HOMER'S ILIAD COMPLETE

Rhapsody 14

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

Homer Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Homer in Print

Page 9

Thus she spake, and the large-eyed, venerable Juno smiled, and smiling, then placed it in her bosom. But Venus, the daughter of Jove, departed to the palace; and Juno, hastening, quitted the summit of Olympus, and, having passed over Pieria and fertile Emathia, she hastened over the snowy mountains of equestrian Thrace, most lofty summits, nor did she touch the ground with her feet. From Athos she descended to the foaming deep, and came to Lemnos, the city of divine Thoas, where she met Sleep, the brother of Death; to whose hand she then clung, and spoke, and addressed him:

"O Sleep,[470] king of all gods and all men,[471] if ever indeed thou didst listen to my entreaty, now too be persuaded; and I will acknowledge gratitude to thee all my days. Close immediately in sleep for me the bright eyes of Jove under his eyelids, after I couch with him in love; and I will give thee, as gifts, a handsome golden throne, for ever incorruptible. And my limping son, Vulcan, adorning it, shall make it, and below thy feet he shall place a footstool, upon which thou mayest rest thy shining feet while feasting."

[Footnote 470: Cf. Hesiod's Theogony, 214. The dying words of Gorgias of Leontium are very elegant: [Greek: Ede me o ypnos archetai parakatatithesthai to adelpho].—AElian, Var. Hist. ii. 35.]

[Footnote 471: So in the Orphic hymn: [Greek: Ypne anax panton makaron thneton t' anthropon].]

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