Metamorphoses

While Orpheus is singing to his lyre on Mount Rhodope, the women of Thrace celebrate their orgies. During that ceremony they take advantage of the opportunity to punish Orpheus for his indifference towards their sex; and, in the fury inspired by their rites, they beat him to death. His head and lyre are carried by the stream of the river Hebrus into the sea, and are cast on shore on the isle of Lesbos. A serpent, about to attack the head when thrown on shore, is changed into a stone, and the Bacchanals who have killed him are transformed into trees.

While with songs such as these, the Thracian poet is leading the woods and the natures of savage beasts, and the following rocks, lo! the matrons of the Ciconians, having their raving breasts covered with the skins of wild beasts, from the summit of a hill, espy Orpheus adapting his voice to the sounded strings of his harp. One of these, tossing her hair along the light breeze, says, “See! see! here is our contemner!” and hurls her spear at the melodious mouth of the bard of Apollo: but, being wreathed at the end with leaves, it makes a mark without any wound. The weapon of another is a stone, which, when thrown, is overpowered in the very air by the harmony of his voice and his lyre, and lies before his feet, a suppliant, as it were, for an attempt so daring.

But still this rash warfare increases, and all moderation departs, and direful fury reigns triumphant. And yet all their weapons would have been conquered by his music; but the vast clamour, and the Berecynthian pipe with the blown horns, and the tambourines, and the clapping of hands, and Bacchanalian yells, prevented the sound of the lyre from being heard. Then, at last, the stones became red with the blood of the bard, now no longer heard. But first the Mænades lay hands on innumerable birds, even yet charmed with his voice as he sang, and serpents, and a throng of wild beasts, the glory of this audience of Orpheus; and after that, they turn upon Orpheus with blood-stained right hands; and they flock together, as the birds, if at any time they see the bird of night strolling about by day; and as when the stag that is doomed to die in the morning sand in the raised amphitheatre is a prey to the dogs; they both attack the bard, and hurl the thyrsi, covered with green leaves, not made for such purposes as these. Some throw clods, some branches torn from trees, others flint stones. And that weapons may not be wanting for their fury, by chance some oxen are turning up the earth with the depressed ploughshare; and not far from thence, some strong-armed peasants, providing the harvest with plenteous sweat, are digging the hard fields; they, seeing this frantic troop, run away, and leave the implements of their labour; and there lie, dispersed throughout the deserted fields, harrows and heavy rakes, and long spades.

After they, in their rage, have seized upon these, and have torn to pieces the oxen with their threatening horns, they return to the destruction of the bard; and they impiously murder him, extending his hands, and then for the first time uttering words in vain, and making no effect on them with his voice. And (Oh Jupiter!) through those lips listened to by rocks, and understood by the senses of wild beasts, his life breathed forth, departs into the breezes. The mournful birds, the crowd of wild beasts, the hard stones, the woods that oft had followed thy song bewailed thee. Trees, too, shedding their foliage, mourned thee, losing their leaves. They say, too, that rivers swelled with their own tears; and the Naiads and Dryads had mourning garments of dark colour, and dishevelled hair. The limbs lie scattered in various places. Thou, Hebrus, dost receive the head and the lyre; and (wondrous to relate!) while it rolls down the midst of the stream, the lyre complains in I know not what kind of mournful strain. His lifeless tongue, too, utters a mournful sound, to which the banks mournfully reply. And now, borne onward to the sea, they leave their native stream, and reach the shores of Methymnæan Lesbos. Here an infuriated serpent attacks the head thrown up on the foreign sands, and the hair besprinkled with the oozing blood. At last Phœbus comes to its aid, and drives it away as it tries to inflict its sting, and hardens the open jaws of the serpent into stone, and makes solid its gaping mouth just as it is. His ghost descends under the earth, and he recognizes all the spots which he has formerly seen; and seeking Eurydice through the fields of the blessed, he finds her, and enfolds her in his eager arms. Here, one while, they walk together side by side, and at another time he follows her as she goes before, and again at another time, walking in front, precedes her; and now, in safety, Orpheus looks back upon his own Eurydice.

Yet Lyæus did not suffer this wickedness to go unpunished; and grieving for the loss of the bard of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down in the woods, by a twisting root, all the Edonian matrons who had committed this crime. For he drew out the toes of her feet, just as each one had pursued him, and thrust them by their sharp points into the solid earth. And, as when a bird has entangled its leg in a snare, which the cunning fowler has concealed, and perceives that it is held fast, it beats its wings, and, fluttering, tightens the noose with its struggles; so, as each one of these had stuck fast, fixed in the ground, in her alarm, she attempted flight in vain; but the pliant root held her fast, and confined her, springing forward to escape. And while she is looking where her toes are, where, too, are her feet and her nails, she sees wood growing up upon her well-turned legs. Endeavouring, too, to smite her thigh, with grieving right hand, she strikes solid oak; her breast, too, becomes oak; her shoulders are oak. You would suppose that her extended arms are real boughs, and you would not be deceived in so supposing.

Bacchus, having punished the Thracian women for the murder of Orpheus, leaves Thrace. His tutor, Silenus, having become intoxicated, loses his companions, and is brought by some Phrygian peasants to Midas. He sends him to Bacchus, on which the God, in acknowledgment of his kindness, promises him whatever favour he may desire. Midas asks to be able to turn everything that he touches into gold. This power is granted; but, soon convinced of his folly, Midas begs the God to deprive him of it, on which he is ordered to bathe in the river Pactolus. He obeys the God, and communicates the power which he possesses to the stream; from which time that river has golden sands.

And this is not enough for Bacchus. He resolves to forsake the country itself, and, with a superior train, he repairs to the vineyards of his own Tymolus, and Pactolus; although it was not golden at that time, nor to be coveted for its precious sands. The usual throng, both Satyrs and Bacchanals, surround him, but Silenus is away. The Phrygian rustics took him, as he was staggering with age and wine, and, bound with garlands, they led him to their king, Midas, to whom, together with the Cecropian Eumolpus, the Thracian Orpheus had intrusted the mysterious orgies of Bacchus. Soon as he recognized this associate and companion of these rites, he hospitably kept a festival on the coming of this guest, for twice five days, and as many nights joined in succession.

“And now the eleventh Lucifer had closed the lofty host of the stars, when the king came rejoicing to the Lydian lands, and restored Silenus to the youth, his foster-child. To him the God, being glad at the recovery of his foster-father, gave the choice of desiring a favour, pleasing, indeed, but useless, as it turned out. He, destined to make a foolish use of the favour, says, ‘Cause that whatever I shall touch with my body shall be turned into yellow gold.’ Liber assents to his wish, and grants him the hurtful favour, and is grieved that he has not asked for something better. The Berecynthian hero departs joyful, and rejoices in his own misfortune, and tries the truth of his promise by touching everything. And, hardly believing himself, he pulls down a twig from a holm-oak, growing on a bough not lofty; the twig becomes gold. He takes up a stone from the ground; the stone, too, turns pale with gold. He touches a clod, also; by his potent touch the clod becomes a mass of gold. He plucks some dry ears of corn, that wheat is golden. He holds an apple taken from a tree, you would suppose that the Hesperides had given it. If he places his fingers upon the lofty door-posts, then the posts are seen to glisten. When, too, he has washed his hands in the liquid stream, the water flowing from his hands might have deceived Danaë. He scarcely can contain his own hopes in his mind, imagining everything to be of gold. As he is thus rejoicing, his servants set before him a table supplied with dainties, and not deficient in parched corn. But then, whether he touches the gifts of Ceres with his right hand, the gifts of Ceres, as gold, become hard; or if he attempts to bite the dainties with hungry teeth, those dainties, upon the application of his teeth, shine as yellow plates of gold. Bacchus, the grantor of this favour, he mingles with pure water; you could see liquid gold flowing through his jaws.

“Astonished at the novelty of his misfortune, being both rich and wretched, he wishes to escape from his wealth, and now he hates what but so lately he has wished for; no plenty relieves his hunger, dry thirst parches his throat, and he is deservedly tormented by the now hated gold; and raising his hands towards heaven, and his shining arms, he says, “Grant me pardon, father Lenæus; I have done wrong, but have pity on me, I pray, and deliver me from this specious calamity!” Bacchus, the gentle Divinity among the Gods, restored him, as he confessed that he had done wrong, to his former state, and annulled his given promise, and the favour that was granted: “And that thou mayst not remain overlaid with thy gold, so unhappily desired, go,” said he, “to the river adjoining to great Sardis, and trace thy way, meeting the waters as they fall from the height of the mountain, until thou comest to the rise of the stream. And plunge thy head beneath the bubbling spring, where it bursts forth most abundantly, and at once purge thy body, at once thy crime.” The king placed himself beneath the waters prescribed; the golden virtue tinged the river, and departed from the human body into the stream. And even now, the fields, receiving the ore of this ancient vein of gold, are hard, growing of pallid colour, from their clods imbibing the gold.

Pan is so elated with the praises of some Nymphs who hear the music of his pipe, that he presumes to challenge Apollo to play with him. The mountain God, Tmolus, who is chosen umpire of the contest, decides in favour of Apollo, and the whole company approve of his judgment except Midas, who, for his stupidity in preferring Pan, receives a pair of asses’ ears. He carefully conceals them till they are discovered by his barber, who publishes his deformity in a very singular manner. He, abhorring riches, inhabited the woods and the fields, and followed Pan, who always dwells in caves of the mountains; but his obtuse understanding still remained, and the impulse of his foolish mind was fated again, as before, to be an injury to its owner. For the lofty Tmolus, looking far and wide over the sea, stands erect, steep with its lofty ascent; and extending in its descent on either side, is bounded on the one side by Sardis, on the other by the little Hypæpæ.

While Pan is there boasting of his strains to the charming Nymphs, and is warbling a little tune upon the reeds joined with wax, daring to despise the playing of Apollo in comparison with his own, he comes to the unequal contest under the arbitration of Tmolus. The aged umpire seats himself upon his own mountain, and frees his ears of the incumbering trees. His azure-coloured hair is only covered with oak, and acorns hang around his hollow temples. And looking at the God of the flocks, he says, “there is no delay in me, your umpire.” He sounds his rustic reeds, and delights Midas with his uncouth music; for he, by chance, is present as he plays. After this the sacred Tmolus turns his face towards the countenance of Apollo; his words follow the direction of his face. He, having his yellow head wreathed with Parnassian laurel, sweeps the ground with his robe, soaked in Tyrian purple, and supports with his left hand his lyre, adorned with gems and Indian ivory; the other hand holds the plectrum. The very posture is that of an artist. He then touches the strings with a skilful thumb; charmed by the sweetness of which, Tmolus bids Pan to hold his reeds in submission to the lyre; and the judgment and decision of the sacred mountain pleases them all. Yet it is blamed, and is called unjust by the voice of Midas alone. But the Delian God does not allow his stupid ears to retain their human shape: but draws them out to a great length, and he fills them with grey hairs, and makes them unsteady at the lower part, and gives them the power of moving. The rest of his body is that of a man; in one part alone is he condemned to punishment; and he assumes the ears of the slowly moving ass.

He, indeed, concealed them, and endeavoured to veil his temples, laden with this foul disgrace, with a purple turban. But a servant, who was wont to cut his hair, when long, with the steel scissars, saw it; who, when he did not dare disclose the disgraceful thing he had seen, though desirous to publish it, and yet could not keep it secret, retired, and dug up the ground, and disclosed, in a low voice, what kind of ears he had beheld on his master, and whispered it to the earth cast up. And then he buried this discovery of his voice with the earth thrown in again, and, having covered up the ditch, departed in silence. There, a grove, thick set with quivering reeds, began to rise; and as soon as it came to maturity, after a complete year, it betrayed its planter. For, moved by the gentle South wind, it repeated the words there buried, and disclosed the ears of his master.

Apollo and Neptune build the walls of Troy for king Laomedon, who refuses to give the Gods the reward which he has promised: on which Neptune punishes his perjury by an inundation of his country. Laomedon is then obliged to expose his daughter to a sea monster, in order to appease the God. Hercules delivers her; and Laomedon defrauds him likewise of the horses which he has promised him. In revenge, Hercules plunders the city of Troy, and carries off Hesione, whom he gives in marriage to his companion Telamon. The son of Latona, having thus revenged himself, departs from Tmolus, and, borne through the liquid air, rests on the plains of Laomedon, on this side of the narrow sea of Helle, the daughter of Nephele. On the right hand of Sigæum and on the left of the lofty Rhœtæum, there is an ancient altar dedicated to the Panomphæan Thunderer. Thence, he sees Laomedon now first building the walls of rising Troy, and that this great undertaking is growing up with difficult labour, and requires no small resources. And then, with the trident-bearing father of the raging deep, he assumes a mortal form, and for the Phrygian king they build the walls, a sum of gold being agreed on for the defences.

