Antistrophe I.
But man's audacious might
What words can paint aright,
Or woman's daring spirit who may tell?
Her passion's frenzied throes,
Co-mates of mortal woes?
For love unlovely, when its evil spell 590
'Mong brutes or men the feebler sex befools,
Conjugial bands o'errules.
Strophe II.
Let him confirm the truth I sing,
Whose thoughts soar not on Folly's wing,
Knowing full well what Thestios' daughter planned[1];—
- ↑ The story of Meleager, as related by Phœnix to Achilles (Il. ix. 529), is fundamentally opposed to that of the later poets. In Homer nothing is heard of the fatal brand. Meleager had, in some unfortunate fray, killed his mother's brother; upon which his mother solemnly cursed him, and prayed to Pluto and Persephone for his death. At this he was so indignant (or so paralysed for battle by believing in the curse), that he refused to defend his native city, Calydon, at a critical moment, and was only at last prevailed on by his wife to take arms and save it. Here the story ends in Homer; though he says that the Fury who stalks in darkness heard the mother's curse.
According to the later poets, Meleager had slain seven brothers of his mother. At his birth she had been informed by the Fates that he would live until a certain log of wood then burning on the hearth was consumed. On this she snatched it off, extinguished it, and kept it carefully in a chest. But now, in rage for the loss of so many brothers, she threw it into the fire, and forthwith her son perished.
