Rhesus
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng3
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those horses that the sea-god gave to Peleus, son of Aeacus.
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Messenger
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Lord, in days to come may it be mine
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to bring my masters such news as I am bearing to you now.
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Hector
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Often the rustic mind is afflicted with dullness; so you have probably come to this ill-suited place to tell your master, in armor, about the sheep! Do you not know my palace or my father’s throne,
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where you should carry your tale when you have prospered with your flocks?
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Messenger
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Dull we herdsmen are; I do not dispute it. But none the less I bring joyful news to you.
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Hector
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Cease your tale of how the sheep-fold fares; I have battles to fight and spears to wield.
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Messenger
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The very things of which I, too, came to tell you; for a chieftain of a countless army is on his way to join you as your friend and ally of this land.
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Hector
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His country? and the home that he has left?
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Messenger
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Thrace; men call his father Strymon.
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Hector
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Did you say that Rhesus was setting foot in Troy?
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Messenger
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You have it; and lighten me of half my speech.
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Hector
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How is it that he comes to Ida’s meadows, wandering from the broad wagon track across the plain?
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Messenger
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I cannot say for certain, though I might guess.
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It is no idle task for an army to make an invasion by night, hearing that the plains are packed with foemen’s troops. But he frightened us rustic shepherds who dwell along the slopes of Ida, the earliest settlement in the land, as he came by night through the wood full of wild beasts.
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On surged the tide of Thracian warriors with loud shouts; at this in wild amazement we drove our flocks unto the heights, for fear that some Argives were coming to plunder and harry your steading, till we caught the sound of voices
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other than Greek and ceased from our alarm. Then I went and questioned in the Thracian tongue those who were reconnoitring the road for their lord, who it was that lead them, and whose son he was called, that came to the city to help the sons of Priam.
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And when I had heard all I wished to learn, I stood still; and I see Rhesus mounted like a god upon his Thracian chariot. Of gold was the yoke that linked the necks of his horses brighter than the snow;
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and on his shoulders flashed his shield with figures welded in gold; while a gorgon of bronze like that on the aegis of the goddess was bound upon the front of his horses, ringing out its note of fear with many a bell. The number of his army you could not reckon
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to an exact sum, for it was beyond one’s comprehension; many knights, many ranks of targeteers, many archers, a great crowd of light-armed troops, arrayed in Thracian garb, to bear them company. Such the man who comes to Troy’s assistance,
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whom the son of Peleus will never escape, either if he tries to escape or if he meets him spear to spear.
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Chorus Leader
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Whenever the gods stand by the citizens, the tide of fortune glides with easy flow to a successful goal.
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Hector
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I shall find many friends now that fortune smiles
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upon my warring and Zeus is on my side. But we have no need of those who did not share our toils long since, when Ares, driving all before him, was rending the sails of our ship of state with his tempestuous blast. Rhesus has shown the friendship he then bore to Troy;
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for he comes to the feast, although he was not with the hunters when they took the prey, nor did he join his spear with theirs.
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Chorus Leader
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You are right to scorn and blame such friends; yet welcome those who wish to help the state.
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Hector
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We who have long kept Ilium safe are sufficient.
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Chorus
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Are you so sure you have already caught the foe?
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Hector
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I am sure; tomorrow’s light will make that plain.
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Chorus Leader
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Beware of what may happen; often fortune veers about.
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Hector
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I loath the friend who brings his help too late.
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But let him, since he has arrived,
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come to our table not as an ally but as a guest;
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for the gratitude of Priam’s sons is forfeit in his case.
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Chorus Leader
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O prince, to turn away allies earns hatred.
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Messenger
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His mere appearance would cause a panic among the foe.
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Hector
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You counsel rightly; you too take the proper view.
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Let Rhesus in his gilded armor join the allies of this land, thanks to the messenger’s report. Exit the Messenger.
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Chorus
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May Nemesis, daughter of Zeus, check the word that may offend; for lo! I will utter all that it is dear
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to my soul to say. You have come, O son of the river god, you have come, welcome in your advent, to the halls of Friendship, since late in time your Pierian mother and Strymon, river with fair bridges,
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are sending you to us.
