Early Modern Mythological Texts: Troia Britanica XV (51-106)

Thomas Heywood. Troia Britanica (1609)

CANTO XV (51-106)

Stanzas 51-60 — 61-70 — 71-80 — 81-90 — 91-100 — 101-106 — Heywood’s endnotes to Canto XV

Ed. Patricia DORVAL

When mounting on a turret, he might spy

The city all on flame, and by the light

A thousand several conflicts. Sparkles fly

As far as to the sea, the waves shine bright,

And now at length he sees Sinon can lie,

His treasons manifest. Still this black night,

Clamours of men and trumpets, clangors grow,

Whilst with warm reeking blood the channels flow.

Aeneas arms in haste, grasps in his hand

A two-edged scimitar to guard his life,

Knows not to whom to run or where to stand.

In every street is danger, rage and strife,

Yet longs for skirmish and on some proud band

To prove his strength, now whilst the tumults rise,

For since th’Argive fires such splendour give,

To die in arms seems sweeter than to live.

Behold where from the foreign slaughter flying
Panthus Othryades, priest of the Sun,	Panthus Othryades
Scours through the streets. Aeneas, him espying,
Calls to him thus: “Whither doth Panthus run?
What mean these flames, these groans of people dying,
This frightful jar of battles new begun?”
When Panthus thus: “Aeneas, let’s away,
Of Troy and us this is the latest day.

Troy was, and Ilium was, but they are past.

Great Jove hath from th’earth’s bosom swept us all.

Th’insulting Greeks have conquered us at last,

And foreign steel now menaces our wall.

The brazen horse that ’midst our mure sticks fast

Hath poured an army forth; whole thousands fall

And drop down from his sides whilst Sinon stands,

Warming amidst the flames his treacherous hands.

The gates are seized, the broken walls made good

With bright death-pointed steel, irruption’s barred.

Behold, my passage was knee-deep in blood,

Crossing the street from great Atrides’ guard.

Such as escape this purple falling flood,

Fire or the sword consumes. Our choice is hard:

Ruin begirts us, and what most we fear

We cannot fly, death rageth everywhere.”

Now hurries strong Aeneas, madly faring

Through flames, through swords, whether Erinys calls,

Egged on by rage and fury, no man sparing.

On every side are fires, wounds, clamours, brawls;

To him armed Rhipheus joins, and wonders-daring

Iphitus, Hypanis, and Dymas falls

In the same rank. Youthful Coroebus tried

Doth likewise glister by Aeneas’ side,

Coroebus, who for fair Cassandra’s love

Came from Mygdonia to the Dardan broils.

These seeking flying death, all dangers prove,

And task their valours to all desperate toils.

To places of most slaughter they remove,

Even where the Greeks commit most horrid spoils,

Armed with this saw: This only captives cheers,

When safety flies, all-resting death appears.

Thus seek they certain death amidst the heart

Of flame-gilt Troy, whilst the black fatal night

Flies hood-winked ’twixt the poles, her iron cart

Rusty with darkness. O what mortal wight

Can half the terror of that hour impart,

Such howls, sighs, groans, wounds, slaughters and affright?

In every street live’s blood, death, murder, fear,

The reeking falchion and the fatal spear.

With armed Androgeos they encounter first,	Androgeos
Androgeos who mistakes them for his mates,
And cheers them thus: “We have already burst
And made irruption through the battered gates.
Now let your swords, that for their live bloods thirst,
Glut them with purple healths, behold their fates.”
But when from them he looks, some fire apply,
With armèd hands upon his trains they fly,

And put them all to massacre. The whiles

Coroebus says: “Some comforts in despair,

Fortune upon our first endeavours smiles.

The foes are vanquished and we victors are.

Then come, make use of their Pelasgian guiles;

Put on their arms and to their guards repair.

Their proper arms shall ’gainst themselves contend,

Where virtue fails, use fraud, to god and friend.”

With that he dons Androgeos’ shining cask,

Which like a bearded comet glisters far;

The rest in foreign helms their faces mask,

And mingled with the Greeks, began new war.

