removed apart from his companions, upon the shore of the hoary sea, gazing on the darkling main; and much he besought his dear mother, stretching forth his hands:
"O mother, since thou hast borne me, to be but shortlived, at least then ought high-thundering Olympian Jove to have vouchsafed honor to me; but now he has not honored me ever so little; for the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnon, has dishonored me; for he, taking away my prize, possesses it, himself having wrested it [from me]."
Thus he spoke, weeping. But to him his venerable mother hearkened, sitting in the depths of the ocean beside her aged sire. And immediately she rose up from the hoary deep, like a mist. And then she sat before him, weeping, and soothed him with her hand, and addressed him, and spoke aloud:
"Son, why weepest thou—on account of what has grief come upon thy mind? Declare it, nor hide it in thy soul, that we both may know it."
But her, sighing deeply, swift-footed Achilles addressed: 'Thou knowest; why should I tell all these things to thee, already knowing [them]? We went against Thebe,[1] the sacred city of Eëtion; and this we plundered, and brought hither all [the spoil]. And these things indeed the sons of the Greeks fairly divided among themselves, and selected for Agamemnon the fair-cheeked daughter of Chryses. But Chryses, priest of the far-darting Apollo, came afterward to the fleet ships of the brazen-mailed Greeks, about to ransom his daughter, and bringing invaluable ransoms, having in his hand the fillets of far-darting Apollo, on his golden scepter. And he supplicated all the Greeks, but chiefly the two sons of Atreus, the leaders of the people. Upon this all the other Greeks shouted assent, that the priest should be reverenced, and the splendid ransoms accepted; yet it was not pleasing to Agamemnon, son of Atreus, in his mind; but he dismissed him evilly, and added a harsh mandate. The old man therefore went back enraged; but Apollo hearkened to him praying, for he was very dear to
- ↑ Thebe was situated on the border of Mysia, on the mountain Placus, in the district afterward called Adramyttium. The inhabitants were Cilicians.—See Heyne, and De Pinedo on Steph. Byz. s. v. p. 307, n. 58.
