Achilleis

BOOK I

Great-souled Aeacides, the offspring dreaded by the Thunderer and forbidden to succeed to his father's heaven, rehearse to me, goddess; though the man's deeds have been much sung in Maeonian strain, yet more remains untold: let me — for so my love bids — pass through all the hero, and bring him forth from his hiding in Scyros with the Dulichian trumpet, nor halt at the dragging of Hector, but lead the youth down through all of Troy. Only do you, if I have drained the old draught with worthy thirst, grant me, Phoebus, new springs, and with a second wreath bind my hair: for not as a stranger do I tread the Aonian grove, nor do my temples now first swell with virgin fillets. The Dircaean field knows it, and Thebes numbers me among the ancient names of forefathers, with their own Amphion.

But you, at whom Italian valour stands far foremost in amaze, and Greek, for whom the twin laurels of poets and of leaders flourish in rivalry — long since the one grieves to be outdone — grant me pardon, and suffer me, in my trembling, to sweat awhile in this dust; you it is I labour at, with long and not yet confident preparation, and the great Achilles is but my prelude to you.

The Dardan shepherd had loosed his fleet from the Oebalian shore, having charmingly plundered unwary Amyclae, and, fulfilling the presages of his mother's dream, was retracing his guilty path, where, sunk beneath the sea, the Nereid Helle now rules over the waters men hate: when Thetis — alas, never vain are the auguries of parents! — took fright at the Idaean oars beneath the glassy flood. And without delay, with a throng of sisters attending, she sprang forth from her watery chambers: the meeting shores of Phrixus seethe, and the narrow strait will not contain its mistresses.

She, when first, the sea shaken off, she rises into the air: 'Me does this fleet seek,' she said, 'against me it threatens ruin; I know the warnings, and that Proteus spoke the truth. Behold, from the raised torches of the poop, Bellona brings a new daughter-in-law to Priam: already I see the Ionian and Aegean pressed by a thousand keels; nor does it suffice that all the coast of the Greek-born race conspires with the swelling sons of Atreus: soon by sea and land will my Achilles be sought, and he himself will wish to follow. Why, for the little one, did we entrust to Pelion his cradle and the cave of his grim master? There, if I err not, the wicked boy plays at the battles of the Lapiths, and already measures himself by his father's spear. O grief, O fears come too late to a mother's heart! Could I not, unhappy, when first in our flood the Rhoetean timbers fell, raise up the great sea, and follow with deep tempest the sails of the lustful pirate, and lead on all my sisters? Even now — but it is late, the wrong of the ravished one is full — yet I will go, and, having embraced the sea-gods and the right hand of favouring Jove — what is left to me — through the years of Tethys and my aged father, a suppliant, piteous, I will beg for one winter's storm.' She spoke, and in season the great king she beheld. He was coming from his host Ocean, glad of the feast, his face suffused with the sea's nectar — whence the storms and winds are silent, and with quiet song the armour-bearing Tritons go, and the rocky whales and the Tyrrhenian herds wheel round about and within, their king saluted; he himself, lofty over the calm waves, towers up, and with his triple weapon bids his team go on, they roll their foaming courses from the breast, swim behind, and blot out with their tails the traces of their feet — when Thetis: 'O father and ruler of the great deep, do you see to what uses you have laid open, wretched man, the sea? The crimes of the lands go forth with safe sails, ever since the Pagasaean ship of Jason, by its rape, broke the rights of the strait and the majesty laid up therein. Lo, another, bearing a crime of theft and the spoils of his host, sails on — the rash arbiter of unjust Ida, ah, what groans is he to give to earth and heaven, what to me! Is this how we are paid for the joys of the Phrygian prize, these the ways of love, this the gift of my dear nursling? These at least — do they carry back demigods, and our own Theseus? — if there is yet any honour in the waves, sink the ships, or give me leave upon the strait! No cruelty: let it be lawful for me to have feared for my son. Grant me to drive off my griefs, nor let it please you that of all those waters one shore and the rocks of an Ilian tomb should be my dwelling.'

She prayed, her cheeks torn, and with naked breast withstood the dark-blue steeds; but the ruler of the waters invites her to his car, and so soothes her with friendly words: 'Seek not in vain, Thetis, to sink the Dardanian fleet: the fates forbid; the ordained order of the gods is to mingle in blood the hands of Europe and of Asia, and the counsels of war and years sad with slaughter has Jupiter decreed, the son whom there, in Sigean dust, how great a victress shall you see amid the funerals of the Phrygian mothers, when your Aeacides shall now flood with warm blood the Teucrian plains, now forbid the choked rivers to flow forth, and shall hinder his chariot with Hector's corpse, and shall drive against our walls — vain labour — with his hand! Cease now to complain of Peleus and the lesser bridal: believe that you bore offspring to Jove; nor shall you grieve unavenged, and use your kindred seas: I will grant you to raise the waves, when the homeward Danaans return, and Caphereus shall set out his nocturnal signals, and together we shall seek the dread Ulysses.'

He had spoken; she, her face cast down at the heavy repulse, who was already preparing to stir up the strait and to make war on the Ilian ships, having devised in her mind other plans, sadly turns her arms toward the Haemonian lands, thrice essaying with her hand, thrice with her steps she thrust back the liquid sea, and the Thessalian shallows strike her snow-white soles. The mountains rejoice, and the nuptial caverns open their hollows, and far and wide Spercheos brims to meet her, and circles her footsteps with his sweet wave. She, taking no joy in the place, but wearying her heart with the counsels she had begun, and, with piety for her cunning master, seeks aged Chiron. His lofty house pierces the mountain and props up Pelion with a long arch; part hewn out by hand, part his own age had broken, yet the images and the couches of the gods, and the place which each hallowed by his reclining and his presiding spirit, are pointed out: but within the Centaur's lofty stalls lie open, not like those of his unspeakable brothers; here are darts that have known no blood of men, nor ash-trees lopped for festive wars, nor bowls broken upon kindred foes, but harmless quivers and the empty hides of beasts. These too while he was in his prime; for then his one labour, unarmed, was to know the health-giving herbs for ailing creatures, or to show forth upon the lyre the heroes of old to his nursling.

And then, awaiting on his threshold the one who would return from the chase, he hastens the feast and brightens the house with a generous fire: when from afar the Nereid was seen rising from the shore; he bursts from the woods — joy gives him strength — and the old man's known hoof clattered on the unaccustomed plain. Then, fawning with his right hand and bowed low upon his shoulders, he leads her into his poor dwelling and bids her note the cave.

