HALIEUTICA, V. 327-347 



javelins, arrayed in triple row with close-set points. 

 Others feel the bronze-pierced wounds of the monster 

 of many battles ; another gazes at his sharp spine 

 bristUng with terrible points ; others behold with 

 wonder his tail, others his capacious belly and 

 measureless head. And, looking on the fierce beast 

 of the sea, one who has lingered more in landward 

 haunts than among ships says among his comrades 

 by his side : O Earth, dear mother, thou didst bear 

 me and hast fed me with landward food, and in thy 

 bosom let me die, when my destined day arrives ! 

 (Be the Sea and the works thereof gracious " unto 

 me and on the dry land let me worship Poseidon !) 

 And may no tiny bark speed me among the grievous 

 waves nor let me scan the winds and the clouds in 

 the air ! Not enough is the so great terror of the 

 waves, not enough for men the terror of distressful 

 seafaring and the woe that they endure, ever riding 

 with the storm -winds of evil noise, nor enough for 

 them to perish by a watery doom : beyond all these 

 they still await such banqueters as these, and find 

 burial without a tomb, glutting the cavern of a wild 

 beast's throat. I fear her who breeds such woes. 



" This is a parenthetical apology, an appeal to the Sea 

 and the Sea-god not to be offended by the poet's preference 

 for the land. Cf. C. i. 9, where the poet deprecates the 

 offence of Phaethon and Apollo at his comparing Antoninus 

 to the sons of Zeus. So in prose, Herod, ii. 45 Kai irfpi jxh 

 ToiTcjv TOffavra ir^fuv flirovffi Kai trapa tQ)v OfCov kcll irapa tQv 

 ijpwwi' evfievfirj tiij. So Tennyson, In Memoriam Ixxix. 1 f. 

 *' * More than my brothers are to me ' [be. 20\ Let this not 

 vex thee, noble heart ! " etc. A good example of the 

 parenthetic apology is Pind. /. i. 1 ff. ^larep 4fid, t6 reov, 

 XpO(Ta(nri 67j3ct, j irpaffxa Kai aaxoKi^a^ VTrfprepop | drtffofiai — firj 

 fioi Kpavaa vf/x{<rdjai AaXos — (f q. Kex^'fJ-ai, where editors amaz- 

 ingly continue to punctuate with a full stop after dr)<jofun. 



485 



