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abide here a long time labouring and growing old without accomplishment or profit. Rather should we, while yet we live, do some deed worthy to be sung, or by bloody death escape the shameful reproach of cowardice. We have better comfort than they — if ye have not forgotten the sparrow^a and the ancient serpent and the fair plane-tree and the mother devoured with her swiftly perishing young, and her tender nestlings.

ćAnd if old Calchas in his soothsaying deferred the day of fulfilment, yet even so the prophecies of Helenus^b, the alien seer, call us to a right speedy victory. Therefore hearken ye to me and let us hasten with good courage in to the belly of the horse, that the Trojans may lead up into Ilios the guileful craft of the dauntless goddess, a self-taken woe, embracing their own doom.^c

ćAnd do ye others loose the stern cables of the ships and yourselves cast fire upon the plaited tents, and leaving desolate the shore of the land of Ilios, sail ye all together on your pretended homeward way, until the hour that to you, gathered on the neighbouring beach, a beacon at eventide, stretched from a fair-anchoring place of outlook, shall give the signal to sail back again. And then let there be no hesitation of hurrying oarsmen nor other cloud of fear, such as the nights bring to men to terrify the mobile soul. But let each clan respect its former valour, and

NOTES

^a When the Greek expedition against Troy lay at Aulis, as the Greeks were sacrificing, a snake came from under the altar and ascended a plane-tree overhead where was a sparrow with eight young ones. The snake devoured them all. Calchas, son of Thestor, the seer of the Greeks, prophesied that the war would last for nine years and that Troy would be taken in the tenth. (Hom. Il. ii. 308 ff.; Qu. Smyrn. vi. 61, viii. 475; Ov. M. xii. 11 ff.)

^b Helenus, son of Priam and Hecuba, twin-brother of Cassandra. He was taken prisoner by the Greeks on the advice of Calchas, and he advised the building of the Wooden Horse and the stealing of the Palladium.

^c A reminiscence of Hesiod, W. 58 (of the creation of Woman).

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