With more than vulgar grief he stood oppressed;
Words, mixed with sighs, thus bursting from his breast:
"Ye sons of Greece! partake your leader's care,[1]
Fellows in arms, and princes of the war!
Of partial Jove too justly we complain,
And heavenly oracles believed in vain.
A safe return was promised to our toils,[2]
With conquest honoured, and enriched with spoils:
Now shameful flight alone can save the host,
Our wealth, our people, and our glory, lost.
So Jove decrees, almighty lord of all!
Jove, at whose nod whole empires rise or fall,
Who shakes the feeble props of human trust,
And towers and armies humbles to the dust.
Haste then, for ever quit these fatal fields,
Haste to the joys our native country yields;
Spread all your canvas, all your oars employ,
Nor hope the fall of heaven-defended Troy."
He said; deep silence held the Grecian band;
Silent, unmoved, in dire dismay they stand,
A pensive scene! till Tydeus' warlike son
Rolled on the king his eyes, and thus begun:
"When kings advise us to renounce our fame,
First let him speak, who first has suffered shame.
If I oppose thee, prince! thy wrath withhold;
The laws of council bid my tongue be bold.
Thou first, and thou alone, in fields of fight,
Durst brand my courage, and defame my might;
Nor from a friend the unkind reproach appeared,
The Greeks stood witness, all our army heard.
The gods, O chief! from whom our honours spring,
The gods have made thee but by halves a king:
They gave thee sceptres and a wide command,
They gave dominion o'er the seas and land;
The noblest power that might the world control
- ↑ See Book ii., line 139, page 53.
- ↑ Agamemnon alludes to the extraordinary sign exhibited to them by Jupiter, while they sacrificed to him at Aulis, and which Calchas interpreted as a divine assurance of success in the tenth year.—See Book ii., line 394, page 58.
- ↑ What can be the drift of Diomed, when he insults Agamemnon in his griefs and distresses? The truth is, this whole accusation of Diomed is only a feint to serve the designs of Agamemnon; for, being desirous to persuade the Greeks against their departure, he effects that design by this counterfeited anger and licence of speech; and, seeming to resent that Agamemnon should be capable of imagining that the army would return to Greece, he artfully makes use of these reproaches to cover his argument. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Tech. sect. 8.—Pope.
