Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
you now, but they will not do so; therefore I say go back into the
host, and do not face me, or you will rue it. Even a fool may be
wise after the event.”
Then Aeneas answered, “Son of Peleus, think not that your words
can scare me as though I were a child. I too, if I will, can brag and
talk unseemly. We know one another’s race and parentage as
matters of common fame, though neither have you ever seen my
parents nor I yours. Men say that you are son to noble Peleus, and
that your mother is Thetis, fair-haired daughter of the sea. I have
noble Anchises for my father, and Venus for my mother; the parents
of one or other of us shall this day mourn a son, for it will be more
than silly talk that shall part us when the fight is over. Learn, then,
my lineage if you will- and it is known to many.
“In the beginning Dardanus was the son of Jove, and founded
Dardania, for Ilius was not yet stablished on the plain for men to
dwell in, and her people still abode on the spurs of manyfountained
Ida. Dardanus had a son, king Erichthonius, who was
wealthiest of all men living; he had three thousand mares that fed
by the water-meadows, they and their foals with them. Boreas was
enamoured of them as they were feeding, and covered them in the
semblance of a dark-maned stallion. Twelve filly foals did they
conceive and bear him, and these, as they sped over the rich plain,
would go bounding on over the ripe ears of corn and not break
them; or again when they would disport themselves on the broad
back of Ocean they could gallop on the crest of a breaker.
Erichthonius begat Tros, king of the Trojans, and Tros had three
noble sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymede who was comeliest of
mortal men; wherefore the gods carried him off to be Jove’s
397