Apollo’s priest to th’ Argive fleet doth bring
Gifts for his daughter, pris’ner to the king;
For which her tender’d freedom he entreats;
But, being dismiss’d with contumelious threats,
At Phœbus’ hands, by vengeful pray’r, he seeks
To have a plague inflicted on the Greeks.
Which had; Achilles doth a council cite,
Embold’ning Calchas, in the king’s despite;
To tell the truth why they were punish’d so.
From hence their fierce and deadly strife did grow.
For wrong in which Æacides so raves,
That goddess Thetis, from her throne of waves
Ascending heav’n, of Jove assistance won,
To plague the Greeks by absence of her son,
And make the general himself repent
To wrong so much his army’s ornament.
This found by Juno, she with Jove contends;
Till Vulcan, with heav’n’s cup, the quarrel ends.