This tale, by Nestor told, did much displease
Tlepolemus, the seed of Hercules;
For often he had heard his father say
That he himself was present at the fray,
And more than shared the glories of the day.
“Old Chronicle,” he said, “among the rest,
You might have named Alcides at the least:
Is he not worth your praise?” The Pylian prince
Sigh’d ere he spoke, then made this proud defence:
“My former woes, in long oblivion drown’d,
I would have lost; but you renew the wound:
Better to pass him o’er, than to relate
The cause I have your mighty sire to hate:
His fame has fill’d the world, and reach’d the sky,
(Which, oh I wish, with truth, I could deny!)
We praise not Hector, though his name, we know,
Is great in arms: ’tis hard to praise a foe.
“He, your great father, levell’d to the ground
Messenia’s towers; nor better fortune found
Elis and Pylos: that a neighbouring state,
And this my own; both guiltless of their fate.
“To pass the rest; twelve, wanting one, he slew,
My brethren, who their birth from Neleus drew;
All youths of early promise, had they lived;
By him they perish’d: I alone survived:
The rest were easy conquest: but the fate
Of Periclymenos is wondrous to relate:
To him our common grandsire of the main
Had given to change his form, and changed, resume again.
Varied at pleasure, every shape he tried,
And in all beasts Alcides still defied:
Vanquish’d on earth, at length he soar’d above,
Changed to the bird that bears the bolt of Jove.
The new-dissembled eagle, now endued
With beak and pounces, Hercules pursued,
And cuff’d his manly cheeks, and tore his face,
Then safe retired, and tower’d in empty space.
Alcides bore not long his flying foe,
But bending his inevitable bow,
Reach’d him in air, suspended as he stood,
And in his pinion fix’d the feather’d wood.
Light was the wound; but in the sinew hung
The point, and his disabled wing unstrung.
He wheel’d in air, and stretch’d his vans in vain;
His vans no longer could his flight sustain;
For while one gather’d wind, one unsupplied
Hung drooping down, nor poised his other side.
He fell: the shaft that slightly was impress’d,
Now from his heavy fall, with weight increased,
Drove through his neck aslant; he spurns the ground,
And the soul issues through the windpipe’s wound.
“Now, brave commander of the Rhodian seas,
What praise is due from me to Hercules?
Silence is all the vengeance I decree
For my slain brothers; but ’tis peace with thee.”
Thus, with a flowing tongue, old Nestor spoke;
Then to full bowls each other they provoke:
At length, with weariness and wine oppress’d,
They rise from table, and withdraw to rest.