The Iliads of Homer Translated according to the Greek · Homer
ANOTHER ARGUMENT
Pray’rs past, cakes on they threw; The ox then, to the altar drawn, they kill’d, and from him drew His hide, then cut him up, his thighs; in two hewn, dubb’d with fat, Prick’d on the sweetbreads, and with wood, leaveless, and kindled at Apposéd fire, they burn the thighs; which done, the inwards, slit, They broil’d on coals and eat; the rest, in giggots cut, they spit, Roast cunningly, draw, sit, and feast; nought lack’d to leave allay’d Each temp’rate appetite; which serv’d, Nestor began and said: “Atrides, most grac’d king of men, now no more words allow, Nor more defer the deed Jove vows. Let heralds summon now The brazen-coated Greeks, and us range ev’rywhere the host, To stir a strong war quickly up.” This speech no syllable lost; The high-voic’d heralds instantly he, charg’d to call to arms The curl’d-head Greeks; they call’d; the Greeks straight answer’d their alarms. The Jove-kept kings, about the king all gather’d, with their aid Rang’d all in tribes and nations. With them the gray-eyed Maid Great Ægis (Jove’s bright shield) sustain’d, that can be never old, Never corrupted, fring’d about with serpents forg’d of gold, As many all suffic’d to make an hundred fringes, worth An hundred oxen, ev’ry snake all sprawling, all set forth With wondrous spirit.
Through the host with this the Goddess ran, In fury casting round her eyes, and furnish’d ev’ry man With strength, exciting all to arms, and fight incessant. None Now lik’d their lov’d homes like the wars. And as a fire upon A huge wood, on the heights of hills, that far off hurls his light; So the divine brass shin’d on these thus thrusting on for fight, Their splendour through the air reach’d heav’n. And as about the flood Caïster, in an Asian mead, flocks of the airy brood, Cranes, geese, or long-neck’d swans, here, there, proud of their pinions fly, And in their falls layout such throats, that with their spiritful cry The meadow shrieks again; so here, these many-nation’d men Flow’d over the Scamandrian field, from tents and ships; the din Was dreadful that the feet of men and horse beat out of earth. And in the flourishing mead they stood, thick as the odorous birth Of flow’rs, or leaves bred in the spring; or thick as swarms of flies Throng then to sheep-cotes, when each swarm his erring wing applies To milk dew’d on the milk-maid’s pails; all eagerly dispos’d To give to ruin th’ Ilians.
And as in rude heaps clos’d, Though huge goatherds are at their food, the goatherds eas’ly yet Sort into sundry herds; so here the chiefs in battle set Here tribes, here nations, ord’ring all. Amongst whom shin’d the king, With eyes like lightning-loving Jove, his forehead answering, In breast like Neptune, Mars in waist. And as a goodly bull Most eminent of all a herd, most wrong, most masterful, So Agamemnon, Jove that day made overheighten clear That heav’n-bright army, and preferr’d to all th’ heroës there. Now tell me, Muses, you that dwell in heav’nly roofs, (for you Are Goddesses, are present here, are wise, and all things know, We only trust the voice of fame, know nothing,) who they were That here were captains of the Greeks, commanding princes here. The multitude exceed my song, though fitted to my choice Ten tongues were, harden’d palates ten, a breast of brass, a voice Infract and trump-like; that great work, unless the seed of Jove, The deathless Muses, undertake, maintains a pitch above All mortal pow’rs. The princes then, and navy that did bring Those so inenarrable troops, and all their soils, I sing.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.