Now I think you’ll cringe at the hint of war
if you get wind of battle far away.”
So he mocked
and the goddess fled the front, beside herself with pain.
But Iris quick as the wind took up her hand
and led her from the fighting ...
racked with agony, her glowing flesh blood-dark.
And off to the left of battle she discovered Ares,
violent Ares sitting there at ease, his long spear
braced on a cloudbank, flanked by racing stallions.
Aphrodite fell to her knees, over and over begged
her dear brother to lend his golden-bridled team:
“Oh dear brother, help me! Give me your horses—
so I can reach Olympus, the gods’ steep stronghold.
I’m wounded, the pain’s too much, a mortal’s speared me—
that daredevil Diomedes, he’d fight Father Zeus!”
Her brother Ares gave her the golden-bridled team.
Heart writhing in pain, she climbed aboard the car
and Iris climbed beside her, seized the reins,
whipped the team to a run and on the horses flew,
holding nothing back. In a moment they had reached
the immortals’ stronghold, steep Olympus. Wind-quick Iris
curbed the team and loosing them from the chariot
threw ambrosial fodder down before their hoofs.
The deathless Aphrodite sank in Dione’s lap
and her mother, folding her daughter in her arms,
stroked her gently, whispered her name and asked,
“Who has abused you now, dear child, tell me,
who of the sons of heaven so unfeeling, cruel?
Why, it’s as if they had caught you in public,
doing something wrong . . . ”
And Aphrodite who loves eternal laughter
sobbed in answer, “The son of Tydeus stabbed me,
Diomedes, that overweening, insolent—all because
I was bearing off my son from the fighting. Aeneas—
dearest to me of all the men alive. Look down!
It’s no longer ghastly war for Troy and Achaea—
now, I tell you, the Argives fight the gods!”
Dione the light and loveliest of immortals
tried to calm her: “Patience, oh my child.
Bear up now, despite your heartsick grief.
How many gods who hold the halls of Olympus
have had to endure such wounds from mortal men,
whenever we try to cause each other pain . . .
Ares had to endure it, when giant Ephialtes and Otus,
sons of Aloeus, bound him in chains he could not burst,
trussed him up in a brazen cauldron, thirteen months.
And despite the god’s undying lust for battle
Ares might have wasted away there on the spot
if the monsters’ stepmother, beautiful Eriboea
had not sent for Hermes, and out of the cauldron
Hermes stole him away—the War-god breathing his last,
all but broken down by the ruthless iron chains.
And Hera endured it too, that time Amphitryon’s son,
mighty Heracles hit her deep in the right breast
with a three-barbed shaft, and pain seized her,
nothing calmed the pain.
Even tremendous Hades
had to endure that flying shaft like all the rest,
when the same man, the son of thunder-shielded Zeus,
shot him in Pylos—there with the troops of battle dead—
and surrendered Death to pain. But Hades made his way
to craggy Olympus, climbed to the house of Zeus,
stabbed with agony, grief-struck to the heart,
the shaft driven into his massive shoulder
grinding down his spirit ...
But the Healer applied his pain-killing drugs
and sealed Hades’ wound—he was not born to die.
Think of that breakneck Heracles, his violent work,
not a care in the world for all the wrongs he’d done—
he and his arrows raking the gods who hold Olympus!
But the man who attacked you? The great goddess
fiery-eyed Athena set him on, that fool—
Doesn’t the son of Tydeus know, down deep,
the man who fights the gods does not live long?
Nor do his children ride his knees with cries of ‘Father’—
home at last from the wars and heat of battle.
So now
let Diomedes, powerful as he is, be on his guard
for fear a better soldier than you engage him—
for fear his wife, Aegialia, Adrastus’ daughter,
for all her self-control, will wail through the nights
and wake her beloved servants out of sleep ...
the gallant wife in tears, longing for him,
her wedded husband, the best of the Achaeans—
Diomedes breaker of horses.”
Soothing words,
and with both her hands Dione gently wiped the ichor
from Aphrodite’s arm and her wrist healed at once,
her stark pain ebbed away.
But Hera and great Athena were looking on
and with mocking words began to provoke the Father,
Athena leading off with taunts, her eyes bright:
“Father Zeus, I wonder if you would fume at me
if I ventured a bold guess? Our goddess of love—
I’d swear she’s just been rousing another Argive,
another beauty to pant and lust for Trojans,
those men the goddess loves to such despair.
Stroking one of the Argive women’s rippling gowns
she’s pricked her limp wrist on a golden pinpoint!”
So she mocked, and the father of gods and mortals
smiled broadly, calling the golden Aphrodite over:
“Fighting is not for you, my child, the works of war.
See to the works of marriage, the slow fires of longing.
Athena and blazing Ares will deal with all the bloodshed.”
And now as the high gods bantered back and forth
Diomedes, loosing his war cry, charged Aeneas—
though what he saw was lord Apollo himself,
guarding, spreading his arms above the fighter,
but even before the mighty god he would not flinch.
Tydides reared and hurled himself again and again,
trying to kill Aeneas, strip his famous armor.
Three times he charged, frenzied to bring him down,
three times Apollo battered his gleaming shield back—
then at Tydides’ fourth assault like something superhuman,
the Archer who strikes from worlds away shrieked out—
a voice of terror—“Think, Diomedes, shrink back now!
Enough of this madness—striving with the gods.
We are not of the same breed, we never will be,
the deathless gods and men who walk the earth.”
Menacing so
that Tydeus’ son pulled back, just a little, edging
clear of the distant deadly Archer’s rage.
And Apollo swept Aeneas up from the onslaught