although Olympian Jove has not immediately brought
them to pass, he will however bring them to pass at last; and at a great
price have they paid the penalty,[178] to wit, with their own heads, and
their wives and children. For this I know well in mind and soul. A day
will be, when sacred Ilium shall perish, and Priam, and the people of
ashen-speared Priam; and when Saturnian Jove, lofty-throned, dwelling in
the aether, will himself shake his gloomy aegis over all, wrathful on
account of this treachery. These things, indeed, shall not be
unaccomplished; but to me there will be grief on thy account, O
Menelaus, if thou shalt die and fulfil the fate of life; then, indeed,
branded with shame, shall I return to much longed-for Argos. For quickly
the Greeks will bethink themselves of their fatherland, and we shall
leave Argive Helen a boast to Priam and to the Trojans, and the earth
will rot thy bones lying in Troy, near to an unfinished work. And thus
will some one of the haughty Trojans exclaim, leaping upon the tomb of
glorious Menelaus: 'Would that Agamemnon thus wreaked his vengeance
against all, as even now he has led hither an army of the Greeks in
vain, and has now returned home into his dear native land, with empty
ships, having left behind him brave Menelaus.' Thus will some one
hereafter say: then may the wide earth yawn for me."

[Footnote 178: The past tense for the future: implying that the
hour of retribution is so certain, that it may be considered
already arrived.]

But him fair-haired Menelaus accosted, cheering him: "Have courage, nor
in anywise frighten the people of the Achaeans. The sharp arrow has not
stuck in a vital part, but before [it reached a vital part], the
variegated belt, and the girdle beneath, and the plate which
brass-working men forged, warded it off."

King Agamemnon answering him replied: "Would that it were so, O beloved
Menelaus; but the physician shall probe the wound, and apply remedies,
which may ease thee of thy acute pains."

He spoke; and thus accosted Talthybius, the divine herald: "Talthybius,
summon hither with all speed the hero Machaon, son of the blameless
physician AEsculapius, that he may see martial Menelaus, the chief of the
Greeks, whom some skilful archer of the Trojans, or of the Lycians, has
wounded with a shaft; a glory, indeed, to him, but a grief to us."

He spoke; nor did the herald disobey when he had heard. But he proceeded
to go through the forc