And quench with wine the yet remaining fire.
The snowy bones his friends and brothers place
(With tears collected) in a golden vase;
The golden vase in purple palls they roll’d,
Of softest texture, and inwrought with gold.
Last o’er the urn the sacred earth they spread,
And raised the tomb, memorial of the dead.
(Strong guards and spies, till all the rites were
done,
Watch’d from the rising to the setting sun.)
All Troy then moves to Priam’s court again,
A solemn, silent, melancholy train:
Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,
And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast.
Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,
And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.
[260]
CONCLUDING NOTE.
We have now passed through the Iliad, and seen the
anger of Achilles, and the terrible effects of it,
at an end, as that only was the subject of the poem,
and the nature of epic poetry would not permit our
author to proceed to the event of the war, it perhaps
may be acceptable to the common reader to give a short
account of what happened to Troy and the chief actors
in this poem after the conclusion of it.
I need not mention that Troy was taken soon after
the death of Hector by the stratagem of the wooden
horse, the particulars of which are described by Virgil
in the second book of the AEneid.
Achilles fell before Troy, by the hand of Paris, by
the shot of an arrow in his heel, as Hector had prophesied
at his death, lib. xxii.
The unfortunate Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son
of Achilles.
Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with
Ulysses for the armour of Vulcan, but being defeated
in his aim, he slew himself through indignation.
Helen, after the death of Paris, married Deiphobus
his brother, and at the taking of Troy betrayed him,
in order to reconcile herself to Menelaus her first
husband, who received her again into favour.
Agamemnon at his return was barbarously murdered by
AEgysthus, at the instigation of Clytemnestra his
wife, who in his absence had dishonoured his bed with
AEgysthus.
Diomed, after the fall of Troy, was expelled his own
country, and scarce escaped with his life from his
adulterous wife AEgiale; but at last was received
by Daunus in Apulia, and shared his kingdom; it is
uncertain how he died.
Nestor lived in peace with his children, in Pylos,
his native country.
Ulysses also, after innumerable troubles by sea and
land, at last returned in safety to Ithaca, which
is the subject of Homer’s Odyssey.
