“Sad work thou mak’st, in bidding me oppose
My will to Juno’s, when her bitter words
Assail me, for full oft amid the gods
She taunts me that I aid the Trojan cause.
But thou return—that Juno see thee not—
And leave to me the furtherance of thy suit.” (D.)
He pledges his promise to her, and ratifies it with the mighty nod that shakes Olympus—a solemn confirmation which made his word irrevocable.
“Waved on th’ immortal head th’ ambrosial locks,
And all Olympus trembled at his nod.”
Critics have somewhat over-praised the grandeur of the image; but it is said that the great sculptor Phidias referred to it as having furnished him with the idea of his noble statue of Olympian Jove. Satisfied with her success, Thetis plunges down from high Olympus into the sea, and the Thunderer proceeds to take his place in full council of the gods, as calm as if nothing had happened. But there are watchful eyes about him which he has not escaped. Juno has been a witness of the interview, and has a shrewd suspicion of its object. A connubial dialogue ensues, which, though the poet has thought fit to transfer the scene of it to Olympus, is of an exceedingly earthly, and what we should now call “realistic,” type. Homer’s recognised translators have not condescended to give it the homely tone of the original. Pope is grandiloquent, and Lord Derby calmly dignified; but Homer intends to be neither. Mr Gladstone’s translation comes nearest the spirit of the Greek. The brief encounter between the king and queen of the Immortals is cut short by the former in rather summary fashion. “Thou hast been promising honour to Achilles, I trow,” says Juno.
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“Zeus that rolls the clouds of heaven ‘Moonstruck! thou art ever trowing; After all, it boots thee nothing; So thou hast the worser bargain. It was done because I willed it. Lest, if I come near, and on thee All the gods that hold Olympus |
her addressing answered then; never I escape thy ken. leaves thee of my heart the less: What if I the fact confess? Hold thy peace—my word obey, these unconquered hands I lay, nought avail thee here to-day.’”[12] |
He bids her, in very plain Greek, sit down and hold her tongue; and gives her clearly to understand—with a threat of violence which is an unusual addition to his many failings as a husband—that it is his fixed intention, on this occasion, to be lord and master, not only of Olympus, but of his wife. Juno is silenced, and the whole assembly of the gods is startled by the Thunderer’s violence. Vulcan, the fire-god—the lame brawny hunchback, always more or less the jester and the butt of the court of Olympus, but with more brains in his head than most of his straight-limbed compeers—Vulcan comes to the general relief. He soothes his royal mother by the argument, that it were ill indeed to break the peace of heaven for the sake of two or three wretched mortals: and he reminds her—we must suppose in an aside—that they both knew by bitter experience that when the father of gods and men did choose to put forth his might, it went hard with all who resisted.
“When to thy succour once before I came,
He seized me by the foot, and hurled me down
From heaven’s high threshold; all the day I fell,
And with the setting sun on Lemnos’ isle
Lighted, scarce half-alive; there was I found,
And by the Sintian people kindly nursed.” (D.)
He gives the mother-goddess further comfort—in “a double cup,” which he proceeds also to hand round the whole of the august circle. They quaff their nectar with unusual zest, as they break into peals of laughter (it must be confessed, rather ungratefully) at the hobbling gait and awkward attentions of their new cup-bearer:—
“Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours;
Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense,
Nor sound of tuneful lyre by Phœbus touched,
Nor Muses’ voice, who in alternate strains
Responsive sung; but when the sun had set
Each to his home departed, where for each
The crippled Vulcan, matchless architect,
With wondrous skill a noble house had reared.”
And so, at the end of the first book of the poem, the curtain falls on the Olympian happy family.