Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/158

148 148 Memnon. mother Eos, the floods of Tethys, the uttermost bounds of the earth on the east, and the whole of his progress from the verge of Oceanus to Troy, in the course of which he had broken a vast army of the Solymi who attempted to impede his march. The next morning he slays Antilochus, and then meets Achilles, with whom he maintains a long and doubtful combat. After his fall the air is darkened, and at his mother's bidding the winds lift his corpse stript of his armour above the ground. The blood which drops from it on the plain forms a stream called by those who dwell at the foot of Ida the Paphlagonian, which every year on the return of the fatal day again runs blood, and sends forth a loathsome stench, as of a putrefying sore. The body is borne to the banks of the ^Esepus, where is a grove sacred to the Nymphs, who mourn over the hero. His faithful Ethiopians are likewise gifted with supernatural vigour, and enabled to follow their king through the air to his resting place. Eos descends with the Months and the Pleiads in her train to bewail her son. At first she threatens to withhold her presence from Olympus, and for a whole day she keeps the world wrapt in darkness. But the thun- der of Jupiter shakes her resolution. The Ethiopians bury their king, and are changed into birds which bear the name of Memnon, and once a year flock to his tomb, sprinkle it with dust, and contend with one another in pairs till at least one of each has fallen. Memnon himself, whethei* in Hades or in Elysium, rejoices in these funeral honours. His tomb on the banks of the ^sepus was shewn in the time of Strabo, and near it was a village called by his name^ If Quintus took this account of Memnon's burial from Arctinus, -^schylus must have drawn the legend which he worked up into his ^vyoaraaia from a different source. For there can scarcely be a doubt that in that tragedy he represented Eos as carrying her son's corpse away, not to the banks of the JEsepus, but to those either of the Nile or of the Choaspes. And the latter seems the more pro-^ bable supposition, especially if Dr Butler (Fragmm. J5sch. 169) is right in his conjecture that Strabo is alluding to '^ Strabo xiii. p. 587.