many wars that were fought in his time, and in gymnastic contests, in which he set prizes for boxing and wrestling; and that he knew tactics, both of hoplites and of horse, best of men, and had taken to leading the people from his youth—not, by Zeus, the kind that flatters the populace, but the kind that brings it to its senses—doing it with grace and pleasure of speech, so that even the rebukes he made appeared neither boorish nor unpleasant; and all that Homer said of him was said with truth. And all that others said about the cattle of Geryon—that Neleus and the Neleidae, except Nestor, took them from Heracles—Protesilaus praises as true and not invented; for Heracles gave Nestor Messene as the reward of his justice, since he committed none of the wrongs his brothers committed about the cattle. And Heracles is said to have been captivated by him, being most chaste and most beautiful, and to have loved him more than Hyllas and Abderus; for those were little boys and quite young, but he met Nestor already an ephebe and practicing virtue, both of soul and body, whence he loved and was loved. And the swearing of oaths by Heracles—not yet customary among men—Nestor, he says, first established and handed down to those at Troy.697. Vinedresser And a son was born to him, Antilochus, who came when the war was already at its midpoint. For Antilochus was young and not yet of fighting age when they mustered at Aulis, and when he wished to campaign his father did not allow it; but when the war had already advanced into its fifth year, he embarked on a ship and arrived, and going to the tent of Achilles—since he heard that this man was most dear to his father—he besought Achilles to intercede for him with his father, that he might not be angry if he disobeyed. And Achilles, delighted with the youth's beauty and admiring his eagerness, said—not yet knowing his father—"Young man, you know your own father, if you do not think you would be praised by him rather for doing some ambitious and youthful deed." And Achilles spoke rightly; for Nestor, overjoyed with his son and proud of him, leads him to Agamemnon, who at once summons the Achaeans, and Nestor is said to have spoken then best of all his life. For they came together rejoicing to see Nestor's son—for he had no son at Troy, neither a Thrasymedes nor any other—and Antilochus stood there blushing and looking at the ground, and won admirers of his beauty no fewer than Achilles had won. For Achilles' form appeared astonishing and divine, but Antilochus' seemed to all delightful and gentle; and the Achaeans, who otherwise had not forgotten themselves, then most of all came to thought of him, Antilochus matching him in age and size,698. Vinedresser and tears, he says, came to many of them in pity for the youth of both, and the Achaeans used words of good omen toward Nestor for what he said, for they were disposed toward him as children toward a father. You may bring forward a statue of Nestor too; for Protesilaus describes him thus: that he always appeared cheerful and on the verge of a smile, bearded in a stately and well-proportioned way, while his work at the wrestling-school was witnessed by his ears and his neck, still youthful; for indeed Nestor was upright and not overcome by old age, and dark-eyed, with his nose not hanging down—qualities which in old age only those keep whom strength does not fail. Antilochus, he says, was in other respects like Nestor, but more given to running and slender in form, and not vain about his hair. And these things too about Antilochus he describes for me: that he was most fond of horses and most given to hunting, and that in the truces of war he used himself upon the wild beasts; he would go up to Ida with Achilles and the Myrmidons, and by himself with the Pylians and Arcadians, who furnished a market of beasts to the army because of the multitude caught; and in war he was noble and winged of foot and swift in his movement under arms, quick to use the commands given, and not abandoning his graciousness even in battle.699. Vinedresser He died not, as most sing, at the hand of Memnon who came from Ethiopia; for there was indeed an Ethiopian Memnon who held power in the time of the Trojan war in Ethiopia, over whom the mound of sand is said to be heaped by the Nile, and the Egyptians and Ethiopians sacrifice to him at Meroe and Memphis when the sun casts its first ray, at which the statue breaks forth a voice with which it greets its worshippers. But there was another Memnon, a Trojan, the youngest of the Trojan war, who while Hector lived seemed no better than those about Deiphobus and Euphorbus, but after his death was thought most eager and most brave, and Troy looked to him when it was already faring badly. This man, stranger, is said to have killed the fair and good Antilochus as he shielded his father Nestor; when indeed Achilles heaped a pyre for Antilochus and sacrificed much upon it, and burned the arms and head of Memnon upon it. For the contest that Achilles held over Patroclus and Antilochus has been honored, he says, more widely and by the best men; whence one was held over himself here, and one over Achilles and Patroclus and Antilochus at Ilium. A contest of running and archery and the spear is said to have been held over Hector too, but no Trojan stripped for wrestling or boxing—the one they did not yet know, and the other, I think, they feared. Diomedes and Sthenelus were of the same age, the one son of Capaneus, the other of Tydeus, who are said to have died in the assault on walls, the one by the Thebans, the other, I think, struck by lightning. And as the corpses lay unburied, the Athenians took up the contest over the bodies and buried them as victors,700. Vinedresser while the contest over the souls the sons won for their fathers when they came of age, and the mastery of the battle came to Diomedes and Sthenelus as the best and equal men. But Homer does not deem them worthy of equal treatment; for the one he likens to a lion and a river sweeping away bridges and the works of men—for so he fought—while the other stands like a spectator of Diomedes, becoming his counselor in flight and the author of fear. Yet Protesilaus says that Sthenelus did no lesser deeds than Diomedes even there; for their friendship was no less than that between Achilles and Patroclus, and they were so ambitious toward one another that the one left behind by the other returned despondent from battle. And the deed against Aeneas and Pandarus, he says, was done by them together; for the one fell upon Aeneas, the greatest of the Trojans, while Sthenelus contended with Pandarus and overcame him—but Homer assigned these to Diomedes alone, as though forgetting what he had said to Agamemnon on behalf of Sthenelus: for "We claim to be far better than our fathers; we also took the seat of Thebes" 701. Vinedresser is, surely, the speech of a man who did things like these at Ilium too. Let you also know this about Sthenelus: that no wall was built for the Achaeans at Troy, nor is there anything with which they fenced either the ships or the spoil, but these are songs of wall-fighting invented by Homer, for whose sake the wall too was composed by him. There was, however, an impulse to wall-building, it is agreed, that came over Agamemnon when Achilles was wrathful, against which Sthenelus first spoke, saying, "I am fitter to tear down walls than to raise them"; and Diomedes too spoke against the wall, saying that Achilles would be deemed worthy of great things if we now shut ourselves in, since he is wrathful. And Ajax is said to have looked askance at the king like a bull and said, "Wretch, what then of the shields?" And Sthenelus deprecated the hollow horse too, saying this was not wall-fighting but theft of battle. In warlike matters, then, they were alike and worthy of equal fear to the Trojans, but Sthenelus fell short of Diomedes in understanding and force of speech and the endurances of soul and body; for he was less master of his anger, and disdainful of the crowd, and harsh in rebuke, and arranged the things of his diet more delicately than was fitting in a camp—whereas Diomedes did the opposite of these. For he bore rebukes moderately and chastened the swelling of his anger, and did not allow the multitude either to commit outrage or to despair, and himself thought it soldierly to appear unkempt, and praised sleeping however it chanced, and his food was whatever came to hand, and he did not even delight in wine unless his labors had reached him.702. Vinedresser Achilles he praised, but was not astonished at, nor did he court him as most did; and Protesilaus once cried out over those verses in which Diomedes is made to say, "You ought not to have entreated the blameless son of Peleus, offering countless gifts; he is haughty even otherwise." For these things, he said, Homer spoke as a fellow soldier and not as one inventing, but as one who had himself been with the Achaeans at Troy; for Diomedes was rebuking Achilles for indulging himself against the Greeks during his wrath. As for their forms: Sthenelus, Protesilaus knows, was tall and erect, gray-eyed and hook-nosed and, as it were, long-haired, ruddy and quick of blood; Diomedes he describes as firm-set and bright-eyed, not yet dark, and straight-nosed, with curly hair and unkempt. Philoctetes son of Poeas campaigned late in the Trojan war, but shot the bow best of men, having learned it, they say, from Heracles son of Alcmene; and he is said to have inherited the bow when Heracles, departing from human nature, set him and the fire on Oeta at his side. This man, they say, was left on Lemnos, dishonored by the Achaeans, when a water-snake darted upon his foot, from which he sickened, lying on a high shore upon a rock; and he came by oracle to the Achaeans later against Paris, whom having killed, he took Troy again with the bow of Heracles and was healed himself by the sons of Asclepius. These things, Protesilaus says, are spoken not far from the truth; for the matters of Heracles are as they are hymned,703. Vinedresser and Philoctetes shared with him the labor on Oeta, and went away with the bow, and alone of men knew how to draw it, and won brilliant prizes of valor at the taking of Ilium. But the matters of his disease and of those who healed him he tells otherwise: that Philoctetes was left on Lemnos, but not bereft of those who would tend him, nor cast away by the Greeks; for many of the inhabitants of Meliboea stayed behind with him—he was their general—and tears came to the Achaeans when a warlike man worth many others left them. He was healed straightway by the Lemnian earth, into which Hephaestus is said to have fallen; this drives away maddening diseases, stops a flow of blood when it has broken out, and alone heals the bite of a water-snake among creeping things. And during the time the Achaeans spent at Ilium, Philoctetes joined Euneus son of Jason in clearing the small islands, driving out the Carians by whom they were held; and as the reward of his alliance a portion of Lemnos became his, which Philoctetes called Akesa, since he was healed on Lemnos. From there Diomedes and Neoptolemus led him willingly to Troy, having besought him on behalf of the Greeks and read to him the oracle about the bow, which had come, they say, from Lesbos. For the Achaeans used the oracles at home—the Dodonaean and the Pythian and all the renowned Boeotian and Phocian oracles—but since Lesbos was a little way from Ilium, they sent the Greeks to the oracle there. And it gave responses, I think, from Orpheus; for the head, after the deed of the women, putting in at Lesbos, settled in a cleft of Lesbos and gave oracles in the hollow of the earth.704. Vinedresser Whence the Lesbians used it for divination, and all the rest of the Aeolians, and the Ionians neighboring the Aeolians; and oracles of this shrine were sent up even to Babylon, for the head sang many things to the great king too. To Cyrus the ancient an oracle is said to have been given from there: "What is mine, O Cyrus, is yours." And he understood it to mean that he would hold the Odrysians and Europe, since Orpheus once, along with his wisdom, became powerful among the Odrysians and among such Greeks as were inspired by mysteries; but the god, I think, was showing Cyrus that he would suffer the fate of Orpheus. For Cyrus, having marched beyond the river Ister against the Massagetae and Issedones—these nations are Scythians—was killed by a woman who ruled these barbarians, and the woman cut off Cyrus' head, just as the Thracian women cut off Orpheus'. So much, stranger, I heard from Protesilaus and the Lesbians about this oracle. He says Philoctetes came to Troy neither sick nor like one who had been sick, but gray from age—for he was about sixty years old—yet vigorous beyond many of the young; he looked most terribly of men and spoke most briefly and agreed with few of the counsels. Agamemnon and Menelaus, he says, were alike neither in form nor in strength; for the one was active in warlike matters, fighting no worse than the best, and doing all that pertains to a king, and knowing what a ruler should know, and obeying when another knew better, and befitting the rule of the Greeks even by his very form—for he appeared august and magnificent, as though sacrificing to the Graces—while Menelaus fought after many of the Greeks,705. Vinedresser and relied on his brother in everything, and though he had Agamemnon eager and well-disposed, he yet envied him, even in what Agamemnon did on his behalf, because he himself wished to rule but was not deemed worthy. At any rate, when Orestes, well reputed at Athens among the Greeks for avenging his father, was in danger at Argos, Menelaus would have looked on as he was stoned by the Argives, had not Orestes fallen upon them with Phocian allies, routed some, and recovered his father's rule even against Menelaus' will. And he says Menelaus wore his hair long in a boyish way, but since Sparta wore its hair long, the Achaeans pardoned him for following the custom of his country. For they did not mock those who came from Euboea, though they wore their hair ridiculously. He says he conversed most easily of men and most briefly, blending pleasure with his speech. The Cretan Idomeneus Protesilaus did not see at Ilium, but says that while they were at Aulis an embassy came from Idomeneus, promising the alliance of the Cretans if he might share the rule with Agamemnon. Agamemnon heard this with self-control and brought the envoy forward; and he, with a clear and high-minded voice, said, "O Achaeans, a man holding the rule of Minos the Cretan gives you a hundred cities as allies, treating the taking of Troy as a game; he asks to be arrayed with Agamemnon and to rule you, as this man does." To this Agamemnon said, "I am ready to yield even the whole rule, if he should appear better than I." And then, he says, Ajax son of Telamon came forward and spoke thus: "We, Agamemnon, gave you the leadership for the good order of the army and that there might not be many rulers;706. Vinedresser but we campaign not to be slaves either to you or to another, but to enslave Troy, which may we take, O gods, having wrought brilliant and noble deeds. For such are we in virtue, that we set out in earnest to take Troy but treat Crete as a game." Ajax the Locrian, he says, was like Diomedes and Sthenelus in warlike matters, but seemed less intelligent, and paid no heed to Agamemnon—for he was of a most powerful father of the Locrians and led no obscure army—nor would he ever willingly be a slave to the sons of Atreus or to anyone else, "so long as this here flashes." Showing his spear, he said these things, glaring fiercely and tossing back his hair from the readiness of his resolve. And he said that all the others who heeded Agamemnon had come for Helen's sake, but he himself for Europe's; for Greeks, he said, must master barbarians. He had a tame serpent five cubits in length, which used to drink and keep company with Ajax and lead him on the roads and accompany him, like a dog. As for Cassandra, he tore her away from the seat of Athena, where she clung to the goddess as a suppliant, but did not force her, nor commit outrage against her, as the myths falsely tell of him; rather, he led her away to his own tent, and Agamemnon, seeing Cassandra—for besides her beauty she was crowned by her art—was at once captivated by the girl and took her from Ajax. And when a quarrel arose between them at the division, the one claimed that what he had taken was his own, the other neither gave her back and said that he had committed impiety against Athena.