Long since Thetis surveys all with silent glance, nor suffering delay: 'Where, Chiron, are my pledges? Tell me,' she says, 'or why does my boy now pass any time without you? Was it not for good cause that anxious sleep, and dark signs of the gods to a mother, and great fears — would they had lied? For now I see swords drawn hostile against my womb, now my hands livid with beating, now savage beasts going to my breasts; often I myself — unspeakable! — bear my son to plunge beneath empty Tartarus and into the Stygian springs again. To do away these fears, by the due order of a magic rite, the Carpathian seer bids me, and to purge the boy beneath the turned vault of heaven, by secret straits, where the uttermost shores of Ocean lie, and father Pontus grows warm as the stars glide down, there with dread expiations to unknown gods and gifts — but it is long to recount all, and I am forbidden; hand him over rather!' So the mother feigned: for he would not have given him, had she dared to confess the soft attire and the foul garments to the old man. Then he himself replies: 'Lead him, best of mothers, I pray, lead him, and bend the gods with humble prayer. For your vows exceed measure, and great is the envy to be appeased. I add no fear, but I will confess the truth: some great thing — nor do his father's omens deceive me — a hastening force prepares, and comes upon his tender years. Once he was wont both to bear threats and eagerly to hear commands, and to depart not far from our caves: now neither Ossa holds him, nor huge Pelion, nor the Thessalian snows. To me themselves the Centaurs often complain of homes ravaged and herds dragged off before their faces, and of being driven, themselves, from plains and rivers: and they prepare ambushes and wars, and swell with threats. Once indeed, when the Thessalian pine bore the Argive kings this way, I saw young Alcides and Theseus — but I am silent.' A cold pallor fixes the Nereid: he was there, made larger by much sweat and dust, and yet, amid his arms and his hurried toils, still sweet to see: a crimson fire swims on his snowy face, and his hair shines, more pleasing than tawny gold. Not yet does his first youth turn with new down, and a tranquil radiance is in his eyes, and much of his mother is in his face: as when the hunter Apollo returns from Lycia and exchanges his savage quiver for the plectrum. And by chance he comes glad too — O how much joys add to beauty! — : a lioness with her cubs beneath the rock of Pholoe he had struck down with the steel and left in the empty caves the dam herself, but he brings the cubs and goads their claws. Yet these, as soon as his mother was seen on the trusty threshold, he casts aside, and clasps her, caught up, in his eager arms, now heavy in his embrace, and now level in height with his mother. There follows, even then bound in great love, Patroclus, and stretches himself, a rival, to such deeds, equal in pursuits and in the measure of his years, but far behind in strength, and yet to see Pergamum with an equal fate.

Straightway he goes down to the nearest streams, which with a swift leap he reaches, and renews his smoking cheeks and his hair at the springs: as when Castor enters the fords of Eurotas on his panting horse, and rouses the weary radiance of his own star. The old man marvels and combs him, now soothing his breast, now his strong shoulders: her joys vex the mother. Then Chiron begs them to pour the feast and the gifts of Bacchus, and, weaving various delights for the astonished goddess, draws out at last the lyre, and moves the strings that soothe cares, and lightly gives to the boy the chords that his thumb had tried, and he sings gladly the mighty seeds of glory: how many the labours of the swollen stepmother that Amphitryon's son surpassed; with what gauntlet Pollux shall crush the raw Bebrycian; with how great a grip the son of Aegeus shall break the Minoan arms of the bull; at the end his mother's couch and Pelion heavy with the gods above: here Thetis, anxious, smiled with a vanquished look. Night draws on to sleep; upon the rock sinks down the huge Centaur, and fondly Achilles entwines himself about his shoulders, though his trusty mother is there, and prefers the accustomed breast.

But Thetis, standing through the night on the wave-resounding rocks, ponders what hiding-place she would choose for her son, in what lands she should hide him, turning it this way and that with divided mind. Nearest, but much given to the pursuits of Mars, is Thrace; nor does the hard race of the Macedonians please her, nor the Cecropidae, who would give spurs to renown; too convenient for ships are Sestos and the Abydene bays: it pleases her to go through the high Cyclades. Here, Myconos despised and lowly Seriphos and Lemnos, no friend to men, and Delos, hospitable to the nations, she had heard but lately of, from the unwarlike hall of Lycomedes, of bands of maidens and of shores resounding with sport, when she was sent to follow Aegaeon as he loosed his hard bonds, and to count the god's hundred chains. This pleases her, this land, the safest for a fearful mother. As a bird, busy now that her brood is near and now fearful, takes thought on what bough to hang her empty home, here she foresees the winds, here anxiously she thinks of snakes, here of men: at last the doubtful one is pleased by the shade, and on the new boughs she has scarcely stood when straightway the tree is loved.

A second care remains for her counsel, and a grievous anxiety wearies the goddess, whether to bear her son herself, clasped to her breast, through the waves, or by great Triton, whether to summon the winged winds, or the Thaumantian wont to feed in the sea. She draws then from the straits, and curbs with sharp purple a yoked pair of dolphins, which for her mightiest Tethys had reared in the Atlantean gulf, beneath the sounding vale of the sea; — nowhere through Neptune's waters has any grey shape so much honour of form and power of swimming, nor more of human heart — she bids these halt at the full edge of the shore, lest the touch of the bare land should harm them. She herself then bears Achilles, relaxed in all his breast, the sleep that is for boys, from the rocks of the Haemonian cave to the calm waters and to the shores bidden to be silent: the Cynthian goddess shows the way and flashes over the whole orb, and Chiron escorts the goddess and, untroubled, asks for swift returns over the sea, and hides his streaming eyes, and watches, on his reared horse, the two snatched away suddenly and now already hidden, where for a little while the grey signs of their flight foam and the wake dies in the liquid deep. Him, never to return again to Thessalian Tempe, now sad Pholoe, now cloudy Othrys bemoans, and Spercheos thinner in his waters, and the cave of the learned old man, struck dumb; the Fauns ask for the boyish songs, and the Nymphs lament the marriage long hoped for.

Now day presses upon the stars, and from the low sea Titan unrolls his dewy steeds, and from the great upper air the sea, lifted on his car, falls back; but the mother had long since traversed the waves and held the Scyrian shoals, and the weary dolphins had gone out from their master's yoke: when the boy's quiet, shaken, and his opening eyes felt the day poured in upon them. He stands amazed at the first air, what places are these, what waves, where is Pelion? All he sees turned and unknown, and he hesitates to recognize his mother. She lays hold of him with her hand and fondly addresses his fear: 'If, dear boy, an equal lot had brought me the bridal that it offered, embracing you I should hold you a great star in the realms of heaven, and, the mother of high heaven, I should fear nothing of the lowly Parcae and earthly fates. Now your birth is unequal to you, my son, and only from your mother is the path of death barred. Nay more, the times to be feared draw near, and perils brought close to the last goal. Let us yield, and a little while put down your manly spirit and deign to wear my dress: if hard Lydian tasks the Tirynthian bore in his hand, and soft spears, if it becomes Bacchus to sweep his gilded steps with a robe, if Jupiter put on a maiden's limbs, nor did the doubtful sex break the great Caeneus: by this, I pray, let me pass out of the threats and the malignant cloud; soon again the plains, again the Centaurs' haunts I will restore to you: by this glory and the coming joys of your youth I beg, if for your sake I have known the earth and a lowly husband, if I armed my offspring in the stern river of Styx — and would it had been wholly! — take for a little while this safe covering, that will do no harm to your spirit. Why do you draw back your face, what are your eyes about? Are you ashamed to soften in this garb? By you, dear boy, by the kindred seas I swear, Chiron shall not know it.' So she handles his bristling heart, soothing in vain; for father and mighty foster-father stand against her prayer, and the raw beginnings of his great nature, even as one might try to bend with the first reins a colt swelling with the fire of unbridled youth: he, long rejoicing in the plains and rivers and his proud honour, offers not his neck to the yoke, nor his rough mouth to the bits, and, a captive, rages to come under his master's rule, and marvels to learn other paths.