The work is now finished; the king refuses the reward, and, as a completion of his perfidy, adds perjury to his false words. “Thou shalt not escape unpunished,” says the king of the sea; and he drives all his waters towards the shores of covetous Troy. He turns the land, too, into the form of the sea, and carries off the wealth of the husbandmen, and overwhelms the fields with waves. Nor is this punishment sufficient: the daughter of the king, is also demanded for a sea monster. Chained to the rugged rocks, Alcides delivers her, and demands the promised reward, the horses agreed upon; and the recompense of so great a service being denied him, he captures the twice-perjured walls of conquered Troy. Nor does Telamon, a sharer in the warfare, come off without honour; and he obtains Hesione, who is given to him. But Peleus was distinguished by a Goddess for his wife; nor was he more proud of the name of his grandfather than that of his father-in-law. Since, not to his lot alone did it fall to be the grandson of Jove; to him alone, was a Goddess given for a wife.

Proteus foretells that Thetis shall have a son, who shall be more powerful than his father, and shall exceed him in valour. Jupiter, who is in love with Thetis, is alarmed at this prediction, and yields her to Peleus. The Goddess flies from his advances by assuming various shapes, till, by the advice of Proteus, he holds her fast, and then having married her, she bears Achilles. Peleus goes afterwards to Ceyx, king of Trachyn, to expiate the death of his brother Phocus, whom he has killed. Ceyx is in a profound melancholy, and tells him how his brother Dædalion, in the transports of his grief for his daughter Chione, who had been slain for vying with Diana, has been transformed into a hawk. During this relation, Peleus is informed that a wolf which Psamathe has sent to revenge the death of Phocus, is destroying his herds. He endeavours to avert the wrath of the Goddess, but she is deaf to his entreaties, till, by the intercession of Thetis, she is appeased, and she turns the wolf into stone.

For the aged Proteus had said to Thetis, “Goddess of the waves, conceive; thou shalt be the mother of a youth, who by his gallant actions shall surpass the deeds of his father, and shall be called greater than he.” Therefore, lest the world might contain something greater than Jove, although he had felt no gentle flame in his breast, Jupiter avoided the embraces of Thetis, the Goddess of the sea, and commanded his grandson, the son of Æacus, to succeed to his own pretensions, and rush into the embraces of the ocean maid. There is a bay of Hæmonia, curved into a bending arch; its arms project out; there, were the water but deeper, there would be a harbour, but the sea is just covering the surface of the sand. It has a firm shore, which retains not the impression of the foot, nor delays the step of the traveller, nor is covered with sea-weeds. There is a grove of myrtle at hand, planted with particoloured berries. In the middle there is a cave, whether formed by nature or art, it is doubtful; still, by art rather. To this, Thetis, thou wast wont often to come naked, seated on thy harnessed dolphin. There Peleus seized upon thee, as thou wast lying fast bound in sleep; and because, being tried by entreaties, thou didst resist, he resolved upon violence, clasping thy neck with both his arms. And, unless thou hadst had recourse to thy wonted arts, by frequently changing thy shape, he would have succeeded in his attempt. But, at one moment, thou wast a bird (still, as a bird he held thee fast); at another time a large tree: to that tree did Peleus cling. Thy third form was that of a spotted tiger; frightened by that, the son of Æacus loosened his arms from thy body.

Then pouring wine upon its waters, he worshipped the Gods of the sea, both with the entrails of sheep and with the smoke of frankincense; until the Carpathian prophet said, from the middle of the waves, “Son of Æacus, thou shalt gain the alliance desired by thee. Do thou only, when she shall be resting fast asleep in the cool cave, bind her unawares with cords and tenacious bonds. And let her not deceive thee, by imitating a hundred forms; but hold her fast, whatever she shall be, until she shall reassume the form which she had before.” Proteus said this, and hid his face in the sea, and received his own waves at his closing words. Titan was now descending, and, with the pole of his chariot bent downward, was taking possession of the Hesperian main; when the beautiful Nereid, leaving the deep, entered her wonted place of repose. Hardly had Peleus well seized the virgin’s limbs, when she changed her shape, until she perceived her limbs to be held fast, and her arms to be extended different ways. Then, at last, she sighed, and said, “Not without the aid of a Divinity, dost thou overcome me;” and then she appeared as Thetis again. The hero embraced her thus revealed, and enjoyed his wish, and by her was the father of great Achilles.

And happy was Peleus in his son, happy, too, in his wife, and one to whose lot all blessings had fallen, if you except the crime of his killing Phocus. The Trachinian land received him guilty of his brother’s blood, and banished from his native home. Here Ceyx, sprung from Lucifer for his father, and having the comeliness of his sire in his face, held the sway without violence and without bloodshed, who, being sad at that time and unlike his former self, lamented the loss of his brother. After the son of Æacus, wearied, both with troubles and the length of the journey, has arrived there, and has entered the city with a few attending him, and has left the flocks of sheep and the herds which he has brought with him, not far from the walls, in a shady valley; when an opportunity is first afforded him of approaching the prince, extending the symbols of peace with his suppliant hand, he tells him who he is, and from whom descended. He only conceals his crime, and, dissembling as to the true reason of his banishment, he entreats him to aid him by a reception either in his city or in his territory. On the other hand, the Trachinian prince addresses him with gentle lips, in words such as these: “Peleus, our bounties are open even to the lowest ranks, nor do I hold an inhospitable sway. To this my inclination, thou bringest in addition as powerful inducements, an illustrious name, and Jupiter as thy grandsire. And do not lose thy time in entreaty; all that thou askest thou shalt have. Look upon all these things, whatever thou seest, as in part thy own: would that thou couldst behold them in better condition!” and then he weeps. Pelcus and his companions enquire what it is that occasions grief so great. To them he thus speaks: -

“Perhaps you may think that this bird, which lives upon prey, and affrights all the birds, always had wings. It was a man; and as great is the vigour of its courage, as he who was Dædalion by name was active, and bold in war, and ready for violence; he was sprung from him, for his father, who summons forth Aurora, and withdraws the last from the heavens. Peace was cherished by me; the care of maintaining peace and my marriage contract was mine; cruel warfare pleased my brother; that prowess of his subdued both kings and nations, which, changed, now chases the Thisbean doves. Chione was his daughter, who, highly endowed with beauty, was pleasing to a thousand suitors, when marriageable at the age of twice seven years. By chance Phœbus, and the son of Maia, returning, the one from his own Delphi, the other from the heights of Cyllene, beheld her at the same moment, and at the same moment were inspired with passion. Apollo defers his hope of enjoyment until the hours of night; the other brooks no delay, and with his wand, that causes sleep, touches the maiden’s face. At the potent touch she lies entranced, and suffers violence from the God. Night has now bespangled the heavens with stars; Phœbus personates an old woman, and takes those delights before enjoyed in imagination. When her mature womb had completed the destined time, Autolycus was born, a crafty offspring of the stock of the God with winged feet, ingenious at every kind of theft, and who used, not degenerating from his father’s skill, to make white out of black, and black out of white. From Phœbus was born (for she brought forth twins) Philammon, famous for his tuneful song, and for his lyre.

“But what avails it for her to have brought forth two children, and to have been pleasing to two Gods, and to have sprung from a valiant father, and the Thunderer as her ancestor? Is even glory thus prejudicial to many? To her, at least, it was a prejudice; who dared to prefer herself to Diana, and decried the charms of the Goddess. But violent wrath was excited in her, and she said, ‘We will please her by our deeds.’ And there was no delay: she bent her bow, and let fly an arrow from the string, and pierced with the reed the tongue that deserved it. The tongue was silent; nor did her voice, and the words which she attempted to utter, now follow; and life, with her blood, left her, as she endeavoured to speak. Oh hapless affection! What pain did I then endure in my heart, as her uncle, and what consolations did I give to my affectionate brother? These the father received no otherwise than rocks do the murmurs of the ocean, and he bitterly lamented his daughter thus snatched from him. But when he beheld her burning, four times had he an impulse to rush into the midst of the pile; thence repulsed, four times did he commit his swift limbs to flight, and, like an ox, bearing upon his galled neck the stings of hornets, he rushed where there was no path. Already did he seem to me to run faster than a human being, and you would have supposed that his feet had assumed wings. Therefore he outran all; and, made swift by the desire for death, he gained the heights of Parnassus.

“Apollo pitying him, when Dædalion would have thrown himself from the top of the rock, made him into a bird, and supported him, hovering in the air upon these sudden wings; and he gave him a curved beak, and crooked claws on his talons, his former courage, and strength greater in proportion than his body; and, now become a hawk, sufficiently benignant to none, he rages equally against all birds; and grieving himself, becomes the cause of grief to others.”

While the son of Lucifer is relating these wonders about his brother, hastening with panting speed, Phocæan Antenor, the keeper of his herds, runs up to him. “Alas, Peleus! Peleus!” says he, “I am the messenger to thee of a great calamity;” and then Peleus bids him declare whatever news it is that he has brought; and the Trachinian hero himself is in suspense, and trembles through apprehension. The other tells his story: “I had driven the weary bullocks to the winding shore, when the Sun at his height, in the midst of his course, could look back on as much of it as he could see to be now remaining; and a part of the oxen had bent their knees on the yellow sands, and, as they lay, viewed the expanse of the wide waters; some, with slow steps, were wandering here and there; others were swimming, and appearing with their lofty necks above the waves. A temple is hard by the sea, adorned neither with marble nor with gold, but made of solid beams, and shaded with an ancient grove; the Nereids and Nereus possess it. A sailor, while he was drying his nets upon the shore, told us that these were the Gods of the temple. Adjacent to this is a marsh, planted thickly with numerous willows, which the water of the stagnating waves of the sea has made into a swamp. From that spot, a huge monster, a wolf, roaring with a loud bellowing, alarms the neighbouring places, and comes forth from the thicket of the marsh, both having his thundering jaws covered with foam and with clotted blood, and his eyes suffused with red flame. Though he was raging both with fury and with hunger, still was he more excited by fury; for he did not care to satisfy his hunger by the slaughter of the oxen, and to satiate his dreadful appetite, but he mangled the whole herd, and, like a true foe, pulled each to the ground. Some, too, of ourselves, while we were defending them, wounded with his fatal bite, were killed. The shore and the nearest waves were red with blood, and the fens were filled with the lowings of the herd. But delay is dangerous, and the case does not allow us to hesitate: while anything is still left, let us all unite, and let us take up arms, arms, I say, and in a body let us bear weapons.”

Thus speaks the countryman. And the loss does not affect Peleus; but, remembering his crime, he considers that the bereaved Nereid has sent these misfortunes of his, as an offering to the departed Phocus. The Œtæan king commands his men to put on their armour, and to take up stout weapons; together with whom, he himself is preparing to go. But Halcyone, his wife, alarmed at the tumult, runs out, and not yet having arranged all her hair, even that which is arranged she throws in disorder; and clinging to the neck of her husband, she entreats him, both with words and tears, to send assistance without himself, and so to save two lives in one. The son of Æacus says to her, “O queen, lay aside thy commendable and affectionate fears; the kindness of thy proposal is too great for me. It does not please me, that arms should be employed against this new monster. The Divinity of the sea must be adored.” There is a lofty tower; a fire is upon the extreme summit, a place grateful to wearied ships. They go up there, and with sighs they behold the bulls lying scattered upon the sea shore, and the cruel ravager with blood-stained mouth, having his long hair stained with gore. Peleus, thence extending his hands towards the open sea, entreats the azure Psamathe to lay aside her wrath, and to give him her aid. But she is not moved by the words of the son of Æacus, thus entreating. Thetis, interceding on behalf of her husband, obtains that favour for him.

But still the wolf persists, not recalled from the furious slaughter, and keenly urged by the sweetness of the blood; until she changes him into marble, as he is fastening on the neck of a mangled heifer. His body preserves every thing except its colour. The colour of the stone shows that he is not now a wolf, and ought not now to be feared. Still, the Fates do not permit the banished Peleus to settle in this land: the wandering exile goes to the Magnetes, and there receives from the Hæmonian Acastus an expiation of the murder.

Ceyx, going to Claros, to consult the oracle about his brother’s fate, is shipwrecked on the voyage. Juno sends Iris to the God of Sleep, who, at her request, dispatches Morpheus to Halcyone, in a dream, to inform her of the death of her husband. She awakes in the morning, full of solicitude, and goes to the shore where she finds the body of Ceyx thrown up by the waves. She is about to cast herself into the sea in despair, when the Gods transform them both into king-fishers. In the mean time, Ceyx being disturbed in mind, both on account of the strange fate of his brother, and the wonders that had succeeded his brother, prepares to go to the Clarian God, that he may consult the sacred oracle, the consolation of mortals: for the profane Phorbas, with his Phlegyans, renders the oracle of Delphi inaccessible. Yet he first makes thee acquainted with his design, most faithful Halcyone, whose bones receive a chill, and a paleness, much resembling boxwood, comes over her face, and her cheeks are wet with tears gushing forth. Three times attempting to speak, three times she moistens her face with tears, and, sobs interrupting her affectionate complaints, she says: -

“What fault of mine, my dearest, has changed thy mind? Where is that care of me, which once used to exist? Canst thou now be absent without anxiety, thy Halcyone being left behind? Now, is a long journey pleasing to thee? Now, am I dearer to thee when at a distance? But I suppose thy journey is by land, and I shall only grieve, and shall not fear as well, and my anxiety will be free from apprehension. The seas and the aspect of the stormy ocean affright me. And lately I beheld broken planks on the sea shore; and often have I read the names upon tombs, without bodies there buried. And let not any deceitful assurance influence thy mind, that the grandson of Hippotas is thy father-in-law; who confines the strong winds in prison, and assuages the seas when he pleases. When, once let loose, the winds have taken possession of the deep, nothing is forbidden to them; every land and every sea is disregarded by them. Even the clouds of heaven do they insult, and by their bold onsets strike forth the brilliant fires. The more I know them, (for I do know them, and, when little, have often seen them in my father’s abode,) the more I think they are to be dreaded. But if thy resolution, my dear husband, cannot be altered by my entreaties, and if thou art but too determined to go; take me, too, as well. At least, we shall be tossed together; nor shall I fear anything, but what I shall be then suffering; and together we shall endure whatever shall happen; together we shall be carried over the wide seas.”

