thrice round the mound that covers Patroclus' ashes. Twelve days has the body now lain unburied; but Venus and Apollo preserve it from decay. Venus sheds over it ambrosial roseate unguents, and Apollo covers it with a dark cool cloud. In less mythological language, the loathliness of death may not mar its beauty, nor the sunbeams breed in it corruption. Even the Olympians are seized with horror and pity. In spite of the remonstrances of his still implacable queen, Jupiter instructs Thetis to visit her son, and soften his cruel obduracy. At the same time he sends Iris to Priam, and persuades him to implore Achilles in person to restore the body of his son. Accompanied by a single herald, and bearing a rich ransom, the aged king passes the Greek lines by night (for Mercury himself becomes his guide, disguised in the form of a Greek straggler, and casts a deep sleep upon the sentinels). He reaches the tent of Achilles, who has just ended his evening meal, throws himself at his feet, and kisses "the dreadful murderous hands by which so many of his sons have fallen," in an agony of supplication. He adjures the conqueror, by the thought of his own aged father Peleus—now looking and longing for his return—to have some pity on a bereaved old man, whose son can never return to him alive; and at least to give him back the body.
"And for thy father's sake look pitying down
On me, more needing pity: since I bear
Such grief as never man on earth hath borne,
Who stoop to kiss the hand that slew my son."
With the impulsive suddenness which is a part of his character, Achilles gives way at once— prepared, indeed, to yield, by his mother's remonstrances. He