What god gave to the astonished mother her tricks and cunning? What thought drew the unteachable Achilles aside? Scyros was by chance keeping the festal day of honour to Pallas of the shore. And the sisters, daughters of placid Lycomedes, on the sacred day had gone out beyond their father's walls — a rare liberty — to give the spring its riches and to bind the goddess's severe hair with foliage and to scatter her spear with flowers: in all an excelling grace of form, in all the same attire, and now, the tender bound of modesty fulfilled, maidenhood ripe for marriage, and the years swelling; but as much as the beauty of the sea, added, overwhelms the green Nymphs, or as much as Diana leaves behind her shoulders the Naiads, so much does the queen of the lovely chorus, Deidamia, shine forth and outshine her fair sisters; on her rosy face the purple is kindled, and a greater light is in her jewels, and the gold is more winning: and her form is equal to the goddess's own, if she should lay down the serpents of her breast and, the helmet removed, calm her face. When the boy saw her leading from afar her companion ranks, fierce and with heart sullied by no emotion before, he stiffened, and drank in a new fire deep in his bones, nor does the draught of love lie hid, but the brandished torch from his marrow returns into his face and features, and tinges the light of his cheeks and roams over him, driven with a thin sweat. As when the Massagetae darken their milky cups with crimson blood, or ivory is stained with purple: so, manifest with varied marks — he pales and reddens — is the sudden flame. And he would go, and of himself the fierce one would scatter the host's holy rites, careless and forgetful of his age, did not shame and reverence for his mother at his side hold him. As the future father and leader of the herd, whose horns are not yet wrought in their full circle, when feeding he beholds a heifer, his mate, of snowy whiteness, his spirits kindle, and through his lips first the love foams; the merry herdsmen watch and stand in his way.

The mother, conscious now, seizes the snatched moment: 'Is it hard, my son, among these to feign the dances and to weave your arms in play? What such thing is there beneath cold Ossa and the Peliac ridges? O if it might fall to me to join your cares and to carry another Achilles in my bosom!' He is soothed, and reddens with gladness, and turns aside his bold looks, and with a lighter hand repels the garments. The mother sees him wavering and willing to be forced, and threw the robes upon him; then she softens his stiff neck and lowers his heavy shoulders and loosens his strong arms and tames his unkempt hair into a fixed order and transfers her own necklaces to his beloved neck; and, restraining his steps within an embroidered hem, she teaches him his gait and motion and the modesty of speech, even as the wax that shall live beneath an artist's thumb takes its forms and follows the fire and the hand: such was the image of the goddess transforming her son, nor did she struggle long; for very much grace remains to him even in his unwilling manhood, and he deceives the gazers, his sex doubtful and hidden by a slender difference.

They go forth, and warning him again and again, and wearying him, flattering Thetis: 'Thus, then, my son, shall you bear your step, thus your face and hands, and imitate your companions in the feigned measures, lest the ruler suspect, and admit you not, mistrustful, into the soft hall, and the lies of the begun deceit perish.' She says it, and with a touch laid on does not cease to adorn him. So when Hecate, wearied at the virgin haunts of Therapnae, returns to her father and brother, her mother goes with her as she walks, and herself veils her shoulders and her bared arms; herself sets in place her bow and quivers, and draws down the hiding robe, and busies herself to compose the scattered hair.

Straightway she approaches the king, and there, with the altars for witnesses, 'This girl,' she says, 'O ruler, the sister of our Achilles — do you not see how grim of cheek, and a match for her brother? — we hand to you: arms upon her shoulders, and the bow she boldly sought to bear, and to repel marriage in the Amazonian fashion. But for me there is care enough for the male stock: let this one bear the baskets and the holy things; do you break by ruling the unteachable, and keep her to her sex, until the marriageable age and the loosing of her modesty; nor let her exercise the bold gymnastic games, or wander through the woodland haunts, nurse her within and seclude her among like maidens; above all remember to keep her from the shore and the harbour. You saw but now the sails of the Phrygians: already the keels, passing over the sea, have learned to betray mutual rights.'

The father accedes to her words, and by the parent's cunning receives the hidden Aeacides — who could withstand the tricks of the gods? — nay, of his own accord he reveres her with suppliant hand and gives thanks at being chosen: nor does the throng of the pious Scyrian maidens cease to fix with too eager gaze the face of the new maiden, how much in neck and hair she stands forth, and how much she spreads in shoulders and breast; then they urge her to join the dances and to come to the chaste rites, and give place to her and rejoice to touch her, even as the birds of Idalia, when they break the soft clouds, now long gathered in sky and home, if a stranger bird has joined its wings and come from a different quarter, all first marvel and shrink, soon fly nearer and nearer, and in the very air little by little have made it their own, and with friendly clapping circle round it gladly, and lead it to the high nests.

The mother departs, long lingering on the threshold, while she repeats her warnings and fixes secret murmurs in his ears, and with silent face gives her last words; then, caught up by the strait, with her neck long bent back, she swims away, and addresses the shore with fond vows: 'Dear to me land, to whom I have entrusted the pledges of my great care and a mighty deposit, with timid cunning, be happy and keep silence, I pray, as Crete kept silence for Rhea: long honour and eternal temples shall gird you, nor shall you be surpassed in fame by unstable Delos; and holy to winds and seas, and among the shoal-strewn Cyclades, where the Aegean storms break the rocks, a tranquil home of the Nereids, and an island to be sworn by to sailors — only admit not the Danaan keels, do not, I pray! Here be only revels and nothing of use for wars — teach Rumour to tell this — and while the Doric arms are made ready and Mavors rages by turns through the world, — I yield indeed — let Achilles be the maiden of pious Lycomedes.'

Meanwhile avenging Europe, kindled with the sweet furies of arms and with the suppliant complaint of the kings, stirs up her deserved grievances; for that son of Atreus canvasses the more, whose wife is at home, and he sharpens in the telling the Ilian crime: that, without war, without arms, was taken captive an offspring of heaven and a nursling of powerful Sparta, that right, faith, and the gods were trodden under by one rape, — is this the Phrygian treaty, this the commerce of the twin lands? What awaits the peoples, where so great a wrong has fallen first upon the foremost leaders? — Every race and age comes together: not only those roused whom the Isthmian barriers shut in with their two-sea rampart, nor whom the boss of wave-resounding Malea encircles, but, set far off, where the path of Phrixus forbids Europe and Asia to be joined; and the peoples whom in order the wave of the upper sea binds along the Abydene shore. The love of war seethes and rouses the shaken cities, Temese subdues its bronze, the Euboean coast is shaken with shipyards, Mycenae resounds with countless anvils, Pisa renews its chariots, Nemea gives the hides of beasts, Cirrha strives to pack the arrow-bearing quivers, Lerna to clothe heavy shields with slaughtered bullocks. The Aetolian gives foot-soldiers to the war, and the rough Acarnanian, Argos drives its squadrons, the pastures of rich Arcadia are emptied, Epirus curbs its swift nurslings, Phocis and the Aonian glades, you grow thin with javelins, Pylos and Messene stretch the engines of the walls; no soil is exempt; arms once laid by are torn from the lofty doorposts of the fathers, and in the flames the gifts of the gods melt: Mars makes savage the gold snatched from the gods above. Nowhere the old shades: Othrys grows less and lofty Taygeta sinks down, the mountains, stripped, have looked upon the open air, now every grove swims: the oaks are felled for the fleet, the wood grows less for oars, the iron is wearied to uses beyond number — to bind the beaks, to fortify the arms, to curb the war-horses, with a thousand chains to link the bristling coats of mail, to smoke with blood and drink deep wounds, with conspiring venom to drive on deaths; they thin the dripping whetstones by friction and add wrath to the sluggish points. And there is no measure to bending bows or casting bullets or hardening stakes or crowning helmets with plumes. Amid these stirrings Thessaly alone bemoans her sluggish rest, and accuses the fates with twofold complaints: that Peleus is old and Achilles not yet ripe.

