She searched to see if footprints still remained.
“And it was this which my divining mind
990
led me to fear when I implored him not
to leave, entrusting himself to the winds.
“But even though we both would now be dead,
I’d rather you had taken me along,
for going would have been more to the purpose:
I would not have to spend my life alone,
and we would not have separately died.
“A part of me is dead; apart from it
I perish, tossed upon those very waves
that parted us! The sea does not have me?
1000
In having him, the sea has me as well!
“My mind would be more cruel than the sea
if I should struggle to prolong my life,
attempt to overcome such wretchedness!
I will not fight against it, nor surrender
you, my beloved, whom I must lament!
“But rather I will come as your companion,
and if the same urn may not hold us both,
the letters carved in stone will let us mingle:
if not our bones, at least our names will touch!”
1010
Grief forbade speaking further; weeping spoke
in place of words, beyond what words could say,
and groans that rose up from her broken heart.
It was now dawn: she left her palace and
once again sought that sad place on the shore
where she had stood and witnessed his departure,
and as she lingered there and told herself,
“He was right there when he released the cable,
and over here was where we kissed good-bye—”
while thinking of what had happened in that place
1020
and looking out to sea, she noticed, at a distance,
something that bobbed and floated on the water,
something resembling a human corpse;
at first she didn’t know what it could be,
but after a while the waves drove it toward shore,
and even though it was some distance off,
it was apparently a body—whose?
She could not tell yet; nonetheless, because
it clearly was the victim of a shipwreck,
an omen stirred within her, and she cried,
1030
weeping as though for one unknown to her,
“Alas, poor man, whoever you might be,
and—if you have one—for your wife!”
The waves
prodded the body nearer, and the more
she looked at it, the less composed she was,
and now it had come close enough to shore
for her to recognize it, and she knew
it was her husband!
“It is he,” she cries,
and tears her hair, and tears her face and garments,
and reaches out with trembling hands to ask,
1040
“O dearest husband, now so pitiful,
is this the homecoming you promised me?”
There was a breakwater along the shore
on which the anger of the sea was spent
and which it would exhaust itself attacking.
She leapt from it—a miracle she could!
And suddenly, Alcyone was flying;
beating the air with unexpected wings,
the saddened bird lightly skimmed the whitecaps,
and as she flew, her long and narrow beak
1050
gave out hoarse cries, as though of one grief-laden,
and when she reached his silent, bloodless corpse
with her new wings, embraced his cherished limbs
and gave him a cold kiss with her hard beak.
Now, whether Ceyx could really feel that kiss
or simply had his head raised by the current
was a matter of some popular debate;
no: he did feel it; and at length the gods
showed mercy and transformed them both; as birds,
their love and conjugal vows remain in force:
1060
they mate and rear their young; for seven days,
halcyon days, in winter, Alcyone
broods on a nest that floats upon the waves,
which at that time are still: Aeolus guards
the winds and keeps them in his custody,
when, for his grandsons’ sakes, he calms the sea.
Aesacus
Some old man watches them as side by side
they fly above the ocean’s vast expanse
and praises their continuing devotion;
another man—or possibly the same—
“This bird, which you see skimming on the waves,
trailing his slender legs, is royal too,
a child of kings, whose lineage goes back
uninterrupted—you could look it up—
as far as Ilus and Assaricus,
and Ganymede, abducted by great Jove,
and Laomedon and aged Priam, who
achieved his destined end in Troy’s last days;
this one was Hector’s brother, and if he
had not met his strange fate in early manhood,
his name might well be equal to that other’s.
“Hector, of course, was born to Hecuba,
but Aesacus was born in secrecy,
as folks say, in Mount Ida’s undergrowth
by the daughter of the two-horned Granicus
Alexiroë. He shunned city life
and lived apart from the glamour of the palace,
dwelling, by his own choice, in mountain caves
and in the unambitious countryside,
1090
and rarely sought the company of Trojans.
“He was no bumpkin, though, and had a heart
susceptible to the delights of love,
and often through the forest he pursued
Hesperia, whom he had caught a glimpse of
as she lay, after bathing, on the banks
of the river Cedren (who had fathered her),
drying her flowing tresses in the sunlight.
“The nymph fled at the sight of Aesacus,
as frightened as the hind is of the wolf,
1100
or as the wild duck, taken by surprise
far from the shelter of his accustomed pond,
flies from the hawk; the Trojan hero followed,
sped by his love as she was by her fear.
