To stay your hands, if ‘tis enough to hear That I am Greek, and in your hostile minds All Greeks are judged alike. Come, glut your hate Upon me. For Ulysses would rejoice To know that I am dead, and Atreus’ sons Would gladly purchase this with great reward. Here the stranger pauses in seeming despair and resignation to his fate. The Trojans urge him to go on with his story. He resumes (108-144): Full oft the Greeks, in utter weariness Of that long siege, desired to abandon Troy, And seek their homes again. Oh, that they had! But whensoe’er they addressed them to the sea, Rough wintry blasts and storms affrighted them. And when this horse, of wooden timbers framed, Completed stood, a votive offering, The winds from every quarter of the heavens Howled threateningly. To seek the will of Heaven, The anxious Greeks despatch Eurypylus To Phœbus’ oracle. He straight reports Apollo’s mandate grim and terrible: “Before, O Greeks, ye sailed to Troia’s shores, Ye first had need to appease the angry winds With bloody sacrifice—a maiden’s death E’en so, by blood must your return be sought; Again must Grecian life atonement make.” When this dire oracle among the crowd, From ear to ear, from lip to lip was spread, They stood with horror stunned, and chilling fear Their inmost hearts with dire forebodings filled. They trembling ask for whom the fates prepare, Whom does Apollo seek in punishment? Then comes the Ithacan with clamor loud, The prophet Calchas dragging in our midst, And bids with charge insistent that he tell The will of heaven. And now from many lips The grim forebodings of Ulysses’ guile Assail my ears, while all in silence wait To see the end. Ten days the seer was mute, Hid in his tent, refusing steadily By word of his to doom a man to death. At length, his feigned reluctance at an end, And goaded by Ulysses’ clamors loud, He spoke, and named me as the sacrifice. All gave assent; and while each feared a doom Which might befall himself, they calmly bore When on my wretched head they saw it light. And now the day of horror was at hand. All things were ready for the sacrifice; The salted meal was sprinkled on my head, And round my brows the fatal fillets twined. Then, I confess it, did I break my bonds. I fled from death and in the sedgy reeds Along the muddy margin of a lake All night I lay in hiding, hoping there To lurk until their homeward sails were spread. And now my country dear I ne’er shall see, My darling children and my aged sire Whose face I long to see. But they are doomed To pay the penalty which I escaped, And by their death repair this fault of mine. But by the gods above, divinities Who with impartial eyes behold the truth, If anywhere there still abides with men Unsullied faith, I beg you, pity me Who have endured so dire a weight of woe,