Now the warlike god had drained the lands of Pelops and the Greek world, the War-mighty, hurling men and horses madly onto the benches. The harbours seethe, and the pools covered with keels, the fleet, brought forth, raises its own storms and its own waves; the very sea now fails the ships, and the sails consume all the winds.

First Hecateian Aulis gathers the Danaan ships, Aulis, on jutting rocks and the ledge of a long ridge climbing toward the Euboean sea — shores much beloved by the mountain-roving goddess, and hard by Caphereus raising its head with a roar to the sea; he, when he saw the Pelasgian ships swim across, thrice from the mountain, thrice from the waves thundered, and gave the presages of a savage night. There is the meeting of arms fatal to Troy, there a mighty war is sworn, until the year's sun should complete all its turnings round: then first Greece looked upon her own strength; then the scattered and discordant mass comes together into a body and a face, and under one king is set in order. So a curving line of nets shuts in the hidden beasts and narrows them little by little as the toils are brought up. They dread the fire and the noise, and, scattered, leave their trackless ways, and marvel that their own mountain shrinks, until from every side they have fallen into a narrow valley; and the herds, each in turn, stand amazed, and with shared fear grow tame: at once the bristling boar, at once the bear and wolf are driven together, and the hind has despised the captive lions.

But although the twin sons of Atreus alike take up their own wars, and Tydeus' son and Sthenelus press hard upon their fathers' fame with eager valour, and Antilochus reckons not his years, and sevenfold Aias flashes with his shield-boss, the king of the herd, and a circle equal to the walls, and watchful Ulysses contends with counsels and with arms: yet all the strength of the war burns for the absent Achilles, they love the name of Achilles, and against Hector Achilles alone is demanded; him alone they call fated for the Teucrians and Priam. For who else has grown up beneath the Haemonian valleys, crawling amid the dug-out snow? Whose raw beginnings and tender years has the Centaur shaped at the outset? To whom is nearer the line of his father's heaven, or what other did the Nereid bear in secret through the Stygian streams and fence beforehand his fair limbs against the steel? These things the Greek cohorts repeat and hand on in the camp, the throng of leaders yields, and confesses, not sad to be outdone. So when the pale gods came together into the Phlegraean camp, and now Gradivus rose to the Odrysian spear, and Tritonia lifted the Libyan serpents, and the Delian bent his huge bow in his hand, Nature alone stood, panting with fear, gazing at the Thunderer — when would he call up storms and thunders from the clouds, how many bolts would he demand of fire-bearing Etna?

And there, while ringed about by the mingled throng of their own the kings take counsel of the seasons both of sea and of war, rebuking the seer Calchas with great uproar Protesilaus speaks — for to him the desire of war was foremost, and even then the glory of the first death was given —: 'O too forgetful of Phoebus and of your own tripods, son of Thestor, when will you move your lips, possessed by the god, more justly? or why do you not unclose the secrets of the Parcae? Do you see how all stand amazed and murmur at the unknown Aeacides? Common in men's eyes is the Calydonian hero, and Aias, second, born of great Telamon, and we too; but Mavors and seized Troy will prove us. Him, the leaders neglected — alas, the shame! — all, as a god of war, do they love. Tell quickly, or why the wreaths in his hair and the great honour? In what shores hidden, or in what land do you bid him be sought? For rumour says he dwells neither in the caves of Chiron, his fatherland, nor in the hall of Peleus. Come, break in upon the gods and vex the hidden fates, and the laurel-bearing fires, if ever, drink most greedily! Dread arms and cruel swords we have remitted to you, never shall these unwarlike fillets be wronged by a helmet: but happy and more excellent than all the throng of leaders shall you be, if through you you find for the Danaans great Achilles.'

Long since with trembling motion he carries his eyes about, and confesses by his first pallor the god entering, the son of Thestor; soon, his cheeks rolling with fire and blood, he sees neither comrades nor camp, but blind and absent now he detects in the upper air the great assemblies of the gods, now he addresses the prophetic birds, now the hard threads of the sisters, now anxiously he consults the incense-bearing altars and snatches the peak of the flames and feeds on the sacred smoke; his hair starts up, and the fillet labours on his stiffened locks, his neck not in its place, nor his steps in order; at last, weary and trembling, with long bellowings he loosens his mouth, and his voice struggled forth through the opposing frenzy: 'Whither do you carry off, Nereid, the mighty nursling of great Chiron, by a woman's wiles? Hither send him: why do you bear him away? I will not suffer it: he is mine, mine. You are the goddess of the deep, and me too Phoebus drives. In what hiding-places do you try to conceal the overthrower of Asia? I see you through the high Cyclades, distraught and seeking shores by a base theft. We are undone: the conscious land of Lycomedes has pleased you, O crime! Lo, the flowing garments come upon his breast, tear them, boy, tear them, and yield not to your timid mother, ah me, he is snatched away and gone! Who is this wicked maiden far off?'

Here with wavering step he stood, and, the strength of his frenzy lost, trembling, fell down before the very altars. Then the Calydonian hero seizes upon the hesitating Ithacan: 'This labour calls us: nor would I refuse to go as your comrade, if your care should draw me, though in the sounding caverns of averted Tethys and in the bosom of watery Nereus he be hidden: you will find him; only do you, provident with cunning, stretch your watchful mind and rouse your fertile breast: to me let no seer in doubtful chances dare to see the fates before you.' Glad Ulysses replies: 'So may the almighty god confirm it, so may that maiden, your father's, nod assent to you! But slippery hope delays me: a great thing indeed, to lead armed Achilles into the camp; but if the fates deny it, how foul and sad to return! Yet the vows of the Danaans I will not leave untried; and now either the Pelean hero will be here with me, or the truth lies deep hidden, and Calchas is without Apollo.'

The Danaans shout aloud, and Agamemnon goads the willing: the assemblies are loosed, and the ranks, dissolved with glad murmur, depart, even as now, the night drawing near, the birds are brought back from their feeding, or as gentle Hybla sees its throngs, heavy with new honey, return into their caves; and without delay the Ithacan sail now asks for the fair breezes, and the youth sits down cheerful at the oars.

But far off, beneath the false image of a feigned sex, one alone had now come to know the hidden Aeacides, Deidamia, by his secret theft, to be a man; but, conscious of the hidden fault, she fears all things, and thinks the silent sisters perceive it. For when hard Achilles stood in the virgin flock, and his mother, departing, loosed his raw modesty, straightway he chose her for companion, though all the throng gathered toward him, and fondly, to her who feared no such thing, he moves his new snares: her he follows and presses, the shameless one, her with his eyes again and again he takes in. Now he clings too close to her side as she does not avoid him, now with light garlands, now with baskets dropped of their own accord, now with sparing thyrsus he strikes her; now the sweet strings of the known lyre and the slender measures and songs of Chiron he shows her, and guides her hand and bends her fingers on the sounding cithara; now he seizes her mouth as she sings and binds her with embraces and praises her through a thousand kisses. Gladly she learns on what peak Pelion is, and who the Aeacides; and at the boy's name and deeds, once heard, she is unceasingly amazed, and sings of the present Achilles. She too teaches him to put forth his strong limbs more modestly, and to thin the rough wool with a worn thumb, and remakes his distaffs and the tasks ruined by his hard hand; and the sound and weight of his voice as he keeps it back, and that he shuns his companions, that with too much fire he bears himself, and pants untimely in his words, she marvels at: now and now, as he makes ready to disclose his guile, with a maiden's levity she flees and forbids him to confess, even as beneath his mother Rhea the young ruler of Olympus gave treacherous kisses to his unwitting sister, still a brother, until reverence for the mid blood ceased, and the sister took fright at love turned otherwise.

At last the wiles of the timid Nereid are uncovered. A grove stood lofty for the orgies of Agenorean Bacchus, a wood admitted to heaven: in its shade the pious matrons were wont to renew the alternate triennial rite, and to bear the rent flock and the tree-trunks torn from the earth, and to render the frenzies pleasing to the god. The law is that the males go far off: the dread leader repeats the precepts, and the cave is proclaimed forbidden to men; nor is that enough: at the appointed bound stands a priestess to be feared, and explores the approaches, lest any defiler stray into the female band. Silently Achilles laughed to himself; him, as he led the standards of the virgin troop and loosed his great arms with a difficult motion — and both the sex becomes him and the mother's lies — his companions marvel at, nor now is fairest Deidamia of her own throng, and, set beside the proud Aeacides, she is as much surpassed as she herself outdoes her sisters. But when from his smooth neck he let down the fawn-skin and gathered the wandering folds with ivy, and high girt his golden temples with purple fillets, and brandished the wreathed missile in his heavy right hand, the throng stands in astonished fear, and, the rites abandoned, it pleases them to ring him round and to lift their faces, bowed before him. Such, when at Thebes he relaxed his face and his spirit, Euhius, and sated his breast with his fatherland's luxury, lifts the garlands from his hair, and the turban, and arms the green thyrsus and, stronger, visits the hostile Indians.

The Moon was climbing the heights of mid heaven on her rosy yoke, when sleep, more sluggish on all its wings, flows down upon the earth and embraces the dumb world: the choirs have sat down, and the bronze a little while plied with beating falls silent, when alone from the tender band Achilles thus to himself: 'How long will you bear the contrivances of your timid mother? And in this unwarlike prison will you first lose the flower of your spirit? Are no warlike weapons allowed your right hand, nor to drive the trembling beasts, where is the field and the rivers of Haemonia? Do you seek my swimmings, Spercheos, and the promised hair? Or for the deserter nursling is there no honour? And am I now said to be snatched far off to the Stygian shades, and does bereaved Chiron mourn my death? You now wield the weapons in your hand, you direct our bows and mount the steeds reared for me, Patroclus: but I to spread my arms with vine-clad thyrsi and to thin the distaff — shame it is and weariness to confess — now I know. Nay more, the fire of the beloved maiden and her coeval torch, captured, day and night you dissemble. How long will you press the wounds that burn your breast, and not prove yourself a man — alas, the shame! — even in love?'

So he says; and, glad in the thick shade of night that a silence in season for his stealth lay still, by force he gains his vows, and with his whole breast brings his true embraces; the whole chorus saw it from the height of the stars, and the horns of the tender Moon reddened. She indeed filled the grove and mountain with her cry: but the companions of Bacchus, the cloud of slumber shaken off, think the signals appointed for the dances; the well-known din on every side is raised, and again Achilles was brandishing his thyrsi, yet first having soothed the doubtful one with friendly words: 'I am he — why do you tremble? — whom my dark-blue mother bore, all but to Jove, and sent to be reared in the woods and snows of Thessaly. Nor would I have put on this garb or these foul coverings, had you not been seen on the first shore: I yielded for your sake, for you the tasks in my hand, for you I wear the soft timbrels. Why do you weep, a daughter-in-law added to the great sea? Why do you groan, who shall bear to heaven mighty grandsons? But your father — : sooner shall Scyros lie, cut down by fire and steel, and these walls go, overturned, into the swelling storms, than that you should pay for my bridal by a cruel death: not so far shall we obey our mother in all things.'

The queen stood aghast, terrified at such marvels, though long her faith was suspect, and close at hand she shuddered at him, and at the face of the confessor, much changed. What is she to do? Shall she herself bear her mischance to her parent and crush herself at once and the youth, perhaps to drink in bitter penalties? And still in her heart remained that love so long deceived: she keeps silence, sick, and represses the now common sin; it pleases her to add to her stealth her nurse for an ally, who, won by the prayers of the two, gives her assent. She with silent cunning hid the stolen modesty and the rising womb and the months sick with their burden, until the appointed times brought their full goal and Lucina, the revealer of the birth, loosed the delivery.

And now along the Aegean windings went the Laertian ship, and the breezes changed the countless Cyclades: now Paros and Olearos lie hid; now high Lemnos is grazed, and behind, Bacchic Naxos shrinks, while before their eyes Samos grows; now Delos darkens the sea: there from the lofty poop they pour libations from the cups, and pray for the faith of the oracle and for a truthful Calchas. The Archer-god heard, and from the peak of Cynthus drove the Zephyr, and to their doubt gave omens with the sail filled. The ship goes secure over the sea: for the lofty commands of the Thunderer forbade Thetis to turn the fixed laws of the fates, sick with her tears and much fearing, that she should not tear up the sea, and with all the winds and straits even then pursue Ulysses, already hated.

Phoebus, now bending low on a lowly Olympus, was breaking his rays and promising the penetrable shore of Ocean to his panting steeds, when rocky Scyros lifted itself; toward it the leader, son of Laertes, let out all the ropes from the ship, and bids his comrades take up the sea again and supply with oars the falling Zephyrs. They draw near, and more and more sure was Scyros, and above, Tritonia, guardian of the placid shore; on landing, the Aetolian and the Ithacan revere the godhead of the friendly goddess. Then the provident hero, lest the host-walls should suddenly be alarmed by their throng, bids his men remain on the ship; he himself seeks the heights with trusty Diomedes, but already Abas, keeper of the shore-citadel, had outrun them, and to the king had reported sails — unknown, yet Greek — approaching the lands. They go on, as two wolves joined in a compact under a winter's night: though his own and his offspring's hunger goads, they deeply dissemble their rage and threats and move humbly, lest the care of the dogs announce the foes and warn the frightened masters to keep watch.

So the heroes go slowly, and the open field, which lies midway between the harbour and the lofty city, they wear away with alternate talk; first the keen son of Tydeus takes up the word: 'By what means do we now prepare to search out the truth? For long since, turning it in my doubtful breast, I ask why you bought these unwarlike thyrsi and the bronze in the midst of the cities, and brought hither the Bacchic hides and turbans and the fawn-skins sprinkled with varied gold. Will you arm with these an Achilles grievous to Priam and the Phrygians?'

Smiling at him a little, with relaxed face, the Ithacan: 'These for you, if only the maiden be now in the hall of Lycomedes hidden by a fraud, will of his own confession lead Pelides into the battles; do you remember to bring all things quickly from the ship, when it is time, and to add to these gifts a shield fair with figures and most rough with gold; this spear will be enough: with you let good Agyrtes be present with the clarion, and bring the hidden trumpet for silent uses.'

He had spoken, and on the very threshold of the gates the king he descries, and, the olive shown, with a preface of peace: 'A great fame, I think, and long since has reached your ears, most peaceful of kings, of the fierce war which now shakes both Europe and Asia, if perchance the names of the leaders have been brought hither, among whom the avenger, the son of Atreus, goes: here is one whom great Tydeus, more excellent than such stock, begot, magnanimous; I am the Ithacan leader Ulysses. The cause of our journey — for why should I fear to confess all to you, since you are a Greek, and one most renowned for known faith — is to explore the approaches and the hated shores of Troy, and what they prepare.' In mid speech the other breaks in: 'May Fortune assent, I pray, and the favouring gods prosper these things on the right hand! Now with your lodging do honour to my house and my pious hearth.' And at once he leads them within the threshold. And without delay the household throng now sets out the tables and the couches; meanwhile with his gaze Ulysses surveys and searches the house, if any traces of the great maiden, or a doubtful face suspect of a strange shape; and through the wandering porticoes he roams, and all the dwelling, as though he marvelled, he visits: even as that hunter, holding sure the lair of his prey, scans the fields with his silent Molossian, until he sees beneath the leaves the foe stretched out in sleep, with teeth laid upon the turf.

A rumour long since resounds in the inner hall, where the trusty home of the maidens is, that there have come the Pelasgian leaders, and a Greek ship, and the comrades received. With reason the others fear; but Pelides scarce hides his new joys, and, eager, longs to see the new heroes and the arms even in such a guise. And now the halls seethe with royal din, and they recline on the painted gold, when the father bids his daughters come, and the chaste companions of his daughters; they enter, even as on the Maeotian bank, when they have plundered the Scythian homes and the captured walls of the Getae, the Amazons feast, their arms laid by. Then indeed Ulysses, intent, weighs their faces and breasts with his gaze; but the night and the lights brought in deceive his eyes, and at once the proportion of those reclining lay hidden. Yet, the one with face erect and roving eyes, keeping none of the signs of maiden modesty, he marks, and to his comrade with a sidelong glance points him out; and had not Deidamia, embracing the headlong one with her fond bosom, warned him, and always held his bared breast and his outstretched hands and shoulders within his robe, and forbidden him to come forth from the couches and to demand wine too often, and replaced the golden ornament on his brow, Achilles would then and there have lain open to the Argive leaders.

When hunger was appeased with the feasts twice and thrice renewed, the king first addresses, and with the cups exhorts the Achaeans: 'I envy, I confess, your enterprise, illustrious glories of the Argolic race: would that I too had a stronger age, such as once was, when I subdued the Dolopians who attacked the Scyrian shores, and broke them in the shoals — the ships, those signs of triumph, which you saw high on the front of my walls! At least if I had offspring, fit to send to war — now you see my own strength, and these dear pledges: when will this throng give me new grandsons?' He had spoken, and the cunning Ulysses, seizing the moment: 'You long for things not to be despised; for who would not burn to see the countless nations and the various leaders and the ranks of kings? All the strength and glory at once of powerful Europe has of its own accord sworn upon the deserved swords. The fields and cities are empty, we have stripped the high mountains, all the sea is overspread with the long shadow of the sails; the fathers hand over arms, the youth, unrecalled, snatches them up, never at other times has so great an abundance of fame been given to the brave, or valour exercised on a greater field.' He marks him intent, and drawing in these things with watchful ear, while the others fear and turn their lowered eyes, and repeats: 'Whoever is proud of ancestors and race, whoever is mighty with horse and javelin, who prevails with the bow, all honour is there, there mighty names contend: scarce the timid mothers or the virgin bands hold back; ah! much condemned to barren years and hated by the gods is he, if any, whom this new glory passes by, sluggish.' He would have risen from the couch, had not provident Deidamia, at a signal given, urging all her sisters, left the tables, herself embracing him; but he clings, looking back at the Ithacan, and last of the company goes out. He indeed relents a little from his begun discourse, yet joining a few words: 'But do you remain tranquil in deep peace, and prepare marriages for your dear daughters, whom chance has made equal to you in the starry faces of goddesses, even as long since reverence touches me to silence! Such is the grace and the species of form mingled with the manly.' The father meets him: 'What if you should see them bearing the Bacchic orgies, or about the altars of Pallas? And we will grant it, if perchance the new south wind shall delay.' They receive it eagerly, and hope is added to their silent vows.

The rest of the palace of Lycomedes, its cares laid by, falls silent in tranquil peace; but long is the night for the sagacious Ithacan, and he longs for light and is weighed down by sleep. Scarce had day arisen, and now, accompanied by Agyrtes, the son of Tydeus was at hand, and bore the foretold gifts. And no less the Scyrian maidens, gone forth from their chamber, went to display their dances and the promised rites to the revered guests. Before the rest the queen and her companion shines, Pelides: even as beneath the rocks of Sicilian Etna among the Ennaean Naiads Diana and fierce Pallas shone, and the bride of the Elysian tyrant. And now they move their steps, and the Ismenian boxwood has given the signs to the bands; four times they strike the bronze of Rhea, four times with the hand the god-filled drums, and four times tread the varied returns. Then they lift the thyrsi together and together set them down, and multiply the step, now in the action of the Curetes, and as the pious Samothracians go, now turned to meet with the Amazonian comb, now in the circle wherein the Delian goddess spurs on the Spartan women and whirls them as they clap to their own Amyclae. Then indeed, then especially manifest, Achilles cares neither to keep the turns nor to join his arms; then he scorns the soft steps, then more than wont the robes, and breaks the dances and throws all into confusion. So once sad Thebes beheld Pentheus disdaining the thyrsi and the timbrels received from his mother.