707. Vinedresser But informers were set on against Ajax by Agamemnon among the Greeks, because of his perpetual enmity toward Ajax, declaring that the goddess gave many strange signs over the girl, and that the army would perish unless he destroyed him. But Ajax, considering how an unjust judgment had destroyed Ajax, and how wisdom availed Palamedes nothing against being slandered and put to death, fled by night in a small ferry-boat, in a storm and as it chanced, when, sailing straight for Tenos and Andros, he died off the Gyrae. And when the news of the calamity reached the Achaeans, few of them touched food, but all lifted their hands as for a good man, and standing by the sea they called upon him and lamented; and they held Agamemnon in anger, as having all but with his own hands wrought the destruction of Ajax. And he received funeral offerings such as had never before nor since been brought to any man, not even to those whom the invisible sea-battles took. For into the Locrian ship that had carried Ajax they heaped wood, as on a pyre, and sacrificed everything black, and rigging it with black sails and all else that has been devised for sailing, they held it with cables until the wind should blow from the land, which Ida sends forth especially about dawn; and when day shone through and the wind came down, they set fire to the hollow ship. So it sailed, rising high into the open sea, and before the sun had risen it was burned up, and all that it bore for Ajax. Chiron in Pelion, he says, was like a man, but wise both in words and in deeds—for he engaged in various hunting, taught warlike arts, produced physicians and harmonized musicians and made men just—and lived a very long time; and Asclepius and Telamon and Peleus and Theseus frequented him,

708. Vinedresser and Heracles too frequented Chiron, when the labors did not draw him away. And he says that he himself shared in Chiron's company together with Palamedes and Achilles and Ajax. And the matters of Palamedes he reports thus: that he came self-taught and already trained in wisdom, knowing more than Chiron; for before Palamedes there were not yet seasons, nor a cycle of months, nor was there yet a name for the year, nor coinage, nor weights and measures, nor counting; there was not yet a love of wisdom, since there were not yet letters. And when Chiron wished to teach him medicine, "I," he said, "Chiron, would gladly have discovered medicine had it not existed; but being discovered, I do not think it worth learning. And besides, the over-wisdom of your art is hateful to Zeus and hateful to the Fates"—and he would have gone through the matters of Asclepius, had he not been struck down here. When the Achaeans were at Aulis, he invented draughts, no idle game but a quick-witted one and within the realm of earnest. And the story told by many of the poets—that Greece campaigned against Troy, while Odysseus in Ithaca feigned madness and was at the plough, yoking an ox with a horse, and Palamedes convicted him by means of Telemachus—he says is not sound; for Odysseus came most eagerly to Aulis, and his name had already been handed down to the Greeks for cleverness,

709. Vinedresser and that he fell out with Palamedes from this. There was an eclipse of the sun at Troy, and the army was despondent, taking the heavenly sign as bearing on the future. So Palamedes came forward and explained the very affliction of the sun, that when the moon runs beneath it, it is darkened and draws on a mist; and if it signifies any evils, "These," he said, "the Trojans will surely suffer—for they began the wrongs, while we have come as the wronged. And it befits us to pray to the rising Sun, sacrificing to him a white and unbroken foal." When the Achaeans had praised this—for they were defeated by Palamedes' words—Odysseus came forward and said: "What must be sacrificed, or what prayed, or to whom, Calchas will say, for such things belong to prophecy; but the things in the heaven, and whether there is disorder or order among the stars, Zeus knows, by whom these things have been ordered and discovered. But you, Palamedes, will talk less nonsense if you attend to the earth rather than philosophize about the things in the heaven." Palamedes, taking him up, said: "If you were wise, Odysseus, you would understand that no one could say anything wise about the heavenly things without knowing more about the earth. And that you fall short of these things I do not doubt, for they say that you Ithacans have neither seasons nor land." From this Odysseus went off full of anger, while Palamedes prepared himself as against an envious man. And once, when the Achaeans were in assembly, cranes happened to be flying in their accustomed manner; and Odysseus, looking at Palamedes, said, "The cranes call the Achaeans to witness that they themselves discovered letters, not you." And Palamedes said, "I did not discover letters,

710. Vinedresser but I was discovered by them; for long ago, lying in the house of the Muses, they needed such a man, and the gods reveal such things through wise men. The cranes, then, lay no claim to letters, but fly praising order, for they journey to Libya to wage war on tiny men; but you could say nothing about order, for you keep no order in your battles." And the charge against Odysseus, I think, stranger, was this: that wherever he saw Hector or Sarpedon or Aeneas, he left his post and shifted to the easier parts of the war. And seeming childish in the assembly, and an older man defeated by the younger Palamedes, he set Agamemnon against him as one who was shifting the Achaeans toward Achilles. And he says they fell out again on this account. Wolves coming down from Ida were harming the baggage-boys and the pack animals about the tents; Odysseus bade them take bows and javelins and go to Ida against the wolves, but Palamedes said: "Odysseus, Apollo makes the wolves a prelude to a plague, and shoots them, as he does the mules and dogs here, but he sends them first among those who are to fall sick, out of goodwill toward men and that they may guard against it. Let us therefore pray to Apollo, Lord of Wolves and Giver of Escape, to destroy these beasts with his own arrows and to turn the disease, they say, onto goats.

