The Daily Odyssey: June 28
“‘O friends, a thousand ways frail mortals lead
To the cold tomb, and dreadful all to tread;
But dreadful most, when by a slow decay
Pale hunger wastes the manly strength away.
Why cease ye then to implore the powers above,
And offer hecatombs to thundering Jove?
Why seize ye not yon beeves, and fleecy prey?
Arise unanimous; arise and slay!
And if the gods ordain a safe return,
To Phœbus shrines shall rise, and altars burn.
But should the powers that o’er mankind preside
Decree to plunge us in the whelming tide,
Better to rush at once to shades below
Than linger life away, and nourish woe.’
“Thus he: the beeves around securely stray,
When swift to ruin they invade the prey;
They seize, they kill!—but for the rite divine.
The barley fail’d, and for libations wine.
Swift from the oak they strip the shady pride;
And verdant leaves the flowery cake supplied.
“With prayer they now address the ethereal train,
Slay the selected beeves, and flay the slain;
The thighs, with fat involved, divide with art,
Strew’d o’er with morsels cut from every part.
Water, instead of wine, is brought in urns,
And pour’d profanely as the victim burns.
The thighs thus offer’d, and the entrails dress’d,
They roast the fragments, and prepare the feast.
“‘Twas then soft slumber fled my troubled brain;
Back to the bark I speed along the main.
When lo! an odour from the feast exhales,
Spreads o’er the coast and scents the tainted gales;
A chilly fear congeal’d my vital blood,
And thus, obtesting Heaven, I mourn’d aloud;