Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/352

316 have given thee toil, who envied that we, remaining near one another, should be delighted with youth, and reach the threshold of old age. But do not now be angry with me for this, nor indignant, that I did not at first thus embrace thee, when I beheld thee; for my mind always shudders in my breast, for fear some one of mortals coming should deceive me with words, for many devise evil means of gain. Nor would Argive Helen, born of Jove, have been mingled with a foreigner in love and in the couch, if she had known that the warlike sons of the Grecians were about to bring her home again to her dear country. But her the deity indeed excited to do an unseemly work: but she did not before lay up in her mind the sad calamity, from which grief first came also upon us. But now, since thou hast told me evident signs of our bed, which no other mortal has beheld, but only thou and I, and one handmaiden only, Actoris, (whom my father gave to me coming hither, who kept for us the door of the close chamber,) now thou persuadest my mind, although it is very difficult [to be persuaded]."

Thus she spoke, and in him excited still more the desire of grief; but he wept, holding his delightful wife, who knew prudent things. And as when the land has appeared welcome to [men] swimming, whose well-built ship Neptune has wrecked in the sea, urged by the wind, and the dark billows, but few have escaped from the hoary sea, swimming to the shore, and much brine has incrusted round their body, but they gladly have stepped upon the land, escaping evil; so her husband was welcome to her beholding him: but she had not yet altogether let go her white arms from his neck. And now the rosy-fingered morning would have appeared while they were weeping, had not blue-eyed Minerva thought of other things. She detained the long night towards the end, and still kept the golden-throned Morn in the ocean, nor did she suffer her to yoke her swift-footed horses, that bear light to men, Lampus and Phæthon, steeds that lead the Morn. And then indeed much-planning Ulysses addressed his wife:

"O wife, we have not yet arrived at the end of all our toils, but still there will be an immeasurable labour behind, great and difficult, all which it behoves me to accomplish. For thus the soul of Tiresias foretold to me on that day, when I went down to the house of Pluto, seeking for a return for my