This page has been validated.
THE ILIAD OF HOMER.
BOOK THE FIRST.
ARGUMENT.
Apollo, enraged at the insult offered to his priest, Chryses, sends a pestilence upon the Greeks. A council is called, and Agamemnon, being compelled to restore the daughter of Chryses, whom he had taken from him, in revenge deprives Achilles of Hippodameia. Achilles resigns her, but refuses to aid the Greeks in battle, and at his request, his mother, Thetis, petitions Jove to honor her offended son at the expense of the Greeks. Jupiter, despite the opposition of Juno, grants her request.
Sing, O goddess, the destructive wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, which brought countless woes upon the Greeks,[1] and hurled many valiant souls of heroes down to Hades, and made themselves[2] a prey to dogs and to all birds [but the will of Jove was being accomplished], from the time when Atrides, king of men, and noble Achilles, first contending, were disunited.
Which, then, of the gods engaged these two in strife, so that they should fight?[3] The son of Latona and Jove; for he, enraged with the king, stirred up an evil pestilence
- ↑ Although, as Ernesti observes, the verb προίαψεν does not necessarily contain the idea of premature death, yet the ancient interpreters are almost unanimous in understanding it so. Thus Eustathius, p. 13, ed. Bas.: μετὰ βλάβης εἰς Ἅιδην πρὸ τοῦ δέοντος ἔπεμψεν, ὡς τῆς προθέσεως (i. e. προ) καιρκόν τι δηλούσης, ἢ ἀπλως ἓπεμψεν, ὡς πλεοναζούσης τῆς προθέσεως. Hesych. t. ii. p. 1029, s. v.: προίαψεν—δήλοῖ δὲ διὰ τῆς λέξεως τὴν μετ' ὀδύνης αὐτῶν ἀπώλειαν. Cf. Virg. Æn. xii. 952: "Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras," where Servius well observes, "quia discedebat a juvene: nam volunt philosophi, invitam animam discedere a corpore, cum quo adhuc habitare legibus naturæ poterat." I have, however, followed Ernesti, with the later commentators.
- ↑ i. e., their bodies. Cf. Æ. i. 44, vi. 362, where there is a similar use of the pronoun.
- ↑ But see Anthon.