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Chorus
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Strymon, who begot you, his strong young son, that day his swirling waters found a refuge in the tuneful Muse’s virgin bosom.
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You are my Zeus, my god of light, as you come driving your dappled horses. Now, O Phrygia, O my country, now may you by God’s grace address Zeus the Deliverer!
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Chorus
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Hail, all hail! O mighty prince!
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fair the cub you have bred, 0 Thrace, a ruler in his every look. See his stalwart frame in golden corslet! Hark to the ringing bells that peal so proudly from his shield-handle.
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A god, O Troy, a god, a very Ares, Strymon’s colt and the tuneful Muse’s, has come to breathe courage into you.
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Rhesus
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Brave son of father as brave, Hector, prince of this land, hail! After many a long day I greet you.
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I rejoice at your success, to see you camped hard on the enemy towers; I am here to help you raze their walls and fire their fleet of ships.
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Hector
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Son of that tuneful mother, one of the Muses, and of Thracian Strymon’s river, I love to speak
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plain truth always; nature did not give me a double tongue. Long, long ago should you have come and shared the labors of this land, and not allowed Troy for any help of yours to fall overthrown by hostile Argive spears. You can not say it was any want of invitation
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that kept you from coming with your help to visit us. What herald or embassy from Phrygia did not come to you, urgently requiring your aid for our city? What sumptuous presents did we not send to you? But you, brother barbarian though you were,
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pledged away to Hellenes us your barbarian brothers, for all the help you gave. Yet it was I with this arm that raised you from your paltry princedom to high lordship over Thrace, when I fell upon the Thracian chieftains face to face around Pangaeum in Paeonia’s land
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and broke their serried ranks, and gave their people up to you enslaved; but you have trampled on this great favor done you, and come with laggard step to give your aid when friends are in distress. While they, whom no natural tie of kin constrains, have long been here, and some are dead and in their graves
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beneath the heaped-up cairn, no mean proof of loyalty to the city; and others in arms and mounted on their chariots, with steadfast soul endure the icy blast and parching heat of the sun, not pledging one another on couches, as you do, in long deep draughts.
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This is the charge I bring against you and utter to your face, that you may know how frank is Hector’s tongue.
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Rhesus
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I too am just the same; straight to the point I cut my way; no shuffling nature is mine. My heart was wrung with sorer anguish than yours
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at my absence from this land; I fumed and chafed, but Scythian people, whose borders march with mine, made war on me on the very eve of my departure for Ilium; I had reached the strand of the Euxine sea, there to transport my Thracian army.
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Then my spear poured out over Scythia’s land great drops of bloody rain, and Thrace too shared in the mingled slaughter. This then was what chanced to keep me from coming to the land of Troy and joining your standard. But as soon as I had conquered these and taken their children as hostages
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and appointed the yearly tribute they should pay my house, I have come, sailing across the sea’s mouth, and on foot traversing the other borders of your land—not as you in your jeers at those carousals of my countrymen hint, nor sleeping soft in gilded palaces,
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but amid the frozen hurricanes that vex the Thracian sea and the Paeonian shores, learning as I lay awake what suffering is, this soldier’s cloak my only wrap. True my coming has tarried, but yet I am in time; ten years already have you been at the fray,
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and accomplished nothing yet; day in, day out, you fall, throwing the dice of war with Argives. But the light of one day will be enough for me to sack those towers and fall upon their anchored fleet and slay the Achaeans; and on the next day I will go
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home from Ilium , at one stroke ending all your toil. Let none of you lay hand to spear to lift it, for I, for all my late arrival, will with my lance make utter havoc of those vaunting Achaeans.
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Chorus
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Joy, joy!
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sweet champion sent by Zeus! Only may Zeus, throned on high, keep jealousy, resistless foe, from you for your words! That fleet of ships from Argos never brought,
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neither formerly nor now, among all its warriors a braver than you. How I wonder will Achilles, how will Aias stand the onset of your spear? Oh! that I might see that day, my prince,
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on which you may wreak vengeance on them, gripping your lance in your death-dealing hand!