By such words and the tears of the daughter of Æolus, is her husband, son of the Morning Star, much affected; for the flame of love exists no less in him. But he neither wishes to abandon his proposed voyage, nor to admit Halcyone to a share in the danger; and he says, in answer, many things to console her timorous breast. And yet she does not, on that account, approve of his reasons. To them he adds this alleviation, with which alone he influences his affectionate wife: “All delay will, indeed, be tedious to me; but I swear to thee by the fire of my sire, (if only the fates allow me to return,) that I will come back before the moon has twice completed her orb.” When, by these promises, a hope has been given her of his speedy return, he forthwith orders a ship, drawn out of the dock, to be launched in the sea, and to be supplied with its proper equipments. On seeing this, Halcyone again shuddered, as though presaging the future, and shed her flowing tears, and gave him embraces; and at last, in extreme misery, she said, with a sad voice, “Farewell!” and then she sank with all her body to the ground.

But the youths, while Ceyx is still seeking pretexts for delay, in double rows, draw the oars towards their hardy breasts, and cleave the main with equal strokes. She raises her weeping eyes, and sees her husband standing on the crooked stern, and by waving his hand making the first signs to her; and she returns the signals. When the land has receded further, and her eyes are unable to distinguish his countenance: still, while she can, she follows the retreating ship with her sight. When this too, borne onward, cannot be distinguished from the distance; still she looks at the sails waving from the top of the mast. When she no longer sees the sails; she anxiously seeks her deserted bed, and lays herself on the couch. The bed, and the spot, renew the tears of Halcyone, and remind her what part of herself is wanting.

They have now gone out of harbour, and the breeze shakes the rigging; the sailor urges the pendent oars towards their sides; and fixes the sailyards on the top of the mast, and spreads the canvass full from the mast, and catches the coming breezes. Either the smaller part, or, at least, not more than half her course, had now been cut by the ship, and both lands were at a great distance, when, towards night, the sea began to grow white with swelling waves, and the boisterous East wind to blow with greater violence. Presently the master cries, “At once, lower the top sails, and furl the whole of the sail to the yards!” He orders, but the adverse storm impedes the execution; and the roaring of the sea does not allow any voice to be heard.

Yet, of their own accord, some hasten to draw in the oars, some to secure the sides, some to withdraw the sails from the winds. This one pumps up the waves, and pours back the sea into the sea; another takes off the yards. While these things are being done without any order, the raging storm is increasing, and the fierce winds wage war on every side, and stir up the furious main. The master of the ship is himself alarmed, and himself confesses that he does not know what is their present condition, nor what to order or forbid; so great is the amount of their misfortunes, and more powerful than all his skill. For the men are making a noise with their shouts, the cordage with its rattling, the heavy waves with the dashing of other waves, the skies with the thunder. The sea is upturned with billows, and appears to reach the heavens, and to sprinkle the surrounding clouds with its foam. And one while, when it turns up the yellow sands from the bottom, it is of the same colour with them; at another time it is blacker than the Stygian waves. Sometimes it is level, and is white with resounding foam. The Trachinian ship too, is influenced by these vicissitudes; and now aloft, as though from the summit of a mountain, it seems to look down upon the vallies and the depths of Acheron; at another moment, when the engulphing sea has surrounded it, sunk below, it seems to be looking at heaven above from the infernal waters. Struck on its side by the waves, it often sends forth a low crashing sound, and beaten against, it sounds with no less noise, than on an occasion when the iron battering ram, or the balista, is shaking the shattered towers. And as fierce lions are wont, gaining strength in their career, to rush with their breasts upon the weapons, and arms extended against them; so the water, when upon the rising of the winds it had rushed onwards, advanced against the rigging of the ship, and was much higher than it.

And now the bolts shrink, and despoiled of their covering of wax, the seams open wide, and afford a passage to the fatal waves. Behold! vast showers fall from the dissolving clouds, and you would believe that the whole of the heavens is descending into the deep, and that the swelling sea is ascending to the tracts of heaven. The sails are wet with the rain, and the waves of the ocean are mingled with the waters of the skies. The firmament is without its fires; and the gloomy night is oppressed both with its own darkness and that of the storm. Yet the lightnings disperse these, and give light as they flash; the waters are on fire with the flames of the thunder-bolts. And now, too, the waves make an inroad into the hollow texture of the ship; and as a soldier, superior to all the rest of the number, after he has often sprung forward against the fortifications of a defended city, at length gains his desires; and, inflamed with the desire of glory, though but one among a thousand more, he still mounts the wall, so, when the violent waves have beaten against the lofty sides, the fury of the tenth wave, rising more impetuously than the rest, rushes onward; and it ceases not to attack the wearied ship, before it descends within the walls, as it were, of the captured bark. Part, then, of the sea is still attempting to get into the ship, part is within it. All are now in alarm, with no less intensity than a city is wont to be alarmed, while some are undermining the walls without, and others within have possession of the walls. All art fails them, and their courage sinks; and as many shapes of death seem to rush and to break in upon them, as the waves that approach. One does not refrain from tears; another is stupefied; another calls those happy whom funeral rites await; another, in his prayers, addresses the Gods, and lifting up his hands in vain to that heaven which he sees not, implores their aid. His brothers and his parent recur to the mind of another; to another, his home, with his pledges of affection, and so what has been left behind by each.

The remembrance of Halcyone affects Ceyx; on the lips of Ceyx there is nothing but Halcyone; and though her alone he regrets, still he rejoices that she is absent. Gladly, too, would he look back to the shore of his native land, and turn his last glance towards his home; but he knows not where it is. The sea is raging in a hurricane so vast, and all the sky is concealed beneath the shade brought on by the clouds of pitchy darkness, and the face of the night is redoubled in gloom. The mast is broken by the violence of the drenching tempest; the helm, too, is broken; and the undaunted wave, standing over its spoil, looks down like a conqueror, upon the waves as they encircle below. Nor, when precipitated, does it rush down less violently, than if any God were to hurl Athos or Pindus, torn up from its foundations, into the open sea; and with its weight and its violence together, it sinks the ship to the bottom. With her, a great part of the crew overwhelmed in the deep water, and not rising again to the air, meet their fate. Some seize hold of portions and broken pieces of the ship. Ceyx himself seizes a fragment of the wreck, with that hand with which he was wont to wield the sceptre, and in vain, alas! he invokes his father, and his father-in-law. But chiefly on his lips, as he swims, is his wife Halcyone. Her he thinks of, and her name he repeats: he prays the waves to impel his body before her eyes; and that when dead he may be entombed by the hands of his friends. While he still swims, he calls upon Halcyone far away, as often as the billows allow him to open his mouth, and in the very waves he murmurs her name. When, lo! a darkening arch of waters breaks over the middle of the waves, and buries his head sinking beneath the bursting billow. Lucifer was obscured that night, and such that you could not have recognized him; and since he was not allowed to depart from the heavens, he concealed his face beneath thick clouds.

In the meantime, the daughter of Æolus, ignorant of so great misfortunes, reckons the nights; and now she hastens to prepare the garments for him to put on, and now, those which, when he comes, she herself may wear, and vainly promises herself his return. She, indeed, piously offers frankincense to all the Gods above; but, before all, she pays her adorations at the temple of Juno, and comes to the altars on behalf of her husband, who is not in existence. And she prays that her husband may be safe, and that he may return, and may prefer no woman before her. But this last alone can be her lot, out of so many of her wishes. But the Goddess endures not any longer to be supplicated on behalf of one who is dead; and, that she may repel her polluted hands from the altars, - she says, “Iris, most faithful messenger of my words, hasten quickly to the soporiferous court of Sleep, and command him, under the form of Ceyx who is dead, to send a vision to Halcyone, to relate her real misfortune.” Thus she says. Iris assumes garment of a thousand colours, and, marking the heavens with her curving arch, she repairs to the abode of the king, Sleep, as bidden, concealed beneath a rock.

There is near the Cimmerians a cave with a long recess, a hollowed mountain, the home and the habitation of slothful Sleep, into which the Sun, whether rising, or in his mid course, or setting, can never come. Fogs mingled with darkness are exhaled from the ground, and it is a twilight with a dubious light. No wakeful bird, with the notes of his crested features, there calls forth the morn; nor do the watchful dogs, or the geese more sagacious than the dogs, break the silence with their voices. No wild beasts, no cattle, no boughs waving with the breeze, no loud outbursts of the human voice, there make any sound; mute Rest has there her abode. But from the bottom of the rock runs a stream, the waters of Lethe, through which the rivulet, trickling with a murmuring noise amid the sounding pebbles, invites sleep. Before the doors of the cavern, poppies bloom in abundance, and innumerable herbs, from the juice of which the humid night gathers sleep, and spreads it over the darkened Earth. There is no door in the whole dwelling, to make a noise by the turning of the hinges; no porter at the entrance. But in the middle is a couch, raised high upon black ebony, stuffed with feathers, of a dark colour, concealed by a dark coverlet; on which the God himself lies, his limbs dissolved in sloth. Around him lie, in every direction, imitating divers shapes, unsubstantial dreams as many as the harvest bears ears of corn, the wood green leaves, the shore the sands thrown up. Into this, soon as the maiden had entered, and had put aside with her hands the visions that were in her way, the sacred house shone with the splendour of her garment, and the God, with difficulty lifting up his eyes sunk in languid sloth, again and again relapsing, and striking the upper part of his breast with his nodding chin, at last aroused himself from his dozing; and, raised on his elbow, he inquired why she had come; for he knew who she was.

But she replied, “Sleep, thou repose of all things; Sleep, thou gentlest of the Deities; thou peace of the mind, from which care flies, who dost soothe the hearts of men, wearied with the toils of the day, and refittest them for labour, command a vision, that resembles in similitude the real shape, to go to Halcyone, in Herculean Trachyn, in the form of the king, and to assume the form of one that has suffered shipwreck. Juno commands this.” After Iris had executed her commission, she departed; for she could no longer endure the effects of the vapour; and, as soon as she perceived sleep creeping over her limbs, she took to flight, and departed along the bow by which she had come just before.

But Father Sleep, out of the multitude of his thousand sons, raises Morpheus, a skilful artist, and an imitator of any human shape. No one more dexterously than he mimics the gait, and the countenance, and the mode of speaking; he adds the dress, too, and the words most commonly used by any one. But he imitates men only; for another one becomes a wild beast, becomes a bird, or becomes a serpent, with its lengthened body: this one, the Gods above call Icelos; the tribe of mortals, Phobetor. There is likewise a third, master of a different art, called Phantasos: he cleverly changes himself into earth, and stone, and water, and a tree, and all those things which are destitute of life. These are wont, by night, to show their features to kings and to generals, while others wander amid the people and the commonalty. These, Sleep, the aged God, passes by, and selects Morpheus alone from all his brothers, to execute the commands of the daughter of Thaumas; and again he both drops his head, sunk in languid drowsiness, and shrinks back within the lofty couch.

Morpheus flies through the dark with wings that make no noise, and in a short space of intervening time arrives at the Hæmonian city; and, laying aside his wings from off his body, he assumes the form of Ceyx; and in that form, wan, and like one without blood, without garments, he stands before the bed of his wretched wife. The beard of the hero appears to be dripping, and the water to be falling thickly from his soaking hair. Then leaning on the bed, with tears running down his face, he says these words: “My most wretched wife, dost thou recognise thy Ceyx, or are my looks so changed with death? Observe me; thou wilt surely know me: and, instead of thy husband, thou wilt find the ghost of thy husband. Thy prayers, Halcyone, have availed me nothing; I have perished. Do not promise thyself, thus deceived, my return. The cloudy South wind caught my ship in the Ægean Sea, and dashed it to pieces, tossed by the mighty blasts; and the waves choked my utterance, in vain calling upon thy name. It is no untruthful messenger that tells thee this: thou dost not hear these things through vague rumours. I, myself, shipwrecked, in person, am telling thee my fate. Come, arise then, shed tears, and put on mourning; and do not send me unlamented to the phantom realms of Tartarus.”

