Apollo

A piercing shriek, she reeled and dropped Aeneas.

But Phoebus Apollo plucked him up, swathed him round, and got him out of there.

The reason I spend some time on this is because it is a moment when we have an immortal wounded by a mortal.

And it brings into focus the difference between men and gods in the poem, or at least one difference.

Men feared the anger of Poseidon scarcely less than that of Zeus, because, though he had no thunderbolts, he could make the earth rend in quake or the sea run mountains high with one blow of his trident.

but though he was fierce and terrible if offended none of the immortals were more kindly to the race of man and none it was said were so faithful a friend to those who had once pleased him and this as you will hear presently was a true saying close to poseidon and leaning lovingly against his broad shoulder tantalus saw a bright-haired youth at whose feet lay a bow and quiver and a golden lyre it was the archer apollo who was the sweet singer of heaven and near him sat nine fair sisters crowned with violets who called them muses as the feast went on another youth whose smiling eyes sparkled with mischief slipped from his place and stood beside apollo and stealthily picked up the golden lyre but Apollo turned, and took it from him laughing, and said, Ah, thieving Hermes, did you not give me this to make amends for the kind you stole from me in the Arcadian pastures, when you were yet a little roguish boy, and now would you steal it too? Nay, let me keep it, my brother, and you shall hear me sing with the nine, in honour of our kind host.

Then Tantalus looked eagerly at the merry face of Hermes, for there were many greater gods, but none more beloved than he.

the god of homely shepherds and of wayfarers.

and now apollo sang to the golden lyre and the nine mutas sang with him they sang in praise of tantalus the generous the hospitable the bounteous friend of the needy and the stranger and how his name was glorious in many lands They told how the gods looked down with favour on the good deeds that he had done, and how, in days to come, that favour should not cease from his house, but bring yet greater glory upon his children's children.

That golden palace, they declared, should vanish from the earth and be no more remembered, but generations yet unborn should marvel while mighty bards told in song the wondrous story of the race of Tantalus.

Now Apollo and those violet-crowned goddesses sang so enchantingly that not only the mortals but the heavenly guests who heard them sat as if spellbound.

even the eagle, which had made Tantalus uneasy from time to time by fixing a fierce gaze upon him and snapping its terrible hooked beak, was lulled to sleep by the gracious harmony and sat with bluish eyelids closed, motionless for the rise and fall of its feathers like ripples on brown water as its glossy back heaved in slumber.

We find firmly established the Olympian patriarchal family.

Zeus, the father of gods and men, his wife Hera, his son Apollo, his daughter Athena, his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and the rest.

We probably think of each feature more or less as like a statue.

A habit of mind obviously wrong and indeed absurd, as if one thought of labor and grief as statues because Rodin or Saint-Gaudens has so represented them.

The cow and the cuckoo are sacred to Hera.

The owl and the snake to Athena.

The dolphin, the crow, the lizard, the bull to Apollo.

Dionysus, always like a wilder and less middle-aged Zeus, appears freely as a snake, bull, he-goat, and lion.