Page:Iliad Buckley.djvu/113

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
734—764.
ILIAD. V.
101

Jove, let flow down on her father's floor her dainty robe of variegated hue, which she herself had wrought and worked with her own hands: then she, having put on her tunic, equipped herself for the tearful war in the armor of cloud-compelling Jove, and around her shoulders she then threw the fringed ægis, dreadful, around which on all sides Terror appears plumed. Thereon was Strife, thereon Fortitude, and thereon was chilling Pursuit;[1] on it was the Gorgonian head of the dreadful monster, dire, horrible, a portent of ægis-bearing Jove. On her head she placed her four-crested helmet, with a spreading metal ridge,[2] golden, sufficient for the heavy-armed of a hundred cities. She then stepped into her shining chariot with her feet; and took her spear, heavy, huge, and sturdy, with which she, sprung from a dread sire, subdues the ranks of heroic men, with whomsoever she is wroth. But Juno with the lash quickly urged on the steeds. The gates of heaven creaked spontaneously, the gates which the Hours guarded, to whom are intrusted the mighty heaven and Olympus, as well to open the dense cloud as to close it. In this way, indeed, through these gates, they drove their steeds, urged on with the goad: and they found the son of Saturn sitting apart from the other gods on the highest summit of many-peaked Olympus. There staying her steeds, the white-armed goddess Juno interrogated supreme Saturnian Jove, and thus addressed him:

"O father Jove, art thou not indignant at Mars for these bold deeds—how numerous and how choice a multitude of Greeks he has destroyed rashly, nor as became him: a grief indeed to me; but Venus and silver-bowed Apollo in quiet are delighted, having let slip this frantic [god], who knows no rights. Father Jove, wilt thou be angry with me if I drive Mars from the battle, having dreadfully wounded him?"

But her answering, cloud-compelling Jove addressed:

  1. Compare Προΐωξις and Παλίωξις, similarly personified, in Hesiod Scut. Herc. 134, and Virg. Æn. viii. 701:

    "———tristesque ex æthero Diræ,
    Et scissâ gaudens vadit Discordia pallâ;
    Quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello"

  2. See note on iii. 362