Book II

Day arising from Ocean set free the world from dank enfolding shades, and the father of the flashing light upraised his torch still dimmed by the neighbouring gloom and moist with sea-water not yet shaken off. And now all behold Aeacides, his shoulders stripped of the scarlet robe, and glorious in those very arms he first had seized – for the wind is calling and his kindred seas are urging him – and quake before the youthful chieftain, not daring to remember aught; so wholly changed to the sight hath he come back, as though he had ne’er experiences the shores of Scyros, but were embarking from the Pelian cave. Then duly – for so Ulysses counselled – he does sacrifice to the gods and the waters and south winds, and venerates with a bull the cerulean king below the waves and Nereus his grandsire: his mother is appeased with garlanded heifer. Thereupon casting the swollen entrails on the salt foam he addresses her: “Mother, I have obeyed thee, though thy commands were hard to bear; too obedient have I been: now they demand me, and I go to the Trojan war and the Argolic fleet.” So speaking he leapt into the bark, and was swept away far from the neighbourhood of land by the whistling south wind; already lofty Scyros beings to gather mist about her, and to fade from sight over the long expanse of sea.

Far away on the summit of a tower with weeping sisters round her his wife leaned forth, holding her precious charge, who bore the name of Pyrrhus, and with her eyes fixed on the canvas sailed herself upon the sea, and all alone still saw the vessel. He too turned his gaze aside to the walls he held dear, he thinks upon the widowed home and the sobs of her he had left: the hidden passion glows again within his heart, and martial ire gives place. The Laertian hero perceives him sorrowing, and draws nigh to influence him with gentle words: “Was it thou, O destined destroyer of great Troy, whom Danaan fleets and divine oracles are demanding, and War aroused is awaiting with unbarred portals – was it thou whom a crafty mother profaned with feminine robes, and trusted yonder hiding-place with so great a secret, and hoped the trust was sure? O too anxious, O too true a mother! Could such valour lie inert and hidden, that scarce hearing the trumpet-blast fled from Thetis and companions and the heart’s unspoken passion? Nor is it due to us that thou comest to the war, and compliest with our prayers; thou wouldst have come – ,”

He spoke, and thus the Aeacian hero takes up the word: “’Twere long to set forth the causes of my tarrying and my mother’s crime; this sword shall make excuse for Scyros and my dishonourable garb, the reproach of destiny. Do thou rather, while the sea is peaceful and the sails enjoy the zephyr, tell how the Danaans began so great a war: I would fain draw straightway from thy words a righteous anger.”

Then the Ithacan, tracing far back the beginning of the tale: “A shepherd, they say – if we believe such things – was chosen in Hector’s domain of Ida to end a strife of beauty, and while he kept the goddesses anxious doubt looked not with friendly eye upon Minerva’s frowning countenance nor on the consort of the heavenly ruler, but gazed overmuch on Dione alone. And verily that quarrel arose in thy own glades, at a gathering of the gods, when pleasant Pelion made marriage-feast for Peleus, and thou even then wert promised to our armament. Wrath thrills the vanquished ones: the judge demands his fateful reward, and compliant Amyclae is shown to the ravisher. He cuts down the Phrygian groves, the secret haunts of the turret-crowned mother, and flings down pines that fear to fall to earth, and borne o’er the sea to Achaean lands he plunders the marriage-chamber of his host the son of Atreus – ah! shame and pity on proud Europe! – and exulting in Helen puts to sea and brings home to Pergamum the spoils of Argos. Then, as the rumours spread far and wide through the cities, of our own will, none urging us, we gather, who could endure the unlawful, crafty breaking of the marriage-bond, or a consort carried off in unresisted rape, as though a beast of the flock or herd, would shake even a valiant heart. Masterful Agenor endured not the treachery of the gods, but went in quest of sacred lowings and Europa riding on a mighty god, and scorned the Thunderer as a son-in-law; Aeëtes endured not the rape of his daughter from the Scythian shore, but with ships and steel pursued the princes and the vessel fated to join the stars: shall we endure a Phrygian eunuch hovering about the coasts and harbours of Argos with his incestuous bark? Are our horses and men so utterly vanished? Are the seas so impassable to Greeks? What if someone now were to carry of Deidamia from her native shores, and tear her from her lonely chamber in dire dismay and crying on the name of great Achilles?”

