Chapter 10

1.Unavailing offerings.]—Ver. 3. ‘Inferias inanes’ is a poetical expression, signifying the offering sacrifices of honey, milk, wine, blood, flowers, frankincense, and other things, at a tomb, which was empty or honorary. The Greeks called these kind of sacrifices by the name ofχοαὶ.2.A ravished wife.]—Ver. 5. This was Helen, the wife of Menelaüs, whose abduction by Paris was the cause of the Trojan war.3.A thousand ships.]—Ver. 7. That is, a thousand in round numbers. For Homer makes them, 1186; Dictys Cretensis, 1225; and Dares, 1140.4.The whole body.]—Ver. 7. The adjective ‘commune’ is here used substantively, and signifies ‘the whole body.’5.Serpent seized.]—Ver. 16-17. Clarke translates this line, ‘Which the snake whipt up, as also the dam flying about her loss, and buried them in his greedy paunch.’6.On the top.]—Ver. 43. ‘Summaque domum sibi legit in arce,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘And chooses there a house for herself, on the very tip-top of it.’7.Protesilaüs.]—Ver. 68. He was the husband of Laodamia, the daughter of Acastus. His father was Iphiclus, who was noted for his extreme swiftness.8.Spear of Hector.]—Ver. 67. Some writers say that he fell by the hand of Æneas.9.Of a Nereid.]—Ver. 93. Cygnus says this sarcastically, in allusion to Achilles being born of Thetis, a daughter of Nereus.10.As a bull.]—Ver. 103-4. Clarke translates these lines in this comical strain: ‘Achilles was as mad as a bull in the open Circus, when he pushes at the red coat, stuffed, used on purpose to provoke him.’11.The open Circus.]—Ver. 104. We learn from Seneca, that it was the custom in the ‘venationes’ of the Circus to irritate the bull against his antagonist, by thrusting in his path figures stuffed with straw or hay, and covered with red cloth. Similar means are used to provoke the bull in the Spanish bull-fights of the present day.12.Eëtionian.]—Ver. 110. Eëtion, the father of Andromache, the wife of Hector, was the king of Thebes in Cilicia, which place was ravaged by the Greeks for having sent assistance to the Trojans.13.Caÿcus.]—Ver. 111. The Caÿcus was a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, which country had incurred the resentment of the Greeks, for having assisted the Trojans.14.Telephus.]—Ver. 112. Telephus, the son of Hercules and the Nymph Auge, was wounded in combat by Achilles. By the direction of the oracle, he applied to Achilles for his cure, which was effected by means of the rust of the weapon with which the wound was made.15.Lycian multitude.]—Ver. 116. The Lycians, whose territory was in Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia, were allies of the Trojans.16.And dashes him.]—Ver. 139. Clarke renders this line,‘Heoverset him, and thwacked him against the ground.’17.This toil.]—Ver. 146. Clarke translates ‘Hic labor,’ ‘This laborious bout.’18.Its entrails.]—Ver. 152. The ‘prosecta,’ or ‘prosiciæ,’ or ‘ablegamina,’ were portions of the animal which were the first cut off, for the purpose of becoming as a sacrifice to the Deities. The ‘prosecta,’ in general, consisted of a portion of the entrails.19.Roasted flesh.]—Ver. 155. We are informed by Servius, that boiled meat was not eaten in the heroic ages.20.Melody of voices.]—Ver. 157. Plutarch remarks, that that entertainment is the most pleasant where no musician is introduced; conversation, in his opinion, being preferable.21.Perrhæbean.]—Ver. 172. The Perrhæbeans were a people of Thessaly,who, having been conquered by the Lapithæ, betook themselves to the mountain fortresses of Pindus.22.Eloquent old man.]—Ver. 176-181. Clarke renders these lines, ‘Come, tell us, O eloquent old gentleman, the wisdom of our age, who was that Cæneus, and why he was turned into the other sex? in which war, or what engagement, he was known to you? by whom he was conquered, if he was conquered by any one?’ Upon that, the old blade replied.’23.Two hundred.]—Ver. 188. Ovid does not here follow the more probable version, that the age of Nestor was three generations of thirty years each.24.The Atracian.]—Ver. 209. ‘Atracides’ is an epithet, meaning ‘Thessalian,’ as Atrax, or Atracia, was a town of Thessaly, situated near the banks of the river Peneus.25.Hippodame.]—Ver. 210. She is called Ischomache by Propertius, and Deidamia by Plutarch.26.With the fires.]—Ver. 215. These fires would be those of the nuptial torches, and of the altars for sacrifice to Hymenæus and the other tutelary divinities of marriage.27.Clots of blood.]—Ver. 238. Clarke renders ‘Sanguinis globos,’ ‘gobletsof blood.’28.Double-limbed.]—Ver. 240. Clarke translates, ‘Ardescunt bimembres,’ ‘The double-limbed fellows are in a flame.’29.Shattered cask.]—Ver. 243. ‘Cadi’ were not only earthenware vessels, in which wine was kept, but also the vessels used for drawing water.30.A chandelier.]—Ver. 247. ‘Funale’ ordinarily means, ‘a link,’ or ‘torch,’ made of fibrous substances twisted together, and smeared with pitch or wax. In this instance the word seems to mean a chandelier with several branches.31.A votive stag.]—Ver. 267. It appears that the horns of a stag were frequently offered as a votive gift to the Deities, especially to Diana, the patroness of the chase. Thus in the seventh Eclogue of Virgil, Mycon vows to present to Diana, ‘Vivacis cornua cervi,’ ‘The horns of a long-lived stag.’32.Cheeks covered.]—Ver. 291. ‘Prima tectus lanugine malas,’ is not very elegantly rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his chaps covered with down, then first putting out.’33.Nessus.]—Ver. 309. We have already seen how Nessus the Centaur met his death from the arrow of Hercules, when about to offer violence to Deïanira.34.A wound in front.]—Ver. 312. It has been suggested that, perhaps Ovid here had in his mind the story of one Pomponius, of whom Quintilian relates, that, having received a wound in his face, he was showing it to Cæsar, on which he was advised by the latter never to look behind him when he was running away.35.Strap of his lance.]—Ver. 321. The ‘amentum’ was the thong, or strap of leather, with which the lance, or javelin, was fastened, in order to draw it back when thrown.36.Not used to bear.]—Ver. 346. He alludes to the twofold nature, or ‘horse-part’ of the Centaur, as Clarke calls it.37.The Dolopians.]—Ver. 364. They were a people of Phthiotis and Thessaly.38.Pierces two breasts.]—Ver. 377. He says this by poetical license, in allusion to thetwo-foldform of the Centaurs.39.Cyllarus.]—Ver. 393. This was also the name of the horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st line.40.Then ought I.]—Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in the Iliad.41.Pelethronian.]—Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.42.Erigdupus.]—Ver. 453. The signification of this name is ‘The noise of strife.’43.Mopsus.]—Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of the Lapithæ. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient history of the same name.44.Emathian.]—Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined to that country.45.Macedonian pike.]—Ver. 466. The ‘sarissa’ is supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four feet long.46.Twist the threads.]—Ver. 475. The woof was called ‘subtegmen,’ ‘subtemen,’ or ‘trama,’ while the warp was called ‘stamen,’ from ‘stare,’ ‘to stand,’ on account of its erect position in the loom.47.Phylleian.]—Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of Phthiotis, in Thessaly.48.Tlepolemus.]—Ver. 537. He was a son of Hercules, by Astioche.49.Polydamas.]—Ver. 547. He was a noble Trojan, of great bravery, who had married a daughter of Priam.50.Rhodian fleet.]—Ver. 575. Tlepolemus, when a youth, slew his uncle, Lycimnius, the son of Mars. Flying from his country with some followers, he retired to the Island of Rhodes, where he gained the sovereignty. He went to the Trojan war with nine ships, to aid the Greeks, where he fell by the hand of Sarpedon.51.After the son.]—Ver. 578-9. ‘A sermone senis repetito munere Bacchi Surrexere toris.’ These words are thus quaintly rendered in Clarke’s translation: ‘From listening to the old gentleman’s discourse, they return again to their bottle; and taking the other glass, they departed.’52.Smintheus.]—Ver. 585. Apollo was so called, in many of the cities of Asia, and was worshipped under this name, in the Isle of Tenedos. He is said by Eustathius, to have been so called from Smynthus, a town near Troy. But, according to other accounts, he received the epithet from the Cretan wordσμίνθος, a mouse; being supposed to protect man against the depredations of that kind of vermin.53.Thermodontean.]—Ver. 611. He alludes to Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, who, aiding the Trojans against the Greeks, was slain by Achilles. The battle-axe was the usual weapon of the Amazons54.Had armed him.]—Ver. 614. Vulcan, the God of Fire, made his armour at the request of his mother, Thetis; and now his body was burned by fire.55.Son of Oïleus.]—Ver. 622. This was Ajax, the King of the Locrians.56.Descendant of Tantalus.]—Ver. 626. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops, and great-grandson of Tantalus. He wisely refused to take upon himself alone the onus of deciding the contention between Ajax and Ulysses.BOOK THE THIRTEENTH.FABLE I.Afterthe 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 standingaround, 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,1O 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,andwhich I drove from this fleet. It is safer, therefore, for him to contend with artful words than with hisrighthand. But neither does my talent lie in speaking, nor his2in 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,andof which night alone3is 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 thingxiii. 18-38.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 city4of Troy under the valiant Hercules, and entered the Colchian shores in the Pagasæan ship. Æacus was his father, who there gives laws to the silentshades, where the heavy stone urgesdownwardSisyphus,5the son of Æolus.“The supreme Jupiter owns Æacus, and confesses that he is his offspring. Thus Ajax is the third6from 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;7I 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 beforehim, and through the means of no informer?8and shall one seem preferable who was the last to take them up, and who, by feigning madness, declined war, until the son of Nauplius,9more cunning than he, but more unhappy for himself, discovered the contrivance10of hisxiii. 38-61.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 believedso to be, and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Pœas,11Lemnos would not have had thee exposedtherethrough our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving theveryrocks 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 clothed12and 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;thenhe would have been living, or, at least, he would have had a death without any criminality. Him,Ulyssesremembering too well the unlucky discovery of his madness, pretended to be betraying the Grecian interests, and proved his feigned charge, and shewedthe Greeksthe gold, which he had previously hidden in the ground. By exile then, or by death,13has he withdrawn from the Greeks theirxiii. 61-89.beststrength. 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 Nestor14was not a crime; who, when he imploredthe aid ofUlysses, 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 upbraided15his 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 leftanother, so was he doomed to be left:suchlaw 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 shieldto the enemy, and covered him16as 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 woundsbeforegave no strength for standing, fled, retarded by no woundwhatever. 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 valiantare; 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, prayedit might fallto my lot;17and your prayers prevailed.xiii. 89-116.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 IthacanUlyssescompare with these things Rhesus,18and the unwarlike Dolon,19and Helenus,20the 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 Dulichian21head, beneath the helm of Achilles, sustain a weight so great; and the spear22from 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. Whythen, caitiff, dost thou ask for a gift that willbutweaken 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 dastardlywretch! thou dost excel allothers,) will be retarded, when dragging a load soxiii. 116-146.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 hadnowended, 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 notnowbe 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 bettersucceedthe great Achilles than he through whom23the great Achilles joined the Greeks? Only let it not avail him that he seems to be as stupid as hereallyis; 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 oftendone sofor yourselves, stand clear of envy, and let each man not disown his own advantages. Foras todescent 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 theseevercondemned24and banished. Through the mother,25too,xiii. 146-167.CyllenianMercury, 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 armsnowin question. Bypersonalmerit weigh the cause. So that it be no merit in Ajax that Telamon and Peleus were brothers; andso thatnot consanguinity, but the honour of merit, be regarded inthe disposal ofthese 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 Phthia26or to Scyros. Nor is Teucer27any 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?’ AndthenI 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 beggingfor his life. That Thebes has fallen, is my doing. Believe me, that I took Lesbos, that ItookTenedos, Chrysa28and Cylla, cities of Apollo, and Scyrostoo. Consider too, that the Lyrnessian29xiii. 176-208.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 one30had 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 Helenas well; and I moved Priam and Antenor31, related to Priam. But Paris and his brothers, and those who, under him, had been ravishers, scarce withheld their wicked hands;andthis 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 wasxiii. 209-237.no opportunity for open fight. At length, in the tenth year we fought.Andwhat 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 trenches32with 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 sent33whither 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 warthusbegun. 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, theonlything he could do. Why, does he not stop them when about to depart? Why does he not take up arms, andwhy notsuggest 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 nightaken? And what, in this tenth year, are you carrying home but disgrace?’“With these and otherwords, for which grief itself had made me eloquent, I brought back the resistingGreeksfrom 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 Thersites34dares 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 hexiii. 237-266.was turning his back, may seem to have done bravely, isallmy 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,oneof the Phrygian race, who dared the same things that wedared; though not before I had compelled him35to disclose everything, and had learned what perfidious Troy designed. Everything had Inowdiscovered, and I had nothingfurtherto 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 foronenight’s service; and let Ajax beesteemedyour greater benefactor.“Why should I make reference to the troops of Lycian Sarpedon,36mowed 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.37Believe nothiscrafty words; here! behold them.” Andthen, 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 axiii. 266-299.singlewound.38But 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 deedsof 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 engage39with Hector in combat, being the ninth in that duty, and preferred by favour of the lot. But yet, most bravechief, 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 togetherwith 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 mothersoanxious 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 thatin thishe is defaming the brave Achilles? If he calls dissembling a crime, we have both of us dissembled.xiii. 299-336.If delaystandsfor 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 Ulyssesby thatof 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,andhonourable for you to have condemned him? But neither couldPalamedes, the son of Nauplius, defend a crime so great, and so manifest; nor did youonlyhear the charges against him,butyou witnessed them, and in the bribeitselfthe charge was established. Nor have I deserved to be accused, because Lemnos,the isleof Vulcan,stillreceivesPhiloctetes, 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, andstillhe lives. This advice was not only well-meant, butit wasfortunate 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 attemptthee, andwill 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 prophet40whom I tookprisoner; and soI revealed the answers of the Deities and the fates of Troy;xiii. 337-362.andas I carried off the hidden statue41of 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 thatstatue. 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,thustorn, 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,42and 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,whilebut 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 thesearms; the more discreet Ajax would have been suing, and the fierce Eurypilus,43and the son of the famous Andremon;44no less,toowould Idomeneus,45and Meriones46sprung 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,) haveallyielded to my wisdom. Thy right hand is of value in war,xiii. 362-397.butthy 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 thepropertime 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 thatliesall my vigour.“But you, ye chieftains, give the reward to your watchfulservant;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 effectI 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, anythingremainsof bold enterprize, and to be recovered from a dangerous spot; if you think that anything is still wanting for the downfall of Troy;thenremember me; or if you give not me the arms, concede them to this;” andthenhe discovers the fatal statue of Minerva.The body of the chiefs is moved, andthen, 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 Jovehimself, cannotnowwithstand 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; andthe 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 Ajaxhimself, may be enabled to conquer Ajax.”Thushe 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 samewhich had formerly been produced from the Œbalian wound. Letters common tothatyouthxiii. 397-426.and to the hero, were inscribed in the middle of the leaves; the latterbelonging tothe name,47the former to the lamentation.The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle,48and of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughterthereof the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the weapons of the Tirynthianhero. 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 thingelseher human form, and alarmed a foreign air49with 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 Apollo50dragged 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. Astyanax51is 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,andthe 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,xiii. 426-438.and,sotaken 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 theeafarfrom 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.EXPLANATION.It may with justice be said, that in the speeches of Ajax Telamon, and Ulysses, here given, the Poet has presented us with a masterpiece of genius; both in the lively colours in which he has described the two rivals, and the ingenious manner in which he has throughout sustained the contrast between their respective characters.The ancient writers are not agreed upon the question, who was the mother of Ajax Telamon; Dares says that it was Hesione; while Apollodorus, Plutarch, Tzetzes and others, allege that it was Peribœa, the daughter of Alcathoüs, the son of Pelops. Pindar and Apollodorus say, that Hercules, on going to visit his friend Telamon, prayed to Jupiter that Telamon might have a son, whose skin should be as impenetrable as that of the Nemæan lion, which he then wore. As he prayed, he espied an eagle; upon which, he informed his friend that a favourable event awaited his prayer, and desired him to call his son after the name of an eagle, which in the Greek isαἰετὸς. The Scholiast on Sophocles, Suidas and Tzetzes, say further, that when Hercules returned to see Telamon, after the birth of Ajax, he covered him with the lion’s skin, and that by this means Ajax became invulnerable except in that spot of his body, which was beneath the hole which the arrow of Hercules had made in the skin of the beast.Dictys, Suidas, and Cedrenus affirm, that the dispute of Ulysses and Ajax Telamon was about the Palladium, to which each of them laid claim. They add, that the Grecian nobles, having adjudged it to Ulysses, Ajax threatened to slay them, and was found dead in his tent the next morning; but it is more generally stated to the effect here related by Ovid, that he killed himself, because he could not obtain the armour of Achilles. Filled with grief and anger combined, he became distracted; and after falling on some flocks, which in his madness he took for enemies, he at last stabbed himself with the sword which he had received from Hector. This account has been followed by Euripides, in his tragedy on the subject of the death of Ajax; and Homer seems to allude to this story, when he makes Ulysses say, that on his descent to the Infernal Regions, the shades of allthe Grecian heroes immediately met him, except that of Ajax, whose resentment at their former dispute about the armour of Achilles was still so warm, that he would not come near him. The Scholiast on Homer, and Eustathius, say that Agamemnon being much embarrassed how to behave in a dispute which might have proved fatal to the Grecian cause, ordered the Trojan prisoners to come before the council to give their opinion, as to which of them had done the most mischief; and that they answered in favour of Ulysses. The Scholiast on Aristophanes also adds, that Agamemnon, not satisfied with this enquiry, sent out spies to know what was the opinion of the Trojans on the relative merits of Ulysses and Ajax; and that upon their report, he decided in favour of Ulysses.According to Pliny and Pausanias, Ajax was buried near the promontory of Sigæum, where a tomb was erected for him; though other writers, on the authority of Dictys, place his tomb on the promontory of Rhœtæum. Horace speaks of him as being denied the honour of a funeral; but he evidently alludes to a passage in the tragedy of Sophocles, where the poet introduces Agamemnon as obstinately refusing to allow him burial, till he is softened by the entreaties of Teucer.It is probable that Homer knew nothing of the story here mentioned relative to the concealment of Achilles, disguised in female apparel, by Thetis, in the court of Lycomedes, her brother; for speaking of the manner in which Achilles engaged in the war, he says that Nestor and Ulysses went to visit Peleus and Menœtius, and easily prevailed with them that Achilles and Patroclus should accompany them to the war. It was, however, at the court of Lycomedes that Achilles fell in love with and married Deidamia, by whom he had Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus, who was present at the taking of Troy, at a very early age.The story of Polydorus is related in the third Book of the Æneid, and is also told by Hyginus, with some variations. He says that Polydorus was sent by Priam to Polymnestor, king of Thrace, while he was yet in his cradle; and that Ilione, the daughter of Priam, distrusting the cruelty and avarice of Polymnestor, who was her husband, educated the child as her own son, and made their own son Deiphylus pass for Polydorus, the two infants being of the same age. He also says that the Greeks, after the taking of Troy, offered Electra to Polymnestor in marriage, on condition that he should divorce Ilione, and slay Polydorus, and that Polymnestor, having acceded to their proposal, unconsciously killed his own son Deiphylus. Polydorus going to consult the oracle concerning his future fortune, was told, that his father was dead, and his native city reduced to ashes; on which he imagined that the oracle had deceived him; but returning to Thrace, his sister informed him of the secret, on which he deprived Polymnestor of his sight.FABLES III.ANDIV.Inreturning 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 exasperationsxiii. 439-472.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,anduntil 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.”Thushe said; and his companions obeying the implacable shade, the noble and unfortunate maid, and more thanan ordinarywoman, 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.She, mindful of herself, after she was brought to the cruel altar, and had perceived that the savage rites were preparing for her; and when she saw Neoptolemus standingby, and wielding his sword, and fixing his eyes upon her countenance, said— “Quickly make use of this noble blood:in methere is no resistance: and do thou bury thy weapons either in my throat or in my breast!” and, at the same time she laid bare her throat and her breast; “should I, Polyxena, forsooth,52either endure to be the slave of any person, or will any sacred Deity be appeased by such a sacrifice. I only wish that my death could be concealed from my mother. My mother is the impediment; and she lessens my joys at death. Yet it is not my death, but her own life, that should be lamented by her. Only, stand ye off, lest I should go to the Stygian shades not a free woman: ifin thisI demand what is just; and withhold the hands of males from the contact of a virgin. My blood will be the more acceptable to him, whoever it is that you are preparing to appease by my slaughter. Yet, if the last prayers of my lips move any of you,—’tis the daughter of king Priam,andnot a captive that entreats—returnxiii. 472-505.my body unconsumed to my mother, and let her not purchase for me with gold, but with tears, the sad privilege of a sepulchre. Whenin former timesshe could, then used she to purchase with gold.”Thusshe said; but the people did not restrain those tears which she restrained. Even the priest himself, weeping and reluctant, divided her presented breast with the piercing steel. She, sinking to the earth on her failing knees, maintained an undaunted countenance to the last moment of her life. Even then was it her care, when she fell, to cover the features that ought to be concealed, and to preserve the honour of her chaste modesty. The Trojan matrons received her, and reckoned the children of Priam whom they had had to deplore; and how much blood one house had expended. And they lament thee, Oh virgin! and thee, Oh thou! so lately called a royal wifeanda royal mother,oncethe resemblance of flourishing Asia, but now a worthless prey amid the plunderof Troy; which the conquering Ulysses would have declined as his, but that thou hadst brought Hector forth.Andscarce did Hector find an owner for his mother. She, embracing the body bereft of a soul so brave, gave to that as well, those tears which so oft she had given for her country, her children, and her husband;andher tears she poured in his wounds. And she impressed kisses with her lips, and beat her breastnowaccustomed to it; and trailing her grey hairs in the clotted blood, many things indeed did she say, but these as well, as she tore her breast:“My daughter, the last affliction (for what now remains?) to thy mother: my daughter, thou liest prostrate, and I behold thy woundasmy own wounds. Lo! lest I should have lost any one of my children without bloodshed, thou, too, dost receive thy wound. Still, becausethou wasta woman, I supposed thee safe from the sword; andyet, a woman, thou hast fallen by the sword. The same Achilles, the ruin of Troy, and the bereaver of myself, the same has destroyed thus many of thy brothers,andthyself. But, after he had fallen by the arrows of Paris and of Phœbus, ‘Now, at least,’ I said, ‘Achilles is nolongerto be dreaded;’ and yet even now, was he to be dreaded by me. The very ashes of him, as he lies buried, rage against this family; andevenin the tomb have we found him an enemy. For the descendant of Æacus have I beenthusprolific.xiii. 505-536.Great Ilion lies prostrate, and the public calamity is completed by a dreadful catastrophe; if indeed, it is completed. Pergamus alone remains for me: and my sorrow is still in its career. So lately the greatest woman in the world, powerful in so many sons-in-law, and children53, and daughters-in-law, and in my husband, now I am dragged into exile, destitute,andtorn away from the tombs of my kindred, as a present to Penelope. She, pointing me out to the matrons of Ithaca, as I tease my allotted task, will say, ‘This is that famous mother of Hector; this is the wife of Priam.’ And, now thou, who after the loss of so manychildren, alone didst alleviate the sorrows of thy mother, hast made the atonement at the tomb of the enemy. Atoning sacrifices for an enemy have I brought forth. For what purpose, lasting like iron, am I reserved? and why do I lingerhere? To what end dost thou, pernicious age, detain me? Why, ye cruel Deities, unless to the end that I may see fresh deaths, do ye reprieve an aged woman of years so prolonged? Who could have supposed, that after the fall of Troy, Priam could have been pronounced happy? Blessed in his death, he has not beheld thee, my daughter,thuscut off; and at the same moment, he lost his life and his kingdom.“But, I suppose, thou, a maiden of royal birth, wilt be honoured with funeral rites, and thy body will be deposited in the tombs of thy ancestors. This is not the fortune of thy house; tears and a handful of foreign sand will be thy lot, theonlygifts of a mother. We have lost all; a child most dear to his mother, now alone remains as a reason for me to endure to live yet for a short time, once the youngest ofallmy male issue, Polydorus, entrusted on these coasts to the Ismarian king. Why, in the mean time, am I delaying to bathe her cruel wounds with the stream, her features, too, besmeared with dreadful blood?”Thusshe spoke; and with aged step she proceeded towards the shore, tearing her grey locks. “Give me an urn, ye Trojan women,” the unhappymotherhad just said, in order that she might take up the flowing waters,whenshe beheld54xiii. 536-571.the body of Polydorus thrown up on the shore, and the great wounds made by the Thracian weapons. The Trojan women cried out aloud; with grief she was struck dumb; and very grief consumed both her voice and the tears that arose within; and much resembling a hard rock she became benumbed. And at one moment she fixed her eyes on the ground before her;andsometimes she raised her haggard features towards the skies;andnow she viewed the features, now the wounds of her son, as he lay; the wounds especially; and she armed and prepared herself for vengeance by rage. Soon as she was inflamed by it, as though shestillremained a queen, she determined to be revenged, and was whollyemployedindevisingafittingform of punishment. And as the lioness rages when bereft of her sucking whelp, and having found the tracks of his feet, follows the enemy that she sees not; so Hecuba, after she had mingled rage with mourning, not forgetful of her spirit,butforgetful of her years, went to Polymnestor, the contriver of this dreadful murder, and demanded an interview; for that it was her wish to show him a concealed treasure left for him to give to her son.The Odrysiankingbelieves her, and, inured to the love of gain, comes to a secret spot. Then with soothing lips, he craftily says, “Away with delays, Hecuba,andgive the present to thy son; all that thou givest, and what thou hast already given, I swear by the Gods above, shall be his.” Sternly she eyes him as he speaks, and falsely swears; and she boils with heaving rage; and so flies on him, seized by a throng of the captive matrons, and thrusts her fingers into his perfidious eyes; and of their sight she despoils his cheeks, and plunges her handsinto the sockets, (’tis rage that makes her strong); and, defiled with his guilty blood, she tears not his eyes, for they are not left,butthe places for his eyes.Provoked by the death of their king, the Thracian people begin to attack the Trojanmatronwith the hurling of darts and of stones. But she attacks the stones thrown at her with a hoarse noise, and with bites; and attempting to speak, her mouth just ready for the words, she barks aloud. The placestillexists, and derives its name55from the circumstance; and long remembering her ancient misfortunes, even then didxiii. 571-612.she howl dismally through the Sithonian plains. Hersadfortune moved both her own Trojans, and her Pelasgian foes, and all the Gods as well; so much so, that even the wife and sister of Jove herself denied that Hecuba had deserved that fate.Although she has favoured those same arms, there is not leisure for Aurora to be moved by the calamities and the fall of Troy. A nearer care and grief at home for her lost Memnon is afflicting her. Him his rosy-coloured mother saw perish by the spear of Achilles on the Phrygian plains.Thisshe saw; and that colour with which the hours of the morning grow ruddy, turned pale, and the æther lay hid in clouds. But the parent could not endure to behold his limbs laid on the closing flames. But with loose hair, just as she was, she disdained not to fall down at the knees of great Jove, and to add these words to her tears: “Inferior to allthe Goddesseswhich the golden æther does sustain, (for throughout all the world are my temples the fewest), still, a Goddess, I am come; not that thou shouldst grant me temples and days of sacrifice, and altars to be heated with fires. But if thou considerest how much I, a female, perform for thee, at the time when, with the early dawn, I keep the confines of the night, thou wouldst think that some reward ought to be given to me. But that is not my care, nor is such now the condition of Aurora such that she should demand the honours deserved by her. Bereft of my Memnon am I come;of himwho, in vain, wielded valiant arms for his uncle, and who in his early years (’twas thus ye willed it,) was slain by the brave Achilles. Give him, I pray, supreme ruler of the Gods, some honour, as a solace for his death, and ease the wounds of a mother.”Jove nods his assent; whensuddenlythe lofty pile of Memnon sinks with its towering fires, and volumes of black smoke darken thelight ofday. Just as when the rivers exhale the rising fogs, and the sun is not admitted below them. The black embers fly, and rolling into one body, they thicken, and take a form, and assume heat and life from the flames. Their own lightness gives them wings; and first, like birds,andthen real birds, they flutter with their wings. At once innumerable sisters are fluttering, whose natal origin is the same. And thrice do they go around the pile, and thrice does their clamour rise in concert into the air. In the fourth flight they separate their company. Then two fierce tribesxiii. 612-622.wage war from opposite sides, and with their beaks and crooked claws expend their rage, and weary their wings and opposing breasts; and down their kindred bodies fall, a sacrifice to the entombed ashes, and they remember that from a great man they have received their birth. Their progenitor gives a name to these birds so suddenly formed, called Memnonides after him; when the Sun has run through the twelve signsof the Zodiac, they fight, doomed to perish in battle, in honour of their parent.56To others, therefore, it seemed a sad thing, that the daughter of Dymas wasnowbarking;butAurora was intent on her own sorrows; and even now she sheds the tears of affection, and sprinkles them in dew over all the world.EXPLANATION.The particulars which Ovid here gives of the misfortunes that befell the family of Priam, with the exception of a few circumstances, agree perfectly with the narratives of the ancient historians.According to Dictys, Philostratus, and Hyginus, after Achilles was slain by the treachery of Paris, on the eve of his marriage with Polyxena, she became inconsolable at his death, and returning to the Grecian camp, she was kindly received by Agamemnon; but being unable to get the better of her despair, she stole out of the camp at night, and stabbed herself at the tomb of Achilles. Philostratus adds, that the ghost of Achilles appeared to Apollonius Tyanæus, the hero of his story, and gave him permission to ask him any questions he pleased, assuring him, that he would give him full information on the subject of them. Among other things, Apollonius desired to know if it was the truth that the Greeks had sacrificed Polyxena on his tomb; to which the ghost replied, that her grief made her take the resolution not to survive her intended husband, and that she had killed herself.Other writers, agreeing with Ovid as to the manner of her death, tell us that it was Pyrrhus who sacrificed Polyxena to his father’s shade, to revenge his death, of which, though innocently, she had been the cause. Pausanias, who says that this was the general opinion, avers, on what ground it is difficult to conceive, that Homer designedly omitted this fact, because it was so dishonourable to the Greeks; and in his description of the paintings at Delphi, by Polygnotus, of the destruction of Troy, he says that Polyxena was there represented as being led out to the tomb of Achilles, where she was sacrificed by the Greeks. He also says, that he had seen her story painted in the same manner at Pergamus, Athens, and other places. Many of the poets, and Virgil in the number, affirmthat Polyxena was sacrificed in Phrygia, near Troy, on the tomb of Achilles, he having desired it at his death; while Euripides says that it was in the Thracian Chersonesus, on a cenotaph, which was erected there in honour of Achilles: and that his ghost appearing, Calchas was consulted, who answered, that it was necessary to sacrifice Polyxena, which was accordingly done by Pyrrhus.The ancient writers are divided as to the descent of Hecuba. Homer, who has been followed by his Scholiast, and by Ovid and Suidas, says that she was the daughter of Dymas, King of Phrygia. Euripides says that she was the daughter of Cisscus, and with him Virgil and Servius agree. Apollodorus, again, makes her to be descended from Sangar and Merope. In the distribution of spoil after the siege of Troy, Hecuba fell to the share of Ulysses, and became his slave; but died soon after, in Thrace. Plautus and Servius allege that the Greeks themselves circulated the story of her transformation into a bitch, because she was perpetually railing at them, to provoke them to put her to death, rather than condemn her to pass her life as a slave. According to Strabo and Pomponius Mela, in their time, the place of her burial was still to be seen in Thrace. Euripides, in his Hecuba, has not followed this tradition, but represents her as complaining that the Greeks had chained her to the door of Agamemnon like a dog. Perhaps she became the slave of Agamemnon after Ulysses had left the army, on his return to Ithaca; and it is possible that the story of her transformation may have been solely founded on this tradition. She bore to Priam ten sons and seven daughters, and survived them all except Helenus; most of her sons having fallen by the hand of Achilles.

