The city-razer Ithacus stood up to speak again, Holding his sceptre. Close to him gray-eyed Minerva stood, And, like a herald, silence caus’d, that all the Achive brood (From first to last) might hear and know the counsel; when, inclin’d To all their good, Ulysses said: “Atrides, now I find These men would render thee the shame of all men; nor would pay Their own vows to thee, when they took their free and honour’d way From Argos hither, that, till Troy were by their brave hands rac’d, They would not turn home. Yet, like babes, and widows, now they haste To that base refuge, ’Tis a spite to see men melted so In womanish changes; though ’tis true, that if a man do go Only a month to sea, and leave his wife far off, and he, Tortur’d with winter’s storms, and toss’d with a tumultuous sea, Grows heavy, and would home. Us then, to whom the thrice-three year Hath fill’d his revoluble orb since our arrival here, I blame not to wish home much more; yet all this time to stay, Out of our judgments, for our end; and now to take our way Without it, were absurd and vile. Sustain then, friends; abide The time set to our object; try if Calchas prophesied True of the time or not. We know, ye all can witness well, (Whom these late death-conferring fates have fail’d to send to hell) That when in Aulis, all our fleet, assembled with a freight Of ills to Ilion and her friends, beneath the fair grown height A platane bore, about a fount, whence crystal water flow’d, And near our holy altar, we upon the Gods bestow’d Accomplish’d hecatombs; and there appear’d a huge portent, A dragon with a bloody scale, horrid to sight, and sent To light by great Olympius; which, crawling from beneath The altar, to the platane climb’d, and ruthless crash’d to death A sparrow’s young, in number eight, that in a top-bough lay Hid under leaves; the dam the ninth, that hover’d every way, Mourning her lov’d birth, till at length, the serpent, watching her, Her wing caught, and devour’d her too. This dragon, Jupiter, That brought him forth, turn’d to a stone, and made a pow’rful mean To stir our zeals up, that admir’d, when of a fact so clean Of all ill as our sacrifice, so fearful an ostent Should be the issue. Calchas, then, thus prophesied th’ event ‘Why are ye dumb-strook, fair-hair’d Greeks? Wise Jove is he hath shown This strange ostent to us. ’Twas late, and passing lately done, But that grace it foregoes to us, for suff’ring all the state Of his appearance (being so slow) nor time shall end, nor fate. As these eight sparrows, and the dam (that made the ninth) were eat By this stern serpent; so nine years we are t’ endure the heat Of rav’nous war, and, in the tenth, take-in this broad-way’d town.’ Thus he interpreted this sign; and all things have their crown As he interpreted, till now. The rest, then, to succeed Believe as certain. Stay we all, till, that most glorious deed Of taking this rich town, our hands are honour’d with.” This said,