711. Vinedresser And let us too, men of Greece, take care of ourselves; for those who guard against the plague need a light diet and vigorous movements. Of medicine I have not taken hold, but by wisdom all things are comprehended." And having said this, he stopped the market of meat and bade the army renounce soldiers' rations, and kept the army on dried fruits and wild herbs, they obeying him and holding everything that came from Palamedes divine and oracular; for indeed the plague that he foretold fell first upon the Hellespontine cities, beginning, they say, from the Black Sea, and attacked Ilium too, but touched none of the Greeks, though they were encamped in a sickened land. For besides the diet, he devised their movements thus: launching a hundred ships, he embarked the army in turns to row and contend with one another, either to round a headland or touch a peak or be first to put in before the others at some harbor or shore; and he persuaded Agamemnon to set prizes for them for swift sailing. So they exercised rejoicing and understanding their health; for he taught them that, with the land corrupted and in such a state, the sea was sweeter and safer to breathe. For these things he was crowned with the prize of wisdom by the Greeks, while Odysseus thought he himself fared dishonorably and turned all the villainy he had against Palamedes. After this Protesilaus reports such things as these: that Achilles, campaigning against the islands and the coastal cities, asked the Achaeans to campaign together with Palamedes.

712. Vinedresser They fought—Palamedes nobly and with self-control, but Achilles uncontrollably, for his spirit, lifting him up, led him into disorder; whence he was glad to have Palamedes fighting beside him and drawing him off from his rush and suggesting how he ought to fight. For indeed he was like a lion-keeper soothing and rousing a noble lion; and he did this not by avoiding the fray, but by striking and warding off missiles and propping his shield against them and pursuing the throng. So they sailed out delighting in one another, and the Myrmidons and the Thessalians from Phylace followed them. For Protesilaus says his own force was afterward assigned to Achilles, and all the Thessalians were thus named Myrmidons. The cities were taken, and renowned deeds of Palamedes were reported—cuttings through isthmuses, rivers turned into the cities, palisades of harbors and outworks, and the night battle about Abydos, when, both being wounded, Achilles withdrew but Palamedes did not give up, and before midnight took the place. But Odysseus, at Troy, was framing speeches to Agamemnon, false but plausible to one who listened simply: that Achilles was in love with the rule of the Greeks and used Palamedes as his go-between, "and they will arrive a little later," he said, "bringing you oxen and horses and slaves, but for themselves money, with which they will win over the powerful of the Greeks against you. So you must keep away from Achilles and, knowing him, guard against him, but this sophist you must kill.

713. Vinedresser And I have found a contrivance against him, by which he will be hated by the Greeks and destroyed by them." And he went through how he had prepared the matters about the Phrygian and the gold taken under the Phrygian; and these things seeming cleverly devised, and Agamemnon assenting to the plot, Odysseus said: "Come now, O king, keep Achilles for me about the cities where he now is, and send for Palamedes here, as though to assault the walls of Ilium and devise engines; for coming without Achilles, he will be capturable not by me alone but even by another less wise." This seemed good, and the heralds sailed to Lesbos, which had not yet been wholly taken, but its affairs stood thus: there was an Aeolian city, Lyrnessus, by nature walled and not unfortified, to which they say the lyre of Orpheus was carried and gave a sound to the rocks; and the seaside region of Lyrnessus is still made musical by the song of the rocks. There they had sat ten days, for the place was hard to take, when the heralds announced Agamemnon's message; it seemed good to obey, and that the one should remain while Palamedes departed, and they parted from one another with tears. When he had sailed down to the camp and reported the affairs of the army, ascribing everything to Achilles, "O king," he said, "do you bid me assault the walls of Troy?

714. Vinedresser I count the sons of Aeacus, and the sons of Capaneus and Tydeus, and the Locrians, and Patroclus surely, and Ajax, to be noble engines; but if you need lifeless engines too, then count Troy as already lying, so far as concerns me." But the contrivances of Odysseus, cleverly composed, forestalled him; and he was made to seem inferior to gold and was falsely charged with being a traitor, and, his hands twisted behind him, he was stoned to death by Peloponnesians and Ithacans, while the rest of Greece did not even see these things, but loved one who seemed to do wrong. Cruel too was the proclamation over him: that no one should bury Palamedes nor hallow him to the earth, and that whoever took up and buried him should die. But while Agamemnon was proclaiming this, Ajax the great threw himself upon the corpse and shed many tears over it, and taking him up, he forced his way through the crowd with his sword bared and ready; and having buried, as was fitting, the one forbidden burial, he no longer approached the common council of the Greeks, nor took part in counsel or judgment, nor went out any more to battle. And when Achilles arrived after the taking of the Chersonese, both were wrathful over Palamedes—Ajax not for long, for when he perceived the allies faring badly, he grieved and laid aside his anger, but Achilles prolonged his wrath; for he made a lyre-song of Palamedes and sang of him, all that he sang of the earlier heroes, and begged him to stand over him in a dream, pouring a libation from a bowl from which Hermes drinks for the sake of dreams. And this hero seems worthy not only to Achilles but to all who love strength and wisdom, of emulation and of song; and Protesilaus, whenever we come to remembrance of him, weeps uncontrollably, praising both the rest of the hero's manliness and that in his death. For Palamedes neither entreated,

715. Vinedresser nor said anything piteous, nor lamented, but saying, "I pity you, Truth, for you have perished before me," he held out his head to the stones, as though understanding that justice would be on his side.

Phoenician Is it possible to see Palamedes too, vinedresser, as I saw Nestor and Sthenelus—or does Protesilaus give no description of his form?

Vinedresser It is possible, stranger; look. In size he was equal to the greater Ajax; in beauty Protesilaus says he rivaled Achilles and Antilochus and himself and Euphorbus the Trojan; for his beard was sprouting soft, with the promise of curls, and his hair was close-cropped, his brows free and straight and meeting toward his nose, which was square and well-set. The intelligence in his eyes appeared in battles unwavering and fierce, but in quiet his glances were friendly and affable; and he is said to have had the greatest eyes of men. And naked, he says, Palamedes was midway between a heavy athlete and a light one, and had much roughness about his face, sweeter than the golden locks of Euphorbus; this roughness came from sleeping however it chanced and from often lodging on the topmost ridge of Ida in the leisure of war—for the apprehension of things on high the wise make from there, from the highest points. He brought to Ilium neither ship nor man, but sailed in a ferry-boat with his brother Oeax, thinking himself, they say, worth many arms. Nor had he an attendant or a servant, nor any Tecmessa or Iphis to bathe him and spread his bed,

716. Vinedresser but his was a self-sufficient life and outside all furnishing. At any rate, when Achilles once said to him, "Palamedes, you seem to most men rather boorish, because you have not acquired anyone to serve you," "What then, Achilles, is this?" he said, holding out both his hands. And when the Achaeans offered him money from the division and bade him be rich, "I do not take it," he said; "for I too bid you be poor, and you do not obey." And once when Odysseus asked him, as he came from astronomy, "What more than we do you see in the heaven?" he said, "The wicked." And he would have been a better man had he taught the Achaeans by what manner the wicked are made plain; for they would not have admitted Odysseus, who poured out against him such false and villainous arts. The fire that is said to have been raised by Nauplius against the Achaeans about hollow Euboea, he says is true and was done on behalf of Palamedes by the Fates and Poseidon—though perhaps, stranger, Palamedes' soul did not even wish it, for being wise he understood, no doubt, the deception against them. Achilles and Ajax buried him on the mainland of the Aeolians bordering Troy, by whom too a very ancient sanctuary has been built for him, and a statue of Palamedes is set up, noble and well-armed, and those who dwell in the coastal cities come together and sacrifice to him. One must seek the sanctuary toward Methymna and Lepetymnus, a high mountain that overlooks Lesbos. The matters of Odysseus he describes thus: that he was most rhetorical and clever, but ironical and a lover of envy, and praising malice, always downcast and as though brooding,

717. Vinedresser and in warlike matters seeming noble rather than being so—not, however, skilled in arming, or in arraying sea-fights and wall-fights, or in the spear and the drawing of the bow. His deeds were many, but not worth wonder, except one: that of the hollow horse, of which Epeus with Athena was the builder and Odysseus the deviser; and in the ambush itself he is said to have appeared more courageous than the rest of the company. He came to Ilium past his prime, and to Ithaca an old man; for he made his wandering longer because of the war he fought against the Cicones, overrunning the seaside of Ismarus. As for the matters of Polyphemus and Antiphates and Scylla, and the things in Hades, and all that the Sirens sang—Protesilaus does not even allow us to hear them, but bids us smear our ears with wax and decline them, not as though they are not full of pleasure and able to enchant the soul, but as unconvincing and invented. And the island of Ogygia and Aeaea, and how the goddesses loved him, he bids us sail past and not anchor at the myths; for Odysseus, he says, was past the prime of love, and somewhat snub-nosed and not tall, and with wandering eyes because of his thoughts and suspicions.