Still Fortune smiles on their nocturnal task,

Where Greeks with Greekish arms confounded are,

And ’mongst their frighted guards great uproar grows,

Since from their friends they cannot ken their foes.

A thousand fall to hell, a thousand fly,

Some to the navy, others to the shore,

And many pale-faced Greeks afraid to die

Run to the horse where they were lodged before,

And in his dark conceited entrails lie.

See fair Cassandra, from the temple door

Dragged by black Myrmidons; her soon espies

Frightful Coroebus and that way he flies,

They after him. A dismal conflict now

Grows in the entrance of the temple, when

Their friends, mistaking their disguisèd brow,

Rout from the battle, meets by strength of men

Huge stones and webs of lead, ’stounding below

Their Greece-armed friends, whose craft’s deceived again.

By ignorance they call their friends on high,

And by their tongues the Grecians them descry.

For now rough Ajax revels in the place,
The two Atrides with their armèd bands,
And sly Ulysses too. Yet in the face
Of all their guards the bold Coroebus stands
Till number o’ersways might. Mygdonia’s race	The death of Coroebus
Is now extinct by force of thousand hands.
Then Rhipheus falls, then is bold Dymas’ breast
Through-pierced, so one by one decline the rest.

Alone ’scapes bold Aeneas by a cry

Raised at King Priam’s palace, whither hying

More mutiny and broils he may espy,

More tragic sight of wretched Trojans dying.

The massacre seems dreadful in his eye:

Before the assaulted gates are thousands lying,

The havoc did so violent appear

As had there been no place of death but there.

The untam’d Mars upon his altars groans,

High-crowned in blood. Some Greeks the palace scale;

The ladders cleave unto the jettying stones,

Whose marble columns bend and seem to fail

Beneath the weight of fire and steel at once;

And still the barricadoed gates the’assail,

Where able-armèd Pyrrhus stands before

Th’inflamèd porch, his armour slacked in gore.

The enclosed princes broil, doubly penned in

With flames and steel, enclosed on every side

With eminent death, yet no irruption win

Though they devolve. The high roof beautified

With gold and figures, which to touch were sin,

The geometric ridge of silver tried

Fires o’er their heads and drills down by the walls,

Which scalds the princes as it melting falls.

Stern Pyrrhus sweats and with Automedon,

His father’s charioteer, assaults the place,

Scarce able to endure the arms they have on,

So overheat with flames, in whose bright face

They stand with naked swords to gaze upon

Those shrinking monuments the fires embrace.

At length with beams shocking by strength of hand,

They shake the walls, unable to withstand,

Which tumbling in like a bay window shows,

Whose gaping mouth seems vast. O now appears

The gorgeous courts, whose floor each lady strows

With her torn garments, hair and pearly tears.

Still, still their shrieks and feminine clangour grows;

As the breach waxeth, so increase their fears.

Their cries pierce heaven, slake fire and soften stones,

Yet move not Pyrrhus and his Myrmidons,

For neither Priam’s guard, the door of brass,

Nor trusty marble can withstand the foe.

But through them all, by force of arms, they pass.

The heavy gates, they from the hinges throw,

Shivering their plated leaves like panes of glass,

Which with the fury of their burnings glow,

And breaking in, the spacious courts they fill

With bloody soldiers who on all sides kill.

King Priam, when he saw his town invaded,

His Troy sitting in fire, not to be freed,

And all those gods that long had Ilium aided

Shrunk from his help and in his fall agreed,

That his far-shining beams at last were faded,

And the universal heart of Troy must bleed,

Th’alarum bells of death on all sides ringing,

His shrieking wife and daughter ‘bout him clinging,

Expecting help from him in whom remained

No help at all, he first dissolves in tears.

But casting up his eye to have complained

His grief to heaven, his sword and helm appears,

Hung by the walls with rust and canker stained,

Now burdens to his arm, in former years

Easy as silks. His grief converts to rage;

He dons those arms, forgetful of his age,

To whom the sad queen with wet eyes thus says:

“What means my woeful lord in his weak hand

To toss this burdenous steel? There is no praise

For men to fight when the high gods withstand.

Lived puissant Hector in these fatal days,

Yet could not his strong limbs protect thy land,

Much less these sapless branches, poor and bare;

Then let the reverent Priam keep his chair.