1.Unavailing offerings.]—Ver. 3. ‘Inferias inanes’ is a poetical expression, signifying the offering sacrifices of honey, milk, wine, blood, flowers, frankincense, and other things, at a tomb, which was empty or honorary. The Greeks called these kind of sacrifices by the name ofχοαὶ.2.A ravished wife.]—Ver. 5. This was Helen, the wife of Menelaüs, whose abduction by Paris was the cause of the Trojan war.3.A thousand ships.]—Ver. 7. That is, a thousand in round numbers. For Homer makes them, 1186; Dictys Cretensis, 1225; and Dares, 1140.4.The whole body.]—Ver. 7. The adjective ‘commune’ is here used substantively, and signifies ‘the whole body.’5.Serpent seized.]—Ver. 16-17. Clarke translates this line, ‘Which the snake whipt up, as also the dam flying about her loss, and buried them in his greedy paunch.’6.On the top.]—Ver. 43. ‘Summaque domum sibi legit in arce,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘And chooses there a house for herself, on the very tip-top of it.’7.Protesilaüs.]—Ver. 68. He was the husband of Laodamia, the daughter of Acastus. His father was Iphiclus, who was noted for his extreme swiftness.8.Spear of Hector.]—Ver. 67. Some writers say that he fell by the hand of Æneas.9.Of a Nereid.]—Ver. 93. Cygnus says this sarcastically, in allusion to Achilles being born of Thetis, a daughter of Nereus.10.As a bull.]—Ver. 103-4. Clarke translates these lines in this comical strain: ‘Achilles was as mad as a bull in the open Circus, when he pushes at the red coat, stuffed, used on purpose to provoke him.’11.The open Circus.]—Ver. 104. We learn from Seneca, that it was the custom in the ‘venationes’ of the Circus to irritate the bull against his antagonist, by thrusting in his path figures stuffed with straw or hay, and covered with red cloth. Similar means are used to provoke the bull in the Spanish bull-fights of the present day.12.Eëtionian.]—Ver. 110. Eëtion, the father of Andromache, the wife of Hector, was the king of Thebes in Cilicia, which place was ravaged by the Greeks for having sent assistance to the Trojans.13.Caÿcus.]—Ver. 111. The Caÿcus was a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, which country had incurred the resentment of the Greeks, for having assisted the Trojans.14.Telephus.]—Ver. 112. Telephus, the son of Hercules and the Nymph Auge, was wounded in combat by Achilles. By the direction of the oracle, he applied to Achilles for his cure, which was effected by means of the rust of the weapon with which the wound was made.15.Lycian multitude.]—Ver. 116. The Lycians, whose territory was in Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia, were allies of the Trojans.16.And dashes him.]—Ver. 139. Clarke renders this line,‘Heoverset him, and thwacked him against the ground.’17.This toil.]—Ver. 146. Clarke translates ‘Hic labor,’ ‘This laborious bout.’18.Its entrails.]—Ver. 152. The ‘prosecta,’ or ‘prosiciæ,’ or ‘ablegamina,’ were portions of the animal which were the first cut off, for the purpose of becoming as a sacrifice to the Deities. The ‘prosecta,’ in general, consisted of a portion of the entrails.19.Roasted flesh.]—Ver. 155. We are informed by Servius, that boiled meat was not eaten in the heroic ages.20.Melody of voices.]—Ver. 157. Plutarch remarks, that that entertainment is the most pleasant where no musician is introduced; conversation, in his opinion, being preferable.21.Perrhæbean.]—Ver. 172. The Perrhæbeans were a people of Thessaly,who, having been conquered by the Lapithæ, betook themselves to the mountain fortresses of Pindus.22.Eloquent old man.]—Ver. 176-181. Clarke renders these lines, ‘Come, tell us, O eloquent old gentleman, the wisdom of our age, who was that Cæneus, and why he was turned into the other sex? in which war, or what engagement, he was known to you? by whom he was conquered, if he was conquered by any one?’ Upon that, the old blade replied.’23.Two hundred.]—Ver. 188. Ovid does not here follow the more probable version, that the age of Nestor was three generations of thirty years each.24.The Atracian.]—Ver. 209. ‘Atracides’ is an epithet, meaning ‘Thessalian,’ as Atrax, or Atracia, was a town of Thessaly, situated near the banks of the river Peneus.25.Hippodame.]—Ver. 210. She is called Ischomache by Propertius, and Deidamia by Plutarch.26.With the fires.]—Ver. 215. These fires would be those of the nuptial torches, and of the altars for sacrifice to Hymenæus and the other tutelary divinities of marriage.27.Clots of blood.]—Ver. 238. Clarke renders ‘Sanguinis globos,’ ‘gobletsof blood.’28.Double-limbed.]—Ver. 240. Clarke translates, ‘Ardescunt bimembres,’ ‘The double-limbed fellows are in a flame.’29.Shattered cask.]—Ver. 243. ‘Cadi’ were not only earthenware vessels, in which wine was kept, but also the vessels used for drawing water.30.A chandelier.]—Ver. 247. ‘Funale’ ordinarily means, ‘a link,’ or ‘torch,’ made of fibrous substances twisted together, and smeared with pitch or wax. In this instance the word seems to mean a chandelier with several branches.31.A votive stag.]—Ver. 267. It appears that the horns of a stag were frequently offered as a votive gift to the Deities, especially to Diana, the patroness of the chase. Thus in the seventh Eclogue of Virgil, Mycon vows to present to Diana, ‘Vivacis cornua cervi,’ ‘The horns of a long-lived stag.’32.Cheeks covered.]—Ver. 291. ‘Prima tectus lanugine malas,’ is not very elegantly rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his chaps covered with down, then first putting out.’33.Nessus.]—Ver. 309. We have already seen how Nessus the Centaur met his death from the arrow of Hercules, when about to offer violence to Deïanira.34.A wound in front.]—Ver. 312. It has been suggested that, perhaps Ovid here had in his mind the story of one Pomponius, of whom Quintilian relates, that, having received a wound in his face, he was showing it to Cæsar, on which he was advised by the latter never to look behind him when he was running away.35.Strap of his lance.]—Ver. 321. The ‘amentum’ was the thong, or strap of leather, with which the lance, or javelin, was fastened, in order to draw it back when thrown.36.Not used to bear.]—Ver. 346. He alludes to the twofold nature, or ‘horse-part’ of the Centaur, as Clarke calls it.37.The Dolopians.]—Ver. 364. They were a people of Phthiotis and Thessaly.38.Pierces two breasts.]—Ver. 377. He says this by poetical license, in allusion to thetwo-foldform of the Centaurs.39.Cyllarus.]—Ver. 393. This was also the name of the horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st line.40.Then ought I.]—Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in the Iliad.41.Pelethronian.]—Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.42.Erigdupus.]—Ver. 453. The signification of this name is ‘The noise of strife.’43.Mopsus.]—Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of the Lapithæ. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient history of the same name.44.Emathian.]—Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined to that country.45.Macedonian pike.]—Ver. 466. The ‘sarissa’ is supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four feet long.46.Twist the threads.]—Ver. 475. The woof was called ‘subtegmen,’ ‘subtemen,’ or ‘trama,’ while the warp was called ‘stamen,’ from ‘stare,’ ‘to stand,’ on account of its erect position in the loom.47.Phylleian.]—Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of Phthiotis, in Thessaly.48.Tlepolemus.]—Ver. 537. He was a son of Hercules, by Astioche.49.Polydamas.]—Ver. 547. He was a noble Trojan, of great bravery, who had married a daughter of Priam.50.Rhodian fleet.]—Ver. 575. Tlepolemus, when a youth, slew his uncle, Lycimnius, the son of Mars. Flying from his country with some followers, he retired to the Island of Rhodes, where he gained the sovereignty. He went to the Trojan war with nine ships, to aid the Greeks, where he fell by the hand of Sarpedon.51.After the son.]—Ver. 578-9. ‘A sermone senis repetito munere Bacchi Surrexere toris.’ These words are thus quaintly rendered in Clarke’s translation: ‘From listening to the old gentleman’s discourse, they return again to their bottle; and taking the other glass, they departed.’52.Smintheus.]—Ver. 585. Apollo was so called, in many of the cities of Asia, and was worshipped under this name, in the Isle of Tenedos. He is said by Eustathius, to have been so called from Smynthus, a town near Troy. But, according to other accounts, he received the epithet from the Cretan wordσμίνθος, a mouse; being supposed to protect man against the depredations of that kind of vermin.53.Thermodontean.]—Ver. 611. He alludes to Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, who, aiding the Trojans against the Greeks, was slain by Achilles. The battle-axe was the usual weapon of the Amazons54.Had armed him.]—Ver. 614. Vulcan, the God of Fire, made his armour at the request of his mother, Thetis; and now his body was burned by fire.55.Son of Oïleus.]—Ver. 622. This was Ajax, the King of the Locrians.56.Descendant of Tantalus.]—Ver. 626. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops, and great-grandson of Tantalus. He wisely refused to take upon himself alone the onus of deciding the contention between Ajax and Ulysses.

