XXIX

     Our conquest these:  if haply we retain
     The reverence that ne’er will overrun
     Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
     Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.

     The invective of Achilles—­Iliad, i. 149

     “Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
     Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
     Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? 
     I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans,
     Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;
     Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;
     Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests
     Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome
     Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. 
     O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice
     Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! 
     Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. 
     Worse, it is thou whose threat ’tis to ravish my prize from me,
     portion
     Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. 
     Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians
     Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. 
     Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat,
     Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,
     Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore
     Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed! 
     So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me
     Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect,
     I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store.”

     The invective of Achilles—­Iliad, i. 225

“Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou!  Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death- stroke.  Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee.  Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects; Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.  Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:  Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the mountains, No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped off Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,