IV. HE LAMENTS HIS BLINDNESS TO THE CUMÆANS.
To what a fate did the father Jove give me to become a sport, when he nurtured me an infant upon the knees of my revered mother! [The city][1] which the people of Phricon once fortified at the advice of Ægis-bearing Jove, the valiant mounters of swift steeds, contending in the contest of savage fire, Æolian Smyrna, neighbouring on the sea, lashed by the waves,[2] and through which the clear water of sacred Meles passes—hence setting out, the daughters of Jove, glorious children, wished to celebrate the divine earth and city of men. But they rejected the divine voice, the song, I say, through folly. Of whom some one having had experience,[3] will, hereafter, bethink him, because he has brought a rebuke for ever upon them through my fate.[4] †But I will endure the fate, which the god gave to me at my birth, bearing * * *[5] with resolute mind. Nor do my limbs desire to remain in the sacred streets of Cumæ, but my mighty mind urges me, although weak, to go to another people.
V. BEGINNING OF THE LITTLE ILIAD.
I sing Ilium and Dardania renowned for steeds, on account of which the Greeks, the servants of Mars, suffered much.
VI. TO THE SON OF THESTOR.
Son of Thestor, although there are many things obscure to
- ↑ There is an awkward hyperbaton. The construction must be taken as if it were πόλις ἐστιν ἥν ποτ . . . . . ἔνθεν, κ. τ. λ.
- ↑ I read ποντοτίνακτον, with Pearson.
- ↑ I read ἀφραδίῃ, with Ilgen, and ὅ σφιν ὄνειδος ἔσαιεν ἐμὸν δία μήσατο πότμον, with Hermann, who interprets it, "intelliget se popularibus suis propter meam sortem æternum peperisse opprobrium," taking ὃ for ὅτι.
- ↑ i. e. through his neglect of me.
- ↑ The word ἀκράαντα is unintelligible:
"The fate which God allotted at my birth,
With patient heart will I endure on earth."Coleridge.
