Neoptolemus

chapter seven when it was daylight alcinous caused it to be proclaimed by the heralds about the town that there was come to the palace a stranger shipwrecked on their coast that in mien and person resembled a god and inviting all the chief people of the city to come and do honour to the stranger The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and young, for whose cheer and to grace Ulysses more, Alcinous made a kingly feast with banquetings and music.

Ulysses being seated at a table next the king and queen, in all men's view, after they had feasted, Alcinist ordered Demodocus, the court singer to be called, to sing some songs of the deeds of heroes, to charm the ear of his guest.

Demodocus came and reached his harp, where it hung between two pillars of silver.

And then the blind singer, to whom in recompense of his lost sight the muses had given an inward discernment, a soul and a voice to excite the hearts of men and gods to delight, began in grave and solemn strains to sing the glories of men highest famed.

Know then that I am Ulysses, of whom i perceive ye have heard something who heretofore have filled the world with the renown of my policies i am he by whose counsel if fame is to be leaved at all more than by the united valor of all the grecians troy fell i am that unhappy man whom the heavens and angry gods have conspired to keep an exile on the seas wandering to seek my home which still flies from me The land which I am in the quest of is Ithaca, in whose ports some ship belonging to your navigation-famed Phaeacian state may haply at some time have found a refuge from tempests.

If ever you have experienced such kindness, requite it now by granting to me, who am the king of that land, a passport to that land.

Admiration seized all the court of Alcinous to behold in their presence one of the number of those heroes who fought at Troy, whose divine story had been made known to them by songs and poems, but of the truth they had little known, or rather they had hitherto accounted those heroic exploits as fictions and exaggerations of poets, but having seen and made proof of the real Ulysses, they began to take those supposed inventions to be real verities, and the tale of Troy to be as true as it was delightful.

Then King Alcinous made answer, Thrice fortunate ought we to esteem our lot, in having seen and conversed with a man of whom report hath spoken so loudly, but, as it seems, nothing beyond the truth.

It moves to prose and then back to broken verse.

And then with the Pyrrhus speech that we're going to hear shortly.

a certain kind of order and power is restored.

I've always thought that Hamlet's so moved by that speech, which, as you said, Annie, mustn't be bad acting.

If it lived in your memory, begin at this line.

Now, let me see, let me see.

The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast.

Ah, it is not so.

And he also abused her.

So Crobius goes after Ajax, but he's killed by Neoptolemus.

And then she was dragged away by Agamemnon as a concubine.

And so she has this whole history of just terrible abuse.

I'd also like to talk a little more about Priam, just really quick.

The symbolism of his death was very interesting.

Neoptolemus kills him.

He puts him up on an altar and uses a double-sided axe to chop...

What of Andromache? Wife of mine iron-hearted Hector, Where journeyeth she?

Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, hath taken her.

And I, whose slave am I? The shaken head, the arm that creepeth by, Starved crotchet, like to fall.

Odysseus, Ithaca's king, hath thee for thrall.

Unhappy wives of Troy, behold, they bear the dead Astyanax, our prince, whom bitter Greeks this hour have hurled to death from Ilion's tower.

One gallery, Hecuba, there lingereth yet, lapping the wave to gather the last freight.

Of Pyrrhus' spoils, for Thessaly, the chief himself, long since hath parted much in grief.

for peleus sake his grandsire whom men say acustus peleus son in war array hath driven to exile loth enough before was he to linger and now goes the more in haste bearing andromache his prize tis she hath charm'd these tears into mine eyes weeping her fatherland as o'er the way she gazed and speaking words to hector's grave howbeit she prayed us that due rites be done for burial of this babe thine hector's son that now from ilion's tower is fallen and dead and lo this great bronze fronted shield the dread of many a greek that hector held in fray o never in god's name so did she pray be this borne forth to hang in peleus hall or that dark bridal chamber that the wall may hurt her eyes but here in troeo a throne Instead of cedar wood and bolted stone, Be this her child's last house, and in thine hands She bade me lay him to be swathed in bands Of death and garments such as rest to thee, In these thy fallen fortunes, seeing that she Hath gone her ways, and for her master's haste May no more follow the babe than to his rest.

and there they wintered and neas fixed on the doors of the temple of apollo a shield of bronze which he had won in battle from the valiant abbas writing thereon these words neas dedicates these arms won from the victorious greeks But when the spring was come, they set sail, and, leaving behind them the land of Phaeacia, came to Buthrotum, that is, in Epirus.

There indeed they heard a marvellous thing, even that Helenus, the son of Priam, was king in these parts, in the room of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, having also two wife, Andromache, who was the widow of Hector.

and when neas wishing to know whether these things were so journeyed towards the city lo in a grove hard by by a river which also was called simois there stood this same andromache and made offerings to the spirit of hector not without many tears and at the first when she saw neas and that he wore such arms as the men of troy were used to wear she swooned with fear but after a while spake thus is this indeed a real thing that i see art thou alive or if thou art dead tell me where is my hector so she cried and wept aloud and neas answered her yes lady this is flesh and blood and not a spirit that thou seest but as for thee what fortune has befallen thee art thou still wedded to pyrrhus and she casting down her eyes made answer o daughter of priam happy beyond thy sisters in that thou wast slain at the tomb of achilles nor wast taken to a prey of the conqueror but as for me i was born across the sea to be a slave of the haughty son of achilles and when he took to wife hermione who was the daughter of helen he gave me to helenus as a slave is given to a slave but pyrrhus after a while orestes slew taking him unawares even by the altar of his father and when he was dead part of his kingdom came to helenus who hath called the land chaonia after chaon of troy and hath also builded a citadel a new pergamma upon the hills but tell me was it some storm that drave thee hither or chance or lastly some sending of the gods and is ascanius yet alive the boy whom i remember does he yet think of his mother that is dead and is he stout and of good courage as befits the son of neas and sister's son to hector And while she spake, there came Helenus from the city with a great company, and bade welcome to his friends with much joy.

And Aeneas saw how that all things were ordered and named even as they had been at Troy, only the things at Troy had been great, and these were very small.

Do thou depart, and magnify our country of Troy even to the heaven.

And when the seer had ended these sayings, he commanded his people that they should carry to the ships gifts, gold, and carvings of ivory, and much silver, and cauldrons that had been wrought at Dodana.

Also a coat of chain-mail, and a helmet with a fair plume, which Pyrrhus had worn.

Also he gave gifts to the old man Anchises.

And at the end you will follow twelve small sails, turning west into the evening.

Chapter 1 The Song This fire will not steal.

Begin with a thing the old singer will not do, and the reason he will not do it, for the reason is the key to the whole night.

There is a song of this war, the greatest of all the songs, most singers say, and this singer does not argue.

It is the song of an anger, the anger of the brightest of the heroes, and of what that anger cost everyone who stood near it, and it burns through a handful of weeks in the tenth year of the war, the way a fire goes through a summer hillside, and men have wept at it for three thousand years.

and they are right too but that song belongs to another singer it was his work and his glory and this fire honors it the way one craftsman honors another's masterpiece by keeping his hands off it The fire will not steal so much as a line of it tonight.

The wrath and the quarrels of the great and the duels before the wall, all of it stays in that other song, where it lives and where you may visit it on some braver afternoon of your own choosing.

Tonight is not that song.