Here at these holy altars let us cling;

The gods, if they be pleased, our lives may guard;

If not, we all will perish with the king,

And die at once; there shall not one be spared.”

Behold where broken through th’all-slaughtering ring

Of Pyrrhus’ Myrmidons, slaves rough and hard,

The young Polites well nigh breathless runs,

Polites, one of Priam’s best-loved sons.

Through many an entry and blind-turning path,

The burning Pyrrhus hath the lad pursued,

Longing upon the youth to vent his wrath.

Now both at once before the king intrude,

The slaughter-thoughted Greek, all bale and scathe,

In the child’s blood his fatal blade imbrued,

Which plucking from his wounds, in the same place

Sparkled the son’s blood in the father’s face,

To whom the armed king thus: “You gods above,
Whose divine eyes all deeds of horror see,
As you are just and acts of pity love,
Behold how this rude man hath dealt by me.
What god worthy heaven’s palace can approve
So black a deed as this that’s done by thee,
Before the father’s eye the child to kill,	The death of Polites
And in his face his innocent blood to spill?

Thou art a bastard, not Achilles’ son,

Of some she-wolf or Hyrcan tigress bred,

Not to be shrined in heaven. Would he have done

So horrible a deed, so full of dread?

The shame and scandal thou this night hast won,

More than Achilles’ honours, shall be spread.

Thy father, honoured, lived and died in fame,

Dishonoured thou shalt perish in thy shame.”

With that the javelin in his hand he threw.

Th’unprofitable strength of his weak arm,

Though it had art to guide the weapon true,

It wanted power to do black Pyrrhus harm.

Against the long skirt of his targe it flew,

But the round boss, as if composed by charm,

Shook off the idle steel, which on the bar

That took the blow scarce left the smallest scar.

Inflamèd Pyrrhus thus to him replies:

“Priam, thy soul shall straight descend to hell,

Even to the place where great Achilles lies,

And my sad deeds unto my father tell.”

With that, all wrath, in Priam’s face he flies;

The prostrate king at Jove’s high altar fell.

With such hot rage he did the king pursue

That though he missed, the whisk him overthrew.

When being grovelled in Polites’ gore,
Grim Pyrrhus with his left hand takes the king
By his white locks, never profaned before,
His reverent head against the ground to ding.
His proud right hand a smoking curtlax wore,
Which to perpetual rest must Priam bring,	The death of Priam
With which against the good old king he tilts
Till his heart blood flowed much above the hilts.

This was old Priam’s fate, his fatal end

And ending glory. He that Asia swayed,

Whose spreading fame did through the earth extend,

Lived till he saw both him and his betrayed,

Even till he had no subject, son or friend,

And saw Troy’s spires even with the groundsels laid,

Who now before Jove’s golden face lies dead,

A nameless corse, a trunk without a head.

All this, when good Aeneas saw from far

The ends of Troy and Priam, burnt, and slain,

And no abatement yet of heat or war,

To his own palace he returns again,

Where gathered on a heap together are

His wife Creusa showering tears amain,

His servants, old Anchises and his son

Ascanius. These about Aeneas run.

After some short discourse of their affairs,

Aeneas on his back Anchises takes,

For young Ascanius he his left hand spares;

In his right hand his guardant sword he shakes.

Creusa follows close with tears and prayers.

So through the fire and foe Aeneas makes;

He with his son and sire the right way choose,

But in the darkness they Creusa lose,

Whom missing, they Creusa call aloud,
Creusa for whose safety they’ll return.
But some black Fate doth her in darkness shroud.
Either Troy’s funeral fires the lady burn,	Creusa’s death
Else is she stifled in the hostile crowd.
For her, the father, son, and husband mourn,
And seeking her amidst the wrathful flames,
They encounter Helenus, who thus exclaims:	Helenus

“Keep on, Aeneas, to the Scaean shore.

The heavens on Troy and us have vengeance poured;

Only thy ruined fortunes they restore.

They smile on thee that have on Priam loured.

The fair Creusa thou shalt see no more;

Her the none-sparing slaughter hath devoured.

