The serpent ate thepoor cheeping things, while the old bird flew about lamenting her
little ones; but the serpent threw his coils about her and caught
her by the wing as she was screaming. Then, when he had eaten
both the sparrow and her young, the god who had sent him made him
become a sign; for the son of scheming Saturn turned him into
stone, and we stood there wondering at that which had come to
pass. Seeing, then, that such a fearful portent had broken in
upon our hecatombs, Calchas forthwith declared to us the oracles
of heaven. 'Why, Achaeans,' said he, 'are you thus speechless?
Jove has sent us this sign, long in coming, and long ere it be
fulfilled, though its fame shall last for ever. As the serpent
ate the eight fledglings and the sparrow that hatched them, which
makes nine, so shall we fight nine years at Troy, but in the
tenth shall take the town.' This was what he said, and now it is
all coming true. Stay here, therefore, all of you, till we take
the city of Priam."
Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from Kim by Rudyard Kipling.
From the earliest days of Ancient Greece, the author(s) of this poem were contemporaries of the writers of the Bible's Old Testament.
Summary of Second Book: Jove sends a lying dream to Agamemnon, who thereon calls the chiefs in assembly, and proposes to sound the mind of his
army--In the end they march to fight--Catalogue of the Achaean and Trojan forces.
Painting: The Wrath of Achilles by Michael Drolling, 1819.
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