HOMER'S ILIAD COMPLETE

Rhapsody 20

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

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Page 3

Thus the blessed gods, inciting both sides, engaged, and among them made severe contention to break out. But dreadfully from above thundered the father of gods and men; whilst beneath Neptune shook the boundless earth and the lofty summits of the mountains. The roots and all the summits of many-rilled Ida were shaken, and the city of the Trojans, and the ships of the Greeks. Pluto himself, king of the nether world, trembled beneath, and leaped up from his throne, terrified, and shouted aloud, lest earth-shaking Neptune should rend asunder the earth over him, and disclose to mortals and immortals his mansions, terrible, squalid, which even the gods loathe. So great a tumult arose from the gods engaging in combat. Against king Neptune, indeed, stood Phoebus Apollo, having his winged shafts, and against Mars the azure-eyed goddess Minerva. Opposed to Juno stood the goddess of the golden bow, huntress Diana, rejoicing in archery, the sister of Apollo; and opposite Latona, the preserver,[644] useful Mercury. Against Vulcan also was the great deep-eddying river, which the gods call Xanthus, and men the Scamander.

[Footnote 641: Buttm. Lexil. p. 406, 3: "The adjective [Greek: aliastos], literally unbending, unyielding, not to be turned, became the epithet of a violent, uncontrollable, incessant tumult, battle, lamentation, &c, as at Il. M. 471; B. 797; O. 760; and as an adverb at O. 549."]

[Footnote 642: Hor. Od. i. xxii. 2: "Intonsum, pueri, dicite Cynthium." Tibull. i. 4, 37: "Solis aeterna est Phoebo, Bacchoque juventa: hanc decet intonsus crinis utrumque Deum." Various reasons are assigned for this; such as, "quia occidendo et renascendo semper est juvenior," Fulgent. Myth. i. 17; or, "quod ipse sit sol, et sol ignis est, qui nunquam senescit," Lutat. on Stat. Theb. i. 694. The inhabitants of Hieropolis, however, worshipped a bearded Apollo.—Macr. Sat. i. 17.]

[Footnote 643: A rising ground which lay on the road from Troy towards the sea-coast, on the other side of the Simois, commanding the entire plain. Hence it is the rendezvous of the gods who favoured the Trojans.]

[Footnote 644: We find a collateral verb [Greek: sokeiin]=_valere_, in Aesch. Eum. 36. Apollon. Lex. p. 762; Hesych. t. ii. p. 1334, derive [Greek: sokos] from [Greek: sosioikos], the former connecting it with [Greek: eriounios, o megalos oniskon, tout' esti ophelon].]

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Homer's Complete ILIAD & ODYSSEY Contents

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