αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ’—
if indeed, but once this battle avoided,
We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal—
Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy to it:
if keeping back
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack
In this life’s human sea at all;
and so on. Again; in another passage which I have before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of Peleus,
τί σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἀνάκτι