To this the king: "Fly, mighty warrior, fly; If thou hast strength, 'twas Heav'n that strength bestow'd, Haste, launch thy vessels, fly with speed away; Rule thy own realms with arbitrary sway: I heed thee not, but prize at equal rate, Thy short-lived friendship, and thy groundless hate. (Pope's use of the word "Myrmidons" in this line has given rise to a sense of the term in English which it never bore in Greek. "Myrmidons" was no epithet of reproach. It was, in fact, simply the proper name of the people over whom Achilles ruled as king. "Earth-born" is Pope's adjective here, not Homer's. It probably makes on modern readers the impression of opprobrium implied, somewhat as if it were, "base-born;" whereas, to the ancient Greek, it conveyed the compliment of a lineage imputed that went back to immemorial antiquity. Pope has, in effect, to the English mind misunderstanding him, curiously perverted his original. But enough of parenthesis.) Go threat thy earth-born Myrmidons; but here Achilles heard, with grief and rage opprest, That prompts his hand to draw the deadly sword, Sent by the sister and the wife of Jove, (For both the princes claim'd her equal care ;) Achilles seized ; The to us somewhat singular way that Pallas took of calling Achilles's attention, namely, plucking him from behind by a lock of his hair, may serve to explain what very likely has puzzled some of our readers in the first and, perhaps, the most beautiful, of Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Fortuguese," a series, so called by her in modest concealment of their really autobiographical character. The representation, A mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair, seems, unless you understand the classic allusion implied, a mar to the otherwise perfect finish of the sonnet. And Mrs. Browning, noble genius as she is, does not gratify us with perfection of outward form in her verse so often that we can afford to lose a single instance for want of knowing fully what she means. A somewhat similar classicism is Milton's in his "Lycidas," Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears. We resume the text of Homer: to him alone confest; A sable cloud conceal'd her from the rest. He sees, and sudden to the goddess cries, A heav'nly witness of the wrongs I bear From Atreus' son? Then let those eyes that view "To calm thy fury I forsake the skies: Let great Achilles, to the gods resign'd, When the proud monarch shall thy arms implore, 44 O monster mixed of insolence and fear, 'Tis ours, the chance of fighting fields to try, From whom the power of laws and justice springs, (Tremendous oath inviolate to kings :) By this I swear, when bleeding Greece again, Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain. When flushed with slaughter, Hector comes to spread The purpled shore with mountains of the dead, Then shalt thou mourn th' affront thy madness gave, This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe." He spoke; and furious hurl'd against the ground Nestor, a very aged chieftain from Pylos, intervenes at this point, vainly endeavoring to reconcile the two wranglers. Nestor is a striking figure in the Iliad. We give, returning to Bryant for the purpose, Homer's lines descriptive of Nestor, and then Nestor's well-meaning, garrulous, somewhat egotistic address. Readers will not fail to notice how exactly in character for an old man is what Nestor is represented as saying: But now uprose Nestor, the master of persuasive speech, The clear-toned Pylian orator, whose tongue With him on sacred Pylos pass away, And now he ruled the third. With prudent words "Ye gods! what new misfortunes threaten Greece! How Priam would exult and Priam's sons, And how would all the Trojan race rejoice, The other Greeks. Now hearken to my words,- Such men I never saw, nor shall I see again,— And the great Polypheme, and Theseus, son On the wide earth would dare to fight with them. Thou, powerful as thou art, take not from him Who now implore thee to lay by thy wrath Agamemnon fulfills his threat of taking away Briseïs from Achilles, Achilles sulkily submitting. But the spoiled mangrown boy in his distress betakes himself to his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis. She comes to Achilles at his call, and soothes him, motherlike. She engages to visit Olympus, and see what can be done with Jupiter for him. ACHILLES, Jupiter we say, but Zeus is the Greek word. The Latin names of the personages common to the Roman with the Greek mythology, have generally prevailed in English use. Greek scholars, some of them, insist that the divinities, supposed generally to be the same in the Greek and the Roman mythology, are really different. Several Hellenic scholars, notably Grote, have sought to restore the Greek names. The attempt, if it succeeds, will succeed slowly against great odds. We prefer, upon the whole, to follow here the established English usage. Still, in our own metrical translations, few in number, of Homeric verse, we, as will be observed, by exception adhere to Homer's own terms. Our readers will thus see something of the difference in effect produced-for Bryant, on his part, conservatively retains the naturalized Latin forms in his translation. The difference will be still further observable when we take up the Odyssey. For the translator whose work we shall use in presenting that far more interesting and far sweeter poem, has chosen with Grote to go back to the Greek names for the Homeric personages. |