Zeus and Hera Quarrel (1.536-567)

. . . οὐδέ μιν Ἥρη
ἠγνοίησεν ἰδοῦσ' ὅτι οἱ συμφράσσατο βουλὰς
ἀργυρόπεζα Θέτις θυγάτηρ ἁλίοιο γέροντος.
αὐτίκα κερτομίοισι Δία Κρονίωνα προσηύδα:
τίς δ' αὖ τοι δολομῆτα θεῶν συμφράσσατο βουλάς; [540]
αἰεί τοι φίλον ἐστὶν ἐμεῦ ἀπὸ νόσφιν ἐόντα
κρυπτάδια φρονέοντα δικαζέμεν: οὐδέ τί πώ μοι
πρόφρων τέτληκας εἰπεῖν ἔπος ὅττι νοήσῃς.

τὴν δ' ἠμείβετ' ἔπειτα πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε:
Ἥρη μὴ δὴ πάντας ἐμοὺς ἐπιέλπεο μύθους [545]
εἰδήσειν: χαλεποί τοι ἔσοντ' ἀλόχῳ περ ἐούσῃ:
ἀλλ' ὃν μέν κ' ἐπιεικὲς ἀκουέμεν οὔ τις ἔπειτα
οὔτε θεῶν πρότερος τὸν εἴσεται οὔτ' ἀνθρώπων:
ὃν δέ κ' ἐγὼν ἀπάνευθε θεῶν ἐθέλωμι νοῆσαι
μή τι σὺ ταῦτα ἕκαστα διείρεο μηδὲ μετάλλα. [550]

τὸν δ' ἠμείβετ' ἔπειτα βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη:
αἰνότατε Κρονίδη ποῖον τὸν μῦθον ἔειπες;
καὶ λίην σε πάρος γ' οὔτ' εἴρομαι οὔτε μεταλλῶ,
ἀλλὰ μάλ' εὔκηλος τὰ φράζεαι ἅσσ' ἐθέλῃσθα.
νῦν δ' αἰνῶς δείδοικα κατὰ φρένα μή σε παρείπῃ [555]
ἀργυρόπεζα Θέτις θυγάτηρ ἁλίοιο γέροντος:
ἠερίη γὰρ σοί γε παρέζετο καὶ λάβε γούνων:
τῇ σ' ὀΐω κατανεῦσαι ἐτήτυμον ὡς Ἀχιλῆα
τιμήσῃς, ὀλέσῃς δὲ πολέας ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.

τὴν δ' ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς: [560]
δαιμονίη αἰεὶ μὲν ὀΐεαι οὐδέ σε λήθω:
πρῆξαι δ' ἔμπης οὔ τι δυνήσεαι, ἀλλ' ἀπὸ θυμοῦ
μᾶλλον ἐμοὶ ἔσεαι: τὸ δέ τοι καὶ ῥίγιον ἔσται.
εἰ δ' οὕτω τοῦτ' ἐστὶν ἐμοὶ μέλλει φίλον εἶναι:
ἀλλ' ἀκέουσα κάθησο, ἐμῷ δ' ἐπιπείθεο μύθῳ, [565]
μή νύ τοι οὐ χραίσμωσιν ὅσοι θεοί εἰσ' ἐν Ὀλύμπῳ
ἆσσον ἰόνθ', ὅτε κέν τοι ἀάπτους χεῖρας ἐφείω.

My Translation:
. . .Hera though,
had hardly failed to see how Thetis made
some secret plan with him—right away
she taunted him, the son of Kronus, Zeus:

So then, you sly and crafty god, which one
of the immortals now makes plans with you?
It’s always your delight to sit apart
from me and make your secret strategies.
You never yet have deigned to share with me
a single word of what you think or plan.

The father of gods and men answered her,

Hera, do not expect to know of all
my plots. They’re too complex for you, although
you are my wife. Still, anything that’s fit
to hear, you’ll know first, before any god
or mortal. But whatever I might wish
to think or plan apart from all the gods,
do not try to probe or ask me of it.

Queen Hera with her steady gaze replied,

Fearsome Son of Kronos, what’s this you’ve said?
Surely I’ve never been one to go around
probing and prying—no, you have told me
only whatever you yourself have wished.
But now I fear and really do suspect
that Silverfooted Thetis, daughter of
the Old Man of the sea, this morning sat
down at your side and clasped your knees. And I
suppose you have agreed to her demands—
that you’ll do honor to Achilles now
and slaughter the Achaeans by the ships.

