“This is the hand, and this, the very spear
with which I have just now gained victory,
and which I’ll use on him in the same way,
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and hope to get the same results again!”
So speaking, he found Cycnus in the fray:
unerring ash struck unevading shoulder,
the left one, with a thud—then bounded off
as from a wall or from a solid cliff:
Achilles saw that Cycnus had been bloodied
where he had struck him and rejoiced—in vain:
there was no wound—it was Menoetes’ blood!
Then truly outraged, roaring like a madman,
Achilles leapt from his high chariot,
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and seeking his invulnerable foe,
he drew his shining sword and closed with him;
he noticed that although the other’s shield
and armor had been punctured by his blade,
it lost its edge on his unyielding body.
Achilles could endure no more of this:
with shield and sword hilt as his weapons, he
assaulted him about the face and head,
blow after blow, until, as one gives way
the other one pursues, perturbs, keeps pressing him,
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gives him no time to pull himself together.
Fear seizes Cycnus, and his vision blurs;
the path he flees on is obstructed by
a boulder in the middle of the plain;
as he lies with his back pressed hard against it,
Achilles seizes him and whirls him round
and flings him heavily against the earth.
Then kneeling on his shield on Cycnus’ breast,
he strips the thongs that tied his helmet on
beneath the chin, and wraps them round his throat
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and strangles him.
Preparing to despoil
his conquered enemy, he notices
the armor that he seeks has been abandoned,
for Neptune took the body of his foe
and transformed Cycnus into that white bird
whose name, until quite recently, he bore.
Caeneus
This effort, this contention, earned a rest
of several days, when arms were put away,
and on both sides, the combatants stood down;
as wakeful sentries paced the Trojan walls
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and Argive trenches, the warriors relaxed.
Achilles, who had triumphed over Cycnus,
was pacifying Pallas with the blood
of a slain heifer; when its entrails were
ablaze upon the altars, and the reek
of burning flesh, so cherished by the gods,
had made its way to heaven, the immortals
received their portion, and the rest of it
was set out on the tables to be eaten.
The officers all took their ease, reclining
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on couches where they stuffed themselves with meat
and drove away their cares and thirst with wine.
No lyres for this lot, no poetry,
no flutes of boxwood, pierced with many holes:
what pleases them is to extend the night
by telling stories of heroic deeds;
they reenact old wars, their own and others,
and are delighted to remember all
the dangers they’ve endured and gotten through:
what else has great Achilles to discuss?
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What else is there to speak of in his presence?
The subject of their stories was, in fact,
his latest victory: the fall of Cycnus
seemed quite a marvel to this gathering:
that any youth should have a body which
no spear could penetrate to wound,
and which, in fact, turned blunted steel away,
astounded all the Greeks—even Achilles.
But Nestor told them, “Cycnus was unique,
the only one in all your generation
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who spurned the sword, impervious to wounds.
But I have seen Thessalian Caeneus—
oh, this was long ago—who could endure
a thousand blows without a single wound!
“Thessalian Caeneus, yes, indeed,
the one who used to dwell on Mount Othrys,
and once was famous for heroic deeds—
but what was most amazing about him,
was that he had been born…a her.”
Astonished
by such a marvel, his whole audience
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implored him to continue with the story.
Achilles, among others, interjected:
“Do tell! For this entire company,
O fluent elder, source of sagacity,
is equal in its eagerness to learn
who Caeneus was, how he changed his sex,
in what campaign or battle did you know him,
and how was he defeated—if he was.”
Nestor replied: “Though my extreme old age
is something of an obstacle to me,
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and much of what I witnessed in my youth
I have forgotten, still I remember much,
and nothing stands out more in memory,
among so many acts of war and peace,
than this does. But if great expanse of years
makes one a living witness of so much
that happened, I have lived two centuries
already, and am living in my third!
“The daughter of Elatus was a maiden
named Caenis, celebrated for her beauty,
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the most attractive of Thessalian women
in all the nearby cities, and in yours,
Achilles, for she grew up in your town.
“A host of suitors hoped in vain to wed her—
your father Peleus might have been one
had he not taken Thetis as his bride
already, or had they not been betrothed.
“But Caenis had no wish for any marriage,
and one day, as the story went, while she
was traveling alone along the shore,
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the sea god, Neptune, forced himself on her.
“And after he had taken his delight
by ravishing the maiden, he announced,
‘Whatever you desire will be granted!
Fear no refusal; ask and it is given.’
(The story that I mentioned said this too.)
“Caenis replied: ‘The injury you’ve done me
requires a great wish to be set right;
that I might never suffer this again,
allow that I may be no more a woman,
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and you will have fulfilled me utterly.’
“The words she ended her prayer with were deeper
than those that she began it with, and seemed
as though they could be coming from a man.
And so it was: for Neptune had already
assented, and now gave much greater gifts:
that she should be impervious to wounds,
and never fall a victim to the sword.
“Caeneus went off happily with these,
and spent his days in masculine pursuits,
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wandering in the fields of Peneus,
delighting in his new phallicity.
The Lapiths and the centaurs
“Pirithoüs, the son of Ixion
the bold, wed Hippodame and invited
those cloud-born beasts, the centaurs, to recline
at tables carefully arranged and set
in a grotto sheltered by high foliage;
the highest-born Thessalians were present,
and we ourselves
; the palace hall rang out
with mingled sounds of festive merriment.
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“They had begun to sing the wedding hymn,
the torches were smoking up the atrium,
and the young maiden, outstanding in her beauty,
had just come in, surrounded by a crowd
of matrons and of newly married women.
“We all congratulated Pirithoüs
on his new bride, which very nearly spoiled
the services by ruining the omen;
for you, Eurytus, fiercest of the fierce
centaurs, with a heart inflamed by wine,
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took fire at the entrance of the virgin,
and lust was doubled by inebriation.
“The tables were all overthrown at once,
and the marriage feast was turned into a rout
as the new bride was picked up by the hair
and carried off! Eurytus seized Hippodame,
and the others seized the women that they fancied
or those that they were able to abduct,
and in no time at all the scene resembled
what happens when a city is despoiled.
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“Female shrieking filled the palace hall;
we rose up instantly, and Theseus
responded first: ‘What senselessness impels you,
mad Eurytus, to harm Pirithoüs,
while I still live? Do you not understand
that in harming one, you harm the two of us?’
“The hero fit his actions to his words,
driving the centaurs off and rescuing
the maiden from their hands. Aware that such
actions were indefensible with words,
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the centaur rushed at Theseus and struck
his face and selfless breast with shameless hands.
“It happened that an antique mixing bowl,
engraved elaborately, stood nearby;
though it was large, Theseus was larger,
and so the greathearted hero hoisted it
and smashed it into his opponent’s face;
bits of his brain, gobbets of gore and wine
came vomiting from mouth and wound alike,
as he crashed backward on the blood-soaked sands.
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“His death enraged the bimanous quadrupeds,
who all together cried at once, ‘To arms!’
Wine gave them courage and they fought at first
with flying cups and jars, and with curved basins;
the implements once found at dinner parties
were now appropriate to war and slaughter.
“Amycus, son of Ophion, first dared
to rob the sanctuary of its gifts,
and snatching up a chandelier replete
with votive lamps all lit up for the wedding,
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he lifted it up high above his head
as though he were about to sacrifice
a spotless bull, and brought it crashing down
on Celadon the Lapith, rendering
the wedding guest unrecognizable
in a welter of crushed bone. The eyes leapt forth
from the disfigured pudding of his face,
and his nose was driven back into his palate.
“Amycus had his turn when Pellaeus,
dismantling a maple table leg,
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used it to lay him flat upon the ground:
one blow fixed chin to breast, and then a second
dispatched him to the shades of Tartarus
in a fine mist of black blood and flying teeth.
“Next up was Gryneus, who, as he stood
fiercely glaring at a smoking altar, asked,
‘Why not use this?’ And promptly hoisting it,
he hurled the huge high altar with its flames
into the middle of the Lapith throng
and flattened Broteas and Orios;
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the mother of Orios was Mycale,
a witch, as people say, whose spells could bring
the moon, despite its struggling, to earth.
“‘You will not get away with that, if I
can find a weapon,’ cried Exadius,
and found one in the antlers of a stag,
a votive offering fixed to a pine.
He plunged the horns into Gryneus’ eyes
and gouged them out; one to an antler clung
the other dribbled down his beard and hung
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suspended in a mass of clotting gore.
