[62.] Plunges into the deep.]—Ver. 791-2. ‘Inque profundum Pronus abit,’ Clarke renders, ‘Goes plumb down into the deep.’ Certainly this is nearer to its French origin, ‘a plomb,’ than the present form, ‘plump down;’ but, like many other instances in his translation, it decidedly does not help us, as he professes to do, to ‘the attainment of the elegancy of this great Poet.’
[63.] Because he plunges.]—Ver. 795. He accounts for the Latin name of the diver, or didapper, ‘mergus,’ by saying that it was so called, ‘a mergendo,’ from its diving, which doubtless was the origin of the name, though not taking its rise in the fiction here related by the Poet.
[ BOOK THE TWELFTH.]
[ FABLES I.] AND [II.]
The Greeks assemble their troops at Aulis, to proceed against the city of Troy, and revenge the rape of Helen; but the fleet is detained in port by contrary winds. Calchas, the priest, after a prediction concerning the success of the expedition, declares that the weather will never be favourable till Agamemnon shall have sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. She is immediately led to the altar for that purpose; but Diana, appeased by this act of obedience, carries away the maiden, and substitutes a hind in her place, on which a fair wind arises. Upon the Greeks landing at Troy, a battle is fought, in which Protesilaüs is killed by Hector, and Achilles kills Cygnus, a Trojan, on which his father Neptune transforms him into a swan.
His father Priam mourned him, not knowing that Æsacus, having assumed wings, was still living; Hector, too, with his brothers, made unavailing offerings[1] at a tomb, that bore his name on it. The presence of Paris was wanting, at this mournful office: who, soon after, brought into his country a lengthened war, together with a ravished wife;[2] and a thousand ships[3] uniting together, followed him, and, together with them, the whole body[4] of the Pelasgian nation. Nor would vengeance have been delayed, had not the raging winds made the seas impassable, and the Bœotian land detained in fishy Aulis the ships ready to depart. Here, when they had prepared a xii. 11-44. sacrifice to Jupiter, after the manner of their country, as the ancient altar was heated with kindled fires, the Greeks beheld an azure-coloured serpent creep into a plane tree, which was standing near the sacrifice they had begun. There was on the top of the tree a nest of twice four birds, which the serpent seized[5] together, and the dam as she fluttered around the scene of her loss, and he buried them in his greedy maw. All stood amazed. But Calchas, the son of Thestor, a soothsayer, foreseeing the truth, says, “Rejoice, Pelasgians, we shall conquer. Troy will fall, but the continuance of our toil will be long;” and he allots the nine birds to the years of the war. The serpent, just as he is, coiling around the green branches in the tree, becomes a stone, and, under the form of a serpent, retains that stone form.
Nereus continued boisterous in the Ionian waves, and did not impel the sails onwards; and there are some who think that Neptune favoured Troy, because he made the walls of the city. But not so the son of Thestor. For neither was he ignorant, nor did he conceal, that the wrath of the virgin Goddess must be appeased by the blood of a virgin. After the public good had prevailed over affection, and the king over the father, and Iphigenia, ready to offer her chaste blood, stood before the altar, while the priests were weeping; the Goddess was appeased, and cast a mist before their eyes, and, amid the service and the hurry of the rites, and the voices of the suppliants, is said to have changed Iphigenia, the Mycenian maiden, for a substituted hind. Wherefore, when the Goddess was appeased by a death which was more fitting, and at the same moment the wrath of Phœbe, and of the sea was past, the thousand ships received the winds astern, and having suffered much, they gained the Phrygian shore.
There is a spot in the middle of the world, between the land and the sea, and the regions of heaven, the confines of the threefold universe, whence is beheld whatever anywhere exists, although it may be in far distant regions, and every sound pierces the hollow ears. Of this place Fame is possessed, and chooses for herself a habitation on the top[6] of a tower, and xii. 45-78. has added innumerable avenues, and a thousand openings to her house, and has closed the entrances with no gates. Night and day are they open. It is all of sounding brass; it is all resounding, and it reechoes the voice, and repeats what it hears. Within there is no rest, and silence in no part. Nor yet is there a clamour, but the murmur of a low voice, such as is wont to arise from the waves of the sea, if one listens at a distance, or like the sound which the end of the thundering makes when Jupiter has clashed the black clouds together. A crowd occupies the hall; the fickle vulgar come and go; and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, wander up and down, and circulate confused words. Of these, some fill the empty ears with conversation; some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. There, is Credulity, there, rash Mistake, and empty Joy, and alarmed Fears, and sudden Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful origin. She sees what things are done in heaven and on the sea, and on the earth; and she pries into the whole universe.
She has made it known that Grecian ships are on their way, with valiant troops: nor does the enemy appear in arms unlooked for. The Trojans oppose their landing, and defend the shore, and thou, Protesilaüs,[7] art, by the decrees of fate, the first to fall by the spear of Hector;[8] and the battles now commenced, and the courageous spirits of the Trojans, and Hector, till then unknown, cost the Greeks dear. Nor do the Phrygians experience at small expense of blood what the Grecian right hand can do. And now the Sigæan shores are red with blood: now Cygnus, the son of Neptune, has slain a thousand men. Now is Achilles pressing on in his chariot, and levelling the Trojan ranks, with the blow of his Peleian spear; and seeking through the lines either Cygnus or Hector, he engages with Cygnus: Hector is reserved for the tenth year. Then animating the horses, having their xii. 78-105. white necks pressed with the yoke, he directed his chariot against the enemy, and brandishing his quivering spear with his arm, he said, “O youth, whoever thou art, take this consolation in thy death, that thou art slain by the Hæmonian Achilles.”