The praised band breaks up and seeks again the paternal threshold, where long since, in the seats of the mid hall, the son of Tydeus had set the gifts that should break the virgin gazes, the pledge of hospitality and the price of his labour; and he urges them to choose, nor does the most peaceful king forbid. Alas, too simple and too unschooled, who knows not the crafty gifts and the wiles of the Greeks and the changeful Ulysses! Here others, whom their idle sex and nature lead, try either the smooth thyrsi or the answering timbrels, or bind their temples with doubled fillets: the arms they see and think them given to their great father. But the fierce Aeacides, as he descries close at hand the radiant orb chased with battles — and by chance it was red with the savage stains of wars — leaning on a spear, he roared and rolled his eyes, and from his forehead, abandoned, his hair rose up; nowhere the mother's commands, nowhere the hidden love, and in all his breast is Troy. As a lion, when, snatched from his mother's udder, he has taken manners, and has learned to have his mane combed and to reverence man, and to be roused to no rage save when bidden, if once the steel has flashed before his eyes, his loyalty is forsworn and his tamer is his foe: against him is his first hunger, and he is ashamed to have served a timid master. But when he came nearer and the rival light gave back his face, and he saw himself, such as he was, in the like gold, he shuddered and blushed at once. Then keen Ulysses, brought to his side, with lowered voice: 'Why do you delay? We know,' he says, 'you are the nursling of half-beast Chiron, you the grandson of heaven and sea; you the Doric fleet, you your own Greece awaits with hanging standards, and Pergamum itself now totters for you with doubtful walls. Come, break off delay: let perfidious Ida grow pale, and let it please your father to hear this, and let it shame the wily Thetis so to have feared for you.' Now he was loosing his breast from the robe, when, so bidden, Agyrtes sounded the great trumpet: they flee, the gifts scattered on every side, and implore their father, and believe battles are stirred, from his breast the garments fell, untouched, now the shield and the spear, shorter for his hand, are seized, — wondrous to believe! — and the Ithacan and the Aetolian leader seemed to be overtopped by his shoulders: so much do the sudden arms and the martial heat confound the household with their dreadful light, and huge in his gait, as though straightway demanding Hector, he stands in the midst, the house trembling: the Pelean maiden is sought; but in another part Deidamia bewailed the uncovered guile; and when first he caught in his heart her loud laments and the well-known voice, he stuck fast, and his valour was broken by the hidden flame. He lets fall the shield, and, turned toward the eyes of the king, astonished at the deed and trembling at the unlooked-for marvels, just as he was, in naked arms, addresses Lycomedes: 'Me, dear father — dismiss your doubtful fear! — me kindly Thetis gave to you: long since such great glory awaited you; you it is that send to the Danaans the sought-for Achilles, dearer to me, and — if it be lawful to say it — than my great parent and sweet Chiron. But turn your heart a little hither willingly, and good receive these words: Peleus joins you as father-in-law to his son, and Thetis, your guest, and they allege their own gods from either blood. One of your daughters, from the virgin band, they ask: do you give her? Or do we seem to you a humble and degenerate race? You do not refuse; join then your hands and conceive the compact, and forgive your own. By a secret theft already known to me is Deidamia; for what could withstand these arms, by which, possessed, she might have repelled our force? Bid me make atonement for this; I lay down my arms and give myself back to the Pelasgians, and I remain. Why do you growl in sorrow? Why do you change your looks? Now you are a father-in-law' — he flung his son before his feet, and adds: 'And now a grandfather: how often shall the cruel sword be turned aside! We are a multitude.' Then both the Danaans, by the rites and the faith of hospitality, and the persuasive Ulysses, drive him on with his prayers. He, although the wrong done to his dear daughter, discovered, and the commands of Thetis move him, and it seems a betrayal to give up so great a deposit of the goddess, yet to go against so many fates he fears, and to delay the Argive wars; suppose he should wish it: there Achilles would have scorned his very mother, nor yet would he have refused to join himself to such a son-in-law: he is overcome. From the secret darkness, ashamed, Deidamia brings forth her step, and not at once, distraught, does she believe in pardon, and with Achilles set before him appeases her father.

One is sent to Haemonia, to fill Peleus with great deeds and to demand the fleet and the comrades for the battles; and the Scyrian ruler too brings down twin alder-ships for his son-in-law, and excuses his strength to the Achaeans. Then the day was spent in feasting, and at last the revealed compact, and the conscious night joins the fearless lovers.

Before her eyes are new wars and Xanthus and Ide and the Argolic ships, and she ponders the very waves and fears the dawn: poured upon her new husband's dear neck, she now looses her tears and clasps his limbs. 'Shall I look on you again, and lay myself in this breast, Aeacides? And will you again deem your own offspring worthy? Or, swollen, bearing back the Teucrian household and captured Pergamum, will you be unwilling to remember the maiden's hiding-place? What shall I pray, alas, or fear first? Or what, anxious, shall I charge, who scarce have leisure to weep? Only one night has given you and grudged you to me! Is this time for our bridal? Is this a free wedding? O sweet thefts and guiles, O fear! The lawful Achilles is snatched from wretched me, go — for I would not dare to recall so great preparations — go cautiously, and remember not in vain to have feared Thetis, go happy, and return ours! Too shameless are my demands: already the comely Trojan women will hope for you with tears and beating of the breast, and will wish to give their necks to your chains and to weigh their country against your couch; or she herself will please you, the daughter of Tyndareus, too much praised for her unchaste rape, while I shall be told to the servants as the childish tale of a first fault, or, dissembled, shall lie hid. Nay come, take me as companion; why should I not bear with you the martial standards? You bore with me the thyrsi in your hand and the Bacchic rites, which unhappy Troy will not believe. Yet at least this one, whom you leave me for a sad solace, this one keep beneath your heart, and grant to me who pray this only, that the barbarian wife bear you nothing, that no captive give unworthy grandsons to Thetis.' As she speaks such things, not himself unmoved, Achilles soothes her and swears his faith, and the sworn faith with weeping he pledges, and, returning, mighty handmaids and captured Ilion and the gifts of Phrygian treasure he promises. The windy storms snatched away his idle words.

BOOK II

Day, brought forth from Ocean, stripped the world of its wrapping of dewy darkness, and the father of the flashing light, still dull from the neighbouring night, was raising his lamp, dripping from the sea not yet shaken off. And now the Aeacides, his breast bared of the crimson robe and conspicuous in the very arms which he had first seized upon — for the breeze calls and the kindred waters urge — all gaze upon, both youth and leader; and, daring to remember nothing, they fear: so changed in all his look he returned, as though he had never suffered the Scyrian shores, and were mounting the ship from the Peliac cave. Then, after the manner of the gods — for so Ulysses warned — he makes offering to the seas and the south winds, and beneath the very wave he reveres the dark-blue king with a bull, and his grandsire Nereus: his mother is appeased with a filleted heifer. Here, casting the swollen entrails on the foaming brine, he speaks: 'We have obeyed, mother, though you bade things hardly to be borne, we have obeyed too well: I go, sought-for, to the Trojan wars and the Argolic ships.' So having begun, he sprang into the alder-ship, and, the south wind whistling deep, is swept far from the neighbouring lands: and now it begins to draw the lofty clouds, and Scyros to depart across the long sea.