1.Unavailing offerings.]—Ver. 3. ‘Inferias inanes’ is a poetical expression, signifying the offering sacrifices of honey, milk, wine, blood, flowers, frankincense, and other things, at a tomb, which was empty or honorary. The Greeks called these kind of sacrifices by the name ofχοαὶ.

2.A ravished wife.]—Ver. 5. This was Helen, the wife of Menelaüs, whose abduction by Paris was the cause of the Trojan war.

3.A thousand ships.]—Ver. 7. That is, a thousand in round numbers. For Homer makes them, 1186; Dictys Cretensis, 1225; and Dares, 1140.

4.The whole body.]—Ver. 7. The adjective ‘commune’ is here used substantively, and signifies ‘the whole body.’

5.Serpent seized.]—Ver. 16-17. Clarke translates this line, ‘Which the snake whipt up, as also the dam flying about her loss, and buried them in his greedy paunch.’

6.On the top.]—Ver. 43. ‘Summaque domum sibi legit in arce,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘And chooses there a house for herself, on the very tip-top of it.’

7.Protesilaüs.]—Ver. 68. He was the husband of Laodamia, the daughter of Acastus. His father was Iphiclus, who was noted for his extreme swiftness.

8.Spear of Hector.]—Ver. 67. Some writers say that he fell by the hand of Æneas.

9.Of a Nereid.]—Ver. 93. Cygnus says this sarcastically, in allusion to Achilles being born of Thetis, a daughter of Nereus.

10.As a bull.]—Ver. 103-4. Clarke translates these lines in this comical strain: ‘Achilles was as mad as a bull in the open Circus, when he pushes at the red coat, stuffed, used on purpose to provoke him.’

11.The open Circus.]—Ver. 104. We learn from Seneca, that it was the custom in the ‘venationes’ of the Circus to irritate the bull against his antagonist, by thrusting in his path figures stuffed with straw or hay, and covered with red cloth. Similar means are used to provoke the bull in the Spanish bull-fights of the present day.

12.Eëtionian.]—Ver. 110. Eëtion, the father of Andromache, the wife of Hector, was the king of Thebes in Cilicia, which place was ravaged by the Greeks for having sent assistance to the Trojans.

13.Caÿcus.]—Ver. 111. The Caÿcus was a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, which country had incurred the resentment of the Greeks, for having assisted the Trojans.

14.Telephus.]—Ver. 112. Telephus, the son of Hercules and the Nymph Auge, was wounded in combat by Achilles. By the direction of the oracle, he applied to Achilles for his cure, which was effected by means of the rust of the weapon with which the wound was made.

15.Lycian multitude.]—Ver. 116. The Lycians, whose territory was in Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia, were allies of the Trojans.

16.And dashes him.]—Ver. 139. Clarke renders this line,‘Heoverset him, and thwacked him against the ground.’

17.This toil.]—Ver. 146. Clarke translates ‘Hic labor,’ ‘This laborious bout.’

18.Its entrails.]—Ver. 152. The ‘prosecta,’ or ‘prosiciæ,’ or ‘ablegamina,’ were portions of the animal which were the first cut off, for the purpose of becoming as a sacrifice to the Deities. The ‘prosecta,’ in general, consisted of a portion of the entrails.

19.Roasted flesh.]—Ver. 155. We are informed by Servius, that boiled meat was not eaten in the heroic ages.

20.Melody of voices.]—Ver. 157. Plutarch remarks, that that entertainment is the most pleasant where no musician is introduced; conversation, in his opinion, being preferable.

21.Perrhæbean.]—Ver. 172. The Perrhæbeans were a people of Thessaly,who, having been conquered by the Lapithæ, betook themselves to the mountain fortresses of Pindus.

22.Eloquent old man.]—Ver. 176-181. Clarke renders these lines, ‘Come, tell us, O eloquent old gentleman, the wisdom of our age, who was that Cæneus, and why he was turned into the other sex? in which war, or what engagement, he was known to you? by whom he was conquered, if he was conquered by any one?’ Upon that, the old blade replied.’

23.Two hundred.]—Ver. 188. Ovid does not here follow the more probable version, that the age of Nestor was three generations of thirty years each.

24.The Atracian.]—Ver. 209. ‘Atracides’ is an epithet, meaning ‘Thessalian,’ as Atrax, or Atracia, was a town of Thessaly, situated near the banks of the river Peneus.

25.Hippodame.]—Ver. 210. She is called Ischomache by Propertius, and Deidamia by Plutarch.

26.With the fires.]—Ver. 215. These fires would be those of the nuptial torches, and of the altars for sacrifice to Hymenæus and the other tutelary divinities of marriage.

27.Clots of blood.]—Ver. 238. Clarke renders ‘Sanguinis globos,’ ‘gobletsof blood.’

28.Double-limbed.]—Ver. 240. Clarke translates, ‘Ardescunt bimembres,’ ‘The double-limbed fellows are in a flame.’

