tumult of whom, approaching, awoke him; and, being raised up, he sat, and addressed them:
"O son of Atreus, and ye other chiefs of the Greeks, first, indeed, extinguish the whole pile, as much as the fire has seized, with dark wine; and then let us collect the bones of Patroclus, the son of Menœtius, well discriminating them (for they are readily distinguished; for he lay in the center of the pyre, but the others, both horses and men, were burned promiscuously at the extremity), and let us place them in a golden vessel, and with a double [layer of] fat, till I myself be hidden in Hades. And I wish that a tomb should be made, not very large, but of such[1] a size as is becoming; but do ye, O Achæans, hereafter, make it both broad and lofty, you who may be left behind me at the many-benched barks."
Thus he spoke; and they obeyed the swift-footed son of Peleus. First of all, indeed, they totally extinguished the pyre with dark wine, as much as the fire had invaded, and the deep ashes fell in; and, weeping, they collected the white bones of their mild companion into a golden vessel, and a double [layer of] fat: then, laying them in the tent, they covered them with soft[2] linen. Next they marked out the area for the tomb, and laid the foundations around the pile; and immediately upraised a mound of earth; and, heaping up the tomb, returned. But Achilles detained the people there, and made the wide assembly sit down; but from the ships he brought forth prizes, goblets, tripods, horses, mules, and sturdy heads of oxen, and slender-waisted women, and hoary[3] iron. First he staked as prizes for swift-footed steeds, a woman to be borne away, faultless, skilled in works, as well as a handled tripod of two-and-twenty measures, for the first; but for the second he staked a mare six years old, unbroken, pregnant with a young mule; for the third he staked a fire-
- ↑ Ernesti considers that τοῖον is here added to indicate magnitude, and Heyne accordingly renders it: "magnitudine fere hac," the speaker being supposed to use a gesture while thus speaking.
- ↑ See Buttm. Lexil. pp. 236–9.
- ↑ "Ernesti conceives that the color is here mentioned to express, not merely the shining aspect, but the newness of the metal; as λευκὸν in 268. This is ingenious; but why not receive it as expressive of color, and borrowed from that to which the metal itself supplies a well-known epithet, viz., the hair of age?"—Kennedy.
