Our slaughter'd heroes, and their bones inurn.

That done, once more the fate of war be tried,

And whose the conquest, mighty Jove decide!'

The Greeks give ear, but none the silence broke;

At length Tydides rose, and rising spoke: "O take not, friends! defrauded of your fame,

Their proffer'd wealth, nor ev'n the Spartan dame.

Let conquest make them ours: Fate shakes their wall,

And Troy already totters to her fall.'

Th' admiring Chiefs, and all the Grecian

With gen'ral shouts return'd him loud acclaim.

Then thus the King of Kings rejects the peace:

'Herald! in him thou hear'st the voice of Greece.

For what remains, let funeral flames be fed

With hero's corpse: I war not with the dead:

Go, search your slaughter'd Chiefs on yonder plain,

And gratify the Manes of the slain.

Be witness, Jove, whose thunder rolls on high!'

He said, and rear'd his sceptre to the sky. To sacred Troy, where all her Princes

lay

490

To wait th' event, the herald bent his way.

He came, and, standing in the midst, explain'd;

The peace rejected, but the truce obtain'd,

Jupiter assembles a council of the deities, and threatens them with the pains of Tartarus, if they assist either side: Minerva only obtains of him that she may direct the Greeks by her counsels. The armies join battle; Jupiter on Mount Ida weighs in his balances the fates of both, and affrights the Greeks with his thunders and lightnings. Nestor alone continues in the field in great danger; Diomed relieves him; whose exploits, and those of Hector, are excellently described. Juno endeavours to animate Neptune to the assistance of the Greeks, but in vain. The

acts of Teucer, who is at length wounded by Hector, and carried off. Juno and Minerva prepare to aid the Grecians, but are restrained by Iris, sent from Jupiter. The night puts an end to the battle. Hector continues in the field (the Greeks being driven to their fortifications before the ships), and gives orders to keep the watch all night in the camp, to prevent the enemy from reëmbarking and escaping by flight. They kindle fires through all the field, and pass the night under arms.

The time of seven-and-twenty days is employed from the opening of the poem to the end of this book. The scene here (except of the celestial machines) lies in the field toward the sea-shore.

AURORA now, fair Daughter of the Dawn,

Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn: When Jove convened the senate of the