The Iliad and the Odyssey (Classics of World Literature) (25 page)

Against the valiant Solymi, Mars reft of light and life;

Leodamië (being envied of all the goddesses)

The golden-bridle-handling queen – the maiden patroness –

Slew with an arrow: and for this he wand’red evermore

Alone through his Aleian field, and fed upon the core

Of his sad bosom, flying all the loath’d consorts of men.

Yet had he one surviv’d to him, of those three childeren,

Hippolochus, the root of me: who sent me here with charge

That I should always bear me well, and my deserts enlarge

Beyond the vulgar, lest I sham’d my race, that far excell’d

All that Ephyra’s famous towers or ample Lycia held.

This is my stock; and this am I.’ This cheer’d Tydides’ heart;

Who pitch’d his spear down, lean’d, and talk’d in this affectionate part:

‘Certes – in thy great ancestor, and in mine own – thou art

A guest of mine, right ancient; king Oeneus twenty days

Detain’d with feasts Bellerophon, whom all the world did praise;

Betwixt whom mutual gifts were given: my grandsire gave to thine

A girdle of Phoenician work, impurpled wondrous fine.

Thine gave a two-neck’d jug of gold, which though I use not here,

Yet still it is my gem at home. But if our fathers were

Familiar, or each other knew, I know not, since my sire

Left me a child, at siege of Thebes, where he left his life’s fire.

But let us prove our grandsires’ sons, and be each other’s guests.

To Lycia when I come, do thou receive thy friend with feasts;

Peloponnesus, with the like, shall thy wish’d presence greet.

Mean space, shun we each other here, though in the press we meet.

There are enow of Troy beside, and men enough renown’d,

To right my pow’rs, whomever heav’n shall let my lance confound.

So are there of the Greeks for thee: kill who thou canst; and now

For sign of amity ’twixt us, and that all these may know

We glory in th’ hospitious rites our grandsires did commend,

Change we our arms before them all.’ From horse then both descend,

Join hands, give faith, and take; and then did Jupiter elate

The mind of Glaucus, who to show his rev’rence to the state

Of virtue in his grandsire’s heart, and gratulate beside

The offer of so great a friend, exchanged in that good pride

Curets of gold for those of brass that did on Diomed shine:

One of a hundred oxen’s price, the other but of nine.

By this had Hector reach’d the ports of Scaea, and the tow’rs.

About him flock’d the wives of Troy, the children, paramours,

Inquiring how their husbands did, their fathers, brothers, loves.

He stood not then to answer them, but said: ‘It now behoves

Ye should go all t’ implore the aid of heaven in a distress

Of great effect, and imminent.’ Then hasted he access

To Priam’s goodly builded court, which round about was run

With walking porches, galleries, to keep off rain and sun.

Within, of one side, on a row of sundry colour’d stones,

Fifty fair lodgings were built out, for Priam’s fifty sons,

And for as fair sort of their wives; and in the opposite view

Twelve lodgings of like stone, like height, were likewise built arew,

Where, with their fair and virtuous wives, twelve princes, son-in-law

To honourable Priam, lay. And here met Hecuba

(The loving mother) her great son, and with her needs must be

The fairest of her female race, the bright Laodice.

The queen grip’t hard her Hector’s hand, and said: ‘O worthiest son,

Why leav’st thou field? Is’t not because the cursed nation

Afflict our countrymen and friends? They are their moans that move

Thy mind to come and lift thy hands – in his high tow’r – to Jove.

But stay a little, that myself may fetch our sweetest wine,

To offer first to Jupiter; then that these joints of thine

May be refresh’d: for (woe is me) how thou art toil’d and spent!

Thou for our city’s general state, thou for our friends far sent,

Must now the press of fight endure, now solitude to call

Upon the name of Jupiter, thou only for us all.

But wine will something comfort thee: for to a man dismay’d

With careful spirits, or too much with labour overlaid,

Wine brings much rescue, strength’ning much the body and the mind.’