718. Vinedresser For he looked like one brooding, and that is graceless in matters of love. What sort of man Odysseus was, and how he killed Palamedes, who was wiser and braver than himself, Protesilaus teaches sufficiently from this; whence he praises also the lament in Euripides, when Euripides says in the songs of Palamedes, "You slew, you slew, O Danaans, the all-wise nightingale of the Muses who pained no one," and still more the verses that follow, in which he says that they did these things being persuaded by a clever and shameless man. Ajax son of Telamon the Achaeans called "great," not from his size, nor because the other was lesser, but from what he did, and they made him a good omen of the war by reason of his father's deed; for Telamon, with Heracles, came against Laomedon who had deceived Heracles, and took Ilium itself. So they delighted in him even unarmed, for he was a giant of a man, above the whole army, with a spirit that was both lofty and tractable and self-controlled; but when armed, they hung upon him as he stepped aloft against the Trojans and handled well that great shield, looking with gray eyes from under his helmet,

719. Vinedresser like lions about to spring. He made his battles against the best, saying that the Lycians and Mysians and Paeonians had come to Troy only to make up the numbers, but holding their leaders worthy of battle and such that to kill one gave a name, and to be wounded by one was no inglorious wound; and when he took an enemy, he kept his hands from his arms—for to kill was a man's part, but to despoil rather a footpad's. No one would have uttered anything wanton or insolent within hearing of Ajax, nor those who had a quarrel with one another; but they rose from their seats for him and gave way to him on the roads, not the many only but those of renowned rank. With Achilles he had a friendship, and they neither wished nor were of a nature to envy one another; and all the griefs about Achilles, even if they arose over small matters, he soothed them all—some as one sharing the pain, some as one rebuking; and when they sat or walked together, Greece turned to look upon the two men, such as, after Heracles, had not yet been born. Ajax they even said was a foster-child of Heracles, and that as an infant he was wrapped in the hero's lion-skin, when Heracles, holding him up to Zeus, asked that he might become invulnerable according to the lion's hide, and an eagle came to him as he prayed, bringing from Zeus a name for the child and a nod for the prayers. And it was clear, even to one who looked simply, that he was not born without divine favor, both from his beauty and from the strength of his form; whence Protesilaus calls him a statue of war. And when I said, "And yet this great and divine man was thrown in wrestling by Odysseus," he said, "If there had been Cyclopes and the myth about them were true, Odysseus would more easily have wrestled with Polyphemus than with Ajax." I heard from Protesilaus, stranger, these things too about this hero,

720. Vinedresser how he wore his hair long for the river Ilissus at Athens, and the Athenians at Troy loved him and held him their leader, and did whatever he said, and he spoke in the Attic manner, since, I think, he dwelt in Salamis, which the Athenians have made a deme. And a son was born to him, whom the Achaeans called Eurysaces, and he reared him in the rest of the upbringing that the Athenians approve; and when at Athens the boys in the month Anthesterion are crowned with flowers in their third year from birth, he set up the bowls from there and sacrificed all that is customary among Athenians, and said that he himself remembered this festival of Dionysus in the time of Theseus. The account of his death—that he died slain by his own hand—is true, but pitiable, and perhaps to Odysseus too. The verses in Hades, "Would that I had not conquered in such a contest; for over them the earth holds such a head"—these, he says, were not spoken there by Odysseus, for he did not go down alive; but they were surely spoken somewhere. For it is plausible that Odysseus too suffered something and prayed against his own victory, out of pity for such a man who died over it. And Protesilaus, praising these things of Homer, praises far more the verse about him in which he says, "and the sons of the Trojans gave judgment"; for he took the unjust judgment from the Achaeans and seated as judges those whom it was likely would vote against Ajax—for hatred is akin to fear.

721. Vinedresser And when he went mad, the Trojans feared him more than they were wont, lest, falling upon the wall, he break it, and they prayed to Poseidon and Apollo—since these had served at the building of the wall—to stand before the heights of the city and check Ajax, if he should touch the battlements; while the Greeks did not cease loving him, but made a grief of Ajax's madness and besought the oracles to declare how he might change and come to his senses. But when they saw him dead and lying by his sword, they wailed all together so that not even Ilium was deaf to it; and the Athenians laid out the body, and Menestheus delivered an oration over him, with which they think it right at Athens to honor those who die at the hands of the enemy. Here Protesilaus knows a renowned deed of Odysseus; for when Ajax lay exposed, he brought the arms of Achilles and, weeping, said, "Be buried in those you loved, and keep the victory over them, harboring no wrath." And when the Achaeans praised Odysseus, Teucer too praised him, but declined the arms, for it was not holy that the cause of his death should be his grave-gifts. They buried him, laying the body in the earth, Calchas explaining that those who kill themselves are not holy to be buried by fire. As for Teucer, consider him young, with size and form and strength among the middling Achaeans.

Phoenician Does Protesilaus know the matters of the Trojans, vinedresser, or does he not deem them worthy of mention, that they may not appear worthy of earnest attention?

Vinedresser That is not the way of Protesilaus, stranger, for envy is far from him. He reports the matters of the Trojans too with an earnest mind, for he says they made a great account of virtue. I will go through these for you before the account of Achilles; for if they were spoken after his, they would not seem wonderful.

722. Vinedresser Praising Hector, then, Protesilaus praises also Homer's account of him; for Homer, he says, best went through his chariot-driving and his battles and his counsels, and how Troy rested not on another but on him. And all the boasts that Hector makes in Homer's poetry, threatening the Achaeans with fire upon the ships, he says are very like the hero's rush; for he spoke many such things in battle, and looked most astonishingly of men and uttered great cries. He was lesser than the Telamonian, but no worse in the battles in which he showed something even of Achilles' heat. He was at odds with Paris as a coward and overcome by adornment; the wearing of long hair, though eagerly pursued by kings and kings' sons, he held unworthy of himself because of that one. His ears were broken, not from wrestling—for this, as I said, neither he himself nor the barbarians knew—but he contended with bulls and held grappling with these beasts a warlike thing; for though this too belonged to a wrestler, he did it unaware, but he practiced withstanding their bellowing and being bold before the points of their horns, and throwing a bull by the neck, and, when wounded by it, not giving up, as an exercise of warlike training. The statue at Ilium presents Hector young and boyish, but Protesilaus says he was even sweeter and greater than it, and died perhaps thirty years old—not, however, fleeing or with his hands slack, for these things are slanders against Hector by Homer—but having fought stoutly and, alone of the Trojans, having remained outside the wall, he fell late in the battle,

723. Vinedresser and being dead, was dragged hung from the chariot, and given back, as Homer says. Aeneas fought less than he, but surpassed the Trojans in understanding, and was deemed worthy of the same honors as Hector, and knew well the matters of the gods, what indeed was fated for him when Troy was taken, and was astonished by no fear, for he kept his thoughtful and reasoned mind especially in the midst of terrors. The Achaeans called Hector the hand of the Trojans, and Aeneas the mind, and said that Aeneas in his self-control gave them more trouble than the maddened Hector. They were of the same age and same height. The form of Aeneas appeared less bright, but rather like one settled, and he wore his hair without affectation, for he did not tend it nor submit to it, but made virtue alone his adornment. He looked so fiercely that his very glance was sufficient against the disorderly. Sarpedon Lycia bore but Troy exalted; for he was the equal of Aeneas in battle, and led all the Lycians and two noble men, Glaucus and Pandarus, of whom the one was renowned in hoplite warfare, while Pandarus said that Lycian Apollo, standing over him while still a youth, shared with him the art of archery, and he always prayed to Apollo whenever he laid hold of the bow for some great matter. And Protesilaus says the Trojans came to meet Sarpedon with their whole army; for besides his manliness and his form, divine and noble, he had bound the Trojans to himself also by the account of his lineage;

724. Vinedresser for from Zeus the sons of Aeacus are sung, and the sons of Dardanus, and the sons of Tantalus, but to be born of Zeus himself fell to him alone of those who came on Troy's behalf and against Troy—a thing which made even Heracles greater and more wonderful among men. He died, as Homer says, and was about forty years old, and got a tomb in Lycia, to which the Lycians escorted him, showing the corpse to the nations through whom he was led. He was prepared with spices and looked like one sleeping, whence the poets say he used Sleep as his escort.

Vinedresser Hear too the matters of Alexander, who is Paris, if you are not too vexed with him.

Phoenician I am vexed, but it is no worse to hear.

Vinedresser

725. He says, then, that Alexander was hateful to all the Trojans, but not bad in warlike matters; his form was most pleasing, his voice and character gracious, since he had mixed with the Peloponnese, and he fought in all manners, and in the skill of archery fell not short of Pandarus. He sailed to Greece as an ephebe, when he became the guest-friend of Menelaus and won Helen by his form, and died not yet thirty years old. He gloried in his own beauty and was gazed at by others and gazed at himself; whence the hero most charmingly jests at him. For this peacock—Protesilaus delights in the bloom and the beauty of the bird—when he once saw it standing tall and spreading its feathers, gazing at them and cleaning them, and even arranging some so that, like strings of jeweled beads, they might appear adorned, "Look," he said, "the one we mentioned just now, Paris the son of Priam." And when I asked him, "How does the peacock resemble Paris?" "In self-love," he said. "For he too, for adornment's sake, gazed about at himself

726. Phoenician and looked over his arms. He fastened leopard-skins to his shoulders, and would not endure that dust should settle on his hair even when he fought, and he polished even the nails of his hands; and he was somewhat hook-nosed and fair, his eye outlined, and one brow rose above the eye. Helenus and Deiphobus and Polydamas matched one another in battle and bore themselves alike in strength, but were renowned in counsel; and Helenus laid hold of prophecy equal to Calchas. About Euphorbus son of Panthous, and how there was a certain Euphorbus in Troy who died at the hand of Menelaus, you have heard, I think, the account of Pythagoras the Samian; for Pythagoras said that he had been Euphorbus and had been transformed, an Ionian from a Trojan, a wise man from a warlike one, a chastened man from one given to luxury; and the hair which, having become wise, he adorned with its roughness, he made golden in Troy when he was Euphorbus. Protesilaus considers Euphorbus his own age-mate, and pities him, and agrees that Patroclus, wounded by him, was handed over to Hector; but had he come to manhood, he says, he would have been thought no worse than Hector. His beauty, he says, charmed even the Achaeans; for he was like a statue, when Apollo, unshorn and delicate, most appears as himself. These things, stranger, the divine and good hero goes through about the Trojans. What remains for us, perhaps, is to complete the account of Achilles, if you are not worn out by the length.

Phoenician If those who ate of the lotus in Homer, vinedresser, clung so eagerly to the plant

727. as to forget their homes, do not doubt that I too cling to the account, as to the lotus, and would neither go away from here willingly, but would be led to my ship only with difficulty, and would weep and lament, bound in it, that I had not had my fill of the account. For you have so disposed me toward the poems of Homer that, holding them divine and such as seem beyond man, I am now amazed not at the epic-craft alone, nor if any pleasure runs through them, but far more at the names of the heroes and at their lineages, and, by Zeus, how each of them was allotted to kill someone or to be killed by another. That Protesilaus, being now a deity, knows these things is, I think, no wonder; but Homer—whence Euphorbus, whence the Helenuses and Deiphobuses, and, by Zeus, the many men of the opposing army whom he names in the catalogue? For that Homer did not invent these things, but made his report of deeds that happened and were real, Protesilaus testifies—except a few which he seems rather to have altered willingly, to make his poetry varied and sweeter; whence what is said by some, that Apollo composed them and inscribed Homer's name upon the poetry, seems to me very sound; for to know these things is more like a god than a man.

Vinedresser That gods are the leaders of all song to the poets, stranger, the poets themselves agree, some asking Calliope, some all the Muses, some even Apollo with the nine, to be present at the account; but these things of Homer were not spoken without divine help—and yet they were not sung by Apollo himself or the Muses themselves.

728. He existed, stranger, Homer the poet existed and sang—some say twenty-four years after the Trojan war, others a hundred and twenty-seven, when the Athenians sent their colony to Ionia, others say it was a hundred and sixty years after Troy when Homer and Hesiod lived, when indeed both sang at Chalcis, the one the seven verses about the two Ajaxes and how their phalanxes were close-fitted and strong, the other his verses to his brother Perses, in which he bade him take to labor and apply himself to farming, that he might not need others nor go hungry. And these things about Homer's dates are truer, stranger, for Protesilaus agrees with them. At any rate, when two poets once spoke a hymn to him here and departed, the hero on his arrival asked me which of them I voted for; and when I praised the poorer—for he had rather won me over—Protesilaus laughed and said, "Panides has suffered the same as you, vinedresser; for he, being king of Chalcis on the Euripus, voted for Hesiod against Homer, and that with a bigger beard than you." Homer the poet existed, stranger, and the poems are a man's, and he knew the names and gathered the deeds from the cities each of them led—for he went over Greece after a time not yet sufficient to dim the things in Troy—and he learned them in another way too, divine and far in wisdom; for they say Homer once sailed to Ithaca, having heard that the soul of Odysseus still breathed, and used necromancy to summon him. And when Odysseus came up, Homer asked him the matters at Ilium,

729. Vinedresser and he said he knew all things and remembered them, but would say nothing of what he knew unless there should be a reward for him from Homer—words of good omen in the poetry and a hymn upon his wisdom and manliness. When Homer agreed to this and said he would gratify him in the poetry however he could, Odysseus went through everything with truth and as it happened, for least of all do souls lie at blood and trenches. And when Homer was already departing, Odysseus cried out, "Palamedes demands of me justice for his own murder, and I know I do wrong, and I shall altogether suffer something, for those who lay down law here are terrible, Homer, and the things from the Avengers are near; but if I shall not seem to the men above to have done these things to Palamedes, the things here will destroy me less. Do not, then, bring Palamedes to Ilium, nor use him as a soldier, nor say that he was wise. Other poets will say it, but it will not seem plausible unless spoken by you." This, stranger, was the fellowship of Odysseus and Homer; and so Homer learned the truth, but rearranged much for the advantage of the story he had set forth.

Phoenician Did you ever ask Protesilaus about Homer's homeland, vinedresser, and of what parents he was?

Vinedresser Often, stranger.

Phoenician And what did he say?

Vinedresser He says he knows, but that Homer left these things out so that the worthy cities might make him their own citizen, and perhaps too that, by some ordinance of the Fates concerning Homer, he should seem without a city; and that he himself would do nothing dear either to the Fates or to the Muses if he should publish this, which has come round at last to Homer's praise. For all cities lay claim to him,

730. Vinedresser and all nations, and would even go to law with one another about him, enrolling themselves under Homer as under a fellow citizen. And that he would not be silent about this account to you, Phoenician, nor hide it, if he knew it, let the things I have said be your proof; for I think I have gone through ungrudgingly for you all that I know.

Phoenician I believe you, vinedresser, and let us follow the account through which these things are kept silent. But it is time for you to reveal Achilles, unless he too will astonish us, as he did the Trojans when he blazed upon them from the trench.

Vinedresser Do not fear Achilles, stranger; for you will meet him as a child at the beginning of the account.

Phoenician You will give great things by going through him from infancy; for after this we shall meet him, I suppose, arming and fighting.

Vinedresser So it will be, and you will say you know all about Achilles. I heard such things as these about him. To Peleus came an apparition of a sea-deity, and the deity, in love with him I think, kept company with Peleus in Pelion, out of modesty toward the crowd not yet telling her own affairs, nor whence she came; and when a calm held the sea, she happened to be sporting on dolphins and sea-horses, while he, watching this from a height of Pelion, understood the goddess and feared her coming. But she led Peleus to courage, recalling Dawn, how she loved Tithonus, and Aphrodite, how she was overcome by Anchises, and the Moon, how she visited the sleeping Endymion.

731. Vinedresser "And I," she said, "Peleus, will give you a son greater than a man." When Achilles was born, they made Chiron his nurturer, and he reared him on honeycombs and the marrow of fawns; and when he came to the age at which boys want little carts and knucklebones, he did not keep him from such things either, but accustomed him to javelins and darts and races, and he had a little ash-spear cut by Chiron, and he was like one lisping toward warlike matters. When he laid hold of his youth, he sent forth a ray from his face, and appeared of extraordinary body, and growing more easily than the trees by the springs, he was much sung in feasts and much in earnest matters. When he appeared to be overcome by spirit, Chiron taught him music, for music is able to soothe the readiness and the loftiness of a temper; and with no labor he learned the harmonies thoroughly and sang to the lyre. He sang of the ancient youths, Hyacinthus and Narcissus and what concerned Adonis; and since the laments over Hyllas and Abderus were fresh—for both, being ephebes, the one had gone off and vanished into a spring, while the mares of Diomedes had devoured the other—he sang these things not without tears. I heard this too: that he sacrificed to Calliope, asking for music and the power in poetry, and the goddess stood over him as he slept and said, "Child, of music and poetry I give you what is sufficient, that you may make feasts sweeter and lull griefs to sleep; but since it seems good to me and to Athena that you be warlike and terrible in camps,

732. and the Fates so order, do you exercise in those things and love them; a poet will come in later times whom I shall send to hymn your deeds." These things were given him as an oracle about Homer. As a youth, he was not reared, as most say, hidden away in Scyros—that tale about him among the maidens; for it is not likely that Peleus, who became the best of heroes, would have sent his son off somewhere fleeing wars and dangers, and that when Telamon was urging Ajax forth, nor would Achilles have endured being cast into the women's quarters, leaving to others the being admired and renowned in Troy. For ambition was greatest indeed even in him.

Phoenician What then does Protesilaus know about these things, vinedresser?

Vinedresser Things more plausible, stranger, and truer. For he says that Theseus, fleeing from Athens under the curse upon his son, died at the hand of Lycomedes in Scyros; and that Peleus, being the guest-friend of Theseus and his partner in the Calydonian deed, sent Achilles to Scyros to avenge Theseus, and that he, sailing out together with Phoenix, who from old age knew only the matters of counsel, shook Scyros by assault—it was set on high and built upon a rocky height—and overcame Lycomedes, but did not kill him; rather he asked, "What ailed you that you killed a man better than yourself, and a fugitive?" and when Lycomedes said, "Because he came on unjust business, Achilles, and tried to seize my rule," he let him go as one who had killed justly, and said he would speak in his defense before Peleus. And he married Deidamia the daughter of Lycomedes, and Neoptolemus was born to them, named so on account of the youth of Achilles,

733. Vinedresser at which he set out to war. While Achilles lived there, Thetis would come and tend her son, like mortal mothers; and when the army was mustering at Aulis, she ferried him over to Phthia, because of what was fated for him, making Peleus master of the child. She is said too to have forged arms for him, such as no one had yet borne, with which he came to Aulis and filled the army with hope, and was thought so much a god's child that they sacrificed to Thetis by the sea and did obeisance to Achilles darting about in his arms. I asked Protesilaus too about the ash-spear, what the marvel about it was, and he says the ash-spear had a length no other spear had, and the wood was straight and so strong that it could not be broken, and the mouth of the point was of adamant and pierced through everything, and the butt-spike on the other end was set with mountain-copper, that the whole, flashing, might fall upon the foe.