To these words Morpheus adds a voice, which she may believe to be that of her husband. He seems, too, to be shedding real tears, and his hands have the gesture of Ceyx. As she weeps, Halcyone groans aloud, and moves her arms in her sleep, and catching at his body, grasps the air; and she cries aloud, “Stay, whither dost thou hurry? We will go together.” Disturbed by her own voice, and by the appearance of her husband, she shakes off sleep; and first she looks about there, to see if he, who has been so lately seen, is there; for the servants, roused by her voice, have brought in lights. After she has found him nowhere, she smites her face with her hands, and tears her garments from off her breast, and beats her breast itself. Nor cares she to loosen her hair; she tears it, and says to her nurse, as she inquires what is the occasion of her sorrow: “Halcyone is no more! no more! with her own Ceyx is she dead. Away with words of comfort. He has perished by shipwreck. I have seen him, and I knew him; and as he departed, desirous to detain him, I extended my hands towards him. The ghost fled: but, yet it was the undoubted and the real ghost of my husband. It had not, indeed, if thou askest me that, his wonted features; nor was he looking cheerful with his former countenance. Hapless, I beheld him, pale, and naked, and with his hair still dripping. Lo! ill-fated man, he stood on this very spot;” and she seeks the prints of his footsteps, if any are left. “This it was, this is what I dreaded in my ill-boding mind, and I entreated that thou wouldst not, deserting me, follow the winds. But, I could have wished, since thou didst depart to perish, that, at least, thou hadst taken me as well. To have gone with thee, yes, with thee, would have been an advantage to me; for then neither should I have spent any part of my life otherwise than together with thee, nor would my death have been divided from thee. Now, absent from thee, I perish; now, absent, I am tossed on the waves; and the sea has thee without me.

“My heart were more cruel than the sea itself, were I to strive to protract my life any further; and, were I to struggle to survive so great a misfortune. But I will not struggle, nor, hapless one, will I abandon thee; and, at least, I will now come to be thy companion. And, in the tomb, if the urn does not, yet the inscription shall unite us: if I touch not thy bones with my bones, still will I unite thy name with my name.” Grief forbids her saying more, and wailings come between each word, and groans are heaved from her sorrow-stricken breast.

It is now morning: she goes forth from her abode to the sea-shore, and, wretched, repairs to that place from which she had seen him go, and says, “While he lingered, and while he was loosening the cables, at his departure, he gave me kisses upon this sea-shore;” and while she calls to recollection the incidents which she had observed with her eyes, and looks out upon the sea, she observes on the flowing wave, I know not what object, like a body, within a distant space: and at first she is doubtful what it is. After the water has brought it a little nearer, and, although it is still distant, it is plain that it is a corpse. Ignorant who it may be, because it is ship-wrecked, she is moved at the omen, and, though unknown, would fain give it a tear. “Alas! thou wretched one!” she says, “whoever thou art; and if thou hast any wife!” Driven by the waves, the body approaches nearer. The more she looks at it, the less and the less is she mistress of her senses. And now she sees it brought close to the land, that now she can well distinguish it: it is her husband. “’Tis he!” she exclaims, and, on the instant, she tears her face, her hair, and her garments; and, extending her trembling hands towards Ceyx, she says, “And is it thus, Oh dearest husband! is it thus, Oh ill-fated one! that thou dost return to me?”

A mole, made by the hand of man, adjoins the waves, which breaks the first fury of the ocean, and weakens the first shock of its waters. Upon that she leaped, and ’tis wondrous that she could. She flew, and beating the light air with her wings newly formed, she, a wretched bird, skimmed the surface of the water. And, while she flew, her croaking mouth, with its slender bill, uttered a sound like that of one in sadness, and full of complaining. But when she touched the body, dumb, and without blood, embracing the beloved limbs with her new-made wings, in vain she gave him cold kisses with her hardened bill. The people were in doubt whether Ceyx was sensible of this, or whether, by the motion of the wave, he seemed to raise his countenance; but really he was sensible of it; and, at length, through the pity of the Gods above, both were changed into birds. Meeting with the same fate, even then their love remained. Nor, when now birds, is the conjugal tie dissolved: they couple, and they become parents; and for seven calm days, in the winter-time, does Halcyone brood upon her nest floating on the sea. Then the passage of the deep is safe; Æolus keeps the winds in, and restrains them from sallying forth, and secures a smooth sea for his descendants.

The Nymph Hesperia flying from Æsacus, who is enamoured of her, is bitten by a serpent, and instantly dies from the effects of the wound. He is so afflicted at her death, that he throws himself into the sea, and is transformed into a didapper. Some old man observes them as they fly over the widely extended seas, and commends their love, preserved to the end of their existence. One, close by, or the same, if chance so orders it, says, “This one, too, which you see, as it cuts through the sea, and having its legs drawn up,” pointing at a didapper, with its wide throat, “was the son of a king. And, if you want to come down to him in one lengthened series, his ancestors are Ilus, and Assaracus, and Ganymede, snatched away by Jupiter, and the aged Laomedon, and Priam, to whom were allotted the last days of Troy. He himself was the brother of Hector, and had he not experienced a strange fate in his early youth, perhaps he would have had a name not inferior to that of Hector; although the daughter of Dymas bore this last. Alexirhoë, the daughter of the two-horned Granicus, is said secretly to have brought forth Æsacus, under shady Ida.

“He loathed the cities, and distant from the splendid court, frequented the lonely mountains, and the unambitious fields; nor went but rarely among the throngs of Ilium. Yet, not having a breast either churlish, or impregnable to love, he espies Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenus, on the banks of her sire, who has been often sought by him throughout all the woods, drying her locks, thrown over her shoulders, in the sun. The Nymph, thus seen, takes to flight, just as the frightened hind from the tawny wolf; and as the water-duck, surprised at a distance, having left her wonted stream, from the hawk. Her the Trojan hero pursues, and, swift with love, closely follows her, made swift by fear. Behold! a snake, lurking in the grass, with its barbed sting, wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in her body. With her flight is her life cut short. Frantic, he embraces her breathless, and cries aloud, - “I grieve, I grieve that ever I pursued thee. But I did not apprehend this; nor was it of so much value to me to conquer. We two have proved the destruction of wretched thee. The wound was given by the serpent; by me was the occasion given. I should be more guilty than he, did I not give the consolation for thy fate by my own death.” Thus he said; and from a rock which the hoarse waves had undermined, he hurled himself into the sea. Tethys, pitying him as he fell, received him softly, and covered him with feathers as he swam through the sea; and the power of obtaining the death he sought was not granted to him. The lover is vexed that, against his will, he is obliged to live on, and that opposition is made to his spirit, desirous to depart from its wretched abode. And, as he has assumed newformed wings on his shoulders, he flies aloft, and again he throws his body in the waves: his feathers break the fall. Æsacus is enraged; and headlong he plunges into the deep, and incessantly tries the way of destruction. Love caused his leanness; the spaces between the joints of his legs are long; his neck remains long, and his head is far away from his body. He loves the sea, and has his name because he plunges in it.

The Greeks assemble their troops at Aulis, to proceed against the city of Troy, and revenge the rape of Helen; but the fleet is detained in port by contrary winds. Calchas, the priest, after a prediction concerning the success of the expedition, declares that the weather will never be favourable till Agamemnon shall have sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. She is immediately led to the altar for that purpose; but Diana, appeased by this act of obedience, carries away the maiden, and substitutes a hind in her place, on which a fair wind arises. Upon the Greeks landing at Troy, a battle is fought, in which Protesilaüs is killed by Hector, and Achilles kills Cygnus, a Trojan, on which his father Neptune transforms him into a swan.

His father Priam mourned him, not knowing that Æsacus, having assumed wings, was still living; Hector, too, with his brothers, made unavailing offerings at a tomb, that bore his name on it. The presence of Paris was wanting, at this mournful office: who, soon after, brought into his country a lengthened war, together with a ravished wife; and a thousand ships uniting together, followed him, and, together with them, the whole body of the Pelasgian nation. Nor would vengeance have been delayed, had not the raging winds made the seas impassable, and the Bœotian land detained in fishy Aulis the ships ready to depart. Here, when they had prepared a sacrifice to Jupiter, after the manner of their country, as the ancient altar was heated with kindled fires, the Greeks beheld an azure-coloured serpent creep into a plane tree, which was standing near the sacrifice they had begun. There was on the top of the tree a nest of twice four birds, which the serpent seized together, and the dam as she fluttered around the scene of her loss, and he buried them in his greedy maw. All stood amazed. But Calchas, the son of Thestor, a soothsayer, foreseeing the truth, says, “Rejoice, Pelasgians, we shall conquer. Troy will fall, but the continuance of our toil will be long;” and he allots the nine birds to the years of the war. The serpent, just as he is, coiling around the green branches in the tree, becomes a stone, and, under the form of a serpent, retains that stone form.

Nereus continued boisterous in the Ionian waves, and did not impel the sails onwards; and there are some who think that Neptune favoured Troy, because he made the walls of the city. But not so the son of Thestor. For neither was he ignorant, nor did he conceal, that the wrath of the virgin Goddess must be appeased by the blood of a virgin. After the public good had prevailed over affection, and the king over the father, and Iphigenia, ready to offer her chaste blood, stood before the altar, while the priests were weeping; the Goddess was appeased, and cast a mist before their eyes, and, amid the service and the hurry of the rites, and the voices of the suppliants, is said to have changed Iphigenia, the Mycenian maiden, for a substituted hind. Wherefore, when the Goddess was appeased by a death which was more fitting, and at the same moment the wrath of Phœbe, and of the sea was past, the thousand ships received the winds astern, and having suffered much, they gained the Phrygian shore.

There is a spot in the middle of the world, between the land and the sea, and the regions of heaven, the confines of the threefold universe, whence is beheld whatever anywhere exists, although it may be in far distant regions, and every sound pierces the hollow ears. Of this place Fame is possessed, and chooses for herself a habitation on the top of a tower, and has added innumerable avenues, and a thousand openings to her house, and has closed the entrances with no gates. Night and day are they open. It is all of sounding brass; it is all resounding, and it reechoes the voice, and repeats what it hears. Within there is no rest, and silence in no part. Nor yet is there a clamour, but the murmur of a low voice, such as is wont to arise from the waves of the sea, if one listens at a distance, or like the sound which the end of the thundering makes when Jupiter has clashed the black clouds together. A crowd occupies the hall; the fickle vulgar come and go; and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, wander up and down, and circulate confused words. Of these, some fill the empty ears with conversation; some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. There, is Credulity, there, rash Mistake, and empty Joy, and alarmed Fears, and sudden Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful origin. She sees what things are done in heaven and on the sea, and on the earth; and she pries into the whole universe.

She has made it known that Grecian ships are on their way, with valiant troops: nor does the enemy appear in arms unlooked for. The Trojans oppose their landing, and defend the shore, and thou, Protesilaüs, art, by the decrees of fate, the first to fall by the spear of Hector; and the battles now commenced, and the courageous spirits of the Trojans, and Hector, till then unknown, cost the Greeks dear. Nor do the Phrygians experience at small expense of blood what the Grecian right hand can do. And now the Sigæan shores are red with blood: now Cygnus, the son of Neptune, has slain a thousand men. Now is Achilles pressing on in his chariot, and levelling the Trojan ranks, with the blow of his Peleian spear; and seeking through the lines either Cygnus or Hector, he engages with Cygnus: Hector is reserved for the tenth year. Then animating the horses, having their white necks pressed with the yoke, he directed his chariot against the enemy, and brandishing his quivering spear with his arm, he said, “O youth, whoever thou art, take this consolation in thy death, that thou art slain by the Hæmonian Achilles.”

Thus far the grandson of Æacus. His heavy lance followed his words. But, although there was no missing in the unerring lance, yet it availed nothing, by the sharpness of its point, thus discharged; and as it only bruised his breast with a blunt stroke, the other said, “Thou son of a Goddess, (for by report have we known of thee beforehand) why art thou surprised that wounds are warded off from me? (for Achilles was surprised); not this helmet that thou seest tawny with the horse’s mane, nor the hollowed shield, the burden of my left arm, are assistant to me; from them ornament alone is sought; for this cause, too, Mars is wont to take up arms. All the assistance of defensive armour shall be removed, and yet I shall come off unhurt. It is something to be born, not of a Nereid, but of one who rules both Nereus and his daughter, and the whole ocean.”

Thus he spoke; and he hurled against the descendant of Æacus his dart, destined to stick in the rim of his shield; it broke through both the brass and the next nine folds of bull’s hide; but stopping in the tenth circle of the hide, the hero wrenched it out, and again hurled the quivering weapon with a strong hand; again his body was without a wound, and unharmed, nor was a third spear able even to graze Cygnus, unprotected, and exposing himself. Achilles raged no otherwise than as a bull, in the open Circus, when with his dreadful horns he butts against the purple-coloured garments, used as the means of provoking him, and perceives that his wounds are evaded. Still, he examines whether the point has chanced to fall from off the spear. It is still adhering to the shaft. “My hand then is weak,” says he, “and it has spent all the strength it had before, upon one man. For decidedly it was strong enough, both when at first I overthrew the walls of Lyrnessus, or when I filled both Tenedos and Eëtionian Thebes with their own blood. Or when Caÿcus flowed empurpled with the slaughter of its people: and Telephus was twice sensible of the virtue of my spear. Here, too, where so many have been slain, heaps of whom I both have made along this shore, and I now behold, my right hand has proved mighty, and is mighty.”

