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Rhapsody 24

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

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Page 8

Thus having spoken, swift-footed Iris departed. But he ordered his sons to prepare his well-wheeled mule-drawn chariot, and to tie a chest upon it; but he descended into an odoriferous chamber of cedar, lofty-roofed, which contained many rarities, and called in his wife Hecuba, and said:

"Unhappy one, an Olympian messenger has come to me from Jove, [that I should] ransom my dear son, going to the ships of the Greeks, and should bear gifts to Achilles, which may melt his soul. But come, tell this to me, what does it appear to thee in thy mind? For my strength and courage vehemently urge me myself to go thither to the ships, into the wide army of the Greeks."

Thus he spoke: but his spouse wept, and answered him in words:

"Ah me, where now is thy prudence gone, for which thou wast formerly distinguished among foreigners, and among those whom thou dost govern? Why dost thou wish to go alone to the ships of the Greeks, before the eyes of the man who slew thy many and brave sons? Certainly an iron heart is thine. For if this cruel and perfidious man shall take and behold[783] thee with his eyes, he will not pity thee, nor will he at all respect thee. But let us now lament him apart,[784] sitting in the hall; but [let it be] as formerly to him, at his birth violent fate spun his thread, when I brought him forth, that he should satiate the swift-footed dogs at a distance from his own parents, with that fierce man, the very middle of whose liver I wish that I had hold of, that, clinging to it, I might devour it; then would the deeds done against my son be repaid; for he did not slay him behaving as a coward, but standing forth in defence of the Trojan men and deep-bosomed Trojan dames, neither mindful of flight nor of receding."

[Footnote 783: A somewhat awkward inversion of the sense.]

[Footnote 784: I.e. without the body of Hector being at hand.]

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