Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
those who were far off might hear him and consider his council. He
therefore with all sincerity and goodwill addressed them thus:-
"King Agamemnon, the Achaeans are for making you a by-word
among all mankind. They forget the promise they made you when
they set out from Argos, that you should not return till you had
sacked the town of Troy, and, like children or widowed women,
they murmur and would set off homeward. True it is that they have
had toil enough to be disheartened. A man chafes at having to stay
away from his wife even for a single month, when he is on
shipboard, at the mercy of wind and sea, but it is now nine long
years that we have been kept here; I cannot, therefore, blame the
Achaeans if they turn restive; still we shall be shamed if we go
home empty after so long a stay- therefore, my friends, be patient
yet a little longer that we may learn whether the prophesyings of
Calchas were false or true.
"All who have not since perished must remember as though it were
yesterday or the day before, how the ships of the Achaeans were
detained in Aulis when we were on our way hither to make war on
Priam and the Trojans. We were ranged round about a fountain
offering hecatombs to the gods upon their holy altars, and there
was a fine plane-tree from beneath which there welled a stream of
pure water. Then we saw a prodigy; for Jove sent a fearful serpent
out of the ground, with blood-red stains upon its back, and it
darted from under the altar on to the plane-tree. Now there was a
brood of young sparrows, quite small, upon the topmost bough,
peeping out from under the leaves, eight in all, and their mother
that hatched them made nine. The serpent ate the poor cheeping
things, while the old bird flew about lamenting her little ones; but
33