Chapter 17, The Return from Troy
Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page
♠ Homer, Iliad 5.406-15
for the heart of Tydeus’ son knoweth not this, that verily he endureth not for long who fighteth with the immortals, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he is come back from war and the dread conflict. [410] Wherefore now let Tydeus’ son, for all he is so mighty, beware lest one better than thou fight against him, lest in sooth Aegialeia, the daughter of Adrastus, passing wise, wake from sleep with her long lamentings all her household, as she wails for her wedded husband, the best man of the Achaeans, even she, [415] the stately wife of horse-taming Diomedes.” Greek Text
♠ Lykophron, Alexandra 592-632
Another shall found Argyrippa, a Daunian estate beside Ausonian Phylamus, seeing the bitter fate of his comrades turned to winged birds, who shall accept a sea life, after the manner of fishermen, like in form to bright-eyed swans. Seizing in their bills the spawn of fishes they shall dwell in an island which bears their leader’s name, on a theatre-shaped rising ground, building in rows their close-set nests with firm bits of wood, after the manner of Zethus. And together they shall betake them to the chase and by night to rest in the dell, avoiding all the alien crowd of men, but in folds of Grecian robes seeking their accustomed resting-place they shall eat crumbs from the hand and fragments of cake from the table, murmuring pleasantly, remembering, hapless ones, their former way of life. His wounding of the Lady of Troezen shall be part cause of his wild lustful bitch shall be frenzied for adulterous bed. But the altar-tomb of Hoplosmia shall save him from doom, when already prepared for slaughter. And in the glen of Ausonia he shall stand like a colossus resting his feet on the boulders, the foundations of Amoebeus, the builder of the walls, when he has cast out of his ship the ballast stones. And, disappointed by the judgement of his brother Alaenus, he shall cast an effectual curse upon the fields, that they may never send up the opulent corn-ear of Deo, when Zeus with his rain nurtures the soil, save only if one who draws his blood from his own Aetolian stock shall till the land, cleaving the furrows with team of oxen. And with pillars which no man shall boast to have moved even a little by his might. For as on wings they shall come back again, traversing with trackless steps the terraces. And a high god shall he be called by many, even by those who dwell by the cavernous plain of Io, when he shall have slain the dragon that harried the Phaeacians. Greek Text
♠ Scholia at Lykophron, Alexandra 592 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 202-4, ed E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Aristotle, Peri Thaumasiôn Akousmatôn (De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus) 836a (79) – Aristotle: Minor Works, pp. 267-68, ed. W. S. Hett. Cambridge, Mass., 1936.
They say that in the island of Diomedeia in the Adriatic there is a remarkable and hallowed shrine of Diomedes, and that birds of vast size sit round this shrine in a circle, having large hard beaks. They say moreover that if ever Greeks disembark on the spot they keep quiet, but if any of the barbarians that live round about land there, they rise and wheeling round attack their heads, and wounding them with their bills kill them. The legend is that these birds are descended from the companions of Diomedes, who were wrecked near the island, when Diomedes was treacherously murdered by Aeneas, the king of those parts at the time. Greek Text and English Translation
♠ Scholia bT at Homer, Iliad 5.412 – Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem 3, pp. 250-51, ed. W. Dindorf and E. Maass. Oxford 1875.
♠ Apollodoros, Epitome 6.9
but when he returned unsuccessful （ for they all favoured King Agamemnon, who had been the accomplice of Ulysses in the murder of Palamedes）, he coasted along the Grecian lands and contrived that the wives of the Greeks should play their husbands false, Clytaemnestra with Aegisthus, Aegialia with Cometes, son of Sthenelus, and Meda, wife of Idomeneus, with Leucus. Greek Text
Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, March 2023
272 total views, 1 views today