Before whose Tauric altar bleed the bulls,
(O rumour terrible! Ο source of shame!)
Had sped thee forth against the people's herds,
The oxen, shared of all?
Was it for victory that brought no fruit?
Or was She robbed of glorious spoils of war?
Was it for stricken deer
She gained no votive gifts?
Or Enyalios,[1] in his coat of mail,
Did he find cause of blame,
As sharing war with thee,
And so revenged his wrong180
In stratagems of night?
Antistroph.
For never yet, Ο son of Telamon,
Had'st thou so wandered from thy reason's path,
Falling on flocks and herds;
By will of Gods, perchance, the evil comes;
But, Zeus and Phœbos, turn,
Turn ye aside the Argives' tale of shame!
But if the mighty kings with subtle craft
Forge idle tales of thee,
Or he who draws his birth
From that pernicious stock of Sisyphos,[2]
Bear not, oh, bear not, king,
That tale of foulest shame,
Still looking idly thus
Upon thy sea-washed tents.190
- ↑ Enyalios, analogous in attributes to Ares, and often identified with him, was one of the tutelary deities of Salamis, and, at Athens, the Polemarch Archon offered an annual sacrifice to him and Artemis.
- ↑ In the post-Homeric legends Anticleia, the wife of Laertes, or Lartios, had been loved by Sisyphos, the craftiest of all men, before her marriage, and Odysseus was his child and not her husband's.
