This toil[17] {and} this combat brought on a cessation for many days;
and both sides rested, laying aside their arms. And while a watchful
guard was keeping the Phrygian walls, and a watchful guard was keeping
the Argive trenches, a festive day had arrived, on which Achilles, the
conqueror of Cygnus, appeased Pallas with the blood of a heifer, adorned
with fillets. As soon as he had placed its entrails[18] upon the glowing
altars, and the smell, acceptable to the Deities, mounted up to the
skies, the sacred rites had their share, the other part was served up at
the table. The chiefs reclined on couches, and sated their bodies with
roasted flesh,[19] and banished both their cares and their thirst with
wine. No harps, no melody of voices,[20] no long pipe of boxwood pierced
with many a hole, delights them; but in discourse they pass the night,
and valour is the subject-matter of their conversation. They relate the
combats of the enemy and their own; and often do they delight to
recount, in turn, both the dangers that they have encountered and that
they have surmounted. For of what {else} should Achilles speak? or of
what, in preference, should they speak before the great Achilles? {But}
especially the recent victory over the conquered Cygnus was the subject
of discourse. It seemed wonderful to them all, that the body of the
youth was penetrable by no weapon, and was susceptible of no wounds, and
that it blunted the steel itself. This same thing, the grandson of
AEacus, this, the Greeks wondered at.

When thus Nestor says {to them}: "Cygnus has been the only despiser of
weapons in your time, and penetrable by no blows. But I myself formerly
saw the Perrhaebean[21] Caeneus bear a thousand blows with his body
unhurt; Caeneus the Perrhaebean, {I say}, who, famous for his
achievements, inhabited Othrys. And that this, too, might be the more
wondrous in him, he was born a woman." They are surprised, whoever are
present, at the singular nature of this prodigy, and they beg him to
tell the story. Among them, Achilles says, "Pray tell us, (for we all
have the same desire to hear it,) O eloquent old man,[22] the wisdom of
our age; who was {this} Caeneus, {and} why changed to the opposite sex?
in what war, and in the engagements of what contest was he known to
thee? by whom was he conquered, if he was conquered by any one?"

Then the aged man {replied}: "Although tardy old age is a disadvantage
to me, and many things which I saw in