But in her stead, the gods to thee shall give

A wife, in whom deceasèd Troy shall live.

Follow yon star, whither his bearded beams

Directs thy navigation. On the sand,

Thousands attend thy conduct through the streams,

Whom ruin spares, for thee and thy command.

Observe yon blazing meteor, whose bright gleams

Points thee unto a rich and fertile land,

Where after many strange adventures past,

Storm-driven Aeneas shall arrive at last.

They to a spacious climate thee restore,	Italy
A province which the gods and Fates hold best.
The Mediterr’an Sea beats on the shore,
With the Sicilian waters south and east;
The Adriatic billows northward roar,
With the high Alps encompassed on the west.
These countries it contains: Latium, Liguria,
The climates of Campania and Etruria,

With fertile Istria and Calabria,

Full-peopled Carnia and Apentium,

Aemilia, else called Romandiola,

With Gallia Cisalpina and Picenum,

Iapygia, Umbria and Venetia,

Flaminia, Apulia, Samnium.

All these are Italy, with great Lucania,

Which shall in times to come be called Romania.

Farewell and thrive but leave us to our fates.”

This said, the divine Helenus retires,

And shuts himself within those fatal gates,

Where none commands but foes and raging fires.

Aeneas hastes to meet his promised mates,

And on the coast their fellowship desires,

Who through the street hews out a bloody track

With old Anchises hanging at his back.

Still Ilium burns, nor are the ruthless flames

Yet quenched; Jove’s sparpled altars lick the blood

Of slaughtered Priam. The bright vestal dames

Are pulled from Pallas’ statue where they stood;

About their golden locks, with loud exclaims,

Rough soldiers wind their arms, and through a flood

Of gore and tears, in which the pavement flows,

Drag them along, that faint beneath their blows.

The young Astyanax from that high tower,
On which his father’s valour oft he saw,
Is tumbled headlong on the rough-paved floor.	The death of Astyanax
His all too bruisèd limbs lie broke and raw.
To woeful Hecuba in thrust a power
Of blood-stained Greeks, without regard or awe,
And from her agèd arms, snatched by rude force
Polyxena, whose beauty begs remorse.

She’s hurried to Achilles’ tomb, where stands
Stern Neoptolemus, from top to toe
Satued in blood and slaughter, in both hands
Waving a keen glaive crimsoned in the foe.
To bind with cords her soft arms he commands,
That more red lives may on his falchion flow.
There the bright maid that bands did ill become,
He piecemeal hews upon Achilles’ tomb.	The death of Polyxena

Thus is King Priam and Queen Hecub’s race
Extinct in dust. Young Polydore alone,
The youngest lad, is with the king of Thrace
Left in great charge, with gold and many a stone
Beyond all rate. But Polymnestor base,	Polymnestor, king of Thrace
Hearing the pride of Troy was spent and gone,
False to the world, and to his friend untrue,
To gain that wealth the lovely infant slew,	The death of Polydore

Whose death, when Hecuba revengèd had
By tearing out the perjured tyrant’s eyes,
First she records the beauty of the lad,
Then all the glories she beneath the skies
Possessed before, which makes her frantic mad.
On her slain husband, daughters, sons, she cries.
Troy she bewailed and fatal Greece she cursed,
Till her great heart, with grief surchargèd, burst.	The death of Hecuba

Ten years, ten months, twelve days this siege endured,
In which of Greece before the town were slain
Four-score hundred and six thousand, all inured	The number of Greeks
To steely war; of Trojans that maintain	and Trojans slain at the siege
The honour of their city well assured,
Besides the number that were prisoners tane,
Six hundred fifty and six thousand tried,
Omitting those that in the last night died.

Chivalrous Hector, void of fraud or slight,

Eighteen great kings slew by his proper hands;

No advantageous odds he used in fight,

Therefore his fame spreads far through foreign lands.

Three kings, to do the amorous Paris right,

Fell by his bow; next-ranked Achilles stands,

Who, besides Troilus and great Hector, slew

Seven puissant kings at Troy, if Fame speak true.

