Of endless youth allotted them, fell through the yoky sphere,
Ruthfully ruffled and defiled.[[118]]
[118]. Iliad, xvii. 432-40 (Chapman’s trans.).
A northern companion-picture is furnished by Grani mourning the death of Sigurd, whom he had borne to the lair of Fafnir, and through the flames to woo Brynhild, and now survived only to be immolated on his pyre. The tears, however, of the weeping horses in the Ramayana and Mahabharata flow rather through fear than through sorrow.
The final appearance of the Pelidean steeds upon the scene of the Iliad reaches a tragic height, probably unequalled in the whole cycle of poetical delineations from the lower animal-world. Achilles, roused at last to battle, and gleaming in his new-wrought armour, cried with a terrible voice as he leaped into his car—
Xanthus and Balius, far-famed brood of Podargê’s strain,
Take heed that in other sort to the Danæan host again,
Ye bring your chariot-lord, when ourselves from the battle refrain,
And not, as ye left Patroclus, leave us yonder slain.[[119]]
The sting of the reproach, and the favour of Heré, together effected a prodigy, and Xanthus spoke thus to his angry lord: