The Iliad of Homer

Mars, red with slaughter, aids our hated foes:
Haste, let us arm, and force with force oppose!"
She spoke; Minerva burns to meet the war:
And now heaven's empress calls her blazing car.

At her command rush forth the steeds divine;
Rich with immortal gold their trappings shine.
Bright Hebe waits; by Hebe, ever young,
The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung.

On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel
Of sounding brass; the polished axle steel.
Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame;
The circles gold, of uncorrupted frame,

Such as the heavens produce: and round the gold
Two brazen rings of work divine were roll'd.
The bossy naves of sold silver shone;
Braces of gold suspend the moving throne:

The car, behind, an arching figure bore;
The bending concave form'd an arch before.
Silver the beam, the extended yoke was gold,
And golden reins the immortal coursers hold.

Herself, impatient, to the ready car,
The coursers joins, and breathes revenge and war.
Pallas disrobes; her radiant veil untied,
With flowers adorn'd, with art diversified,

(The laboured veil her heavenly fingers wove,)
Flows on the pavement of the court of Jove.
Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,
Jove's cuirass blazes on her ample breast;

Deck'd in sad triumph for the mournful field,
O'er her broad shoulders hangs his horrid shield,
Dire, black, tremendous! Round the margin roll'd,
A fringe of serpents hissing guards the gold:

Here all the terrors of grim War appear,
Here rages Force, here tremble Flight and Fear,
Here storm'd Contention, and here Fury frown'd,
And the dire orb portentous Gorgon crown'd.

The massy golden helm she next assumes,
That dreadful nods with four o'ershading plumes;
So vast, the broad circumference contains
A hundred armies on a hundred plains.

The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;
Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,
Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,
Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.

Swift at the scourge the ethereal coursers fly,
While the smooth chariot cuts the liquid sky.
Heaven's gates spontaneous open to the powers,^[155]
Heaven's golden gates, kept by the winged Hours;^[156]

Commission'd in alternate watch they stand,
The sun's bright portals and the skies command,
Involve in clouds the eternal gates of day,
Or the dark barrier roll with ease away.

The sounding hinges ring on either side
The gloomy volumes, pierced with light, divide.
The chariot mounts, where deep in ambient skies,
Confused, Olympus' hundred heads arise;

Where far apart the Thunderer fills his throne,
O'er all the gods superior and alone.
There with her snowy hand the queen restrains
The fiery steeds, and thus to Jove complains:

"O sire! can no resentment touch thy soul?
Can Mars rebel, and does no thunder roll?
What lawless rage on yon forbidden plain,
What rash destruction! and what heroes slain!

Venus, and Phoebus with the dreadful bow,
Smile on the slaughter, and enjoy my woe.
Mad, furious power! whose unrelenting mind
No god can govern, and no justice bind.

Say, mighty father! shall we scourge this pride,
And drive from fight the impetuous homicide?"
To whom assenting, thus the Thunderer said:
"Go! and the great Minerva be thy aid.

To tame the monster–god Minerva knows,
And oft afflicts his brutal breast with woes."
He said; Saturnia, ardent to obey,
Lash'd her white steeds along the aerial way

Swift down the steep of heaven the chariot rolls,
Between the expanded earth and starry poles
Far as a shepherd, from some point on high,^[157]
O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye,

Through such a space of air, with thundering sound,
At every leap the immortal coursers bound
Troy now they reach'd and touch'd those banks divine,
Where silver Simois and Scamander join

There Juno stopp'd, and (her fair steeds unloosed)
Of air condensed a vapour circumfused
For these, impregnate with celestial dew,
On Simois, brink ambrosial herbage grew.

Thence to relieve the fainting Argive throng,
Smooth as the sailing doves they glide along.
The best and bravest of the Grecian band
(A warlike circle) round Tydides stand.

Such was their look as lions bathed in blood,
Or foaming boars, the terror of the wood
Heaven's empress mingles with the mortal crowd,
And shouts, in Stentor's sounding voice, aloud;

Stentor the strong, endued with brazen lungs,^[158]
Whose throats surpass'd the force of fifty tongues.
"Inglorious Argives! to your race a shame,
And only men in figure and in name!

Once from the walls your timorous foes engaged,
While fierce in war divine Achilles raged;
Now issuing fearless they possess the plain,
Now win the shores, and scarce the seas remain."

Her speech new fury to their hearts convey'd;
While near Tydides stood the Athenian maid;
The king beside his panting steeds she found,
O'erspent with toil reposing on the ground;

To cool his glowing wound he sat apart,
(The wound inflicted by the Lycian dart.)
Large drops of sweat from all his limbs descend,
Beneath his ponderous shield his sinews bend,

Whose ample belt, that o'er his shoulder lay,
He eased; and wash'd the clotted gore away.
The goddess leaning o'er the bending yoke,
Beside his coursers, thus her silence broke:

"Degenerate prince! and not of Tydeus' kind,
Whose little body lodged a mighty mind;
Foremost he press'd in glorious toils to share,
And scarce refrain'd when I forbade the war.

Alone, unguarded, once he dared to go,
And feast, incircled by the Theban foe;
There braved, and vanquish'd, many a hardy knight;
Such nerves I gave him, and such force in fight.

155

—Spontaneous open.

"Veil'd with his gorgeous wings, upspringing light Flew through the midst of heaven; th' angelic quires, On each hand parting, to his speed gave way Through all th' empyreal road; till at the gate Of heaven arrived, the gate self–open'd wide, On golden hinges turning."

—"Paradise Lost," v. 250.

156

"Till Morn, Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarr'd the gates of light."

—"Paradise Lost," vi, 2.

157

—Far as a shepherd. "With what majesty and pomp does Homer exalt his deities! He here measures the leap of the horses by the extent of the world. And who is there, that, considering the exceeding greatness of the space would not with reason cry out that 'If the steeds of the deity were to take a second leap, the world would want room for it'?"—Longinus, Section 8.

158

"No trumpets, or any other instruments of sound, are used in the Homeric action itself; but the trumpet was known, and is introduced for the purpose of illustration as employed in war. Hence arose the value of a loud voice in a commander; Stentor was an indispensable officer…In the early Saracen campaigns frequent mention is made of the service rendered by men of uncommonly strong voices; the battle of Honain was restored by the shouts and menaces of Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed," etc.—Coleridge, p. 213.