Thus he spoke; and as if he distrusted what he had done before, he hurled his spear against Menœtes, one of the Lycian multitude, who was standing opposite, and he tore asunder both his coat of mail, and his breast beneath it. He beating the solid earth with his dying head, he drew the same weapon from out of the reeking wound, and said, “This is the hand, this the lance, with which I conquered but now. The same will I use against him; in his case, I pray that the event may prove the same.” Thus he said, and he hurled it at Cygnus, nor did the ashen lance miss him; and, not escaped by him, it resounded on his left shoulder: thence it was repelled, as though by a wall, or a solid rock. Yet Achilles saw Cygnus marked with blood, where he had been struck, and he rejoiced, but in vain. There was no wound; that was the blood of Menœtes.

Then indeed, raging, he leaps headlong from his lofty chariot, and hand to hand, with his gleaming sword striking at his fearless foe, he perceives that the shield and the helmet are pierced with his sword, and that his weapon, too, is blunted upon his hard body. He endures it no longer; and drawing back his shield, he three or four times strikes the face of the hero, and his hollow temples, with the hilt of the sword; and following, he presses onward as the other gives ground, and confounds him, and drives him on, and gives him no respite in his confusion. Horror seizes on him, and darkness swims before his eyes; and as he moves backwards his retreating steps, a stone in the middle of the field stands in his way. Impelled over this, with his breast upwards, Achilles throws Cygnus with great violence, and dashes him to the earth. Then, pressing down his breast with his shield and his hard knees, he draws tight the straps of his helmet; which, fastened beneath his pressed chin, squeeze close his throat, and take away his respiration and the passage of his breath.

He is preparing to strip his vanquished foe; he sees nothing but his armour, left behind. The God of the Ocean changed his body into a white bird, of which he so lately bore the name.

A truce ensuing, the Grecian chiefs having assembled at a feast, express their surprise at the fact of Cygnus being invulnerable. Nestor, by way of showing a still more surprising instance, relates how the Nymph Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, having yielded to the caresses of Neptune, was transformed by him into a man, and made invulnerable. Cæneus being present at the wedding feast of Pirithoüs, the son of Ixion, where Eurytus was a guest, the latter, being elevated with wine, made an attempt upon Hippodamia, the bride; on which a quarrel arose between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. After many on both sides had been slain, Cæneus still remained unhurt; on which, the Centaurs having heaped up trunks of trees upon him, he was pressed to death; Neptune then changed his body into a bird.

This toil and this combat brought on a cessation for many days; and both sides rested, laying aside their arms. And while a watchful guard was keeping the Phrygian walls, and a watchful guard was keeping the Argive trenches, a festive day had arrived, on which Achilles, the conqueror of Cygnus, appeased Pallas with the blood of a heifer, adorned with fillets. As soon as he had placed its entrails upon the glowing altars, and the smell, acceptable to the Deities, mounted up to the skies, the sacred rites had their share, the other part was served up at the table. The chiefs reclined on couches, and sated their bodies with roasted flesh, and banished both their cares and their thirst with wine. No harps, no melody of voices, no long pipe of boxwood pierced with many a hole, delights them; but in discourse they pass the night, and valour is the subject-matter of their conversation. They relate the combats of the enemy and their own; and often do they delight to recount, in turn, both the dangers that they have encountered and that they have surmounted. For of what else should Achilles speak? or of what, in preference, should they speak before the great Achilles? But especially the recent victory over the conquered Cygnus was the subject of discourse. It seemed wonderful to them all, that the body of the youth was penetrable by no weapon, and was susceptible of no wounds, and that it blunted the steel itself. This same thing, the grandson of Æacus, this, the Greeks wondered at.

When thus Nestor says to them: “Cygnus has been the only despiser of weapons in your time, and penetrable by no blows. But I myself formerly saw the Perrhæbean Cæneus bear a thousand blows with his body unhurt; Cæneus the Perrhæbean, I say, who, famous for his achievements, inhabited Othrys. And that this, too, might be the more wondrous in him, he was born a woman.” They are surprised, whoever are present, at the singular nature of this prodigy, and they beg him to tell the story. Among them, Achilles says, “Pray tell us, (for we all have the same desire to hear it,) O eloquent old man, the wisdom of our age; who was this Cæneus, and why changed to the opposite sex? in what war, and in the engagements of what contest was he known to thee? by whom was he conquered, if he was conquered by any one?”

Then the aged man replied: “Although tardy old age is a disadvantage to me, and many things which I saw in my early years escape me now, yet I remember most of them; and there is nothing, amid so many transactions of war and peace, that is more firmly fixed in my mind than that circumstance. And if extended age could make any one a witness of many deeds, I have lived two hundred years, and now my third century is being passed by me. Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, was remarkable for her charms; the most beauteous virgin among the Thessalian maids, and one sighed for in vain by the wishes of many wooers through the neighbouring cities, and through thy cities, Achilles, for she was thy countrywoman. Perhaps, too, Peleus would have attempted that alliance; but at that time the marriage of thy mother had either befallen him, or had been promised him. Cænis did not enter into any nuptial ties; and as she was walking along the lonely shore, she suffered violence from the God of the ocean. ’Twas thus that report stated; and when Neptune had experienced the pleasures of this new amour, he said, ‘Be thy wishes secure from all repulse; choose whatever thou mayst desire.’ The same report has related this too; Cænis replied, ‘This mishap makes my desire extreme, that I may not be in a condition to suffer any such thing in future. Grant that I be no longer a woman, and thou wilt have granted me all.’ She spoke these last words with a hoarser tone, and the voice might seem to be that of a man, as indeed it was.

“For now the God of the deep ocean had consented to her wish; and had granted moreover that he should not be able to be pierced by any wounds, or to fall by any steel. Exulting in his privilege, the Atracian departed; and now spent his time in manly exercises, and roamed over the Peneïan plains. Pirithoüs, the son of the bold Ixion, had married Hippodame, and had bidden the cloud-born monsters to sit down at the tables ranged in order, in a cave shaded with trees. The Hæmonian nobles were there; I, too, was there, and the festive palace resounded with the confused rout. Lo! they sing the marriage song, and the halls smoke with the fires; the maiden, too, is there, remarkable for her beauty, surrounded by a crowd of matrons and newly married women. We all pronounce Pirithoüs fortunate in her for a wife; an omen which we had well nigh falsified. For thy breast, Eurytus, most savage of the savage Centaurs, is inflamed as much with wine as with seeing the maiden; and drunkenness, redoubled by lust, holds sway over thee. On the sudden the tables being overset, disturb the feast, and the bride is violently dragged away by her seized hair. Eurytus snatches up Hippodame, and the others such as each one fancies, or is able to seize; and there is all the appearance of a captured city. The house rings with the cries of women. Quickly we all rise; and first, Theseus says, ‘What madness, Eurytus, is impelling thee, who, while I still live, dost provoke Pirithoüs, and, in thy ignorance, in one dost injure two?’ And that the valiant hero may not say these things in vain, he pushes them off as they are pressing on, and takes her whom they have seized away from them as they grow furious.

“He says nothing in answer, nor, indeed, can he defend such actions by words; but he attacks the face of her protector with insolent hands, and strikes his generous breast. By chance, there is near at hand an ancient bowl, rough with projecting figures, which, huge as it is, the son of Ægeus, himself huger still, takes up and hurls full in his face. He, vomiting both from his wounds and his mouth clots of blood, and brains and wine together, lying on his back, kicks on the soaking sand. The double-limbed Centaurs are inflamed at the death of their brother; and all vying, with one voice exclaim, ‘To arms! to arms!’ Wine gives them courage, and, in the first onset, cups hurled are flying about, and shattered casks and hollow cauldrons; things before adapted for a banquet, now for war and slaughter. First, the son of Ophion, Amycus, did not hesitate to spoil the interior of the house of its ornaments; and first, from the shrine he tore up a chandelier, thick set with blazing lamps; and lifting it on high, like him who attempts to break the white neck of the bull with sacrificial axe, he dashed it against the forehead of Celadon the Lapithean, and left his skull mashed into his face, no longer to be recognized. His eyes started out, and the bones of his face being dashed to pieces, his nose was driven back, and was fixed in the middle of his palate. Him, Belates the Pellæan, having torn away the foot of a maple table, laid flat on the ground, with his chin sunk upon his breast, and vomiting forth his teeth mixed with blood; and sent him, by a twofold wound, to the shades of Tartarus.

“As Gryneus stood next, looking at the smoking altar with a grim look, he said, ‘And why do we not make use of this?’ and then he raised an immense altar, together with its fire; and hurled it into the midst of the throng of the Lapithæ, and struck down two of them, Broteus and Orius. The mother of Orius was Mycale, who was known by her incantations to have often drawn down the horns of the struggling moon. On this Exadius says, ‘Thou shalt not go unpunished, if only the opportunity of getting a weapon is given me;’ and, as his weapon, he wields the antlers of a votive stag, which were upon a lofty pine-tree. With the double branches of these, Gryneus is pierced through the eyes, and has those eyes scooped out. A part of them adheres to the antlers, a part runs down his beard, and hangs down clotted with gore. Lo! Rhœtus snatches up an immense flaming brand, from the middle of the altar, and on the right side breaks through the temples of Charaxus, covered with yellow hair. His locks, seized by the violent flames, burn like dry corn, and the blood seared in the wound emits a terrific noise in its hissing, such as the iron glowing in the flames is often wont to emit, which, when the smith has drawn it out with the crooked pincers, he plunges into the trough; whereon it whizzes, and, sinking in the bubbling water, hisses. Wounded, he shakes the devouring fire from his locks, and takes upon his shoulders the threshold, torn up out of the ground, a whole waggon-load, which its very weight hinders him from throwing full against the foe. The stony mass, too, bears down Cometes, a friend, who is standing at a short distance; nor does Rhœtus then restrain his joy, and he says, ‘In such manner do I pray that the rest of the throng of thy party may be brave;’ and then he increases the wound, redoubled with the half-burnt stake, and three or four times he breaks the sutures of his head with heavy blows, and its bones sink within the oozing brains.

“Victorious, he passes on to Evagrus, and Corythus, and Dryas; of which number, when Corythus, having his cheeks covered with their first down, has fallen, Evagrus says, ‘What glory has been acquired by thee, in killing a boy?’ Rhœtus permits him to say no more, and fiercely thrusts the glowing flames into the open mouth of the hero, as he is speaking, and through the mouth into the breast. Thee, too, cruel Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire around his head, but the same issue does not await thee as well. Thou piercest him with a stake burnt at the end, while triumphing in the success of an uninterrupted slaughter, in the spot where the neck is united to the shoulder. Rhœtus groans aloud, and with difficulty wrenches the stake out of the hard bone, and, drenched in his own blood, he flies. Orneus flies, too, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded in his right shoulder-blade, and Thaumas with Pisenor; Mermerus, too, who lately excelled all in speed of foot, but now goes more slowly from the wound he has received; Pholus, too, and Melaneus, and Abas a hunter of boars, and Astylos the augur, who has in vain dissuaded his own party from this warfare. He also says to Nessus, as he dreads the wounds, ‘Fly not! for thou shalt be reserved for the bow of Hercules.’ But Eurynomus and Lycidas, and Areos, and Imbreus did not escape death, all of whom the right hand of Dryas pierced right through. Thou, too, Crenæus, didst receive a wound in front, although thou didst turn thy back in flight; for looking back, thou didst receive the fatal steel between thy two eyes, where the nose is joined to the lower part of the forehead. In the midst of so much noise, Aphidas was lying fast asleep from the wine which he had drunk incessantly, and was not aroused, and in his languid hand was grasping the mixed bowl, stretched at full length upon the shaggy skin of a bear of Ossa. Soon as Phorbas beheld him from afar, wielding no arms, he inserted his fingers in the strap of his lance, and said, ‘Drink thy wine mingled with the water of Styx;’ and, delaying no longer, he hurled his javelin against the youth, and the ash pointed with steel was driven into his neck, as, by chance, he lay there on his back. His death happened without his being sensible of it; and the blood flowed from his full throat, both upon the couch and into the bowl itself.

“I saw Petræus endeavouring to tear up an acorn-bearing oak from the earth; and, as he was grasping it in his embrace, and was shaking it on this side and that, and was moving about the loosened tree, the lance of Pirithoüs hurled at the ribs of Petræus, transfixed his struggling breast together with the tough oak. They said, too, that Lycus fell by the valour of Pirithoüs, and that Chromis fell by the hand of Pirithoüs. But each of them gave less glory to the conqueror, than Dictys and Helops gave. Helops was transfixed by the javelin, which passed right through his temples, and, hurled from the right side, penetrated to his left ear. Dictys, slipping from the steep point of a rock, while, in his fear, he is flying from the pursuing son of Ixion, falls down headlong, and, by the weight of his body, breaks a huge ash tree, and spits his own entrails upon it, thus broken. Aphareus advances as his avenger, and endeavours to hurl a stone torn away from the mountain. As he is endeavouring to do so, the son of Ægeus attacks him with an oaken club, and breaks the huge bones of his arm, and has neither leisure, nor, indeed, does he care to put his useless body to death; and he leaps upon the back of the tall Bianor, not used to bear any other than himself; and he fixes his knees in his ribs, and holding his long hair, seized with his left hand, shatters his face, and his threatening features, and his very hard temples, with the knotty oak. With his oak, too, he levels Nedymnus, and Lycotas the darter, and Hippasus having his breast covered with his flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods, and Tereus, who used to carry home the bears, caught in the Hæmonian mountains, alive and raging.

