Page 175 - the-iliad

am not he that would bid you throw off your anger and help
the Achaeans, no matter how great their need; but he is giv-
ing much now, and more hereafter; he has sent his captains
to urge his suit, and has chosen those who of all the Ar-
gives are most acceptable to you; make not then their words
and their coming to be of none effect. Your anger has been
righteous so far. We have heard in song how heroes of old
time quarrelled when they were roused to fury, but still they
could be won by gifts, and fair words could soothe them.
‘I have an old story in my mind—a very old one—but
you are all friends and I will tell it. The Curetes and the
Aetolians were fighting and killing one another round Ca-
lydon—the Aetolians defending the city and the Curetes
trying to destroy it. For Diana of the golden throne was an-
gry and did them hurt because Oeneus had not offered her
his harvest first-fruits. The other gods had all been feast-
ed with hecatombs, but to the daughter of great Jove alone
he had made no sacrifice. He had forgotten her, or some-
how or other it had escaped him, and this was a grievous
sin. Thereon the archer goddess in her displeasure sent a
prodigious creature against him—a savage wild boar with
great white tusks that did much harm to his orchard lands,
uprooting apple-trees in full bloom and throwing them to
the ground. But Meleager son of Oeneus got huntsmen and
hounds from many cities and killed it—for it was so mon-
strous that not a few were needed, and many a man did it
stretch upon his funeral pyre. On this the goddess set the
Curetes and the Aetolians fighting furiously about the head
and skin of the boar.

1 The Iliad