gent, to gratify my dear father Jove, lest my sire may again reprove her, and disturb our banquet. For if the Olympian Thunderer wishes to hurl [us] from our seats[1]—for he is much the most powerful. But do thou soothe him with gentle words; then will the Olympian king straightway be propitious to us."
Thus then he spoke, and rising, he placed the double cup[2] in the hand of his dear mother, and addressed her:
"Be patient, my mother, and restrain thyself, although grieved, lest with my own eyes I behold thee beaten, being very dear to me; nor then indeed should I be able, though full of grief, to assist thee; for Olympian Jove is difficult to be opposed. For heretofore, having seized me by the foot, he cast me, desiring at one time to assist you, down from the heavenly threshold. All day I was carried down through the air, and I fell on Lemnos[3] with the setting sun: and but little life was in me by that time. There the Sintian[4] men forthwith received and tended[5] me, having fallen."
Thus he spoke: but the white-armed goddess Juno smiled; and smiling she received the cup from the hand of her son. But he, beginning from left to right,[6] kept pouring out for all the other gods, drawing nectar from the goblet. And then inextinguishable laughter arose among the immortal gods, when they saw Vulcan bustling about[7] through the mansion.
Thus, then, they feasted[8] the entire day till the setting sun;
- ↑ An aposiopesis; understand, "he can easily do so."
- ↑ See my note on Od. iii. p. 30, n. 13. It was "a double cup with a common bottom in the middle."—Crusius.
- ↑ Hercules having sacked Troy, was, on his return, driven to Cos by a storm raised by Juno, who was hostile to him, and who had contrived to cast Jupiter into a sleep, that he might not interrupt her purpose. Jupiter awaking, in resentment of the artifice practiced upon him, bound her feet to iron anvils, which Vulcan attempting to loose, was cast headlong down to Lemnos by his enraged sire.
- ↑ A race of robbers, of Tyrrhenian origin (according to Müller), and the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos. This island was ever after sacred to Vulcan. Cf. Lactant. i. 15; Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 740, sqq.
- ↑ See Arnold.
- ↑ This meaning of ἐνδέξια is due to Buttmann.
- ↑ See Buttmann, Lexil. p. 481.
- ↑ "The gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for
