Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/291

Rh Diomede, another Grecian captain, had the boldness to fight with Venus, and wound her; whereupon the goddess, in a rage, ordered her son Cupid to make this hero to be hated by all women, repeating it often that he should die a maid; from whence, by a small change in orthography, he was called Diomede. And it is to be observed, that the term maiden-head is frequently, at this very day, applied to persons of either sex.

Ajax was, in fame, the next Grecian general to Achilles. The derivation of his name from A jakes, however asserted by great authors, is, in my opinion, very unworthy both of them and of the hero himself. I have often wondered to see such learned men mistake in so clear a point. This hero is known to have been a most intemperate liver, as it is usual with soldiers; and, although he was not old, yet, by conversing with camp-strollers, he had got pains in his bones, which he pretended to his friends were only age-aches; but they telling the story about the army, as the vulgar always confound right pronunciation, he was afterward known by no other name than Ajax.

The next I shall mention is Andromache, the famous wife of Hector. Her father was a Scotch gentleman, of a noble family still subsisting in that ancient kingdom. But, being a foreigner in Troy, to which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam, as Dictys Cretensis learnedly observes; Hector fell in love with his daughter, and the father's name was Andrew Mackay. The young lady was called by the same name, only a little softened to the Grecian accent. Astyanax