Zeus the Cloudgatherer replied and said,

You peevish pest! Always supposing this
and that—I never can escape your gaze.
But even so, there’s nothing you can do—
you’ll just estrange yourself from me much more,
and all the worse it’ll be for you. If things
are as you say, it’s got to be because
I want it so. Now silence! Take your seat!
Obey my word or all the gods who hold
Olympus won’t be worth a damn to you
when I come near with my resistless hands.

Alexander Pope's Translation:
All, but the god’s imperious queen alone:
Late had she view’d the silver-footed dame,
And all her passions kindled into flame.
“Say, artful manager of heaven (she cries),
Who now partakes the secrets of the skies?
Thy Juno knows not the decrees of fate,
In vain the partner of imperial state.
What favourite goddess then those cares divides,
Which Jove in prudence from his consort hides?”
To this the thunderer: “Seek not thou to find
The sacred counsels of almighty mind:
Involved in darkness likes the great decree,
Nor can the depths of fate be pierced by thee.
What fits thy knowledge, thou the first shalt know;
The first of gods above, and men below;
But thou, nor they, shall search the thoughts that roll
Deep in the close recesses of my soul.”
Full on the sire the goddess of the skies
Roll’d the large orbs of her majestic eyes,
And thus return’d:—“Austere Saturnius, say,
From whence this wrath, or who controls thy sway?
Thy boundless will, for me, remains in force,
And all thy counsels take the destined course.
But ’tis for Greece I fear: for late was seen,
In close consult, the silver-footed queen.
Jove to his Thetis nothing could deny,
Nor was the signal vain that shook the sky.
What fatal favour has the goddess won,
To grace her fierce, inexorable son?
Perhaps in Grecian blood to drench the plain,
And glut his vengeance with my people slain.”
Then thus the god: “O restless fate of pride,
That strives to learn what heaven resolves to hide;
Vain is the search, presumptuous and abhorr’d,
Anxious to thee, and odious to thy lord.
Let this suffice: the immutable decree
No force can shake: what is, that ought to be.
Goddess, submit; nor dare our will withstand,
But dread the power of this avenging hand:
The united strength of all the gods above
In vain resists the omnipotence of Jove.”

Comments:
Just one comment today regarding this passage. This concerns the difficulty of translating δαιμονίη in line 561. In his note on this word’s occurrence here, G. S. Kirk writes that it “expresses affectionate remonstrance here, as it does when Andromakhe and Hektor use the term to address each other at 6.407 and 486; often it implies a stronger rebuke, as at 4.31. Derivation from δαίμων is obvious, but the precise development of different nuances of meaning, as with many colloquialisms, is not.” What I want to know, however, is on what basis Kirk has decided the “nuance” in this case is one of “affectionate remonstrance” and not “stronger rebuke.” If we were to accept Kirk’s sense of it, how could we capture the more affectionate connotation? Perhaps something like “My silly dear.” But to tell the truth, I’ve always read Zeus as fairly pissed off here, even though the scene as a whole is presented in a humorous manner (in fact, one of my students rewrote this scene in the form of a screenplay for a modern sitcom, which worked extremely well). So I prefer to read the term here as indicating a stronger rebuke, but I didn’t want to go so far as anything like “you bothersome bitch” or “you nagging bitch.” I landed on “you peevish pest” as a kind of compromise (I could have just as easily gone with “you nagging pest” but opted for the alliteration because it removes the sting a bit). I’m not entirely satisfied with that, but I’ve found that I can either obsess over these details and never get much done or just accept certain compromises like this on a provisional basis. And in fact, I’ve also found that if I go back and review what I’ve translated a week or two earlier, the most obvious and felicitous solutions to formerly knotty problems will make themselves known. Sometimes. For example, I had translated ὀΐω in line 558 as “I believe,” but when, a day later, I was working on ὀΐεαι in line 561, I hit upon “suppose,” which both captures the denotative meaning of the word better and has greater euphony in English. It was only after I had discovered this that I put two and two together and saw that Zeus was picking up on Hera’s diction and mocking her by turning it back around on her. So at that point I retraced my steps and changed 558’s occurrence to “suppose” as well. These are the kinds of details that I hope to bring out when I go back through all of book 1 to polish it.