29.Shattered cask.]—Ver. 243. ‘Cadi’ were not only earthenware vessels, in which wine was kept, but also the vessels used for drawing water.

30.A chandelier.]—Ver. 247. ‘Funale’ ordinarily means, ‘a link,’ or ‘torch,’ made of fibrous substances twisted together, and smeared with pitch or wax. In this instance the word seems to mean a chandelier with several branches.

31.A votive stag.]—Ver. 267. It appears that the horns of a stag were frequently offered as a votive gift to the Deities, especially to Diana, the patroness of the chase. Thus in the seventh Eclogue of Virgil, Mycon vows to present to Diana, ‘Vivacis cornua cervi,’ ‘The horns of a long-lived stag.’

32.Cheeks covered.]—Ver. 291. ‘Prima tectus lanugine malas,’ is not very elegantly rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his chaps covered with down, then first putting out.’

33.Nessus.]—Ver. 309. We have already seen how Nessus the Centaur met his death from the arrow of Hercules, when about to offer violence to Deïanira.

34.A wound in front.]—Ver. 312. It has been suggested that, perhaps Ovid here had in his mind the story of one Pomponius, of whom Quintilian relates, that, having received a wound in his face, he was showing it to Cæsar, on which he was advised by the latter never to look behind him when he was running away.

35.Strap of his lance.]—Ver. 321. The ‘amentum’ was the thong, or strap of leather, with which the lance, or javelin, was fastened, in order to draw it back when thrown.

36.Not used to bear.]—Ver. 346. He alludes to the twofold nature, or ‘horse-part’ of the Centaur, as Clarke calls it.

37.The Dolopians.]—Ver. 364. They were a people of Phthiotis and Thessaly.

38.Pierces two breasts.]—Ver. 377. He says this by poetical license, in allusion to thetwo-foldform of the Centaurs.

39.Cyllarus.]—Ver. 393. This was also the name of the horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st line.

40.Then ought I.]—Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in the Iliad.

41.Pelethronian.]—Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.

42.Erigdupus.]—Ver. 453. The signification of this name is ‘The noise of strife.’

43.Mopsus.]—Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of the Lapithæ. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient history of the same name.

44.Emathian.]—Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined to that country.

45.Macedonian pike.]—Ver. 466. The ‘sarissa’ is supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four feet long.

46.Twist the threads.]—Ver. 475. The woof was called ‘subtegmen,’ ‘subtemen,’ or ‘trama,’ while the warp was called ‘stamen,’ from ‘stare,’ ‘to stand,’ on account of its erect position in the loom.

47.Phylleian.]—Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of Phthiotis, in Thessaly.

48.Tlepolemus.]—Ver. 537. He was a son of Hercules, by Astioche.

49.Polydamas.]—Ver. 547. He was a noble Trojan, of great bravery, who had married a daughter of Priam.

50.Rhodian fleet.]—Ver. 575. Tlepolemus, when a youth, slew his uncle, Lycimnius, the son of Mars. Flying from his country with some followers, he retired to the Island of Rhodes, where he gained the sovereignty. He went to the Trojan war with nine ships, to aid the Greeks, where he fell by the hand of Sarpedon.

51.After the son.]—Ver. 578-9. ‘A sermone senis repetito munere Bacchi Surrexere toris.’ These words are thus quaintly rendered in Clarke’s translation: ‘From listening to the old gentleman’s discourse, they return again to their bottle; and taking the other glass, they departed.’

52.Smintheus.]—Ver. 585. Apollo was so called, in many of the cities of Asia, and was worshipped under this name, in the Isle of Tenedos. He is said by Eustathius, to have been so called from Smynthus, a town near Troy. But, according to other accounts, he received the epithet from the Cretan wordσμίνθος, a mouse; being supposed to protect man against the depredations of that kind of vermin.

53.Thermodontean.]—Ver. 611. He alludes to Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, who, aiding the Trojans against the Greeks, was slain by Achilles. The battle-axe was the usual weapon of the Amazons

54.Had armed him.]—Ver. 614. Vulcan, the God of Fire, made his armour at the request of his mother, Thetis; and now his body was burned by fire.

55.Son of Oïleus.]—Ver. 622. This was Ajax, the King of the Locrians.

56.Descendant of Tantalus.]—Ver. 626. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops, and great-grandson of Tantalus. He wisely refused to take upon himself alone the onus of deciding the contention between Ajax and Ulysses.

Afterthe 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 standingaround, 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,1O 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,andwhich I drove from this fleet. It is safer, therefore, for him to contend with artful words than with hisrighthand. But neither does my talent lie in speaking, nor his2in 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,andof which night alone3is 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 thingxiii. 18-38.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 city4of Troy under the valiant Hercules, and entered the Colchian shores in the Pagasæan ship. Æacus was his father, who there gives laws to the silentshades, where the heavy stone urgesdownwardSisyphus,5the son of Æolus.

“The supreme Jupiter owns Æacus, and confesses that he is his offspring. Thus Ajax is the third6from 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;7I 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 beforehim, and through the means of no informer?8and shall one seem preferable who was the last to take them up, and who, by feigning madness, declined war, until the son of Nauplius,9more cunning than he, but more unhappy for himself, discovered the contrivance10of hisxiii. 38-61.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 believedso to be, and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Pœas,11Lemnos would not have had thee exposedtherethrough our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving theveryrocks 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 clothed12and 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;thenhe would have been living, or, at least, he would have had a death without any criminality. Him,Ulyssesremembering too well the unlucky discovery of his madness, pretended to be betraying the Grecian interests, and proved his feigned charge, and shewedthe Greeksthe gold, which he had previously hidden in the ground. By exile then, or by death,13has he withdrawn from the Greeks theirxiii. 61-89.beststrength. 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 Nestor14was not a crime; who, when he imploredthe aid ofUlysses, 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 upbraided15his 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 leftanother, so was he doomed to be left:suchlaw 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 shieldto the enemy, and covered him16as 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 woundsbeforegave no strength for standing, fled, retarded by no woundwhatever. 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 valiantare; 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, prayedit might fallto my lot;17and your prayers prevailed.xiii. 89-116.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 IthacanUlyssescompare with these things Rhesus,18and the unwarlike Dolon,19and Helenus,20the 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 Dulichian21head, beneath the helm of Achilles, sustain a weight so great; and the spear22from 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. Whythen, caitiff, dost thou ask for a gift that willbutweaken 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 dastardlywretch! thou dost excel allothers,) will be retarded, when dragging a load soxiii. 116-146.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 hadnowended, 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 notnowbe 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 bettersucceedthe great Achilles than he through whom23the great Achilles joined the Greeks? Only let it not avail him that he seems to be as stupid as hereallyis; 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 oftendone sofor yourselves, stand clear of envy, and let each man not disown his own advantages. Foras todescent 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 theseevercondemned24and banished. Through the mother,25too,xiii. 146-167.CyllenianMercury, 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 armsnowin question. Bypersonalmerit weigh the cause. So that it be no merit in Ajax that Telamon and Peleus were brothers; andso thatnot consanguinity, but the honour of merit, be regarded inthe disposal ofthese 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 Phthia26or to Scyros. Nor is Teucer27any 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?’ AndthenI 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 beggingfor his life. That Thebes has fallen, is my doing. Believe me, that I took Lesbos, that ItookTenedos, Chrysa28and Cylla, cities of Apollo, and Scyrostoo. Consider too, that the Lyrnessian29xiii. 176-208.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 one30had 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 Helenas well; and I moved Priam and Antenor31, related to Priam. But Paris and his brothers, and those who, under him, had been ravishers, scarce withheld their wicked hands;andthis 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 wasxiii. 209-237.no opportunity for open fight. At length, in the tenth year we fought.Andwhat 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 trenches32with 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 sent33whither 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 warthusbegun. 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, theonlything he could do. Why, does he not stop them when about to depart? Why does he not take up arms, andwhy notsuggest 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 nightaken? And what, in this tenth year, are you carrying home but disgrace?’

“With these and otherwords, for which grief itself had made me eloquent, I brought back the resistingGreeksfrom 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 Thersites34dares 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 hexiii. 237-266.was turning his back, may seem to have done bravely, isallmy 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,oneof the Phrygian race, who dared the same things that wedared; though not before I had compelled him35to disclose everything, and had learned what perfidious Troy designed. Everything had Inowdiscovered, and I had nothingfurtherto 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 foronenight’s service; and let Ajax beesteemedyour greater benefactor.

“Why should I make reference to the troops of Lycian Sarpedon,36mowed 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.37Believe nothiscrafty words; here! behold them.” Andthen, 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 axiii. 266-299.singlewound.38But 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 deedsof 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 engage39with Hector in combat, being the ninth in that duty, and preferred by favour of the lot. But yet, most bravechief, 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 togetherwith 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 mothersoanxious 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 thatin thishe is defaming the brave Achilles? If he calls dissembling a crime, we have both of us dissembled.xiii. 299-336.If delaystandsfor 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 Ulyssesby thatof 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,andhonourable for you to have condemned him? But neither couldPalamedes, the son of Nauplius, defend a crime so great, and so manifest; nor did youonlyhear the charges against him,butyou witnessed them, and in the bribeitselfthe charge was established. Nor have I deserved to be accused, because Lemnos,the isleof Vulcan,stillreceivesPhiloctetes, 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, andstillhe lives. This advice was not only well-meant, butit wasfortunate 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 attemptthee, andwill 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 prophet40whom I tookprisoner; and soI revealed the answers of the Deities and the fates of Troy;xiii. 337-362.andas I carried off the hidden statue41of 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 thatstatue. 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,thustorn, 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,42and 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,whilebut 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 thesearms; the more discreet Ajax would have been suing, and the fierce Eurypilus,43and the son of the famous Andremon;44no less,toowould Idomeneus,45and Meriones46sprung 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,) haveallyielded to my wisdom. Thy right hand is of value in war,xiii. 362-397.butthy 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 thepropertime 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 thatliesall my vigour.