“But look: right from the middle of the altar,
Rhoetus snatches up a blazing brand
of plum-tree wood, and whirling it around
on his right side, he smashes in the head
of Charaxus, all covered in blond hair,
which catches fire instantly and burns
as swiftly as a grainfield in a drought,
and the boiling blood that issues from that wound
gives out a terrifying hissing noise,
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just as a heated bar of iron does
when the blacksmith removes it from the furnace
with his pincers and then thrusts it in a vat
of water where it hisses and it sizzles.
“Distressed, he brushed the leaping flames away
from his unkempt hair, and tore a threshold stone
out of the earth, and hoisted that great weight,
more suitable for oxen, on his shoulders;
too heavy to be launched against a foe,
it fell—he dropped it—on a friend, Cometus,
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who happened to be standing near, and crushed him.
“Rhoetus could not keep from chortling:
‘Oh, bravely done,’ he said, ‘and may the rest
of your side do as well as you, I pray!’
He charged again, still wielding his charred brand,
and struck at him repeatedly, until
his skull was broken into many pieces,
which sank into the jelly of his brain.
“The winner then went up against Euagrus,
Dryas, and young Corythus; when the latter,
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lay flattened out, Euagrus asked, ‘What glory
will you receive for murdering a child?’
“Rhoetus didn’t give the man a chance
to say another word: fiercely he thrust
his glowing torch into the other’s mouth,
while he still had it open from his speech,
and drove it deeply down into his breast!
“And you, cruel Dryas, he pursued as well,
whirling his flaming torch about his head,
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but not, in your case, with the same results:
for as that serial slaughterer came on,
rejoicing in his rampage, you transfixed him
with a blackened stake where neck and shoulder join.
“Rhoetus groaned and then, with all his might,
he wrenched the stake from his unyielding bone,
and dripping with his own blood, ran away;
and with him fled Orneus, Lycabas,
and Medon, whose right shoulder had been wounded;
and Thaumas fled along with Pisenor
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and Mermeros, till recently the winner
in footraces against any contender,
but now disabled by a wound himself;
and Phobus, Melaneius, and Abas,
hunter of boars, and Asbolus the augur,
who had attempted, unsuccessfully,
to argue against their going into battle;
to Nessus, worried about being wounded,
he spoke these reassuring words: ‘Don’t worry:
stay where you are—your fate reserves you for
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the bow of Hercules!’
“But Eurynomus,
Lycidas, Areos, and Imbreus
did not escape: Dryas destroyed them all
in combat, face to face; your fatal wound
was frontal too, Crineus, even though
you took it fleeing him: for you looked back
and his spear nailed you right between the eyes.
“Aphidas lay asleep, inertly clutching
his cup of wine and water mixed together,
stretched at his ease upon a bearskin throw,
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and would not stir, no matter all the tumult;
and from a distance, Phorbas spotted him,
not answering (in vain!) the call to arms,
and fitting javelin to sling, he said,
‘One Beaujolais-and-River-Styx to go!’
“At once he hurled his spear at the young man,
and as he lay there with his head flung back
the iron-tipped ash drove right through his throat;
death took him unawares, and from his wound
the black blood flowed onto the couch he lay on
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and filled the cup he clung to till the end.
“I saw Petraeus struggling to wrench
an acorn-laden oak out of the ground;
with both his arms he’d managed to surround it,
and shook it back and forth until it tottered,
and just as he had almost got it loose
the spear of Pirithoüs tore through his ribs
and pinned his straining breast to the firm oak.
“Men praise the valor of Pirithoüs
for slaying Lycus and for Chromis too,
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but neither of those deaths gave him the glory
that slaying Dictys and Helops did: Helops
was pinned by a javelin that went right through
his temple, from the right ear to the left,
and Dictys, as he fled Pirithoüs
in fearful haste, toppled over the edge
of a mountain with two peaks, plunging headlong
until a giant ash tree broke his fall,
and left its fractured branches decorated
with loops of his intestines.
“Aphareus
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was fixing to avenge him, struggling
to hurl the rock he’d broken off a mountain,
and as he struggled with it, Theseus
got in the first shot with his club of oak
and broke the huge bones of his elbow joint;
and then, with neither time nor inclination
to wound the helpless creature any further,
he leapt upon the back of tall Bienor,
accustomed to no rider but himself,
and locking knees against the centaur’s ribs,
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with his left hand, he clutched him by the hair,
and with his knotty cudgel smashed his face
and trashy mouth and shattered his thick skull.