The great helm-mover thus receiv’d the auth’ress of his kind:

My royal mother, bring no wine, lest rather it impair

Than help my strength, and make my mind forgetful of th’ affair

Committed to it. And to pour it out in sacrifice –

I fear with unwash’d hands to serve the pure-liv’d deities;

Nor is it lawful, thus imbrued with blood and dust, to prove

The will of heav’n, or offer vows to cloud-compelling Jove.

I only come to use your pains, assembling other dames,

Matrons, and women honour’d most, with high and virtuous names,

With wine and odours, and a robe most ample, most of price,

And which is dearest in your love, to offer sacrifice

In Pallas’ temple, and to put the precious robe ye bear

On her Palladium; vowing all twelve oxen of a year,

Whose necks were never rung with yoke, shall pay her grace their lives,

If she will pity our sieg’d town, pity ourselves, our wives,

Pity our children, and remove from sacred Ilion

The dreadful soldier Diomed. And when yourselves are gone

About this work, myself will go to call into the field

(If he will hear me) Helen’s love, whom would the earth would yield,

And headlong take into her gulf, ev’n quick before mine eyes.

For then my heart, I hope, would cast her load of miseries;

Borne for the plague he hath been born, and bred to the deface

(By great Olympius) of Troy, our sire, and all our race.’

This said, grave Hecuba went home, and sent her maids about

To bid the matrons: she herself descended, and search’d out

(Within a place that breath’d perfumes) the richest robe she had,

Which lay with many rich ones more, most curiously made

By women of Sydonia, which Paris brought from thence,

Sailing the broad sea, when he made that voyage of offence,

In which he brought home Helena. That robe transferr’d so far

(That was the undermost) she took – it glitter’d like a star –

And with it went she to the fane, with many ladies more,

Amongst whom fair-cheek’d Theano unlock’d the folded door,

Chaste Theano, Antenor’s wife, and of Cisseüs’ race,

Sister to Hecuba, both born to that great king of Thrace.

Her th’ Ilians made Minerva’s priest; and her they follow’d all

Up to the temple’s highest tow’r, where on their knees they fall,

Lift up their hands, and fill the fane with ladies’ piteous cries.

Then lovely Theano took the veil, and with it she implies

The great Palladium, praying thus: ‘Goddess of most renown

In all the heav’n of goddesses! Great guardian of our town,

Reverend Minerva! Break the lance of Diomed; cease his grace;

Give him to fall in shameful flight, headlong, and on his face,

Before our ports of Ilion, that instantly we may

Twelve unyok’d oxen of a year in this thy temple slay

To thy sole honour; take their bloods, and banish our offence;

Accept Troy’s zeal, her wives, and save our infants’ innocence.’

She pray’d, but Pallas would not grant. Mean space was Hector come

Where Alexander’s lodgings were, that many a goodly room

Had, built in them by architects, of Troy’s most curious sort –

And where no lodgings but a house, nor no house but a court,

Or had all these contain’d in them; and all within a tow’r,

Next Hector’s lodgings and the king’s. The lov’d of heaven’s chief pow’r

(Hector) here ent’red. In his hand a goodly lance he bore,

Ten cubits long; the brazen head went shining in before,

Help’d with a burnish’d ring of gold. He found his brother then

Amongst the women, yet prepar’d to go amongst the men:

For in their chamber he was set, trimming his arms, his shield,

His curets, and was trying how his crooked bow would yield

To his straight arms. Amongst her maids was set the Argive queen,

Commanding them in choicest works. When Hector’s eye had seen

His brother thus accompanied, and that he could not bear

The very touching of his arms, but where the women were,

And when the time so needed men, right cunningly he chid.

That he might do it bitterly, his cowardice he hid

(That simply made him so retir’d) beneath an anger, feign’d

In him by Hector, for the hate the citizens sustain’d

Against him for the foil he took in their cause, and again,

For all their general foils in his. So Hector seems to plain

Of his wrath to them, for their hate, and not his cowardice,

As that were it that shelt’red him in his effeminacies,

And kept him in that dangerous time from their fit aid in fight;

For which he chid thus: ‘Wretched man! So timeless is thy spite,

That ’tis not honest; and their hate is just, ’gainst which it bends.

