Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/199

and led it from Pluto's, but Mercury and blue-eyed Minerva escorted me.'

"Thus having spoken, he went again within the house of Pluto. But I remained there firmly, if by chance any one of the heroes, who perished in former times, would still come; and I should now still have seen former men, whom I wished, [Theseus, and Pirithoüs, glorious children of the gods;] but first myriads of nations of the dead were assembled around me with a divine clamour; and pale fear seized me, lest to me illustrious Proserpine should send a Gorgon head of a terrific monster^[1] from Orcus. Going then immediately to my ship, I ordered my companions to go on board themselves, and to loose the halsers. But they quickly embarked, and sat down on the benches. And the wave of the stream carried it through the ocean river, first the rowing and afterwards a fair wind.

 

BOOK XII.

 

ARGUMENT.

He relates his return from the infernal regions to Circe's island, and her advice respecting his return home. How he escaped the Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis. His arrival in Sicily, where his companions, having eaten the oxen of the Sun, were shipwrecked and lost; he concludes by relating his arrival, alone, carried on the mast of his ship, at the island of Calypso.

"But when the ship left the stream of the river Ocean, and came back to the wave of the wide-wayed sea, to the island of Ææa, where are the abodes and dancing-places^[2] of Aurora, the mother of dawn, and the risings of the sun: having come here, we drew up our ship on the sands, and we ourselves disembarked upon the shore of the sea. Here lying down to sleep we awaited divine morning: but when the mother of dawn, rosy-fingered morning, appeared, then I sent forward my companions to the house of Circe, to bring the corpse, the

1. Hence Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 610:
   "But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt
   Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
   The ford."
   
   
2. I prefer taking χοροῖσι in this sense, although "dances" is by no means unsuitable. See my note on Æsch. Ag. p. 95, n. 3, ed. Bohn.