at Priam
having repudiated Arisbe to marry Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus,
AEsacus seeing his mother-in-law pregnant of her second son, foretold
his father that her progeny would be the cause of a bloody war,
which would end in the destruction of the kingdom of Troy; and that
upon this prediction, the infant, when born, was exposed on Mount
Ida.

Tzetzes adds, that AEsacus told his father that it was absolutely
necessary to put to death both the mother and the infant which was
born on that same day; on which Priam being informed that Cilla, the
wife of Thymaetes, being delivered on that day of a son, he ordered
them both to be killed; thinking thereby to escape the realization
of the prediction. Servius, on the authority of Euphorion, relates
the story in much the same manner; but a poet quoted by Cicero in
his first book on Divination, says that it was the oracle of Zelia,
a little town at the foot of Mount Ida, which gave that answer as an
interpretation of the dream of Hecuba. Pausanias says it was the
sibyl Herophila who interpreted the dream, while other ancient
writers state that it was Cassandra. Apollodorus says that AEsacus
learned from his grandfather Merops the art of foretelling things to
come.

BOOK THE TWELFTH.

FABLES I. AND II. [XII.1-145]

The Greeks assemble their troops at Aulis, to proceed against the
city of Troy, and revenge the rape of Helen; but the fleet is
detained in port by contrary winds. Calchas, the priest, after a
prediction concerning the success of the expedition, declares that
the weather will never be favourable till Agamemnon shall have
sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. She is immediately led to the
altar for that purpose; but Diana, appeased by this act of
obedience, carries away the maiden, and substitutes a hind in her
place, on which a fair wind arises. Upon the Greeks landing at Troy,
a battle is fought, in which Protesilaues is killed by Hector, and
Achilles kills Cygnus, a Trojan, on which his father Neptune
transforms him into a swan.

His father Priam mourned him, not knowing that AEsacus, having assumed
wings, was {still} living; Hector, too, with his brothers, made
unavailing offerings[1] at a tomb, that bore his name {on it}. The
presence of Paris was wanting, at this mournful office: who, soon after,
brought into his country a lengthened war, together with a ravished
wife;[2] and a thousand