neys on high; but he deprived them of their return.[1] O goddess, daughter of Jove, relate to us also some[2] of these things.
Now all the others,[3] as many as had escaped from utter destruction, were at home, having escaped both the war and the sea. But him alone, anxious for a return [home], and for his wife, the venerable nymph Calypso, a divine one of the goddesses, detained in her hollow grot, desiring him to be her husband. But when, after revolving years,[4] the time had now arrived, in which the gods destined him to return home to Ithaca, not even then was he freed from labours, although amongst his own friends. But all the gods pitied him except Neptune; but he was unceasingly angry with godlike Ulysses, before he arrived in his own land. But he [Neptune] had gone to the Æthiopians who dwell afar off, (the Æthiopians who are divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some at the setting of the sun, others at the rising,) in order to obtain[5] a hecatomb of bulls and lambs. There sitting down he was delighted with a feast; but the other [gods] were assembled together in the palace of Olympian Jove. And unto them the father of men and of gods began discourse; for he remembered in his mind the noble Ægisthus, whom far-famed Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, slew: and remembering him, he spoke [these] words to the immortals.
"Alas![6] How, forsooth, do mortals reproach the gods! For they say that their evils are from us: whereas they themselves, through their own infatuation, suffer griefs beyond what is destined. Thus even now Ægisthus, contrary to the degrees of fate, married the wedded wife of Atrides, and slew him on his return, although aware that utter destruction [awaited himself]; since we forewarned him, (having sent the trusty Mercury, the slayer of Argus,) neither to kill him, nor to woo his wife; for from Orestes revenge shall[7] follow
- ↑ Literally, "the day of return."
- ↑ ἀμόθεν, ποθέν, Hesych. "ab aliqua parte."
- ↑ i. e. of the Grecian princes.
- ↑ This is the genitive absolute, and so translated by Virgil's "volventibus annis."
- ↑ ἀντιόων is the Attic future, as shown by Buttm. Lexil. p. 142.
- ↑ A word used by the Dryopians and Scythians to signify gods, (cf. Alberti on Hesych. s. v.,) and hence used as a term of surprise or deprecation. σχετλιαστικὸν ἐπίρρημα, Schol.
- ↑ Jove quotes the very words of Mercury, which accounts for the bold change of tense. See Ernesti.
