Page:Homer The Iliad.djvu/91

Rh The Goddess fled: her, Iris, swift as wind, Caught up, and from the tumult bore away, Weeping with pain, her fair skin soiled with blood."

It is the original of the grand passage in the 'Paradise Lost,' in which the English poet has adopted almost literally the Homeric idea of suffering inflicted on an immortal essence, while carefully avoiding the ludicrous element in the scene. In the "battle of the Angels, Michael cleaves Satan down the right side:—

In sore plight the goddess mounts to Olympus, and there, throwing herself into the arms of her mother Dione, bewails the wrong she has suffered at the hands of a presumptuous mortal. Dione comforts her as best she may, reminding her how in times past other of the Olympian deities have had to endure woes from men: Mars, when the giants Otus and Ephialtes bound him for thirteen months in brazen fetters; Juno herself, the queen of Heaven, and Pluto, the king of the Shades, had been wounded by the daring Hercules. She foretells, however, an untimely death for the presumptuous hero who has raised his hand against a goddess:—

"Fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life, Who fights against the gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field returned. Brave as he is, let Diomed beware He meet not with a mightier than himself: Then fair Ægiale, Adrastus' child, The noble wife of valiant Diomed,