Homer ILIAD : Rhapsody 14

Page 6

She also beheld Jove sitting upon the highest top of many-rilled Ida, and he was hateful to her soul. Then the venerable large-eyed Juno next anxiously considered how she could beguile the mind of aegis-bearing Jove. And now this plan appeared best to her mind, to proceed to Ida, having well arrayed herself, if perchance he might desire to lie beside her form[460] in dalliance, so that she might pour upon his eyelids and vigilant mind careless and genial sleep. And she proceeded to her chamber, which Vulcan, her dear son, had made for her, and had fitted the thick doors to the lintels with a secret bolt;[461] and this no other god could remove. There entering in, she closed the shining doors. First she washed all impurities from her lovely person with rich oil, ambrosial,[462] and anointed herself with rich oil, ambrosial and agreeable,[463] which was odoriferous to her; and the perfume of which, when shaken in the brazen-floored[464] mansion of Jove, reached even to earth and to heaven. With this having anointed her body, and having also combed her hair, with her hands she arranged her shining locks, beautiful, ambrosial, [which flowed] from her immortal head. Next she threw around her an ambrosial robe, which Minerva had wrought[465] for her in needlework, and had embroidered much varied work upon it, and she fastened it upon her breast with golden clasps. Then she girded herself with a zone, adorned with a hundred fringes, and in her well-perforated ears placed her triple-gemmed, elaborate,[466]earrings, and much grace shone from [her]. From above she, divine of goddesses, covered herself with a veil, beautiful, newly wrought, and it was bright as the sun; and beneath her shining feet she fastened her beautiful sandals. But when she had arranged all her ornaments around her person, she proceeded straight from her chamber; and having called Venus apart from the other gods, addressed her in speech:

"Wilt thou now be at all obedient to me, dear child, in what I shall say? Or wilt thou refuse, enraged in thy mind on this account, because I aid the Greeks whilst thou [aidest] the Trojans?"

[Footnote 460: Construe [Greek: paradratheein e chroie].]

[Footnote 461: Respecting the different meanings of [Greek: kleis], see Kennedy.]

[Footnote 462: See Buttm. Lexil. p 81, 3.]

[Footnote 463: Buttmann, p. 242, regards [Greek: edanos] as "perhaps a stronger and higher meaning of [Greek: eos], or [Greek: eos], good, which may be compared with [Greek: outidanos mekedanos]."]

[Footnote 464: See my note on Od. ii. 2.]

[Footnote 465: "The proper sense of [Greek: exyse] is, scraped or rubbed over and its use here is best explained by supposing a reference to some process among the ancients whereby a shining appearance was given to their vestments, as by calendering or glazing with us."—Kennedy.]

[Footnote 466: [Greek: Moroenta peri a emoresen o technites.—Schol].]

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Rhapsody 14

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