“Demoleon could not any longer endure Theseus enjoying this success in the combat, and he tried with vast efforts to tear up from the thick-set wood an aged pine; because he could not effect this, he hurled it, broken short, against his foe. But Theseus withdrew afar from the approaching missile, through the warning of Pallas; so at least he himself wished it to be thought. Yet the tree did not fall without effect: for it struck off from the throat of the tall Crantor, both his breast and his left shoulder. He, Achilles, had been the armour-bearer of thy father: him Amyntor, king of the Dolopians, when conquered in war, had given to the son of Æacus, as a pledge and confirmation of peace. When Peleus saw him at a distance, mangled with a foul wound, he said, ‘Accept however, Crantor, most beloved of youths, this sacrifice;’ and, with a strong arm, and energy of intention, he hurled his ashen lance against Demoleon, which broke through the enclosures of his ribs, and quivered, sticking amid the bones. He draws out with his hand the shaft without the point; even that follows, with much difficulty; the point is retained within his lungs. The very pain gives vigour to his resolution; though wounded, he rears against the enemy, and tramples upon the hero with his horse’s feet. The other receives the re-echoing strokes upon his helmet and his shield, and defends his shoulders, and holds his arms extended before him, and through the shoulder-blades he pierces two breasts at one stroke. But first, from afar, he had consigned to death Phlegræus, and Hyles; in closer combat, Hiphinoüs and Clanis. To these is added Dorylas, who had his temples covered with a wolf’s skin, and the real horns of oxen reddened with much blood, that performed the duty of a cruel weapon.

“To him I said, for courage gave me strength, ‘Behold, how much thy horns are inferior to my steel;’ and then I threw my javelin. When he could not avoid this, he held up his right hand before his forehead, about to receive the blow; and to his forehead his hand was pinned. A shout arose; but Peleus struck him delaying, and overpowered by the painful wound, (for he was standing next to him) with his sword beneath the middle of his belly. He leaped forth, and fiercely dragged his own bowels on the ground, and trod on them thus dragged, and burst them thus trodden; and he entangled his legs, as well in them, and fell down, with his belly emptied of its inner parts. Nor did thy beauty, Cyllarus, save thee while fighting, if only we allow beauty to that monstrous nature of thine. His beard was beginning to grow; the colour of his beard was that of gold; and golden-coloured hair was hanging from his shoulders to the middle of his shoulder-blades. In his face there was a pleasing briskness; his neck, and his shoulders, and his hands, and his breast were resembling the applauded statues of the artists, and so in those parts in which he was a man; nor was the shape of the horse beneath that shape, faulty and inferior to that of the man. Give him but the neck and the head of a horse, and he would be worthy of Castor. So fit is his back to be sat upon, so stands his breast erect with muscle; he is all over blacker than black pitch; yet his tail is white; the colour, too, of his legs is white. Many a female of his own kind longed for him; but Hylonome alone gained him, than whom no female more handsome lived in the lofty woods, among the half beasts. She alone attaches Cyllarus, both by her blandishments, and by loving, and by confessing that she loves him. Her care, too, of her person is as great as can be in those limbs: so that her hair is smoothed with a comb; so that she now decks herself with rosemary, now with violets or roses, and sometimes she wears white lilies; and twice a day she washes her face with streams that fall from the height of the Pagasæan wood; and twice she dips her body in the stream: and she throws over her shoulder or her left side no skins but what are becoming, and are those of choice beasts.

“Their love was equal: together they wandered upon the mountains; together they entered the caves; and then, too, together had they entered the Lapithæan house; together were they waging the fierce warfare. The author of the deed is unknown: but a javelin came from the left side, and pierced thee, Cyllarus, below the spot where the breast is joined to the neck. The heart, being pierced with a small wound, grew cold, together with the whole body, after the weapon was drawn out. Immediately, Hylonome receives his dying limbs, and cherishes the wound, by laying her hand on it, and places her mouth on his, and strives to stop the fleeting life. When she sees him dead, having uttered what the clamour hinders from reaching my ears, she falls upon the weapon that has pierced him, and as she dies, embraces her husband. He, too, now stands before my eyes, Phæocomes, namely, who had bound six lions’ skins together with connecting knots; covered all over, both horse and man. He, having discharged the trunk of a tree, which two yokes of oxen joined together could hardly have moved, battered the son of Phonolenus on the top of his head. The very broad round form of his skull was broken; and through his mouth, and through his hollow nostrils, and his eyes, and his ears, his softened brains poured down; just as curdled milk is wont through the oaken twigs, or as any liquor flows under the weight of a well-pierced sieve, and is squeezed out thick through the numerous holes. But I, while he was preparing to strip him of his arms as he lay, (this thy sire knows,) plunged my sword into the lower part of his belly, as he was spoiling him. Chthonius, too, and Teleboas, lay pierced by my sword. The former was bearing a two-forked bough as his weapon, the latter a javelin; with his javelin he gave me a wound. You see the marks; look! the old scar is still visible.

“Then ought I to have been sent to the taking of Troy; then I might, if not have overcome, still have stayed the arms of the mighty Hector. But at that time Hector was not existing, or but a boy; and now my age is failing. Why tell thee of Periphas, the conqueror of the two-formed Pyretus? Why of Ampyx, who fixed his cornel-wood spear, without a point, full in the face of the four-footed Oëclus? Macareus, struck down the Pelethronian Erigdupus, by driving a crowbar into his breast. I remember, too, that a hunting spear, hurled by the hand of Nessus, was buried in the groin of Cymelus. And do not believe that Mopsus, the son of Ampycus, only foretold things to come; a two-formed monster was slain by Mopsus, darting at him, and Odites in vain attempted to speak, his tongue being nailed to his chin, and his chin to his throat. Cæneus had put five to death, Stiphelus, and Bromus, and Antimachus, and Helimus, and Pyracmos, wielding the axe. I do not remember their respective wounds, but I marked their numbers, and their names. Latreus, most huge both in his limbs and his body, sallied forth, armed with the spoils of Emathian Halesus, whom he had consigned to death. His age was between that of a youth, and an old man; his vigour that of a youth; grey hairs variegated his temples. Conspicuous by his buckler, and his helmet, and his Macedonian pike; and turning his face towards both sides, he brandished his arms, and rode in one same round, and vaunting, poured forth thus many words into the yielding air: -

“‘And shall I put up with thee, too, Cænis? for to me thou shalt ever be a woman, to me always Cænis. Does not thy natal origin lower thy spirit? And does it not occur to thy mind for what foul deed thou didst get thy reward, and at what price the false resemblance to a man? Consider both what thou wast born, as well as what thou hast submitted to: go, and take up a distaff together with thy baskets, and twist the threads with thy thumb; leave warfare to men.’ As he is vaunting in such terms, Cæneus pierces his side, stretched in running, with a lance hurled at him, just where the man is joined to the horse. He raves with pain, and strikes at the exposed face of the Phylleian youth with his pike. It bounds back no otherwise than hail from the roof of a house; or than if any one were to beat a hollow drum with a little pebble. Hand to hand he encounters him, and strives to plunge his sword into his tough side; but the parts are impervious to his sword. ‘Yet,’ says he, ‘thou shalt not escape me; with the middle of the sword shalt thou be slain, since the point is blunt;’ and then he slants the sword against his side, and grasps his stomach with his long right arm. The blow produces an echo, as on a body of marble when struck; and the shivered blade flies different ways, upon striking his neck.

“After Cæneus had enough exposed his unhurt limbs to him in his amazement, ‘Come now,’ said he, ‘let us try thy body with my steel;’ and up to the hilt he plunged his fatal sword into his shoulder-blade, and extended his hand unseen into his entrails, and worked it about, and in the wound made a fresh wound. Lo! the double-limbed monsters, enraged, rush on in an impetuous manner, and all of them hurl and thrust their weapons at him alone. Their weapons fall blunted. Unstabbed and bloodless the Elateïan Cæneus remains from each blow. This strange thing makes them astonished. ‘Oh great disgrace!’ cries Monychus; ‘a whole people, we are overcome by one, and that hardly a man; although, indeed, he is a man; and we by our dastardly actions, are what he once was. What signify our huge limbs? What our twofold strength? What that our twofold nature has united in us the stoutest animals in existence? I neither believe that we are born of a Goddess for our mother, nor of Ixion, who was so great a person, that he conceived hopes of even the supreme Juno. By a half male foe are we baffled. Heap upon him stones and beams, and entire mountains, and dash out his long-lived breath, by throwing whole woods upon him. Let a whole wood press on his jaws; and weight shall be in the place of wounds.’

“Thus he said; and by chance having got a tree, thrown down by the power of the boisterous South wind, he threw it against the powerful foe: and he was an example to the rest; and in a short time, Othrys, thou wast bare of trees, and Pelion had no shades. Overwhelmed by this huge heap, Cæneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself into the open air, and to throw off the wood cast upon him: and sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some gave out that his body was hurled to roomy Tartarus by the weight of the wood. The son of Ampycus denied this, and saw go forth into the liquid air, from amid the pile, a bird with tawny wings; which then was beheld by me for the first time, then, too, for the last. When Mopsus saw it with gentle flight surveying his camp, and making a noise around it with a vast clamour, following him both with his eyes and his feelings, he said, ‘Hail! thou glory of the Lapithæan race, once the greatest of men, but now the only bird of thy kind, Cæneus.’ This thing was credited from its assertor. Grief added resentment, and we bore it with disgust, that one was overpowered by foes so many. Nor did we cease to exercise our weapons, in shedding their blood, before a part of them was put to death, and flight and the night dispersed the rest.”

Periclymenus, the brother of Nestor, who has received from Neptune the power of transforming himself, is changed into an eagle, in a combat with Hercules; and in his flight is shot by him with an arrow. Neptune prays Apollo to avenge the death of Cygnus: because the Destinies will not permit him to do so himself. Apollo enters the Trojan camp in disguise, and directs the arrow which Paris aims at Achilles; who is mortally wounded in the heel, the only vulnerable part of his body.

As the Pylian related this fight between the Lapithæ and the Centaurs, but half human, Tlepolemus could not endure his sorrow for Alcides being passed by with silent lips, and said, “It is strange, old man, that thou shouldst have a forgetfulness of the exploits of Hercules; at least, my father himself used often to relate to me, that these cloud-begotten monsters were conquered by him.” The Pylian, sad at this, said, “Why dost thou force me to call to mind my misfortunes, and to rip up my sorrows, concealed beneath years, and to confess my hatred of, and disgust at, thy father? He, indeed, ye Gods! performed things beyond all belief, and filled the world with his services; which I could rather wish could be denied; but we are in the habit of praising neither Deiphobus nor Polydamas, nor Hector himself: for who would commend an enemy? That father of thine once overthrew the walls of Messene, and demolished guiltless cities, Elis and Pylos, and carried the sword and flames into my abode. And, that I may say nothing of others whom he slew, we were twice six sons of Neleus, goodly youths; the twice six fell by the might of Hercules, myself alone excepted. And that the others were vanquished might have been endured; but the death of Periclymenus is wonderful; to whom Neptune, the founder of the Neleian family, had granted to be able to assume whatever shapes he might choose, and again, when assumed, to lay them aside. He, after he had in vain been turned into all other shapes, was turned into the form of the bird that is wont to carry the lightnings in his crooked talons, the most acceptable to the king of the Gods. Using the strength of that bird, his wings, and his crooked bill, together with his hooked talons, he tore the face of the hero. The Tirynthian hero aims at him his bow, too unerring, and hits him, as he moves his limbs aloft amid the clouds, and hovering in the air, just where the wing is joined to the side.

“Nor is the wound a great one, but his sinews, cut by the wound, fail him, and deny him motion and strength for flying. He fell down to the earth, his weakened pinions not catching the air; and where the smooth arrow had stuck in his wing, it was pressed still further by the weight of his pierced body, and it was driven, through the upper side, into the left part of the neck. Do I seem to be owing encomiums to the exploits of thy father Hercules, most graceful leader of the Rhodian fleet? Yet I will no further avenge my brothers, than by being silent on his brave deeds: with thyself I have a firm friendship.” After the son of Neleus had said these things with his honied tongue, the gifts of Bacchus being resumed after the discourse of the aged man, they arose from their couches: the rest of the night was given to sleep.

But the God who commands the waters of the sea with his trident, laments, with the affection of a father, the body of his son, changed into the bird of the son of Sthenelus; and abhorring the ruthless Achilles, pursues his resentful wrath in more than an ordinary manner. And now, the war having been protracted for almost twice five years, with such words as these he addresses the unshorn Smintheus: “O thou, most acceptable to me, by far, of the sons of my brother, who, together with me, didst build the walls of Troy in vain; and dost thou not grieve when thou lookest upon these towers so soon to fall? or dost thou not lament that so many thousands are slain in defending these walls? and (not to recount them all) does not the ghost of Hector, dragged around his Pergamus, recur to thee? Though still the fierce Achilles, more blood-stained than war itself, lives on, the destroyer of our toil, let him but put himself in my power, I will make him feel what I can do with my triple spear. But since it is not allowed us to encounter the enemy in close fight, destroy him, when off his guard, with a secret shaft.”

