HOMER'S ILIAD COMPLETE

Rhapsody 1

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

Homer Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Homer in Print

Page 4

Thus he spoke; but the old man was afraid, and obeyed the command. And he went in silence along the shore of the loud-resounding sea; but then, going apart, the aged man prayed much to king Apollo, whom fair-haired Latona bore:

"Hear me, god of the silver bow, who art wont to protect Chrysa and divine Cilla, and who mightily rulest over Tenedos: O Sminthius,[7] if ever I have roofed[8] thy graceful temple, or if, moreover, at any time I have burned to thee the fat thighs of bulls or of goats, accomplish this entreaty for me. Let the Greeks pay for my tears, by thy arrows."

[Footnote 7: An epithet derived from [Greek: sminthos], the Phrygian name for a mouse: either because Apollo had put an end to a plague of mice among that people, or because a mouse was thought emblematical of augury.—Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 68, observes that this "worship of Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and its neighbouring territory, dates before the earliest period of AEolic colonization." On the Homeric description of Apollo, see Mueller, Dorians, vol. i. p. 315.]

[Footnote 8: Not "crowned," as Heyne says; for this was a later custom.—See Anthon and Arnold.]

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