His hand flew to the sword-hilt, and a dark flush surged over his face: Ulysses was silent and content.

Then spoke Oenides: “Nay, O thou worthiest progeny of heaven, tell us, thy admiring friends, of the ways in which thy spirit first was trained, and as the vigour of thy youth increased what stirring themes of glory Chiron was wont to recount to thee, and how thy valour grew, by what arts he made strong thy limbs or fired thy courage; let it be worthy while to have sought Scyros over long leagues of sea, and to have first shown weapons to those arms of thine.”

Who would find it hard to tell of his own deeds? Yet he begins modestly, somewhat uncertain and more like one compelled: “Even in my years of crawling infancy, when the Thessalian sage received me on his stark mountain-side, I am said to have devoured no wonted food, nor to have sated my hunger at the nourishing breast, but to have gnawed the tough entrails of lions and the bowels of a half-slain she-wolf. That was my first bread, that the bounty of joyous Bacchus, in such wise did that father of mine feed me. Then he taught me to go with him through pathless deserts, dragging me on with mighty stride, and to laugh at sight of the wild beasts, nor tremble at the shattering rocks by rushing torrents or at the silence of the lonely forest. Already at that time weapons were in my hand and quivers on my shoulders, the love of steel grew apace within me, and my skin was hardened by much sun and frost; nor were my limbs weakened by soft couches, but I shared the hard rock with my master’s mighty frame.

”Scarce had my raw youth turned the wheel of twice six years, when already he made me outpace swift hinds and Lapith steeds and running overtake the flung dart; often Chiron himself, while yet he was swift of foot, chased me at full gallop with headlong speed o’er all the plains, and when I was exhausted by roaming over the meads he praised my joyously and hoisted me upon his back. Often too in the first freezing of the streams he would bid me go upon them with light step nor break the ice. These were my boyhood glories. Why now should I tell thee of the woodland battles and of the glades that know my fierce shout no more? Never would he suffer me to follow unwarlike does through the pathless glens of Ossa, or lay low timid lynxes with my spear, but only to drive angry bears from their resting-places, and boars with lightning thrust; or if anywhere a mighty tiger lurked or a lioness with her cubs in some secret lair upon the mountain-side, he himself, seated in his vast cave, awaited my exploits, if perchance I should return bespattered with dark blood; nor did he admit me to his embrace before he had scanned my weapons.

“And already I was being prepared for the armed tumults of the neighbouring folk, and no fashion of savage warfare passed me by. I learnt how the Paeonians whirl and fling their darts and the Macetae their javelins, with how fierce a rush the Sarmatian plies his pike and the Getan his falchion, how the Gelonian draws his bow, and how the Balearic wielder of the pliant thong keeps the missile swinging round with balanced motion, and as he swings it marks out a circle in the air. Scarce could I recount all my doings, successful though they were; now he instructs me to span huge dykes by leaping, now to climb and grasp the airy mountain-peak, with what stride to run upon the level, how to catch flung stones in mimic battle on my shielded arm, to pass through burning houses, and to check flying four-horse teams on foot.

“Spercheus, I remember was flowing with rapid current, fed full with constant rains and melted snows and carrying on its flood boulders and living trees, when he sent me in, there were the waves rolled fiercest, and bade me stand against them and hurl back the swelling billows that he himself could scarce have borne, though he stood to face them with so many a limb. I strove to stand, but the violence of the stream and the dizzy panic of the broad spate forced me to give ground; he loomed o’er me from above and fiercely threatened, and flung taunts to shame me. Nor did I depart till he gave me word, so far did the lofty love of fame constrain me, and my toils were not too hard with such a witness. For to fling the Oebalian quoit far out of sight into the clouds, or to practise the holds of the sleek wrestling-bout, and to scatter blows with the boxing-gloves were sport and rest to me: nor laboured I more therein that when I struck with my quill the sounding strings, or told the wondrous fame of heroes of old.

“Also did he teach me of juices and the grasses that succour disease, what remedy will staunch too fast a flow of blood, what will lull to sleep, what will close gaping wounds; what plague should be checked by the knife, what will yield to herbs; and he implanted deep within my heart the precepts of divine justice, whereby he was wont to give revered laws to the tribes that dwelt on Pelion, and tame his own twy-formed folk. So much do I remember, friends, of the training of my earliest years, and sweet is their remembrance; the rest my mother knows.”