food, and ambrosia, and giving him beauteous garments. But when hateful old age was completely pressing on, and he was not able to move or raise his limbs, then this seemed to her in her mind the best plan: she placed him in a bedchamber and put shining doors to it. His voice indeed flows[1] over talkatively, nor is there any longer such strength in his flexile members as [there was] before. I would not choose thee to be such among the immortals, to be immortal, and to live all days. But if indeed, being such in form and figure, thou couldst live, and be called my husband, grief would not then surround my deep thoughts. But now old age, equal [to all], will quickly surround thee, merciless! which afterwards comes upon men, destructive, toilsome, which the gods hate. But to me will there be great reproach all days on account of thee, among the gods, who hitherto dreaded my converse and devices, by which I have at sometime mingled all the immortals with mortal women. For my device has subdued all. But now indeed no longer will my mouth be opened[2] to mention this among immortals, since I am much hurt, hardly, unbearably, and have wandered in mind, and, couched with a mortal, have conceived a son beneath my zone. Him indeed, as soon as he shall first behold the light of the sun, shall the mountain-dwelling, deep-bosomed nymphs nourish, who inhabit this mighty and divine mountain, who indeed are neither mortals nor immortals.[3] Long,[4] indeed, they live, and eat
- ↑ But Ilgen reads τρεῖ ἄσπετον, from Il. xvii. 332, meaning, I suppose, to express the indistinct accents of a person who speaks under the influence of fear. Hesych. τρεῖν φοβεῖσθαι, φεύγειν.
"All pow'rs so quite decay'd, that when he spake,
His voice no perceptible accent brake."Chapman."Of youth, of vigour, and of voice bereft."Congreve. - ↑ I have adopted χείσεται, Martin's conjecture, with Ernesti and Hermann.
- ↑ Hermann rightly explains this sense of ἔπονται, "quæ neque in mortalibus neque in immortalibus numerantur." Congreve has well expressed this:
"They nor of mortal, nor immortal seed,
Are said to spring, yet on ambrosia feed." - ↑ The reader will find some good illustrations of this fable in Barnes, but I cannot help transcribing the following quaint remarks from a note on Congreve's Translation, vol. ii. p. 476. "Ausonius, from Hesiod, computes the life of a man at ninety-six years; a crow, he says, lives nine