He nodded his assent; and the Delian God, indulging together both his own resentment and that of his uncle, veiled in a cloud, comes to the Trojan army, and in the midst of the slaughter of the men, he sees Paris, at intervals, scattering his darts among the ignoble Greeks; and, discovering himself to be a Divinity, he says, “Why dost thou waste thy arrows upon the blood of the vulgar? If thou hast any concern for thy friends, turn upon the grandson of Æacus, and avenge thy slaughtered brothers.” Thus he said; and pointing at the son of Peleus, mowing down the bodies of the Trojans with the sword, he turned his bow towards him, and directed his unerring arrow with a fatal right hand. This was the only thing at which, after the death of Hector, the aged Priam could rejoice. And art thou then, Achilles, the conqueror of men so great, conquered by the cowardly ravisher of a Grecian wife? But if it had been fated for thee to fall by the hand of a woman, thou wouldst rather have fallen by the Thermodontean battle-axe.

Now that dread of the Phrygians, the glory and defence of the Pelasgian name, the grandson of Æacus, a head invincible in war, had been burnt: the same Divinity had armed him, and had burned him. He is now but ashes; and there remains of Achilles, so renowned, I know not what; that which will not well fill a little urn. But his glory lives, which can fill the whole world: this allowance is befitting that hero, and in this the son of Peleus is equal to himself, and knows not the empty Tartarus. Even his very shield gives occasion for war, that you may know to whom it belongs; and arms are wielded for arms. The son of Tydeus does not dare to claim them, nor Ajax, the son of Oïleus, nor the younger son of Atreus, nor he who is his superior both in war and age, nor any others; the hope of so much glory exists only in him begotten by Telamon and the son of Laërtes. The descendant of Tantalus removes from himself the burden and the odium of a decision, and orders the Argive leaders to sit in the midst of the camp, and transfers the judgment of the dispute to them all.

After the death of Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses contend for his armour; the Greek chiefs having adjudged it to the last, Ajax kills himself in despair, and his blood is changed into a flower. When Ulysses has brought Philoctetes, who is possessed of the arrows of Hercules, to the siege, and the destinies of Troy are thereby accomplished, the city is taken and sacked, and Hecuba becomes the slave of Ulysses.

The chiefs were seated; and a ring of the common people standing around, Ajax, the lord of the seven-fold shield, arose before them. And as he was impatient in his wrath, with stern features he looked back upon the Sigæan shores, and the fleet upon the shore, and, stretching out his hands, he said, “We are pleading, O Jupiter, our cause before the ships, and Ulysses vies with me! But he did not hesitate to yield to the flames of Hector, which I withstood, and which I drove from this fleet. It is safer, therefore, for him to contend with artful words than with his right hand. But neither does my talent lie in speaking, nor his in acting; and as great ability as I have in fierce warfare, so much has he in talking. Nor do I think, O Pelasgians, that my deeds need be related to you; for you have been eye-witnesses of them. Let Ulysses recount his, which he has performed without any witness, and of which night alone is conscious. I own that the prize that is sought is great; but the rival of Ajax lessens its value. It is no proud thing, great though it may be, to possess any thing which Ulysses has hoped for. Already has he obtained the reward of this contest, in which, when he shall have been worsted, he will be said to have contended with me. And I, if my prowess were to be questioned, should prevail by the nobleness of my birth, being the son of Telamon, who took the city of Troy under the valiant Hercules, and entered the Colchian shores in the Pagasæan ship. Æacus was his father, who there gives laws to the silent shades, where the heavy stone urges downward Sisyphus, the son of Æolus.

“The supreme Jupiter owns Æacus, and confesses that he is his offspring. Thus Ajax is the third from Jupiter. And yet, O Greeks, let not this line of descent avail me in this cause, if it be not common to me with the great Achilles. He was my cousin; I ask for what belonged to my cousin? Why does one descended from the blood of Sisyphus, and very like him in thefts and fraud, intrude the name of a strange family among the descendants of Æacus? Are the arms to be denied me, because I took up arms before him, and through the means of no informer? and shall one seem preferable who was the last to take them up, and who, by feigning madness, declined war, until the son of Nauplius, more cunning than he, but more unhappy for himself, discovered the contrivance of his cowardly mind, and dragged him forth to the arms which he had avoided. Now let him take the best arms who would have taken none. Let me be dishonoured, and stripped of the gifts that belonged to my cousin, who presented myself in the front of danger. And I could wish that that madness had been either real or believed so to be, and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Pœas, Lemnos would not have had thee exposed there through our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving the very rocks with thy groans, and art wishing for the son of Laërtes what he has deserved; which, may the Gods, the Gods, I say, grant thee not to pray in vain.

“And now, he that was sworn upon the same arms with ourselves, one of our leaders, alas! by whom, as his successor, the arrows of Hercules are used, broken by disease and famine, is being clothed and fed by birds; and in shooting fowls, he is employing the shafts destined for the destruction of Troy. Still, he lives, because he did not accompany Ulysses. And the unhappy Palamedes would have preferred that he had been left behind; then he would have been living, or, at least, he would have had a death without any criminality. Him, Ulysses remembering too well the unlucky discovery of his madness, pretended to be betraying the Grecian interests, and proved his feigned charge, and shewed the Greeks the gold, which he had previously hidden in the ground. By exile then, or by death, has he withdrawn from the Greeks their best strength. Thus Ulysses fights, thus is he to be dreaded. Though he were to excel even the faithful Nestor in eloquence, yet he would never cause me to believe that the forsaking of Nestor was not a crime; who, when he implored the aid of Ulysses, retarded by the wound of his steed, and wearied with the years of old age, was deserted by his companion. The son of Tydeus knows full well that these charges are not invented by me, who calling on him often by name, rebuked him, and upbraided his trembling friend with his flight. The Gods above behold the affairs of men with just eyes. Lo! he wants help, himself, who gave it not; and as he left another, so was he doomed to be left: such law had he made for himself.

“He called aloud to his companions. I came, and I saw him trembling, and pale with fear, and shuddering at the impending death. I opposed the mass of my shield to the enemy, and covered him as he lay; and I preserved (and that is the least part of my praise) his dastardly life. If thou dost persist in vying, let us return to that place; restore the enemy, and thy wound, and thy wonted fear; and hide behind my shield, and under that contend with me. But, after I delivered him, he to whom his wounds before gave no strength for standing, fled, retarded by no wound whatever. Hector approaches, and brings the Gods along with him to battle, and where he rushes on, not only art thou alarmed, Ulysses, but even the valiant are; so great terror does he bring. Him, as he exulted in the successes of his bloodstained slaughter, in close conflict, I laid flat with a huge stone. Him demanding one with whom he might engage, did I alone withstand; and you, Greeks, prayed it might fall to my lot; and your prayers prevailed. If you inquire into the issue of this fight, I was not beaten by him.

“Lo! the Trojans bring fire and sword, and Jove, as well, against the Grecian fleet. Where is now the eloquent Ulysses? I, forsooth, protected a thousand ships, the hopes of your return, with my breast. Grant me the arms, in return for so many ships. But, if I may be allowed to speak the truth, a greater honour is sought for them than is for me, and our glory is united; and Ajax is sought for the arms, and not the arms by Ajax. Let the Ithacan Ulysses compare with these things Rhesus, and the unwarlike Dolon, and Helenus, the son of Priam, made captive with the ravished Pallas. By daylight nothing was done; nothing when Diomedes was afar. If once you give these arms for services so mean, divide them, and that of Diomedes would be the greater share of them. But, why these for the Ithacan? who, by stealth and unarmed, ever does his work, and deceives the unwary enemy by stratagem? The very brilliancy of his helmet, as it sparkles with bright gold, will betray his plans, and discover him as he lies hid. But neither will the Dulichian head, beneath the helm of Achilles, sustain a weight so great; and the spear from Pelion must be heavy and burdensome for unwarlike arms. Nor will the shield, embossed with the form of the great globe, beseem a dastard left hand, and one formed for theft. Why then, caitiff, dost thou ask for a gift that will but weaken thee? should the mistake of the Grecian people bestow it on thee, there would be a cause for thee to be stripped, not for thee to be dreaded by the enemy. Thy flight, too, (in which, alone, most dastardly wretch! thou dost excel all others,) will be retarded, when dragging a load so great. Besides, that shield of thine, which has so rarely experienced the conflict, is unhurt; for mine, which is gaping in a thousand wounds from bearing the darts, a new successor must be obtained. In fine, what need is there for words? Let us be tried in action. Let the arms of that brave hero be thrown in the midst of the enemy: order them to be fetched thence, and adorn him that brings them back, with them so brought off.”

The son of Telamon had now ended, and a murmur among the multitude ensued upon his closing words, until the Laërtian hero stood up, and fixing his eyes, for a short time, on the ground, raised them towards the chiefs, and opened his mouth in the accents that were looked for; nor was gracefulness wanting to his eloquent words.

“If my prayers had been of any avail together with yours, Pelasgians, the successor to a prize so great would not now be in question, and thou wouldst now be enjoying thine arms, and we thee, O Achilles. But since the unjust Fates have denied him to me and to yourselves, (and here he wiped his eyes with his hands as though shedding tears,) who could better succeed the great Achilles than he through whom the great Achilles joined the Greeks? Only let it not avail him that he seems to be as stupid as he really is; and let not my talents, which ever served you, O Greeks, be a prejudice to me: and let this eloquence of mine, if there is any, which now pleads for its possessor, and has often done so for yourselves, stand clear of envy, and let each man not disown his own advantages. For as to descent and ancestors, and the things which we have not made ourselves, I scarce call these our own. But, indeed, since Ajax boasts that he is the great grandson of Jove, Jupiter, too, is the founder of my family, and by just as many degrees am I distant from him. For Laërtes is my father, Arcesius his, Jupiter his; nor was any one of these ever condemned and banished. Through the mother, too, Cyllenian Mercury, another noble stock, is added to myself. On the side of either parent there was a God. But neither because I am more nobly born on my mother’s side, nor because my father is innocent of his brother’s blood, do I claim the arms now in question. By personal merit weigh the cause. So that it be no merit in Ajax that Telamon and Peleus were brothers; and so that not consanguinity, but the honour of merit, be regarded in the disposal of these spoils. Or if nearness of relationship and the next heir is sought, Peleus is his sire, and Pyrrhus is his son. What room, then, is there for Ajax? Let them be taken to Phthia or to Scyros. Nor is Teucer any less a cousin of Achilles than he; and yet does he sue for, does he expect to bear away the arms?

“Since then the contest is simply one of deeds; I, in truth, have done more than what it is easy for me to comprise in words. Yet I shall proceed in the order of events. Thetis, the Nereid mother, prescient of coming death, conceals her son by his dress. The disguise of the assumed dress deceived all, among whom was Ajax. Amid woman’s trinkets I mixed arms such as would affect the mind of a man. And not yet had the hero thrown aside the dress of a maiden, when, as he was brandishing a shield and a spear, I said, ‘O son of a Goddess, Pergamus reserves itself to fall through thee. Why, then, dost thou delay to overthrow the mighty Troy?’ And then I laid my hands on him, and to brave deeds I sent forth the brave. His deeds then are my own. ’Twas I that subdued Telephus, as he fought with his lance; ’twas I that recovered him, vanquished, and begging for his life. That Thebes has fallen, is my doing. Believe me, that I took Lesbos, that I took Tenedos, Chrysa and Cylla, cities of Apollo, and Scyros too. Consider too, that the Lyrnessian walls were levelled with the ground, shaken by my right hand. And, not to mention other things, ’twas I, in fact, that found one who might slay the fierce Hector; through me the renowned Hector lies prostrate. By those arms through which Achilles was found out, I demand these arms. To him when living I gave them; after his death I ask them back again.

“After the grief of one had reached all the Greeks, and a thousand ships had filled the Eubœan Aulis, the breezes long expected were either not existing or adverse to the fleet; and the ruthless oracles commanded Agamemnon to slay his innocent daughter for the cruel Diana. This the father refuses, and is enraged against the Gods themselves, and, a king, he is still a father. By my words I swayed the gentle disposition of the parent to the public advantage. Now, indeed, I make this confession, and let the son of Atreus forgive me as I confess it; before a partial judge I upheld a difficult cause. Yet the good of the people and his brother, and the supreme power of the sceptre granted to him, influence him to balance praise against blood. I was sent, too, to the mother, who was not to be persuaded, but to be deceived with craft; to whom, if the son of Telamon had gone, until even now would our sails have been without wind. A bold envoy, too, I was sent to the towers of Ilium, and the senate-house of lofty Troy was seen and entered by me; and still was it filled with their heroes. Undaunted, I pleaded the cause which all Greece had entrusted to me; and I accused Paris, and I demanded back the plunder, and Helen as well; and I moved Priam and Antenor, related to Priam. But Paris and his brothers, and those who, under him, had been ravishers, scarce withheld their wicked hands; and this thou knowest, Menelaüs, and that was the first day of my danger in company with thee. It were a tedious matter to relate the things which, by my counsel and my valour, I have successfully executed in the duration of this tedious warfare.