Four kings, beside the Sagittary, fell
By Diomede, two by Aeneas lost
Their precious lives; though many more fought well,
Their warlike deeds are not so far engrossed.
Black Pyrrhus’ acts above the rest excel,
Who thinking ‘mongst them to be praisèd most,
Three royal lives his tragic wrath obeyed,	Ironia
An agèd king, a woman and a maid.

Not how two worthy Greeks in words contended
Who should the rich Vulcanian armour have,	Ovid, Metamorphoses
Now how from Ajax, who had Greece defended,
Th’impartial judges to Ulysses gave,
To prove that counsel above strength extended,
And had more power the Argive camp to save,
In grief of which great loss, Ajax grew mad,
Slain by the sword that he from Hector had.	The death of Ajax

Nor of Ulysses’ travels twice ten years,

Nor of his love with Circe, the fair queen,

Who by her spells transformed him and his peers,

And kept him thence where he desired t’have been

With fair Penelope, famed ’mongst the spheres

In living chaste, though princes full of spleen

Possessed her kingdom and her palace seized,

Whom, wanting power, she by delays appeased.

100

Nor how he after twenty winters came,
And in disguise his constant lady proved.
How he by arms released the beauteous dame,
And all her suitors from his land removed.	Telegonus, son to Ulysses and
Nor how Telegonus, won with the fame	Circe,
Of him whom most the witch Calypso loved,	otherwise called Calypso
From his fair mother Circe himself withdrew,	Ulysses slain by his bastard son
And unawares his royal father slew.	Telegonus

101

Nor how King Naulus laid trains on the seas

To avenge him on the Grecians for his son

Palamedes, whose death did much displease

The agèd prince since ‘twas by treason done.

Nor how such wandering Greeks as he could seize,

Who on his shores their shipwrecked vessels ran,

Naulus destroyed and unto ruin brought

Since they his son’s dear life esteemèd nought.

102

Nor how King Agamemnon home returning
Was by his fair wife Clytemnestra slain.	The death of Agamemnon
How false Aegisthus, in the Queen’s love burning,
Plotted with her to shorten the king’s reign.
Nor how Orestes, for his father mourning,
Grew mad, and slew Aegisthus that had lain
With his fair mother, whom when he had caught her,
Unchild-like he did with his own hands slaughter.	The death of Clytemnestra

103

Nor how black Pyrrhus Helen’s daughter stale,
The fair Hermione, she that before
Was to Orestes trothed and should sans fail
Have been espoused to him, who at the door
Of Delphos’ temple slew him without bale,	The death of Pyrrhus
Staining Apollo’s shrine with Pyrrhus’ gore.
Nor how that face for which the whole world wrangled,
To see it changed with age, herself she strangled.	The death of Helen

104

Nor how the Greeks, after their bloody toils,

Antenor left to inhabit razèd Troy,

And after th’end of their sad tragic broils,

All Asia’s wealth within their fleet enjoy,

Robbing the town of all her richest spoils,

Whose high cloud-piercing towers the flames destroy.

Nor how Aeneas doth his forces gather

And ships with his young son and agèd father,

105

Rigging to sea these two and twenty sail

That fetched the fire-brand that all Troy inflamed,

The selfsame ships in which the Trojan stale

The Spartan queen, ’gainst whom all Greece exclaimed.

Nor of Queen Dido’s love and tragic bate.

Nor of Aeneas’ travels nobly famed.

Nor how Andromache was captain-led,

Left to the hot lust of the conqueror’s bed,

106

With whom Cassandra was enforced to go,

With Helenus that kenned divinest things,

And all these sad proceedings did foreshow

And prophesied to Troy’s confedered kings,

Nor of King Diomede’s sad overthrow.

Of Albion’s isle first known my Muse next sings,

Her chariot now I can no further drive.

Britain from conquered Troy we next derive.

[Heywood’s endnotes to canto XV]

Dolopes are a people of Thessaly in the borders of Phthiotis, out of which province

Ulysses made choice of his guard.

Pallas, whose name we have often used, some take to be the daughter of Neptune and Tritonis, and lived in the time of Gyges. Others hold her to be sprung of Jove’s brain, as we have before remembered:

Pallada quondam

Cum patris è capite exiliit clarissima parvam

Laverunt Tritonis aqua.

