to my soul to say. You have come, O son of the river god, you have come, welcome in your advent, to the halls of Friendship, since late in time your Pierian mother and Strymon, river with fair bridges, are sending you to us.

ChorusStrymon, who begot you, his strong young son, that day his swirling waters found a refuge in the tuneful Muse’s virgin bosom. You are my Zeus, my god of light, as you come driving your dappled horses. Now, O Phrygia, O my country, now may you by God’s grace address Zeus the Deliverer!

ChorusShall old Troy once more at last spend the whole day in drinking toasts and singing love’s praise, while the bewildering wine-cup sends a capacious challenge round, as over the sea for Sparta the sons of Atreus quit the Ilian strand? O friend, with your arm and spear may you do me this service, then safe return.

ChorusCome, appear, brandish that shield of gold full in Achilles’ face; raise it aslant along the chariot’s branching rail, urging on your horses, and shaking your lance with double point. For none after facing you will ever join the dance on the plains of Argive Hera; no, but he shall die, slain by Thracians, and this land shall bear the burden of his corpse and be glad.

ChorusHail, all hail! O mighty prince! fair the cub you have bred, 0 Thrace, a ruler in his every look. See his stalwart frame in golden corslet! Hark to the ringing bells that peal so proudly from his shield-handle. A god, O Troy, a god, a very Ares, Strymon’s colt and the tuneful Muse’s, has come to breathe courage into you.RhesusBrave son of father as brave, Hector, prince of this land, hail! After many a long day I greet you. I rejoice at your success, to see you camped hard on the enemy towers; I am here to help you raze their walls and fire their fleet of ships.HectorSon of that tuneful mother, one of the Muses, and of Thracian Strymon’s river, I love to speak plain truth always; nature did not give me a double tongue. Long, long ago should you have come and shared the labors of this land, and not allowed Troy for any help of yours to fall overthrown by hostile Argive spears. You can not say it was any want of invitation that kept you from coming with your help to visit us. What herald or embassy from Phrygia did not come to you, urgently requiring your aid for our city? What sumptuous presents did we not send to you? But you, brother barbarian though you were, pledged away to Hellenes us your barbarian brothers, for all the help you gave. Yet it was I with this arm that raised you from your paltry princedom to high lordship over Thrace, when I fell upon the Thracian chieftains face to face around Pangaeum in Paeonia’s land and broke their serried ranks, and gave their people up to you enslaved; but you have trampled on this great favor done you, and come with laggard step to give your aid when friends are in distress. While they, whom no natural tie of kin constrains, have long been here, and some are dead and in their graves beneath the heaped-up cairn, no mean proof of loyalty to the city; and others in arms and mounted on their chariots, with steadfast soul endure the icy blast and parching heat of the sun, not pledging one another on couches, as you do, in long deep draughts. This is the charge I bring against you and utter to your face, that you may know how frank is Hector’s tongue.RhesusI too am just the same; straight to the point I cut my way; no shuffling nature is mine. My heart was wrung with sorer anguish than yours at my absence from this land; I fumed and chafed, but Scythian people, whose borders march with mine, made war on me on the very eve of my departure for Ilium; I had reached the strand of the Euxine sea, there to transport my Thracian army. Then my spear poured out over Scythia’s land great drops of bloody rain, and Thrace too shared in the mingled slaughter. This then was what chanced to keep me from coming to the land of Troy and joining your standard. But as soon as I had conquered these and taken their children as hostages and appointed the yearly tribute they should pay my house, I have come, sailing across the sea’s mouth, and on foot traversing the other borders of your land—not as you in your jeers at those carousals of my countrymen hint, nor sleeping soft in gilded palaces, but amid the frozen hurricanes that vex the Thracian sea and the Paeonian shores, learning as I lay awake what suffering is, this soldier’s cloak my only wrap. True my coming has tarried, but yet I am in time; ten years already have you been at the fray, and accomplished nothing yet; day in, day out, you fall, throwing the dice of war with Argives. But the light of one day will be enough for me to sack those towers and fall upon their anchored fleet and slay the Achaeans; and on the next day I will go home from Ilium , at one stroke ending all your toil. Let none of you lay hand to spear to lift it, for I, for all my late arrival, will with my lance make utter havoc of those vaunting Achaeans.

ChorusJoy, joy! sweet champion sent by Zeus! Only may Zeus, throned on high, keep jealousy, resistless foe, from you for your words! That fleet of ships from Argos never brought, neither formerly nor now, among all its warriors a braver than you. How I wonder will Achilles, how will Aias stand the onset of your spear? Oh! that I might see that day, my prince,