Phoenician And the arms, vinedresser—how does he say they were adorned?

Vinedresser Not in Homer's manner, stranger; for those too were divinely devised by Homer, who inscribed cities and stars and wars and farmings and marriages and songs—but he says this about them: that Achilles had no other arms than those he brought to Troy, and that arms of Achilles were never lost, nor did Patroclus put them on during the wrath; for he died in his own arms, renowned in battle and already touching the wall, while the arms of Achilles remained inviolate and untaken—for he did not even die in his arms,

734. but coming as it seemed to a marriage, he died naked and crowned, like a bridegroom. The arms were fashioned plain and modest, but a varied play of material was blended into them, shifting now into one gleam and now another, as many as the rainbow has; whence they seemed to be sung as beyond art and Hephaestus.

Phoenician Will you show him too, vinedresser, and describe him from his form?

Vinedresser Why should I not, having so eager a listener? His hair he says was abundant and sweeter than gold, and graceful however and wherever the wind or he himself moved it; his nose not yet hooked, but as though about to be; his brow crescent-shaped; the spirit in his eyes, which were gray, when he was at rest seemed to be holding back some impulse, but when he set out, it leapt out together with his resolve, and to those who saw him he fawned more sweetly; for the Achaeans felt toward him something like what one feels toward valiant lions—for though we greet them in quiet, we rejoice in them more when, filled with spirit, they rush upon a boar or a bull or one of the fighting beasts. The high temper of Achilles, he says, was shown also by his neck, for it was straight and upright. And he was the most just of heroes by nature and from his company with Chiron. His being slandered as to money came from there, for he was so disposed toward it that out of the twenty-three cities he himself took, he received very many captives, but was overcome by none of them except a girl—whom he did not even give to himself, but asked the Achaeans for her—and when Nestor charged the Achaeans with injustice, if Achilles should not receive the larger share, "Let the greater part of the deeds be mine," he said, "but in money let whoever wishes have the advantage."

735. Vinedresser At that assembly, stranger, the wrath of Achilles toward Agamemnon over Palamedes began; for mentioning the cities they had both taken, "Such," he said, "was the treason of Palamedes; let whoever wishes judge me too, for I come from the same things." When Agamemnon took these words to himself and reviled Achilles, and Odysseus said that to speak on behalf of a traitor was itself treason, Achilles drove the latter from the assembly—he too having said nothing dear to the Achaeans—and, having reached Agamemnon with many more reproaches, lived out of range, neither doing anything that bore on the common good nor going to the councils, when the entreaties came to him from Agamemnon, the Achaeans being now in extremity. Ajax and Nestor served as envoys for them—the one because of kinship and because he had already been reconciled to them after being wrathful for the same reasons as Achilles, the other because of wisdom and age, which all the Achaeans honored. When they obtained from him at least that Patroclus should fight as ally for them, the one, having done and suffered all that Homer says, died fighting Troy over the wall; while the other did nothing ignoble over him, nor said anything, but having lamented him stoutly and buried him as he himself wished and thought he would gratify him, went against Hector. The hyperboles Homer uses about those who perished with their chariots when Achilles appeared,

736. and about those slaughtered in the river, and the movement of the river when it raised its own wave against Achilles—Protesilaus praises these as poetical, but draws a line through them as overdone; for neither would the Scamander, smaller than the great rivers, have been impassable to Achilles, great as he was, nor would Achilles have rushed to battle with the river, for even if it roared very fiercely against him, he would have escaped by turning aside and not coming to grips with the water. More plausible than these, I think, are the things he goes through: that the Trojans were driven together into the river and more of them perished than perished in the whole war, but that these things were not done by Achilles alone—rather the Greeks, already emboldened by him, came down and slaughtered those in the river, while Achilles took no heed of these, but fought a contest such as this. There was a man come from Paeonia, of whom Homer too made mention, and he calls him Asteropaeus, grandson of the river Axius, and ambidextrous, and the greatest of Achaeans and Trojans, this Paeonian, who came against the spears like a beast; Homer left this out of his account. He had just come to Troy with a fresh force of Paeonian horsemen, whom Achilles routed by terrifying them, for they thought a deity had fallen upon them, never having met such a man; but when Asteropaeus alone stood his ground, he feared for himself more than when he fought Hector, and not unwounded did he take the Paeonian; whence, when his allies forbade him to fight Hector that day, he did not endure these words, but saying, "Let him see me even with my wounds the better man," he rushed against Hector, drawn up before the wall. Having killed him, he became such as I said in the account about him,

and dragged him about the wall in a barbarous and unpleasant manner, but pardonable, since he was avenging Patroclus. For Achilles, using a kind of divine nature, always did something great on behalf of his friends,

736b. Phoenician whence he was wrathful over Palamedes against all the Greeks together, and avenged Patroclus and Antilochus. The words said to Ajax son of Telamon about friends one must know well; for when Ajax afterward asked him which of his deeds were most dangerous to him, Achilles said, "Those for my friends." And when he asked again which were sweetest and least toilsome, he answered the same; and when Ajax wondered how the same deed could be both hard and easy, "Because," he said, "the dangers for my friends, being great, I do eagerly and so cease from the grief over them." "And what wound, Achilles, pained you most?" he said. "The one I was wounded by Hector." "But surely you were not wounded by him," said Ajax. "By Zeus, in my head," said Achilles, "and in my hands; for myself I consider my head, but Patroclus was my hands." Patroclus, Protesilaus says, stranger, was not much older than Achilles, but a divine and self-controlled man, and most suited of the companions to Achilles; for he rejoiced whenever Achilles rejoiced, and grieved in the same manner, and always counseled something and listened to him singing; and the horses too bore him rejoicing, as they did Achilles. He was in size and manliness midway between the two Ajaxes, for he fell short of the Telamonian in all things, but surpassed both in respect to the Locrian; and Patroclus was honey-pale, and dark in the eyes and well-browed, and praising moderation of hair; his head was set upon a neck such as the wrestling-schools train, his nose was straight, and his nostrils widened, like those of eager horses.

737. Phoenician You reminded me at a good time of Achilles' horses, vinedresser; for I greatly need to learn why, being better than other horses, they were thought divine.

Vinedresser I too asked the hero this very thing, stranger, and he says the so-called immortality about them was mythologized by Homer; but that Thessaly, being good for horses and excellent, reared two horses, a white and a chestnut, marvelous in swiftness and brilliant in temper, by some divine providence, when Achilles was in his bloom; and since all the divine things said of Achilles were already believed, the horses too seemed divine and to appear beyond the mortal. The end of Achilles came as Homer too acknowledges; for he says he died by Paris and Apollo, knowing, I suppose, the things in the Thymbraion, and how, at the holy places and oaths of which he made Apollo a witness, he fell treacherously slain. The sacrifice of Polyxena at the tomb, and all you hear from the poets about that love, stand thus: Achilles loved Polyxena and was arranging this marriage for himself on condition of raising the Achaeans from Ilium, and Polyxena too loved Achilles. They saw one another at the ransoming of Hector, for Priam, coming to Achilles, made his daughter his guide, she being the youngest of those Hecuba bore him, and the youngest children always tended the steps of their fathers; and Achilles was so self-controlled, out of justice, even in matters of love, that he neither took the girl, though she was in his power, but agreed with Priam upon her marriage and trusted him when he postponed the wedding. And when Achilles died naked amid the oaths about these things, Polyxena is said—when the Trojan women fled from the temple and the Trojans were scattered, for they did not even bear the fall of Achilles without fear—

738. Vinedresser to have deserted and fled to the Greek camp, and being brought to Agamemnon, lived in splendid and chaste tendance, as in a father's house; but on the third day after the corpse lay there, she ran to the tomb by night and leaned herself upon a sword, saying many piteous and wedding-like things, and then indeed she begged Achilles to remain her lover and to wed her, not having lied about the marriage. The things said by Homer in the second Weighing of Souls—if indeed those things are Homer's—that when Achilles died the Muses lamented him in songs and the Nereids with beatings of their breasts, he says are not far overstated; for the Muses neither came nor sang, nor was any Nereid seen by the army, though they knew they were coming, but other wonderful things happened, not far from what Homer said. For out of the Melas gulf the sea swelled, at first bellowing, and not long after, raised to the height of a great hill, advanced toward the Rhoeteum, while the Achaeans were astonished and at a loss what they themselves and the land would suffer; and when it came near and surged against the camp, it sounded a lament, sharp and crowded together, like a throng of women, such as they utter at funerals. And this appearing divine and supernatural, and all agreeing that the wave was bringing the Nereids—for it overwhelmed nothing, but lay down gently and smooth upon the land—the things that followed seemed far more divine: for when night came on, a wailing of Thetis ran through the army as she chanted dirges and cried out for her son. And she cried clear and resounding, like the echo in the mountains; and then most of all the Achaeans understood that Thetis had borne Achilles, not otherwise disbelieving it. This mound, stranger, which you see standing on the front of the headland,

739. Vinedresser the Achaeans raised when he was mingled with Patroclus into the tomb, giving the fairest grave-gift to himself and to him; whence those who praise the things of friendship sing of him. He was buried most conspicuously of men with all that Greece brought to him, no longer thinking it noble to wear long hair after Achilles, and heaping upon the pyre, all together, the gold and whatever each had—either bringing it to Troy or receiving it from the division—both at once and when Neoptolemus came to Troy; for he got brilliant gifts again, both from his son and from the Achaeans, who tried to repay him; indeed, even those making their voyage from Troy would put in at the tomb and think they embraced Achilles.