“But look: as she was fleeing him, a serpent
that lurked there in the grass sank its curved fangs
deep in her foot and poisoned her at once;
her flight was ended even as her life;
the lover, maddened by his grief, embraces
her corpse and cries out, ‘Shame on me!
1110
How I regret that I pursued you so!
I never feared any such thing as this,
or that my victory would cost so much!
“‘The snake and I are both responsible:
he for the bite that he has given you,
and I for having given him the cause:
I’ll be the greater criminal than he,
if, by my death, I cannot solace you!’
“And from a cliff that had been hollowed out
by the hoarse waves until it overhung
1120
the sea, he leapt—but Tethys pitied him
as he descended, and she broke his fall
so that he landed gently on the surface,
where she put feathers on him as he floated,
denying him the longed-for gift of death.
“The lover was indignant, being forced
to live against his wishes, and his spirit,
coerced into remain
ing in the seat
it longed to leave, could not endure to stay;
so as new wings appeared upon his shoulders,
1130
he flew aloft and once again attempted
to fling himself headlong into the sea.
“His feathers broke his fall, and he, enraged,
dove straightway down, and plunging to the depths,
attempted to find out the way to death,
continually and without success.
“He’s very thin now: Love has made him so.
His legs are lengthy, and his neck as well,
which keeps his head quite distant from his body.
He loves the water and approves his name
1140
[mergus] because [as we once used to say]
he immerges himself underneath its surface.”
BOOK XII
AROUND AND ABOUT THE ILIAD
Iphegenia on Aulis The house of Rumor Cycnus Caeneus The Lapiths and the centaurs Periclymenus The death of Achilles
Iphigenia on Aulis
His father, Priam, mourned, quite unaware
that Aesacus still lived on borrowed wings:
and Hector and his brothers pointlessly
conducted funeral rites before a tomb
with the name AESACUS carved into the stone;
Paris had failed to show up for the service,
but afterward brought an abducted bride
and a long war back to his own country:
a thousand ships and the whole Greek nation,
bound by their oath, came after in pursuit,
10
and would have promptly taken their revenge,
if fierce winds had not made the sea impassable,
and if Boeotia had not held the fleet
at the fishing port of Aulis; there, as they
prepared to offer sacrifice to Jove
in the manner of their country, and the ancient
altar was glowing with fresh-kindled flame,
the Greeks observed a dark-blue serpent winding
itself around a nearby pine tree’s trunk.
Eight fledglings nested high up in that tree,
20
and they, together with their mother, who
flew round her little lost ones, disappeared
into the serpent’s gullet as he grabbed them!
All were astounded save the prescient
augur, Thestorides, who spoke the truth:
“Rejoice, O Greeks, for victory is ours!
Troy will be taken, though it will take time!”
In his interpretation of events,
each of the nine birds was a year of war.
Their living predator, who coiled around
30
the leafy branches, was turned into stone
that had the serpent’s form engraved on it.
The north wind still blew fierce on the Aegean
and military convoys kept to port:
some held that Neptune, having built its walls,
intended to protect the Trojan city,
but not Thestorides: not ignorant,
and not one to keep silent when he knew
that a virgin goddess’s fierce wrath must be
placated by a mortal virgin’s blood.
40
And after piety had given way
to patriotics and the common good,
and kingship triumphed over fatherhood,
Iphigenia waited at the altar,
prepared to sacrifice her spotless blood,
surrounded by her grief-stricken attendants;
the goddess suddenly was overcome,
yielded, and cast a cloud before their eyes;
and there, in the officiating throng
of bloody ritual and beseeching voices,
50
Diana substituted—so they say—
a deer for Iphigenia.
Therefore, when
the goddess’s cruelty had been appeased
by bloodshed and her anger (and the Ocean’s)
had both subsided, the thousand ships discovered
a favoring wind, and after many trials,
at last they came to the Phrygian sands.
The house of Rumor
At the world’s center is a place between
the land and seas and the celestial regions
where the tripartite universe is joined;
60
from this point everything that’s anywhere
(no matter how far off) can be observed,
and every voice goes right into its ears.
Rumor lives here; she chose this house herself,
well situated on a mountaintop,
and added on some features of her own;
it has innumerable entrances
and a thousand apertures—but not one door:
by day and night it lies completely open.