“But you, ye chieftains, give the reward to your watchfulservant;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 effectI 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, anythingremainsof bold enterprize, and to be recovered from a dangerous spot; if you think that anything is still wanting for the downfall of Troy;thenremember me; or if you give not me the arms, concede them to this;” andthenhe discovers the fatal statue of Minerva.

The body of the chiefs is moved, andthen, 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 Jovehimself, cannotnowwithstand 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; andthe 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 Ajaxhimself, may be enabled to conquer Ajax.”

Thushe 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 samewhich had formerly been produced from the Œbalian wound. Letters common tothatyouthxiii. 397-426.and to the hero, were inscribed in the middle of the leaves; the latterbelonging tothe name,47the former to the lamentation.

The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle,48and of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughterthereof the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the weapons of the Tirynthianhero. 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 thingelseher human form, and alarmed a foreign air49with 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 Apollo50dragged 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. Astyanax51is 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,andthe 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,xiii. 426-438.and,sotaken 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 theeafarfrom 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.

It may with justice be said, that in the speeches of Ajax Telamon, and Ulysses, here given, the Poet has presented us with a masterpiece of genius; both in the lively colours in which he has described the two rivals, and the ingenious manner in which he has throughout sustained the contrast between their respective characters.

The ancient writers are not agreed upon the question, who was the mother of Ajax Telamon; Dares says that it was Hesione; while Apollodorus, Plutarch, Tzetzes and others, allege that it was Peribœa, the daughter of Alcathoüs, the son of Pelops. Pindar and Apollodorus say, that Hercules, on going to visit his friend Telamon, prayed to Jupiter that Telamon might have a son, whose skin should be as impenetrable as that of the Nemæan lion, which he then wore. As he prayed, he espied an eagle; upon which, he informed his friend that a favourable event awaited his prayer, and desired him to call his son after the name of an eagle, which in the Greek isαἰετὸς. The Scholiast on Sophocles, Suidas and Tzetzes, say further, that when Hercules returned to see Telamon, after the birth of Ajax, he covered him with the lion’s skin, and that by this means Ajax became invulnerable except in that spot of his body, which was beneath the hole which the arrow of Hercules had made in the skin of the beast.

Dictys, Suidas, and Cedrenus affirm, that the dispute of Ulysses and Ajax Telamon was about the Palladium, to which each of them laid claim. They add, that the Grecian nobles, having adjudged it to Ulysses, Ajax threatened to slay them, and was found dead in his tent the next morning; but it is more generally stated to the effect here related by Ovid, that he killed himself, because he could not obtain the armour of Achilles. Filled with grief and anger combined, he became distracted; and after falling on some flocks, which in his madness he took for enemies, he at last stabbed himself with the sword which he had received from Hector. This account has been followed by Euripides, in his tragedy on the subject of the death of Ajax; and Homer seems to allude to this story, when he makes Ulysses say, that on his descent to the Infernal Regions, the shades of allthe Grecian heroes immediately met him, except that of Ajax, whose resentment at their former dispute about the armour of Achilles was still so warm, that he would not come near him. The Scholiast on Homer, and Eustathius, say that Agamemnon being much embarrassed how to behave in a dispute which might have proved fatal to the Grecian cause, ordered the Trojan prisoners to come before the council to give their opinion, as to which of them had done the most mischief; and that they answered in favour of Ulysses. The Scholiast on Aristophanes also adds, that Agamemnon, not satisfied with this enquiry, sent out spies to know what was the opinion of the Trojans on the relative merits of Ulysses and Ajax; and that upon their report, he decided in favour of Ulysses.

According to Pliny and Pausanias, Ajax was buried near the promontory of Sigæum, where a tomb was erected for him; though other writers, on the authority of Dictys, place his tomb on the promontory of Rhœtæum. Horace speaks of him as being denied the honour of a funeral; but he evidently alludes to a passage in the tragedy of Sophocles, where the poet introduces Agamemnon as obstinately refusing to allow him burial, till he is softened by the entreaties of Teucer.

It is probable that Homer knew nothing of the story here mentioned relative to the concealment of Achilles, disguised in female apparel, by Thetis, in the court of Lycomedes, her brother; for speaking of the manner in which Achilles engaged in the war, he says that Nestor and Ulysses went to visit Peleus and Menœtius, and easily prevailed with them that Achilles and Patroclus should accompany them to the war. It was, however, at the court of Lycomedes that Achilles fell in love with and married Deidamia, by whom he had Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus, who was present at the taking of Troy, at a very early age.

The story of Polydorus is related in the third Book of the Æneid, and is also told by Hyginus, with some variations. He says that Polydorus was sent by Priam to Polymnestor, king of Thrace, while he was yet in his cradle; and that Ilione, the daughter of Priam, distrusting the cruelty and avarice of Polymnestor, who was her husband, educated the child as her own son, and made their own son Deiphylus pass for Polydorus, the two infants being of the same age. He also says that the Greeks, after the taking of Troy, offered Electra to Polymnestor in marriage, on condition that he should divorce Ilione, and slay Polydorus, and that Polymnestor, having acceded to their proposal, unconsciously killed his own son Deiphylus. Polydorus going to consult the oracle concerning his future fortune, was told, that his father was dead, and his native city reduced to ashes; on which he imagined that the oracle had deceived him; but returning to Thrace, his sister informed him of the secret, on which he deprived Polymnestor of his sight.

Inreturning 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 exasperationsxiii. 439-472.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,anduntil 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.”Thushe said; and his companions obeying the implacable shade, the noble and unfortunate maid, and more thanan ordinarywoman, 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.

She, mindful of herself, after she was brought to the cruel altar, and had perceived that the savage rites were preparing for her; and when she saw Neoptolemus standingby, and wielding his sword, and fixing his eyes upon her countenance, said— “Quickly make use of this noble blood:in methere is no resistance: and do thou bury thy weapons either in my throat or in my breast!” and, at the same time she laid bare her throat and her breast; “should I, Polyxena, forsooth,52either endure to be the slave of any person, or will any sacred Deity be appeased by such a sacrifice. I only wish that my death could be concealed from my mother. My mother is the impediment; and she lessens my joys at death. Yet it is not my death, but her own life, that should be lamented by her. Only, stand ye off, lest I should go to the Stygian shades not a free woman: ifin thisI demand what is just; and withhold the hands of males from the contact of a virgin. My blood will be the more acceptable to him, whoever it is that you are preparing to appease by my slaughter. Yet, if the last prayers of my lips move any of you,—’tis the daughter of king Priam,andnot a captive that entreats—returnxiii. 472-505.my body unconsumed to my mother, and let her not purchase for me with gold, but with tears, the sad privilege of a sepulchre. Whenin former timesshe could, then used she to purchase with gold.”

Thusshe said; but the people did not restrain those tears which she restrained. Even the priest himself, weeping and reluctant, divided her presented breast with the piercing steel. She, sinking to the earth on her failing knees, maintained an undaunted countenance to the last moment of her life. Even then was it her care, when she fell, to cover the features that ought to be concealed, and to preserve the honour of her chaste modesty. The Trojan matrons received her, and reckoned the children of Priam whom they had had to deplore; and how much blood one house had expended. And they lament thee, Oh virgin! and thee, Oh thou! so lately called a royal wifeanda royal mother,oncethe resemblance of flourishing Asia, but now a worthless prey amid the plunderof Troy; which the conquering Ulysses would have declined as his, but that thou hadst brought Hector forth.Andscarce did Hector find an owner for his mother. She, embracing the body bereft of a soul so brave, gave to that as well, those tears which so oft she had given for her country, her children, and her husband;andher tears she poured in his wounds. And she impressed kisses with her lips, and beat her breastnowaccustomed to it; and trailing her grey hairs in the clotted blood, many things indeed did she say, but these as well, as she tore her breast:

“My daughter, the last affliction (for what now remains?) to thy mother: my daughter, thou liest prostrate, and I behold thy woundasmy own wounds. Lo! lest I should have lost any one of my children without bloodshed, thou, too, dost receive thy wound. Still, becausethou wasta woman, I supposed thee safe from the sword; andyet, a woman, thou hast fallen by the sword. The same Achilles, the ruin of Troy, and the bereaver of myself, the same has destroyed thus many of thy brothers,andthyself. But, after he had fallen by the arrows of Paris and of Phœbus, ‘Now, at least,’ I said, ‘Achilles is nolongerto be dreaded;’ and yet even now, was he to be dreaded by me. The very ashes of him, as he lies buried, rage against this family; andevenin the tomb have we found him an enemy. For the descendant of Æacus have I beenthusprolific.xiii. 505-536.Great Ilion lies prostrate, and the public calamity is completed by a dreadful catastrophe; if indeed, it is completed. Pergamus alone remains for me: and my sorrow is still in its career. So lately the greatest woman in the world, powerful in so many sons-in-law, and children53, and daughters-in-law, and in my husband, now I am dragged into exile, destitute,andtorn away from the tombs of my kindred, as a present to Penelope. She, pointing me out to the matrons of Ithaca, as I tease my allotted task, will say, ‘This is that famous mother of Hector; this is the wife of Priam.’ And, now thou, who after the loss of so manychildren, alone didst alleviate the sorrows of thy mother, hast made the atonement at the tomb of the enemy. Atoning sacrifices for an enemy have I brought forth. For what purpose, lasting like iron, am I reserved? and why do I lingerhere? To what end dost thou, pernicious age, detain me? Why, ye cruel Deities, unless to the end that I may see fresh deaths, do ye reprieve an aged woman of years so prolonged? Who could have supposed, that after the fall of Troy, Priam could have been pronounced happy? Blessed in his death, he has not beheld thee, my daughter,thuscut off; and at the same moment, he lost his life and his kingdom.