Phoenician And Neoptolemus, vinedresser—what sort of man does he say he was?

Vinedresser Noble, stranger, and less than his father, but no worse than the Telamonian; and he says the same about his form, that he was handsome and resembled his father, but fell short of him by as much as the handsome fall short of statues. And Achilles got hymns from Thessaly, which they sang going each year to the tomb by night, mingling something of a mystery-rite with the funeral offerings, as the Lemnians do, and the Peloponnesians descended from Sisyphus.

Phoenician Another account has come, vinedresser, which, by Heracles, I would not let go, even if you did everything to make it fly past you.

740. Vinedresser But some, stranger, count the digressions of an account as idle chatter and nonsense, toward those who have no leisure. And I see that you are a slave of the ship you command, and a slave of the winds, of which, if even a small breeze should stand at the stern, you must shake out the sails and rise up with the ship, counting all things second to sailing.

Phoenician Let the ship fare well from now on, and the things in it; for the cargoes of the soul are sweeter to me and more profitable, and let us count the digressions of the account no nonsense, but a surplus profit of this trading.

Vinedresser You are sound, stranger, in thinking thus; and since you wish it, listen. The rites of the Corinthians over Melicertes—for these I called the descendants of Sisyphus—and all that the same people do over the children of Medea, whom they killed for Glauce's sake, are like a dirge, mystic and inspired; for the children they propitiate, but Melicertes they hymn. And over the deed once done against their husbands by the women of Lemnos through Aphrodite, Lemnos is purified, and once each year the fire on it is quenched for nine days, and a sacred ship from Delos brings fire; and if it arrives before the funeral offerings, it anchors nowhere in Lemnos, but rides at sea off the headlands until it becomes holy to sail in.

741. Vinedresser For invoking then the chthonic and unspeakable gods, they keep pure, I think, the fire that is in the sea; and when the sacred ship has sailed in and they distribute the fire both to the rest of life and to the fiery crafts, they say a new life begins from there. The Thessalian funeral offerings that came to Achilles from Thessaly were ordained for the Thessalians from Dodona; for the oracle bade the Thessalians, sailing to Troy, to sacrifice yearly to Achilles and to slay some victims as to a god, others as among the dead. At first it was done thus: a ship from Thessaly, rigged with black sails, sailed to Troy, bringing twice seven envoys, and two bulls, a white and a black, both tame, and wood from Pelion, that they might need nothing of the city, and they brought fire from Thessaly and libations and water drawn from the Spercheius, whence the Thessalians first made it custom to use unfading garlands at funerals, so that, even if winds should hold the ship back, they might not bring rotten or withered ones. By night they had to anchor, and before touching the land to sing a hymn from the ship to Thetis, composed thus: "Thetis, dark-blue, Thetis of Peleus, who bore the great son, Achilles, of whom what mortal nature brought, Troy received as her portion, but what of your immortal lineage the child drew, the sea holds.

742. Vinedresser "Come to this steep mound with Achilles for the burnt offerings . . . come tearless with Thessaly, Thetis dark-blue, Thetis of Peleus." When they had come to the tomb after the hymn, a shield was beaten, as in war, and with rhythmic runnings they raised the war cry together, calling on Achilles; and having crowned the summit of the mound and dug trenches upon it, they slaughtered the black bull as to one dead. They called Patroclus too to the feast, doing this also as a favor to Achilles; and having cut the victim and made the offering, they went down to the ship and, sacrificing on the shore the other of the bulls to Achilles again—beginning with the basket and the entrails for that sacrifice (for they sacrificed this sacrifice as to a god)—about dawn they sailed away, carrying off the sacrificial meat, so that they might not feast in the enemy's land. These things so august and ancient, stranger, they say were abolished by the tyrants who are said to have ruled the Thessalians after the sons of Aeacus, and were neglected too by Thessaly; for some of the cities sent, but others did not think it worth while, others said they would send next year,

743. Vinedresser and others let the matter drop. And when the land was oppressed by drought and the oracle bade them honor Achilles "as is lawful," they took away from the rites the things they did as to a god, interpreting "as is lawful" in this way, and made offerings to him as to a dead man, cutting whatever came to hand; and when the expedition of Xerxes against Greece came, in which the Thessalians, having medized, again abandoned the customs toward Achilles—since a ship had sailed from Aegina to Salamis bringing the house of the sons of Aeacus for the alliance of Greece—and when, in later times, Alexander son of Philip enslaved the rest of Thessaly but released Phthia to Achilles, and, campaigning against Darius, made Achilles his ally at Troy, the Thessalians turned again to Achilles, and drove around the tomb all the cavalry that Alexander led from Thessaly, and fell upon one another as in a cavalry battle, and went away praying and sacrificing, and called upon him against Darius by Balius and Xanthus, crying these things from their horses. But when Darius was taken and Alexander was among the Indians, the Thessalians reduced the funeral offerings and sent a black lamb. And as those who made the offerings either did not come to Troy, or, if they came, did each thing by day and not in order, Achilles grew wrathful, and if I should go through all he inflicted on Thessaly, the account will be full of idle talk. About four years ago Protesilaus, meeting me here, said he had come from the Black Sea—for, finding a ship, he had sailed to visit Achilles, likened to a stranger, and he often does this—and when I said that he was a lover of comrades and good in loving Achilles, "But now," he said, "I come having fallen out with him,

744. Vinedresser for perceiving him wrathful with the Thessalians over the funeral offerings, I said, 'Achilles, let this go.' But he is not persuaded, and says he will give them some evil from the sea. And I fear lest that terrible and relentless one has found something for them from Thetis." And I, stranger, hearing this from Protesilaus, thought that mildew and mists would be cast by Achilles on the Thessalians' crops for the destruction of the fruit—for these afflictions seem somehow to settle from the sea upon the fruitful parts of the mainland—and I thought too that some of the cities in Thessaly would be flooded, as Bura and Helice and Atalante among the Locrians suffered; for the one they say sank, and the others were rent apart. But other things seemed good to Achilles and Thetis, by which the Thessalians have been ruined. For, great penalties being set on the shellfish from which men make purple dye, the Thessalians were charged with breaking the law in some way concerning this dye—whether truly, I do not know—and so debts hang over them,

745. Vinedresser by which they sell their fields, sell their houses, and of their slaves some have run away from them, others have been sold, and most do not even make offerings to their own parents, for they have sold even the tombs; so that the evil which Achilles threatened to give the Thessalians from the sea, stranger, let us consider this to be it.

Phoenician A baneful wrath you speak of, vinedresser, and hard to heal. But tell me, what wonder does Protesilaus know about the island in the Black Sea? For there, I suppose, he keeps company with him.

Vinedresser

746. There, stranger, and he says such things about it as these: that there is an island, one of those in the Black Sea, toward the inhospitable side rather, which those sailing in by the mouth of the Black Sea put on their left, extending in length thirty stades and in breadth no more than four, and trees grow on it, white poplars and elms, some at random, but those about the sanctuary already in order. The sanctuary is set toward the Maeotis—which, equal to the Black Sea, empties into it—and the statues in it are Achilles and Helen, joined together by the Fates. For though love lies in the eyes, and the poets sing of love arising from there, Achilles and Helen were the first to love one another though they had not seen one another, but she being in Egypt and he in Ilium, they were moved to love one another, finding their ears the origin of desire.

[746b] Vinedresser And since it was fated for them to live in immortality, and no land beneath Ilium would do—the Echinades off Oeniadae and Acarnania being already defiled, when Alcmaeon, having killed his mother, dwelt at the outlets of the Achelous in a land younger than the deed—Thetis besought Poseidon to send up some island out of the sea in which they might dwell. And he, considering the length of the Black Sea, and that, no island lying in it, it was sailed uninhabited, revealed the White Island, of the size I said, for Achilles and Helen to dwell in, and for sailors to put in and anchor in the open sea. And being lord of all the watery substance, and reflecting upon the rivers Thermodon and Borysthenes and Ister, how they pour into the Black Sea with measureless and ever-flowing streams, he heaped up the silt of the rivers, which they drag from the Scythians into the sea, and rounded off an island, compacting it on the floor of the Black Sea. There Achilles and Helen first saw and embraced one another, and held their wedding-feast, Poseidon himself and Amphitrite and all the Nereids and all the rivers and deities that come to the Maeotis and the Black Sea. White birds, they say, dwell on it, and these are moist and smelling of the sea, which Achilles has made his attendants, adorning the grove for him with the breeze of their wings and the drops from them, doing this as they fly along the ground and rise a little above the earth. To men sailing the gulf of the sea, the island is holy to enter, for it lies like a hospitable hearth for ships; but to make a home of it is forbidden to all who sail and to the Greeks and barbarians about the Black Sea.

