tackle; and they hearkened to him exhorting them, and raising up the fir-mast placed it within the hollow mast-hole; and bound it with the fore-cables, and drew the white sails with well-twisted thongs. And the wind swelled the middle of the sail; and the purple wave roared loudly around the keel, as the ship made its way: and it ran through the waves passing on its way; having then bound the tackle through the swift black ship, they set crowned cups of wine; and made libations to the immortal eternal gods, but most of all to the blue-eyed daughter of Jove. Then it passed along the way through the whole night and in the morning.
BOOK III.
ARGUMENT.
But the sun, having left the very beauteous sea,[1] rose upwards into the brazen heaven,[2] that it might shine to the immortals and to mortal men over the bounteous earth. And they came to Pylos, the well-built citadel of Neleus: now they[3] were offering sacrifices on the shore of the sea, all-black bulls to the azure-haired Shaker of the earth.[4] There were nine seats and five hundred sat in each, and they allotted nine
- ↑ On λίμνη put for θάλασσα or Ὠκεανὸς, see Loewe. Cf. Hesych. s. v. λίμνη and ποταμός, with Alberti's note, t. ii. p. 481. Strabo, v. p. 225, uses the compound λίμνοθάλαττα.
- ↑ It was the old opinion that the heaven was solid, and framed of brass. Cf. Pind. Nem. vi. 5, ὁ δὲ χάλκεος ἀσφαλὲς αἐὶ ἕδος μένει οὐρανός (hence perhaps the brazen shoulders attributed to Atlas in Eur. Ion, i.). The phrase seems merely equivalent to στερεός.
- ↑ The Pylians.
- ↑ i. e. Neptune. Cf. Virg. Æn. iii. 119, whose verses have been compared with the present by Gellius, xiii. 25. Macrob. Sat. iii. 4.