“But, I suppose, thou, a maiden of royal birth, wilt be honoured with funeral rites, and thy body will be deposited in the tombs of thy ancestors. This is not the fortune of thy house; tears and a handful of foreign sand will be thy lot, theonlygifts of a mother. We have lost all; a child most dear to his mother, now alone remains as a reason for me to endure to live yet for a short time, once the youngest ofallmy male issue, Polydorus, entrusted on these coasts to the Ismarian king. Why, in the mean time, am I delaying to bathe her cruel wounds with the stream, her features, too, besmeared with dreadful blood?”

Thusshe spoke; and with aged step she proceeded towards the shore, tearing her grey locks. “Give me an urn, ye Trojan women,” the unhappymotherhad just said, in order that she might take up the flowing waters,whenshe beheld54xiii. 536-571.the body of Polydorus thrown up on the shore, and the great wounds made by the Thracian weapons. The Trojan women cried out aloud; with grief she was struck dumb; and very grief consumed both her voice and the tears that arose within; and much resembling a hard rock she became benumbed. And at one moment she fixed her eyes on the ground before her;andsometimes she raised her haggard features towards the skies;andnow she viewed the features, now the wounds of her son, as he lay; the wounds especially; and she armed and prepared herself for vengeance by rage. Soon as she was inflamed by it, as though shestillremained a queen, she determined to be revenged, and was whollyemployedindevisingafittingform of punishment. And as the lioness rages when bereft of her sucking whelp, and having found the tracks of his feet, follows the enemy that she sees not; so Hecuba, after she had mingled rage with mourning, not forgetful of her spirit,butforgetful of her years, went to Polymnestor, the contriver of this dreadful murder, and demanded an interview; for that it was her wish to show him a concealed treasure left for him to give to her son.

The Odrysiankingbelieves her, and, inured to the love of gain, comes to a secret spot. Then with soothing lips, he craftily says, “Away with delays, Hecuba,andgive the present to thy son; all that thou givest, and what thou hast already given, I swear by the Gods above, shall be his.” Sternly she eyes him as he speaks, and falsely swears; and she boils with heaving rage; and so flies on him, seized by a throng of the captive matrons, and thrusts her fingers into his perfidious eyes; and of their sight she despoils his cheeks, and plunges her handsinto the sockets, (’tis rage that makes her strong); and, defiled with his guilty blood, she tears not his eyes, for they are not left,butthe places for his eyes.

Provoked by the death of their king, the Thracian people begin to attack the Trojanmatronwith the hurling of darts and of stones. But she attacks the stones thrown at her with a hoarse noise, and with bites; and attempting to speak, her mouth just ready for the words, she barks aloud. The placestillexists, and derives its name55from the circumstance; and long remembering her ancient misfortunes, even then didxiii. 571-612.she howl dismally through the Sithonian plains. Hersadfortune moved both her own Trojans, and her Pelasgian foes, and all the Gods as well; so much so, that even the wife and sister of Jove herself denied that Hecuba had deserved that fate.

Although she has favoured those same arms, there is not leisure for Aurora to be moved by the calamities and the fall of Troy. A nearer care and grief at home for her lost Memnon is afflicting her. Him his rosy-coloured mother saw perish by the spear of Achilles on the Phrygian plains.Thisshe saw; and that colour with which the hours of the morning grow ruddy, turned pale, and the æther lay hid in clouds. But the parent could not endure to behold his limbs laid on the closing flames. But with loose hair, just as she was, she disdained not to fall down at the knees of great Jove, and to add these words to her tears: “Inferior to allthe Goddesseswhich the golden æther does sustain, (for throughout all the world are my temples the fewest), still, a Goddess, I am come; not that thou shouldst grant me temples and days of sacrifice, and altars to be heated with fires. But if thou considerest how much I, a female, perform for thee, at the time when, with the early dawn, I keep the confines of the night, thou wouldst think that some reward ought to be given to me. But that is not my care, nor is such now the condition of Aurora such that she should demand the honours deserved by her. Bereft of my Memnon am I come;of himwho, in vain, wielded valiant arms for his uncle, and who in his early years (’twas thus ye willed it,) was slain by the brave Achilles. Give him, I pray, supreme ruler of the Gods, some honour, as a solace for his death, and ease the wounds of a mother.”

Jove nods his assent; whensuddenlythe lofty pile of Memnon sinks with its towering fires, and volumes of black smoke darken thelight ofday. Just as when the rivers exhale the rising fogs, and the sun is not admitted below them. The black embers fly, and rolling into one body, they thicken, and take a form, and assume heat and life from the flames. Their own lightness gives them wings; and first, like birds,andthen real birds, they flutter with their wings. At once innumerable sisters are fluttering, whose natal origin is the same. And thrice do they go around the pile, and thrice does their clamour rise in concert into the air. In the fourth flight they separate their company. Then two fierce tribesxiii. 612-622.wage war from opposite sides, and with their beaks and crooked claws expend their rage, and weary their wings and opposing breasts; and down their kindred bodies fall, a sacrifice to the entombed ashes, and they remember that from a great man they have received their birth. Their progenitor gives a name to these birds so suddenly formed, called Memnonides after him; when the Sun has run through the twelve signsof the Zodiac, they fight, doomed to perish in battle, in honour of their parent.56

To others, therefore, it seemed a sad thing, that the daughter of Dymas wasnowbarking;butAurora was intent on her own sorrows; and even now she sheds the tears of affection, and sprinkles them in dew over all the world.

The particulars which Ovid here gives of the misfortunes that befell the family of Priam, with the exception of a few circumstances, agree perfectly with the narratives of the ancient historians.

According to Dictys, Philostratus, and Hyginus, after Achilles was slain by the treachery of Paris, on the eve of his marriage with Polyxena, she became inconsolable at his death, and returning to the Grecian camp, she was kindly received by Agamemnon; but being unable to get the better of her despair, she stole out of the camp at night, and stabbed herself at the tomb of Achilles. Philostratus adds, that the ghost of Achilles appeared to Apollonius Tyanæus, the hero of his story, and gave him permission to ask him any questions he pleased, assuring him, that he would give him full information on the subject of them. Among other things, Apollonius desired to know if it was the truth that the Greeks had sacrificed Polyxena on his tomb; to which the ghost replied, that her grief made her take the resolution not to survive her intended husband, and that she had killed herself.

Other writers, agreeing with Ovid as to the manner of her death, tell us that it was Pyrrhus who sacrificed Polyxena to his father’s shade, to revenge his death, of which, though innocently, she had been the cause. Pausanias, who says that this was the general opinion, avers, on what ground it is difficult to conceive, that Homer designedly omitted this fact, because it was so dishonourable to the Greeks; and in his description of the paintings at Delphi, by Polygnotus, of the destruction of Troy, he says that Polyxena was there represented as being led out to the tomb of Achilles, where she was sacrificed by the Greeks. He also says, that he had seen her story painted in the same manner at Pergamus, Athens, and other places. Many of the poets, and Virgil in the number, affirmthat Polyxena was sacrificed in Phrygia, near Troy, on the tomb of Achilles, he having desired it at his death; while Euripides says that it was in the Thracian Chersonesus, on a cenotaph, which was erected there in honour of Achilles: and that his ghost appearing, Calchas was consulted, who answered, that it was necessary to sacrifice Polyxena, which was accordingly done by Pyrrhus.

The ancient writers are divided as to the descent of Hecuba. Homer, who has been followed by his Scholiast, and by Ovid and Suidas, says that she was the daughter of Dymas, King of Phrygia. Euripides says that she was the daughter of Cisscus, and with him Virgil and Servius agree. Apollodorus, again, makes her to be descended from Sangar and Merope. In the distribution of spoil after the siege of Troy, Hecuba fell to the share of Ulysses, and became his slave; but died soon after, in Thrace. Plautus and Servius allege that the Greeks themselves circulated the story of her transformation into a bitch, because she was perpetually railing at them, to provoke them to put her to death, rather than condemn her to pass her life as a slave. According to Strabo and Pomponius Mela, in their time, the place of her burial was still to be seen in Thrace. Euripides, in his Hecuba, has not followed this tradition, but represents her as complaining that the Greeks had chained her to the door of Agamemnon like a dog. Perhaps she became the slave of Agamemnon after Ulysses had left the army, on his return to Ithaca; and it is possible that the story of her transformation may have been solely founded on this tradition. She bore to Priam ten sons and seven daughters, and survived them all except Helenus; most of her sons having fallen by the hand of Achilles.

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