“After the first encounter, the enemy for a long time kept themselves within the walls of the city, and there was no opportunity for open fight. At length, in the tenth year we fought. And what wast thou doing in the mean time, thou, who knowest of nothing but battles? what was the use of thee? But if thou inquirest into my actions: I lay ambuscades for the enemy; I surround the trenches with redoubts; I cheer our allies that they may bear with patient minds the tediousness of a protracted war; I show, too, how we are to be supported, and how to be armed; I am sent whither necessity requires. Lo! by the advice of Jove, the king, deceived by a form in his sleep, commands him to dismiss all care of the war thus begun. He is enabled, through the author of it, to defend his own cause. Ajax should not have allowed this, and should have demanded that Troy be razed. And he should have fought, the only thing he could do. Why, does he not stop them when about to depart? Why does he not take up arms, and why not suggest some course for the fickle multitude to pursue? This was not too much for him, who never says any thing but what is grand. Well, and didst thou take to flight? I was witness of it, and ashamed I was to see, when thou wast turning thy back, and wast preparing the sails of disgrace. Without delay, I exclaimed, ‘What are you doing? What madness made you, O my friends, quit Troy, well nigh taken? And what, in this tenth year, are you carrying home but disgrace?’

“With these and other words, for which grief itself had made me eloquent, I brought back the resisting Greeks from the flying fleet. The son of Atreus calls together his allies, struck with terror; nor, even yet, does the son of Telamon dare to utter a word; yet Thersites dares to launch out against the kings with impudent remarks, although not unpunished by myself. I am aroused, and I incite the trembling citizens against the foe, and by my voice I reclaim their lost courage. From that time, whatever that man, whom I drew away as he was turning his back, may seem to have done bravely, is all my own. In fine, who of the Greeks is either praising thee, or resorts to thee; but with me the son of Tydeus shares his exploits; he praises me, and is ever confident while Ulysses is his companion. It is something, out of so many thousands of the Greeks, to be singled out alone by Diomedes. Nor was it lot that ordered me to go forth; and yet, despising the dangers of the night and of the enemy, I slew Dolon, one of the Phrygian race, who dared the same things that we dared; though not before I had compelled him to disclose everything, and had learned what perfidious Troy designed. Everything had I now discovered, and I had nothing further to find out, and I might now have returned, with my praises going before me. Not content with that, I sought the tent of Rhesus, and in his own camp slew himself and his attendants. And thus, as a conqueror, and having gained my own desires, I returned in the captured chariot, resembling a joyous triumph. Deny me the arms of him whose horses the enemy had demanded as the price for one night’s service; and let Ajax be esteemed your greater benefactor.

“Why should I make reference to the troops of Lycian Sarpedon, mowed down by my sword? With much bloodshed I slew Cœranos, the son of Iphitus, and Alastor, and Chromius, and Alcander, and Halius, and Noëmon, and Prytanis, and I put to death Thoön, with Chersidamas, and Charops, and Ennomos, impelled by his relentless fate; five of less renown fell by my hand beneath the city walls. I, too, fellow-citizens, have wounds, honourable in their place. Believe not his crafty words; here! behold them.” And then, with his hand, he pulls aside his garment, and, “this is the breast,” says he, “that has been ever employed in your service.”

“But the son of Telamon has spent none of his blood on his friends for so many years, and he has a body without a single wound. But what signifies that, if he says that he bore arms for the Pelasgian fleet against both the Trojans and Jupiter himself? I confess it, he did bear them; nor is it any part of mine with malice to detract from the good deeds of others; but let him not alone lay claim to what belongs to all, and let him give to yourselves, as well, some of the honour. The descendant of Actor, safe under the appearance of Achilles, repelled the Trojans, with their defender, from the ships on the point of being burnt. He, too, unmindful of the king, and of the chiefs, and of myself, fancies that he alone dared to engage with Hector in combat, being the ninth in that duty, and preferred by favour of the lot. But yet, most brave chief, what was the issue of thy combat? Hector came off, injured by no wound. Ah, wretched me! with how much grief am I compelled to recollect that time at which Achilles, the bulwark of the Greeks, was slain: nor tears, nor grief, nor fear, hindered me from carrying his body aloft from the ground; on these shoulders, I say, on these shoulders I bore the body of Achilles, and his arms together with him, which now, too, I am endeavouring to bear off. I have strength to suffice for such a weight, and, assuredly, I have a soul that will be sensible of your honours.

“Was then, forsooth! his azure mother so anxious in her son’s behalf that the heavenly gifts, a work of so great ingenuity, a rough soldier, and one without any genius, should put on? For he will not understand the engravings on the shield; the ocean, and the earth, and the stars with the lofty heavens and the Pleïades, and the Hyades, and the Bear that avoids the sea, and the different cities, and the blazing sword of Orion; arms he insists on receiving, which he does not understand. What! and does he charge that I, avoiding the duties of this laborious war, came but late to the toil begun? and does he not perceive that in this he is defaming the brave Achilles? If he calls dissembling a crime, we have both of us dissembled. If delay stands for a fault, I was earlier than he. A fond wife detained me, a fond mother Achilles. The first part of our time was given to them, the rest to yourselves. I am not alarmed, if now I am unable to defend myself against this accusation, in common with so great a man. Yet he was found out by the dexterity of Ulysses, but not Ulysses by that of Ajax.

“And that we may not be surprised at his pouring out on me the reproaches of his silly tongue, against you, too, does he make objections worthy of shame. Is it base for me, with a false crime to have charged Palamedes, and honourable for you to have condemned him? But neither could Palamedes, the son of Nauplius, defend a crime so great, and so manifest; nor did you only hear the charges against him, but you witnessed them, and in the bribe itself the charge was established. Nor have I deserved to be accused, because Lemnos, the isle of Vulcan, still receives Philoctetes, the son of Pœas. Greeks, defend your own acts! for you consented to it. Nor yet shall I deny that I advised him to withdraw himself from the toils of the warfare and the voyage, and to try by rest to assuage his cruel pains. He consented, and still he lives. This advice was not only well-meant, but it was fortunate as well, when ’twas enough to be well-meant. Since our prophets demand him for the purpose of destroying Troy, entrust not that to me. The son of Telamon will be better to go, and by his eloquence will soften the hero, maddened by diseases and anger, or by some wile will skilfully bring him thence. Sooner will Simoïs flow backward, and Ida stand without foliage, and Achaia promise aid to Troy, than, my breast being inactive in your interest, the skill of stupid Ajax shall avail the Greeks.

“Though thou be, relentless Philoctetes, enraged against thy friends and the king, and myself, though thou curse and devote my head, everlastingly, and though thou wish to have me in thy anguish thrown in thy way perchance, and to shed my blood; and though if I meet thee, so thou wilt have the opportunity of meeting me, still will I attempt thee, and will endeavour to bring thee back with me. And, if Fortune favours me, I will as surely be the possessor of thy arrows, as I was the possessor of the Dardanian prophet whom I took prisoner; and so I revealed the answers of the Deities and the fates of Troy; and as I carried off the hidden statue of the Phrygian Minerva from the midst of the enemy. And does Ajax, then, compare himself with me? The Fates, in fact, would not allow Troy to be captured without that statue. Where is the valiant Ajax? where are the boastful words of that mighty man? Why art thou trembling here? Why dares Ulysses to go through the guards, and to entrust himself to the night, and, through fell swords, to enter not only the walls of Troy, but even its highest towers, and to tear the Goddess from her shrine, and, thus torn, to bear her off amid the enemy?

“Had I not done these things, in vain would the son of Telamon been bearing the seven hides of the bulls on his left arm. On that night was the victory over Troy gained by me; then did I conquer Pergamus, when I rendered it capable of being conquered. Forbear by thy looks, and thy muttering, to show me the son of Tydeus; a part of the glory in these things is his own. Neither wast thou alone, when for the allied fleet thou didst grasp thy shield: a multitude was attending thee, while but one fell to me: who, did he not know that a fighting man is of less value than a wise one, and that the reward is not the due of the invincible right hand, would himself, too, have been suing for these arms; the more discreet Ajax would have been suing, and the fierce Eurypilus, and the son of the famous Andremon; no less, too would Idomeneus, and Meriones sprung from the same land, and the brother of the greater son of Atreus have sought them. But these, brave in action, (nor are they second to thee in war,) have all yielded to my wisdom. Thy right hand is of value in war, but thy temper is one that stands in need of my direction. Thou hast strength without intelligence; I have a care for the future. Thou art able to fight; with me, the son of Atreus chooses the proper time for fighting. Thou only art of service with thy body; I with my mind: and as much as he who guides the bark, is superior to the capacity of the rower, as much as the general is greater than the soldier, so much do I excel thee; and in my body there is an intellect that is superior to hands: in that lies all my vigour.

“But you, ye chieftains, give the reward to your watchful servant; and for the cares of so many years which I have passed in anxiety, grant this honour as a compensation for my services. Our toil is now at its close; I have removed the opposing Fates, and by rendering it capable of being taken, in effect I have taken the lofty Pergamus. Now, by our common hopes, and the walls of the Trojans doomed to fall, and by those Gods whom lately I took from the enemy, by anything that remains, through wisdom to be done; if, too, anything remains of bold enterprize, and to be recovered from a dangerous spot; if you think that anything is still wanting for the downfall of Troy; then remember me; or if you give not me the arms, concede them to this;” and then he discovers the fatal statue of Minerva.

The body of the chiefs is moved, and then, in fact appears what eloquence can do; and the fluent man receives the arms of a brave one. He, who so often has alone withstood both Hector, and the sword, and flames, and Jove himself, cannot now withstand his wrath alone, and grief conquers the man that is invincible. He seizes his sword, and he says: - “This, at least, is my own; or will Ulysses claim this, too, for himself. This must I use against myself; and the blade, which has often been wet with the blood of the Phrygians, will now be wet with the slaughter of its owner: that no one but Ajax himself, may be enabled to conquer Ajax.”

Thus he said; and he plunged the fatal sword into his breast, then for the first time suffering a wound, where it lay exposed to the steel. Nor were his hands able to draw out the weapon there fixed: the blood itself forced it out. And the earth, made red by the blood, produced a purple flower from the green turf, the same which had formerly been produced from the Œbalian wound. Letters common to that youth and to the hero, were inscribed in the middle of the leaves; the latter belonging to the name, the former to the lamentation.

The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle, and of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughter there of the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the weapons of the Tirynthian hero. After he had carried them back to the Greeks, their owner attending too, the concluding hand was put, at length, to this protracted war. Troy and Priam fell together; the wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing else her human form, and alarmed a foreign air with her barkings. Where the long Hellespont is reduced into a narrow compass, Ilion was in flames; nor had the flames yet ceased; and the altar of Jove had drank up the scanty blood of the aged Priam. The priestess of Apollo dragged by the hair, extends her unavailing hands towards the heavens. The victorious Greeks drag along the Dardanian matrons, embracing, while they may, the statues of their country’s Gods, and clinging to the burning temples, an envied spoil. Astyanax is hurled from those towers from which he was often wont, when shown by his mother, to behold his father, fighting for himself, and defending the kingdom of his ancestors.

And now Boreas bids them depart, and with a favourable breeze, the sails, as they wave, resound, and the sailors bid them take advantage of the winds. “Troy, farewell!” the Trojan women cry; - “We are torn away!” and they give kisses to the soil, and leave the smoking roofs of their country. The last that goes on board the fleet, a dreadful sight, is Hecuba, found amid the sepulchres of her children. Dulichian hands have dragged her away, while clinging to their tombs and giving kisses to their bones; yet the ashes of one has she taken out, and, so taken out, has carried with her in her bosom the ashes of Hector. On the tomb of Hector she leaves the grey hair of her head, an humble offering, her hair and her tears. There is opposite to Phrygia, where Troy stood, a land inhabited by the men of Bistonia. There, was the rich palace of Polymnestor, to whom thy father, Polydorus, entrusted thee, to be brought up privately, and removed thee afar from the Phrygian arms. A wise resolution; had he not added, as well, great riches, the reward of crime, the incentive of an avaricious disposition. When the fortunes of the Phrygians were ruined, the wicked king of the Phrygians took a sword, and plunged it in the throat of his fosterchild; and, as though the crime could be removed with the body, he hurled him lifeless from a rock into the waters below.

In returning from Troy, the Greeks are stopped in Thrace by the shade of Achilles, who requests that Polyxena shall be sacrificed to his manes. While Hecuba is fetching water with which to bathe the body of her daughter, she espies the corpse of her son Polydorus. In her exasperations she repairs to the court of Polymnestor; and having torn out his eyes, is transformed into a bitch. Memnon, who has been slain by Achilles, is honoured with a magnificent funeral, and, at the prayer of Aurora, his ashes are transformed by Jupiter into birds, since called Memnonides.

On the Thracian shore the son of Atreus had moored his fleet, until the sea was calm, and until the wind was more propitious. Here, on a sudden, Achilles, as great as he was wont to be when alive, rises from the ground, bursting far and wide, and, like to one threatening, revives the countenance of that time when he fiercely attacked Agamemnon with his lawless sword. “And are you departing, unmindful of me, ye Greeks?” he says; “and is all grateful remembrance of my valour buried together with me? Do not so. And that my sepulchre may not be without honour, let Polyxena slain appease the ghost of Achilles.” Thus he said; and his companions obeying the implacable shade, the noble and unfortunate maid, and more than an ordinary woman, torn from the bosom of her mother, which she now cherished almost alone, was led to the tomb, and became a sacrifice at his ruthless pile.