Far off on the topmost tower, attended by the tears of her sisters, and holding the child entrusted to her, which bears the name of Pyrrhus, his wife hung, and with her eyes fixed on the sails she went, herself too, with the strait, and now alone saw the poop; he too turns his sidelong looks to the beloved walls and ponders the widowed home and the groans of the forsaken one: the hidden fire is born again beneath his heart, and valour gives place. The Laertian hero perceives him grieving, and, approaching, sets to bend him with placid words: 'Are you,' he says, 'O debtor to the wasting of great Troy, whom the Danaan fleets, whom the oracles of the gods demand, and War awaits upright on the unbarred threshold — are you he whom a crafty mother profaned with a woman's robe and entrusted such mighty thefts to that hiding-place and hoped for faith? O too anxious and too much a mother! Should this valour have lain torpid in the silent shade, which, scarce at the heard clang of the clarion, fled both Thetis and your companions and the fires you had suppressed? Nor is it any reproach to us that you come to arms and follow us as we pray: would that you had come —' He said; and the Aeacian hero takes him up with such words: 'It is long to set forth the lingering causes and the mother's crime; this Scyros shall be excused by my sword, and the unbecoming garb, those crimes of the fates. Do you rather, while the strait is gentle and the sails enjoy the Zephyr, tell what was the first beginning to the Danaans of so great a war: I would fain straightway take from it a just wrath.' Here the Ithacan, taking up his discourse a little farther back: 'There is told, in Hectorean Ida — if we believe such things — a shepherd chosen to resolve the contest of beauty, who held the goddesses in anxiety, and did not look with a kindly eye on the grim face of Minerva, nor on the consort of the heavenly ruler, but saw too much Dione alone. And indeed that strife arose beneath your own caves, in the council of the gods, while Pelion sweetly weds Peleus, and even then promising at our arms, wrath shakes the vanquished; the judge seeks the deadly prizes: ready Amyclae is shown to the ravisher. He cuts down the Phrygian groves, the inmost shrines of the tower-bearing mother, and bids the pines, fearing to fall to the ground, hasten down, and, carried over the strait to the Achaean lands, he despoils the chamber of his host, the son of Atreus — alas, the shame and the pity of powerful Europe! — and, proud with Helen, he sails, and bears the captive Argos to Pergamum. Thence, the rumour given everywhere through the various cities, on every side, unbidden, each of his own accord we come together, avengers: for who would suffer that the wedded compacts be broken by unlawful guiles, and marriages dragged off by an easy rape like a flock or a herd or worthless heaps of harvest? This loss too would move the brave. The imperious Agenor did not bear the snares of the gods and the sacred lowings, and sought his Europa, borne off by a great divinity, and spurned the Thunderer as a son-in-law; Aeetes did not bear his offspring snatched from the Scythian shore, and followed with steel and fleet the demigod kings and the ship that should go among the stars: shall we bear the Phrygian, a half-man, flitting about the harbours and shores of Argolis with his unchaste ship? Is it so far that nowhere are there arms and horses, and seas impassable to Greeks? What if now someone should go to snatch from her father's shores Deidamia, and tear her, astonished, from her widowed seat, crying the name of great Achilles?' His hand returned to the hilt, and at once a great blush struck his face: Ulysses kept silence, content.

The son of Oeneus takes it up: 'Nay, O most worthy offspring of heaven, your training and the elements of your earliest nature, and, when soon strong youth was added, what seeds of glory Chiron was wont to open to you, and the approaches of valour, by what arts to increase your limbs, by what your spirit, do you set forth, your comrades much favouring? Let it be a reward to have sought deep through the long waves for Scyros, and to have shown the first arms to these arms.'

Whom would it irk to tell his own deeds? Yet he modestly begins, doubtful a little, and nearer to one constrained: 'I am said, even in my tender and still crawling years, when the Thessalian elder received me on his rugged mountain, to have drained no food after the custom, nor sated my hunger at nursing udders, but to have drawn the thick entrails of lions and the marrow of a half-living she-wolf. This was my first Ceres, these the gifts of glad Bacchus; so that father gave them; soon to go with him through trackless haunts, drawing me on with a longer stride, and he taught me to smile at the beasts I saw, nor to fear the rocks broken by the rushing waves, nor the silences of the vast wood. Even then arms in my hand, even then quivers on my neck, and a hastened love of the steel, and a skin hardened by much sun and frost; nor were my limbs slack on a soft bed, but a rock shared with my mighty master. Scarce had my raw life turned for me twice six circles of years, when already he made me outstrip the swift stags and the Lapith horses, and follow with my running the darts sent before; often Chiron himself, while my age was swift, let loose, chased me with his winged pace over all the plains, and praised me, rejoicing, when I was spent with my wandering course over the grass, and lifted me onto his own back. Often too, at the first stiffening of the river, he bade me go over the ice and not break it with my light sole. This was my boyish glory; why should I now tell you of the battles of the woods and the glades now emptied of their savage roaring? Never did he suffer me to chase the unwarlike does through the Ossaean wilds, or to lay low timid lynxes with my spear, but to rouse the surly bears from their lairs, and the lightning-swift boars, and, wherever was a great tiger or the secluded cave on the ridges of a lioness with her young. He himself, seated, awaited my deeds in the vast cave, to see if I should return sprinkled with black blood; nor did he admit me to his kisses before he had inspected the weapons. And now I was being fitted, my neighbouring youth, to the sword-bearing tumults, nor did any image of fierce Mars pass me by. I learned with what whirl the Paeonians wield their arms, with what the Macedonians dart their javelins, with what eddy the Sauromatian the pike, the Getan the scythe, and the Gelonian draws the bow, and with what twist the Balearic driver of the bent thong, swinging, would balance his hanging wounds, and would mark off the enclosed air within his own circle. Scarce could I recount all my deeds, though I bore them well. Now he teaches me to join great trenches with a leap, now, climbing, to seize the head of an airy mountain, with what step one flees over the plains, and in the semblances of battle to receive, with my shielded boss, the hurled millstones, and to roam through burning huts, and on foot to stay the flying four-horse teams. I remember: most rapid went Spercheos, fed by constant rains and the melted snows, and bore living tree-trunks and rocks: when he set me, sent in where the rush of the wave was fiercer, to stand against it and to repel the swelling floods, which he himself could scarce have borne, with his step so often resisting. I stood indeed, but the roused river bore me back, and the gloom of my wide flight: he, fierce, leaning over from above, threatened, and pressed my shame with words, nor did I go off except when bidden: so the lofty glory drove me on, nor were the hard toils so great beneath such a witness. For far off to hide the Oebalian discs in the clouds, and to knot the liquid wrestling-bout, and to spread the gauntlets, was sport and rest to me; nor was there greater sweat in these than when I struck the sounding strings with the Apollonian plectrum and marvelled at the ancient honours of men. Nay more, the juices and the herbs that help diseases, by what medicine the too-much blood should stay, what should make sleep, what close the gaping wounds, what plague should be checked with steel, what should yield to herbs, he taught me, and fixed beneath my breast the warnings of sacred justice, by which he was wont to give revered laws to the Peliac peoples and to make peace among his own twy-formed kindred. Thus far, my comrades, the elements of my years I both remember and am glad to remember: the rest my mother knows.'