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Rhesus
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Such exploits am I ready to achieve to atone for my long absence; (with due submission to Nemesis I say this); then when we have cleared this city of its foes
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and you have chosen out first-fruits for the gods, I wish to march with you against the Argives’ country and at my coming lay Hellas waste with war, that they in turn may know the taste of ill.
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Hector
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If I could rid the city of this present curse
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and restore it to its old security, I should indeed feel deep gratitude towards the gods. But, as for sacking Argos and the pasture-lands of Hellas with the spear, it is no such easy task as you say.
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Rhesus
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Do they not say that here came the greatest chiefs of Hellas?
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Hector
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Yes, and I do not scorn them; I have enough to do in driving them away.
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Rhesus
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Well, when we slay these, is our task not fully done?
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Hector
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Do not leave the present need to look to distant schemes.
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Rhesus
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You are, it seems, content to suffer and make no return.
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Hector
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Yes, for I rule a great empire, even though I am here.
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But on the left wing or the right or in the centre of the allies you may plant your shield and marshal your troops.
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Rhesus
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Alone I will face the foe, Hector. But if you are ashamed, after all your previous toil,
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to have no share in firing their ships’ prows, place me face to face with Achilles and his army.
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Hector
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Against that man you cannot range your eager spear.
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Rhesus
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Why, it was surely said he sailed to Ilium.
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Hector
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He sailed and he is here; but he is angry
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and takes no part with the other chieftains in the battle.
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Rhesus
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Who next to him has won a name in their army?
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Hector
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Aias and the son of Tydeus are, I take it, in no way his inferiors; there is Odysseus, a wheedling rascal, but bold enough indeed,
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and of all men he has wrought most outrage on this country. For he came by night to Athena’s shrine and stole her image and took it to the Argive ships; next he came inside our battlements, clad as a vagrant in a beggar’s garb, and loudly did he curse
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the Argives, sent as a spy to Ilium; and then went out again, when he had slain the sentinels and warders at the gate. He is always to be found lurking in ambush about the altar of Thymbrean Apollo near the city. In him we have a troubling pest to wrestle with.
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Rhesus
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No brave man thinks it right to kill his foe in secret, but to meet him face to face. If I can catch this fellow alive, who, as you say, sits in stealthy ambush and plots his mischief, I will impale him at the outlet of the gates
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and set him up for winged vultures to make their meal upon. This is the death he ought to die, pirate and temple-robber that he is.
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Hector
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To your quarters now, for it is night. For you I will myself point out a spot where your army
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can watch this night apart from our array. Our password is Phoebus, if perhaps there should be need of it; hear and remember it, and tell it to the Thracian army. You must advance in front of our ranks and keep a watchful guard, and receive Dolon,
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who went to spy on the ships, for he, if he is safe, is even now approaching the camp of Troy.
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Chorus
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Whose watch is it? who relieves me? night’s earlier stars are on the wane, and the seven
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Pleiads mount the sky; in the middle of the heavens the eagle floats. Rouse yourselves, why delay? Up from your beds to the watch! Do you not see the moonlight?
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Dawn is near, dawn is coming, and lo! a star that heralds it. Who was told off to the first watch? The son of Mygdon, whom they call Coroebus.
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Who after him? The Paeonian contingent roused the Cilicians, and the Mysians us. Is it not then high time we went and roused the Lycians for the fifth watch,
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as the lot decided?
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Chorus
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Hark! hark! a sound; sitting on her blood-stained nest by Simois, she sings with voice of many trills
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her piteous plaint, the nightingale that slew her child. Already on Ida they are pasturing the flocks, and over the night I catch the shrill pipe’s note. Sleep charms my eyes,
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for sleep is sweetest at dawn to tired eyelids. Why does not our scout draw near, whom Hector sent to spy on the fleet? He is so long away, I have my fears.