And Pluto, God of under-grounds. The world indiff’rently Dispos’d betwixt us; ev’ry one his kingdom; I the seas, Pluto the black lot, Jupiter the principalities Of broad heav’n, all the sky and clouds, was sorted out. The earth And high Olympus common are, and due to either’s birth. Why then should I be aw’d by him? Content he his great heart With his third portion, and not think, to amplify his part, With terrors of his stronger hands, on me, as if I were The most ignoble of us all. Let him contain in fear His daughters and his sons, begot by his own person, This Holds more convenience. They must hear these violent threats of his.” “Shall I,” said Iris, “bear from thee, an answer so austere? Or wilt thou change it? Changing minds, all noble natures bear. And well thou know’st, these greatest born, the Furies follow still.” He answer’d: “Iris, thy reply keeps time, and shows thy skill. O ’tis a most praiseworthy thing, when messengers can tell, Besides their messages, such things, as fit th’ occasion well. But this much grieves my heart and soul, that being in pow’r and state All-ways his equal, and so fix’d by one decree in fate, He should to me, as under him, ill language give, and chide. Yet now, though still incens’d, I yield, affirming this beside, And I enforce it with a threat: That if without consent Of me, Minerva, Mercury, the Queen of regiment, And Vulcan, he will either spare high Ilion, or not race Her turrets to the lowest stone, and, with both these, not grace The Greeks as victors absolute, inform him this from me— His pride and my contempt shall live at endless enmity.” This said, he left the Greeks, and rush’d into his wat’ry throne, Much miss’d of all th’ heroic host. When Jove discern’d him gone, Apollo’s service he employ’d, and said: “Lov’d Phœbus, go To Hector; now th’ earth-shaking God hath taken sea, and so Shrunk from the horrors I denounc’d; which standing, he, and all The under-seated Deities, that circle Saturn’s fall, Had heard of me in such a fight as had gone hard for them. But both for them and me ’tis best, that thus they fly th’ extreme, That had not pass’d us without sweat. Now then, in thy hands take My adder-fring’d affrighting shield, which with such terror shake, That fear may shake the Greeks to flight. Besides this, add thy care, O Phœbus, far-off shooting God, that this so sickly fare Of famous Hector be recur’d, and quickly so excite His amplest pow’rs, that all the Greeks may grace him with their flight, Ev’n to their ships, and Hellespont; and then will I devise All words and facts again for Greece, that largely may suffice To breathe them from their instant toils.” Thus from th’ Idæan height, Like air’s swift pigeon-killer, stoop’d the far-shot God of light, And found great Hector sitting up, not stretch’d upon his bed, Not wheezing with a stopp’d-up spirit, not in cold sweats, but fed With fresh and comfortable veins, but his mind all his own,