Achilles (Mythological character) -- Juvenile literature; Epic poetry, Greek -- Adaptations; Readers; Trojan War -- Juvenile literature
So also the English poet, Milton, begins his great epic poem, "Paradise
Lost," which tells about the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden:
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
_Sing, heavenly Muse_, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos; or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God, _I thence_
_Invoke thy aid_ to my advent'rous song.
VI. THE DREAM OF AGAMEMNON.
Very soon great evils came upon the Greeks because of the strife between
the chiefs. When Chryseis was restored to her father, Apollo stopped the
plague; but the wrong done to Achilles provoked the anger of another
deity. This was Thetis, who, having much power with Jupiter, was able to
persuade him to take up the cause of her injured son.
For as soon as the heralds departed from his tent, leading away the
fair-cheeked Briseis, Achilles withdrew from his friends, retired to the
seashore, and sitting there alone he bitterly wept, and with
outstretched hands prayed to his mother, Thetis. The goddess heard his
voice, and ascending from the depths of the ocean, where she dwelt in
the palace of her aged father, Nereus, she sat down beside the hero, and
soothing him with her hand, she inquired the cause of his distress. "Why
do you weep, my son? What grief has come upon thy mind?"
Then Achilles related to his mother what Agamemnon had done, and he
begged her to go to Mount Olympus and entreat Jupiter to punish the
insult that had been offered to her son. He spoke of the service she had
done for Jupiter long before, when Juno, Neptune, and Minerva had made a
plot to bind him, and cast him from the throne of heaven. They might
have succeeded in doing this if Thetis had not called Briʹa-reus up from
Pluto's kingdom to help Jupiter. Briareus was a mighty giant who had a
hundred hands, and his appearance in Olympus so terrified the
conspirators that they did not attempt to carry out their wicked plot.
"Now," said Achilles to his mother, "remind Jupiter of this, and beg him
to aid the Trojans and give them victory in battle, so that Agamemnon
may feel the effects of his folly in dishonoring me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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