It is constructed of resounding brass
70
that murmurs constantly and carries back
all that it hears, which it reiterates;
there is no quiet anywhere within,
and not a part of it is free from noise;
no clamor here, just whispered murmurings,
as of the ocean heard from far away,
or like the rumbling of thunder when
great Jupiter has made the dark clouds speak.
Crowds fill the entryway, a fickle mob
that comes and goes; and rumors everywhere,
80
thousands of fabrications mixed with fact,
wander the premises, while false reports
flit all about. Some fill their idle ears
with others’ words, and some go bearing tales
elsewhere, while everywhere the fictions grow,
as everyone adds on to what he’s heard.
Here are Credulity and Heedless Error,
with Empty Joy and Fearful Consternation;
and here, with Unexpected Treachery,
are Whispers of Uncertain Origin;
90
nothing that happens, whether here on earth
or in the heavens or the seas below,
is missed by Rumor as she sweeps the world.
Cycnus
Rumor let it be known that a Greek fleet
replete with gallant soldiers was approaching;
its arrival—not unexpected—was observed
by the opposing Trojans, who defended
their shores and kept the enemy from landing;
and you were first to fall, Protesilaüs,
dispatched by Hector’s spear; those early fights
100
cost the Greeks greatly as they came to know
what skill brave Hector had at slaughtering.
Nor were the Phrygians exempted from
discovering how capably Achaeans
butchered their enemies, and soon the shores
grew red with blood; now Cycnus out of Troy,
the son of Neptune, cut his thousand down,
and now Achilles in his chariot
pressed on relentlessly against his foe,
flattening ranks of Trojans with each thrust
110
of his great spear, fashioned out of wood
from a tree harvested on Pelion;
and as he searched for Hector or for Cycnus,
met with the latter on the battlefield
(for Hector’s fate had been postponed ten years);
then urging on his horses, whose white necks
strained at the yoke, Achilles drove
his chariot straight for the enemy,
and shook his spear to threaten him, and cried,
“Young man, whoever you might be,
120
take consolation, dead, from knowing that
your slayer is Thessalian Achilles.”
So spoke the hero, and his weighty spear
followed directly on his utterance,
but though his cast was nothing less than certain,
the sharp point struck—and merely dinged the breast
of his opponent without harming him.
“O goddess-born,” the other one replied,
“for your celebrity has preceded you,
why do you marvel that we stand unscathed?”
130
(It was indeed a marvel to Achilles.)
“Neither the golden, horsehair-crested helmet
that you observe me wearing, nor the curved shield,
the burden that I bear on my left side,
serves any purpose other than adornment.
Mars also, for this reason, puts on armor!
Deprive me then, of my protective gear,
and I’ll still walk away from here unhurt.
“Breeding matters: it is good to be the son—
not of a Nereid—but of the one
who rules Nereus, his daughters—and the sea!”
He spoke and cast his spear at the Achaean,
but it was fated just to strike his shield,
tearing through bronze and nine layers of hide,
and lodging in the tenth.
He shook it off
and hurled another back with his strong hand,
but once again did not inflict a wound
on the undamaged body of his foe,
nor did a third spear even land on Cycnus,
although he offered himself openly;
you will have seen a bull in the arena,
who, with his terrifying horns, pursues
the provocation of a scarlet cape,
only to discover that he’s missed it:
Achilles, raging, was not otherwise.
He checks his spear: is the tip still on? It is.
“My arm,” he said, “that once was so very strong,
has lost its power—but only in this case?
—For surely, it was strong enough when I
was first to breech the walls at Lyrnesus,
or when this arm dyed Tenedos and Thebes,
Eetion’s city, with their defenders’ blood,
or left the Caïcus’ swift current purple
from slaughter of the tribes along its shores,
or when Telephus—twice—felt my spear’s heft!
“And here as well, among so many dead,
these heaps of corpses piled up on the shore
which I have seen and made, this arm of mine
has done—and still can do—its mighty work!”
He spoke as one who lacks all confidence
170
in the heroic deeds of yesterday,
and cast his spear directly at Menoetes,
one of the rank and file from Lycia,
and tore right through his armor and his breast.
And as the dying foot soldier crashed down
headlong upon the heavy earth, Achilles
withdrew the spear from its hot wound, and said,