War burns about the town for thee; for thee our slaughter’d friends

Besiege Troy with their carcasses, on whose heaps our high walls

Are overlook’d by enemies; the sad sounds of their falls

Without are echo’d with the cries of wives and babes within;

And all for thee: and yet for them thy honour cannot win

Head of thine anger; thou shouldst need no spirit to stir up thine,

But thine should set the rest on fire, and with a rage divine

Chastise impartially the best, that impiously forbears.

Come forth, lest thy fair tow’rs and Troy be burn’d about thine ears.’

Paris acknowledg’d (as before) all just that Hector spake,

Allowing justice, though it were for his injustice sake:

And where his brother put a wrath upon him by his art,

He takes it (for his honour’s sake) as sprung out of his heart,

And rather would have anger seem his fault than cowardice;

And thus he answer’d: ‘Since – with right – you join’d check with advice,

And I hear you, give equal ear: it is not any spleen

Against the town, as you conceive, that makes me so unseen,

But sorrow for it; which to ease, and by discourse digest

Within myself, I live so close. And yet, since men might wrest

My sad retreat, like you, my wife with her advice inclin’d

This my addression to the field, which was mine own free mind,

As well as th’ instance of her words: for though the foil were mine,

Conquest brings forth her wreaths by turns: stay then this haste of thine

But till I arm, and I am made a consort for thee straight;

Or go, I’ll overtake thy haste.’ Helen stood at receipt,

And took up all great Hector’s powers, t’ attend her heavy words;

By which had Paris no reply; this vent her grief affords:

‘Brother (if I may call you so, that had been better born

A dog, than such a horrid dame as all men curse and scorn,

A mischief-maker, a man-plague), O would to god the day

That first gave light to me had been a whirlwind in my way,

And borne me to some desert hill, or hid me in the rage

Of earth’s most far-resounding seas, ere I should thus engage

The dear lives of so many friends: yet since the gods have been

Helpless foreseers of my plagues, they might have likewise seen

That he they put in yoke with me, to bear out their award,

Had been a man of much more spirit; and, or had noblier dar’d

To shield mine honour with this deed, or with his mind had known

Much better the upbraids of men, that so he might have shown

(More like a man) some sense of grief for both my shame and his.

But he is senseless, nor conceives what any manhood is;

Nor now, nor ever after will: and therefore hangs, I fear,

A plague above him. But come near, good brother; rest you here,

Who, of the world of men, stands charg’d with most unrest for me –

Vile wretch – and for my lover’s wrong: on whom a destiny

So bitter is impos’d by Jove, that all succeeding times

Will put – to our unended shames – in all men’s mouths our crimes.’

He answer’d: ‘Helen, do not seek to make me sit with thee:

I must not stay, though well I know thy honour’d love of me.

My mind calls forth to aid our friends, in whom my absence breeds

Longings to see me: for whose sakes, importune thou to deeds

This man by all means, that your care may make his own make hast,

And meet me in the open town, that all may see at last

He minds his lover. I myself will now go home, and see

My household, my dear wife and son, that little hope of me.

For, sister, ’tis without my skill if I shall ever more

Return and see them, or to earth her right in me restore:

The gods may stoop me, by the Greeks.’ This said, he went to see

The virtuous princess, his true wife, white-arm’d Andromache.

She, with her infant son and maid, was climb’d the tow’r, about

The sight of him that sought for her, weeping and crying out.

Hector, not finding her at home, was going forth, retir’d,

Stood in the gate, her woman call’d, and curiously inquir’d

Where she was gone, bad tell him true, if she were gone to see

His sisters, or his brothers’ wives, or whether she should be

At temple with the other dames, t’ implore Minerva’s ruth.

Her woman answer’d: since he ask’d, and urg’d so much the truth,

The truth was she was neither gone to see his brothers’ wives,