spirit of the Greek. The brief encounter between the king and queen of the Immortals is cut short by the former in rather summary fashion. "Thou hast been promising honour to Achilles, I trow," says Juno.
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"Zeus that rolls the clouds of heaven |
her addressing answered then; |
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He bids her, in very plain Greek, sit down and hold her tongue; and gives her clearly to understand—with a threat of violence which is an unusual addition to his many failings as a husband—that it is his fixed intention, on this occasion, to be lord and master, not only of Olympus, but of his wife. Juno is silenced, and the whole assembly of the gods is startled by the Thunderer's violence. Vulcan, the fire-god—the lame brawny hunchback, always more or less the jester and the butt of the court of Olympus, but with more brains in his head than most of his straight-limbed compeers—Vulcan comes to the general relief. He soothes his royal mother by the argument, that it were ill indeed to break the peace of heaven for the sake of two or three wretched mortals: and he reminds her—we must suppose in an aside—that they both knew by bitter experience that when the father of gods and men did choose to put forth his might, it went hard with all who resisted.
"When to thy succour once before I came,
He seized me by the foot, and hurled me down
From heaven's high threshold; all the day I fell,
- ↑ Translations, 1863.
