Odorous, which the fishy scent subdued.
All morning, patient watchers, there we lay;
And now the num’rous phocæ from the Deep
Emerging, slept along the shore, and he
At noon came also, and perceiving there
His fatted monsters, through the flock his course
Took regular, and summ’d them; with the first
He number’d us, suspicion none of fraud
Conceiving, then couch’d also. We, at once,
Loud- shouting flew on him, and in our arms
Constrain’d him fast; nor the sea-prophet old
Call’d not incontinent his shifts to mind.
First he became a long-maned lion grim,
Then dragon, panther then, a savage boar,
A limpid stream, and an o’ershadowing tree.
We persevering held him, till at length
The Antient of the Deep, skill’d as he is
In wiles, yet weary, question’d me, and said.
Instructed liest thou in wait for me,
To seize and hold me? what is thy desire?
Old Seer! thou know’st; why, fraudful, should’st thou ask?
It is because I have been prison’d long
Within this isle, whence I have sought in vain
Deliv’rance, till my wonted courage fails.
Yet say (for the Immortals all things know)
What God detains me, and my course forbids
Hence to my country o’er the fishy Deep?
But thy plain duty was to have adored
Jove, first, in sacrifice, and all the Gods,
Egit adire domes
That then embarking, by propitious gales
Impell’d, thou might’st have reach’d thy country soon.
For thou art doom’d ne’er to behold again
Thy friends, thy palace, or thy native shores,
Till thou have seen once more the hallow’d flood
Of Ægypt, and with hecatombs adored
Devout, the deathless tenants of the skies.
Then will they speed thee whither thou desir’st.
Which bade me pass again the gloomy gulph
To Ægypt; tedious course, and hard to atchieve!
Yet, though in sorrow whelm’d, I thus replied.
But tell me, and the truth simply reveal;
Have the Achaians with their ships arrived
All safe, whom Nestor left and I, at Troy?
Or of the Chiefs have any in their barks,
Or in their followers’ arms found a dire death
Unlook’d for, since that city’s siege we closed?
Atrides, why these questions? Need is none
That thou should’st all my secrets learn, which once
Reveal’d, thou would’st not long dry-eyed remain.
Of those no few have died, and many live;
But leaders, two alone, in their return
Have died (thou also hast had war to wage)
And one, still living, roams the boundless sea.
Him Neptune, first, against the bulky rocks
The Gyræ drove, but saved him from the Deep;
Nor had he perish’d, hated as he was
By Pallas, but for his own impious boast
In frenzy utter’d that he would escape
The billows, even in the Gods’ despight.
Neptune that speech vain- glorious hearing, grasp’d
His trident, and the huge Gyræan rock
Smiting indignant, dash’d it half away;
Part stood, and part, on which the boaster sat
When, first, the brainsick fury seiz’d him, fell,
Bearing him with it down into the gulphs
Of Ocean, where he drank the brine, and died.
But thy own brother in his barks escaped
That fate, by Juno saved; yet when, at length,
He should have gain’d Malea’s craggy shore,
Then, by a sudden tempest caught, he flew
With many a groan far o’er the fishy Deep
To the land’s utmost point, where once his home
Thyestes had, but where Thyestes’ son
Dwelt then, Ægisthus. Easy lay his course
And open thence, and, as it pleased the Gods,
The shifted wind soon bore them to their home.
He, high in exultation, trod the shore
That gave him birth, kiss’d it, and, at the sight,
The welcome sight of Greece, shed many a tear.
Yet not unseen he landed; for a spy,
One whom the shrewd Ægisthus had seduced
By promise of two golden talents, mark’d
His coming from a rock where he had watch’d
The year complete, lest, passing unperceived,
The King should reassert his right in arms.
Swift flew the spy with tidings to this Lord,
And He, incontinent, this project framed
Insidious. Twenty men, the boldest hearts
Of all the people, from the rest he chose,
Whom he in ambush placed, and others charged
Diligent to prepare the festal board.
With horses, then, and chariots forth he drove
Full-fraught with mischief, and conducting
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