Pausanias in “Attica”; Herodotus in “Melpomene”

Apollonius, liber 4, Argonautica

The like many others affirm as also that when she leapt out of Jove’s brain, at the said time it rained a shower of gold on the earth. Of her birth, many writers differ: some affirm her to be the daughter of Triton, others to be rather the daughter of Jupiter and Thetis, others of Cranaus, differing from their opinions. Therefore I hold with Cicero, who avers that there were more of the names. One of the mother of Apollo, a second born by Nile and adored of the Egyptians, a third of the brain of Jupiter, a fourth of Jupiter and Coryphe, the daughter of Oceanus, whom the Arcadians call Coria, and the inventor of the chariot; a fifth that was supposed to kill her father to preserve her virginity.

Stesichorus, Lucianus

Strabo, liber 14,

Apollodorus

Athenodorus Byzantius

Tzetzes

Cicero, De natura deorum

Pallas and Minerva were one. She was also by some called Tritonia:

Iovis filia gloriosa Tritonia.

Callimachus in Hymn

Homer

Both Greece and Troy highly honoured her. She is said to invent arms and to have aided her father Jupiter in the destruction of the Tytanoyes, which the poets call Gigantomachia, of whom it is thus remembered:

Simonides Coeus, Genealogies, II

Isaacius

Horatius, Carminum, I

Pallada bellorum studiis cantamus amicam.
è Iove progenitam magno, quae destruit vrbes.	Stesichorus

And of another thus:

Sed prius illa fugis fumantia solvit equorum	Callimachus
Colla lavans alti fluctibus Oceani

And so much of Pallas or Minerva, to whom the Trojans dedicated their chief temple.

Mygdonia is a part of Phrygia next Troas by the river Rhyndacus; of this country Prince Coroebus that loved Cassandra was called Mygdonides.

The Scaean shore: Scaea is a gate of Troy opening to the west, where Laomedon was buried; of that gate the sea and shore adjacent bear the name of Scaea.

The names of the eighteen kings slain by Hector are thus, though somewhat corruptly by ancient writers remembered: King Archilochus, King Protesilaus, King Patroclus,
King Menon, King Prothoenor, King Orchomenus, King Polemon, King Epistrophus, King Schedius,
King Diores, King Polyxenus, King Phibus, King Antiphus, King Leonteus, King Polypoetes, King Humerus, King Fumus, King Exampitus. Achilles slew seven kings: King Cupemus, King Yponeus, King Plebeus, King Austerus,
King Lymonius, King Memnon, King Neoptolemus besides Hector, Troilus and Margareton, with other of Priam’s bastard sons.

Dares and Dictys

Some likewise, contrary to the assertion of Ovid and others, affirm that Paris slew the Emperor Palamedes, Ajax and Achilles. Aeneas slew King Amphimachus and King Nireus, the fair Greek whom Homer so much loved. Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, slew King Priam, an aged man, Queen Penthesileia, a warlike woman, Polites, a young lad, and Polyxena, a beauteous maid. King Diomede slew the Sagittary, King Antiphus, King Escorius, King Obstineus and King Prothoenor. Many others were slain in the disordered battles but how or by whom it is not particularly registered.

Of Ulysses’ love to Circe, Ovid in diverse places toucheth it, part whereof I have thus Englished:

Calypso, as they on the sea bank stood,
Casting her eyes upon the neighbour flood,	De arte amandi, II
Desires the acts and bloody deeds to hear,
Done by th’Odrysian captain’s sword and spear.
When holding ’twixt his fingers a white wand,	Ulysses et Circe
What she requests he draws upon the sand:
“Here’s Troy,” quoth he, for here the town is meant.
“Think Simois that, imagine this my tent;
Here Scythian Rhesus’ tents are pitchèd high.
This way, his horsemen slain, returned I.
Here Dolon died ―” when on the sudden, lo,
A climbing wave the shores doth overflow.
And as the drops upon his work doth fall,
It washed away his tents, his Troy and all,
To whom the goddess: “Dares Ulysses trust
These senseless violent waves that are so cursed
And darest thou with these waters be annoyed,
By whom such great names are so soon destroyed?”

