HOMER'S ILIAD COMPLETE

Rhapsody 5

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

Homer Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Homer in Print

Page 20

Minerva, on the other hand, the daughter of aegis-bearing Jove, let flow down on her father's floor her dainty robe of variegated hue, which she herself had wrought and worked with her own hands: then she, having put on her tunic, equipped herself for the tearful war in the armour of cloud-compelling Jove, and around her shoulders she then threw the fringed aegis, dreadful, around which on all sides Terror appears plumed. Thereon was Strife, thereon Fortitude, and thereon was chilling Pursuit;[228] on it was the Gorgonian head of the dreadful monster, dire, horrible, a portent of aegis-bearing Jove. On her head she placed her four-crested helmet, with a spreading metal ridge,[229] golden, sufficient for the heavy-armed of a hundred cities. She then stepped into her shining chariot with her feet; and took her spear, heavy, huge, and sturdy, with which she, sprung from a dread sire, subdues the ranks of heroic men, with whomsoever she is wroth. But Juno with the lash quickly urged on the steeds. The gates of heaven creaked spontaneously, the gates which the Hours guarded, to whom are intrusted the mighty heaven and Olympus, as well to open the dense cloud as to close it. In this way, indeed, through these gates, they drove their steeds, urged on with the goad: and they found the son of Saturn sitting apart from the other gods on the highest summit of many-peaked Olympus. There staying her steeds, the white-armed goddess Juno interrogated supreme Saturnian Jove, and thus addressed him:

"O father Jove, art thou not indignant at Mars for these bold deeds,--how numerous and how choice a multitude of Greeks he has destroyed rashly, nor as became him: a grief indeed to me; but Venus and silver-bowed Apollo in quiet are delighted, having let slip this frantic [god], who knows no rights. Father Jove, wilt thou be angry with me if I drive Mars from the battle, having dreadfully wounded him?"

[Footnote 228: Compare [Greek: Proioxis] and [Greek: Palioxis], similarly personified, in Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 134, and Virg. AEn. viii. 701:

"—tristesque ex aethere Dirae, Et scissa gaudens vadit Discordia palla; Quam cum sanguineo sequitur Bellona flagello."]

[Footnote 229: See note on iii. 362.]

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