Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/198

162 sucked up, was lost to him; and the black earth appeared around his feet, and the deity dried it up. And lofty trees shed down fruit from the top, pear trees, and apples, and pomegranates producing glorious fruit, and sweet figs, and flourishing olives: of which, when the old man raised himself up to pluck some with his hands, the wind kept casting them away to the dark clouds.

"And I beheld Sisyphus, having violent griefs, bearing an enormous stone with both [his hands]: he indeed leaning with his hands and feet kept thrusting the stone up to the top: but when it was about to pass over the summit, then strong force began to drive it back again, then the impudent stone rolled to the plain; but he, striving, kept thrusting it back, and the sweat flowed down from his limbs, and a dirt arose from his head.

"After him I perceived the might of Hercules, an image; for he himself amongst the immortal gods is delighted with banquets, and has the fair-legged Hebe, [daughter of mighty Jove and golden-sandaled Juno]. And around him there was a clang of the dead, as of birds, frighted on all sides; but he, like unto dark night, having a naked bow, and an arrow at the string, looking about terribly, was always like unto one about to let fly a shaft. And there was a fearful belt around his breast, the thong was golden: on which wondrous forms were wrought, bears, and wild boars, and terrible lions, and contests, and battles, and slaughters, and slayings of men; he who devised that thong with his art, never having wrought such a one before, could he work any other such. But he immediately knew me, when he saw me with his eyes, and pitying me, addressed winged words:

O Jove-born son of Laertes, much-contriving Ulysses, ah wretched one, thou too art certainly pursuing some evil fate, which I also endured under the beams of the sun. I was indeed the son of Jove, the son of Saturn, but I had infinite labour; for I was subjected to a much inferior man, who enjoined upon me difficult contests: and once he sent me hither to bring the dog, for he did not think that there was any contest more difficult than this. I indeed brought it up