How could her magic potions Circe please,

De remedio amoris, liber I

When wise Ulysses’ ships float on the seas?

All exorcisms the loving witch doth try

To stay the Greek, whilst he away doth fly.

All spells and charms the loving witch assayed,

That such hot flames might not her thoughts invade.

But ’spite the cunning hag and charm her best,

Ulysses flies; love scorns to be suppressed.

She that men’s shapes could from themselves estrange,

Had not the power her own desires to change.

’Tis said that, when Ulysses would away,

With such like words she did entreat his stay:

“What I hoped erst, I do not now entreat,

That you with me would make a lasting seat

And be my husband. Yet if I my race

Call but to mind, I might deserve that place.

Despising me, a worthy wife you shun,

A goddess and the daughter of the Sun.

All that I beg, my humorous love to feed,

Is only this: you would not make such speed.

Stay but a while; it is an easy task.

What less thing can you grant? What less I ask?

Behold, the deep sea rageth: Neptune fear,

Stay till a calm and then begin to steer.

Why shouldst thou fly? Thy fore-sheet and thy mizzen,

Why swell they with the wind? No Troy is risen

For thee again to sack, here are no brawls;

No man thy mates and thee to battle calls.

Here true love reigns, here peace is firmly grounded,

In which myself and only I am wounded.

My heart is thine and shall be thine for aye,

And all my land is in thy kingly sway.”

She speaks, he launcheth, and the selfsame wind

That fills his sails blows thence the words and mind.

Of Circe, otherwise called Calypso, he begot Telegonus, who afterward unawares slew his father Ulysses. She was the daughter of the Sun and Perses. Others have imagined her the daughter of Hecate or of Aeata, others to be the daughter of Asterope and Hyperion, as Orpheus in Argonautica:

Tzetzes, History 16, Chil., 5

Hesiodus in Theog.; Homerus,

liber Odyss.

Dionysius Miletus

Aeetae affinis, coniunctaque sanguine, solis

Filia, quam proprio dixerunt nomine Circen.

Asteropeque parens, Hyperionque est auus, illa, etc.

She had by Ulysses these sons: Agrius and Latinus, Telegonus and Auson, of whom Ausonia (alias Italia) bears the name, with Casiphon, with Marsus, of whom the Marsians took name, and Romanus. Her tomb was in one of the Pharmacusan Islands not far from Salamine.

Hesiodus in Theogonia;

Lycophron

Strabo, lib. 9

Diomedes, the manner of whose death we have not touched in our history, was killed by Daunus, whose country he had before freed and in the same slain a huge dragon, who threw his body with all the statues that were reared to his honour, ungratefully, into the sea where they perished.

Timaeus Siculus

Of Clytemnestra’s adultery, Ovid saith:

Whilst Agamemnon lived with one contented,	De arte amandi, II
His wife lived chaste and neither it repented.
His secret blows her heart did so provoke,
Wanting the sword, she with the scabbard stroke.
She hears of Chryseis and the many jars
About Lyrnessus to increase the wars,
And therefore mere revenge the lady charms
To take Thyestes in her amorous arms.

And in another place:

Why could not his blind lusts Aegisthus bridle?
Will you needs know th’adulterer was still idle,	De remedio amoris, I
When others laboured Ilium to annoy,
And lay strong siege about the walls of Troy?
Abroad he warred not, nor at home he lawed.
His thoughts no naval office could applaud.
What he could do he did, for so it proved;
Least he should nothing do, he therefore loved,
So is this love begot, so is he bred,
So cherished, so at length he gathers head.

The end of the fifteenth Canto

Back to Canto XV (1-50)

Notes to Canto XV

On to Canto XVI

How to cite

Patricia Dorval, ed., 2018. Troia Britanica Canto XIV (1609). In A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Classical Mythology: A Textual Companion, ed. Yves Peyré (2009-).

http://www.shakmyth.org/page/Early+Modern+Mythological+Texts%3A+Troia+Britanica+XV+%2851-106%29

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Early Modern Mythological Texts: Troia Britanica XV (51-106)

Thomas Heywood. Troia Britanica (1609)

How to cite