While those his father's former bounty fed
Nor reach the goblet nor divide the bread!
The kindest but his present wants allay,
To leave him wretched the succeeding day :
Frugal compassion! Heedless they who boast
Both parents still, nor feel what he has lost,

Shall cry,
"Begone! thy father feasts not here :"
The wretch obeys, retiring with a tear.
Thus wretched, thus retiring all in tears,
To my sad soul Astyanax appears!
Forced by repeated insults to return,
And to his widowed mother vainly mourn.
He who with tender delicacy bred,

With princes sported, and on dainties fed,
And when still evening gave him up to rest
Sunk oft in down upon the nurse's breast,
Must-ah, what must he not?

Whom Ilion calls

Astyanax, from her well-guarded walls,

Is now that name no more, unhappy boy!
Since now no more thy father guards his Troy.
But thou, my Hector ! liest exposed in air,
Far from thy parents' and thy consort's care,
Whose hand in vain, directed by her love,
The martial scarf and robe of triumph wove.
Now to devouring flames be these a prey,
Useless to thee from this accursed day!
Yet let the sacrifice at least be paid,
An honour to the living, not the dead !'

So spake the mournful dame : her matrons hear,
Sigh back her sighs, and answer tear with tear.

In accordance with Grecian custom, preparations are now made for the funeral-pile of Patroclus, on which

D

Achilles pours libations of wine and oil, and also slays upon it the twelve Trojan youths he had captured. The fire burns all night long, and in the morning is quenched with wine, when the ashes of Patroclus are gathered together and placed in an urn. The funeral games then take place: chariot-racing, boxing, shooting with bows, foot-racing, and combats with sword and

spear.

Each morning of the days on which the funeral games are taking place, Achilles ties the body of Hector to his chariot and drags it furiously round the camp, till the gods of Olympus begin to weary at the sight of the vengeful spite of Achilles. Thetis accordingly visits the Greek by night and prevails on him to restore the body of Hector to his Trojan friends. Priam also visits him by stealth, and beseeches Achilles by the memory of his own father to relent from his obdurate revenge and give up the body. Achilles, moved with pity at the old king's tears, at length consents to his request-the body is carried away to Troy, and a truce of twelve days is agreed to by the Greeks in order that the Trojans may in all honour hold

The funeral feast of Hector, the queller of the steed!

The 'Iliad' concludes with the death of Hector, but it

may be well to give here a further brief account of the fate of Troy. The Trojans continued resolutely to defend their city after the death of their champion, receiving assistance from different nations against the Greeks. Amongst these allies were notably the Amazons under Queen Penthesilea, daughter of Mars; but she soon fell under the sword of Achilles, who was so struck with her beauty when he stripped her of her arms that he shed tears at having caused her death. This unusual tenderness on the part of the Grecian hero roused the laughter and scorn of the cynical Thersites —a ridicule which so provoked the hot-headed Achilles that he slew the railing Greek on the spot. Memnon, king of an Ethiopian nation, was another who came to the aid of Troy, bringing with him an army of 10,000 men, and in one of the battles Memnon killed Antilochus, son of the veteran Greek Nestor. The old man sent a challenge to Memnon to fight him in requital of his son's death, but the Ethiopian refused on account of the age of his opponent, offering to fight Achilles in his stead, by whom he was slain. The great and redoubtable Achilles soon after this met his own fate at the hands of Apollo in the semblance of Paris, who shot an arrow at his vulnerable heel, from which wound he

died. Magnificent funeral honours were prepared for Achilles by his countrymen, but his body was carried away by Thetis to an island in the Euxine Sea, where the Greek hero was restored by the gods to a new life. Paris was about the same time wounded by Philoctetes, and retired to the mountains of Ida, where he died.

The magnificent armour of Achilles, which had been prepared for him by Vulcan, after the hero's death became a source of contention between Ulysses and Ajax ; and when ultimately it became the property of Ulysses, Ajax in spleen committed suicide. The armour was afterwards given by Ulysses to Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who had come after his father's death to the siege of Troy, where he greatly distinguished himself by his valour, and showed a cruelty in some respects nearly as great as that of his father.

According to the decree of Jupiter, so long as the Trojans kept safe within their walls the Palladium, or statue of Pallas Minerva, they would be able to repel all foreign foes; but this could not prevent treachery from within, and the city soon succumbed after Ulysses, having entered in disguise, carried off their safeguard through the connivance of the faithless Helen. When he reached the Grecian camp he conceived the scheme

of introducing into Troy a wooden horse, within whose body were concealed a body of chosen Grecian warriors. This clumsy contrivance the besiegers left standing within their ramparts, while they pretended to sail away and desert the siege. The Trojans, seeing the camp thus forsaken, broke down a portion of their walls, and dragged the wooden horse within the city. During the night the Grecians left their place of concealment, kindled up a signal on the walls for their ships to return, when Troy was taken and sacked. Priam was slain before the altar of Jupiter by Neoptolemus, and many others of the chief Trojans were either slain or carried into captivity Helen herself, the original cause of the war, becoming the prize of her former husband, Menelaus.

In the two most celebrated poems of Homer-the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey'-he has displayed a consummate knowledge of human nature, and gained immortality by the sweetness and elegance of his verse. He is the more to be admired in that he had no model; and whatever faults there may be, they are to be attributed to the age in which he lived, and not to the poet. The song of Homer is historic song, and he has given a