747. Vinedresser For they must, having anchored and sacrificed, embark at sunset, not passing the night on the land; and if the wind follows, they sail, but if not, mooring the boat, they rest in the hollow. For Achilles and Helen are then said to drink together and to be in songs, singing of their love for one another, and the verses of Homer about Troy, and Homer himself. For the gift of poetry that came to Achilles from Calliope, Achilles still praises and pursues more earnestly, now that he has ceased from warlike matters. At any rate the song over Homer is composed divinely, stranger, and poetically, for this too Protesilaus knows and sings.

Phoenician Might it be granted me, vinedresser, to hear the song—or is it not lawful to bring it forth?

Vinedresser Indeed, stranger, many of those who have approached the island say they hear Achilles singing other things too; but this song, I think, he composed last year, most charmingly, holding to the resolution and the meaning. It is composed thus: "Echo, dwelling by the boundless water along the side of the great Black Sea, my lyre sounds you by my hand; but do you sing me divine Homer, the glory of men, the glory of our labors, through whom I did not die, through whom Patroclus is mine, through whom my Ajax is equal to the immortals, through whom the city won by the spear, sung by the wise, took up glory and did not fall—Troy."

Phoenician Marvelously did Achilles compose it, vinedresser, and worthily of himself and of Homer. And it is otherwise wise in lyric songs not to draw them out, nor to make them long-drawn. So from old, then, poetry was renowned and wise.

748. Vinedresser From old, stranger. For they say that Heracles, having crucified the body of Asbolus the centaur, inscribed upon it this epigram: "Asbolus, fearing the wrath neither of gods nor of men, hangs, fed to the sharp-haired ravens, hung from the well-resined pine, a great feast for the unmeasured-lived crows."

Phoenician An athlete in these matters too was Heracles, praising grandiloquence, vinedresser, from which the poet must, I suppose, give voice. But let us return to the island; for a current took us up, such as many eddy about the Black Sea, and drove us off our course.

Vinedresser Let us return, stranger. The songs on it are such, and the voice with which they sing sounds divine and brilliant; at any rate it carries so far over the sea that a shudder rises in the sailors from amazement. And those who have anchored say they hear the noise of horses and the clash of arms and a war cry, such as men utter in battle. And if, when men have anchored at the north or south of the island, a wind is about to blow contrary to the mooring, Achilles proclaims this at the stern and bids them shift their mooring and give way to the wind. Many too of those sailing out of the Black Sea sail to me and report these things, and, by Zeus, how, when they catch sight of the island, being borne over the boundless sea, they embrace one another and come to tears from joy; and having sailed in and greeted the land, they walk to the sanctuary to pray to Achilles and sacrifice. And the victim stands of its own accord at the altar, according to the ship and those who sail in it. As for the matter of the golden pitcher that once appeared in Chios to the island, it has been told, stranger, by wise men, and why should one again touch what has been clearly told? And to a merchant who once frequented the island, Achilles himself is said to have appeared and to have narrated to him the matters at Troy, and to have entertained him with drink, and bidden him, when he sailed out to Ilium, to bring him a Trojan girl, naming her as so-and-so, a slave to such a man in Ilium.

749. Vinedresser When the stranger marveled at the saying and, taking courage now, asked him why he needed an Ilian slave, "Because, stranger," he said, "she is of the stock whence Hector and those before him were, and she is the remnant of the blood of the sons of Priam and Dardanus." The merchant, then, thought Achilles was in love, and having bought the girl, sailed up to the island; and Achilles, praising him on his arrival, bade him keep her for him on the ship—because, I think, the island is not to be entered by women—and to come himself in the evening to the sanctuary and feast with him and Helen; and when he came, he gave him much money, of the kind that merchants cannot resist, and said he made him his guest-friend and gave him a thriving trade and a fair voyage for his ship. And when day came, "Do you sail," he said, "having these things, but leave the girl for me on the shore." They were not yet a stade from the land when a wailing of the girl struck them, Achilles tearing her apart and rending her limb from limb. As for the Amazons whom some of the poets say came to Troy to fight Achilles—Achilles did not kill them at Troy, for I do not know how it is plausible that, Priam having warred against them on behalf of the Phrygians about Mygdon, the Amazons should later have come as allies to Ilium; rather, I think, about the Olympiad in which Leonidas the Rhodian first won the stadium, Achilles destroyed the most warlike of them on the island itself, they say.

750. Phoenician A great account you have laid hold of, vinedresser, and you have roused my ears, otherwise already standing alert to your words; and it is likely these too came to you from Protesilaus.

Vinedresser From him, stranger, that good teacher, and they are clear to many of those who have sailed into the Black Sea. For along the inhospitable side of the Black Sea, where the Taurian mountains stretch, certain Amazons are said to dwell, in the mainland that the Thermodon and Phasis enclose as they issue from the mountains; them their father and begetter Ares trained to be in the company of warlike things and to live an armed and mounted life, and a herd of horses sufficient for an army grazes for them in the marshes. To consort with men their land does not allow them, but they themselves, when they need children, go down to the river Halys and trade and consort with the men, wherever it chances, and going off to their haunts and homes, whatever male children they bear they carry to the borders of the country, so that the begetters may take them up, and these take up whichever chanced to be theirs and make them slaves; but whatever females they bear, these they love and consider of their own race, and tend them as is a mother's nature, except for giving suck. This they do because of their battles, that the girls may not become womanish nor have their breasts hang down. The name of the Amazons we take to be from their not being nourished at the breast; and they nourish the infants with the milk of brood-mares and dew of honeycombs, which settles like honey upon the reeds of the rivers. The things said by poets and mythologists about these Amazons let us decline from the account,

751. Vinedresser for they would not be suitable to the present earnest matter; but let the deed about the island—what was done by them and how it ended—be told rather, since it is among the accounts of Protesilaus. For sailors once, on a number of ships, and shipwrights of those bringing wares out of the Black Sea to the Hellespont, were carried down to the left bank of the sea, about which the women are said to dwell, and being taken by them, were bound for some time, fed at mangers, so that the women might sell them across the river to the man-eating Scythians. But when a youth, taken along with them, was pitied by one of the Amazons for his beauty, and some love arose from this, she begged the ruler, who was her sister, not to sell the strangers; and being released and mingling with them, they now spoke in the manner of those women, and recounting the storm and the things at sea, they came to mention the sanctuary, having lately sailed past the island, and described the wealth in it. The women, treating the strangers as a find—since they were sailors and shipwrights, and the land was otherwise good for building ships—made ships in the manner of horse-transports, that they might attack Achilles with their horses; for the Amazons, when off their horses, are a female race and simply women. They took first to rowing and practiced sailing; and when they had gathered the knowledge of sailing, setting out about spring from the mouths of the Thermodon, they made for the sanctuary, about two thousand stades, on fifty ships, I think; and having anchored at the island, they first ordered the Hellespontine strangers to cut down the trees with which the sanctuary is adorned in a circle. But when the axes, recoiling upon them, went some into their heads, others into their necks, and all fell beside the trees, the Amazons poured upon the sanctuary, shouting and driving their horses. And Achilles, looking upon them hot and terrible, and leaping as upon the Scamander and Ilium, threw into the horses a panic stronger than the bridle,

752. Vinedresser by which they reared up, considering the women an alien and superfluous burden, and changed into the ways of beasts, and falling upon the Amazons as they lay, drove in their hoofs and bristled their manes and set their ears upon them, like savage lions, and ate the bare arms of the fallen, and rending their breasts fastened upon the entrails and devoured them; and filled with human food, they pranced about the island and went mad, full of gore, and standing upon the headlands and seeing the surface of the sea, they thought they had come upon a plain and hurled themselves into the sea. The ships of the Amazons too perished, a strong wind blowing upon them; for being empty and anchored in no order, they fell upon one another and were shattered, and ship sank ship and broke it through, as in a sea-fight, and all the crosswise and prow-to-prow rammings that sea-fighting helmsmen make, all these befell among empty ships sailing without forethought. And when many wrecks had been carried to the sanctuary and men lay in it still breathing, and half-eaten, and human limbs and flesh that the horses had spat out were strewn about, Achilles made an easy purification of the island; for drawing up a crest of the sea, he washed and rinsed these things away.

Phoenician Whoever does not consider you exceedingly dear to the gods, vinedresser, is himself hateful to the gods; for to know such divine accounts thus, I think, comes to you from those who made you also a friend and intimate of Protesilaus. But since you have filled us with heroic accounts, how he himself came back to life I would no longer ask, since you say he keeps this account profane and unspeakable; but the Cocytuses and the Pyriphlegethons and the Acherusian lake and such names of rivers and lakes, and, by Zeus, the Aeacuses and their courts and places of punishment, perhaps you will report yourself, and he allows you to relate.

Vinedresser He allows it, but it is already evening, and the ox is at rest;

753. Vinedresser the yoke-teams, at any rate, you see, are coming from the unyoking, and I must receive them, and the account is longer than the occasion allows. For now, then, go to your ship rejoicing, taking everything the garden bears; and if the wind is yours, sail, stranger, having poured a libation from the ship to Protesilaus—for this it is customary for those casting off from here to do—but if the wind is contrary, come here at sunrise, and you will obtain what you wish.