the spear of Achilles on the Phrygian
plains. {This} she saw; and that colour with which the hours of the
morning grow ruddy, turned pale, and the aether lay hid in clouds. But
the parent could not endure to behold his limbs laid on the closing
flames. But with loose hair, just as she was, she disdained not to fall
down at the knees of great Jove, and to add these words to her tears:
"Inferior to all {the Goddesses} which the golden aether does sustain,
(for throughout all the world are my temples the fewest), still,
a Goddess, I am come; not that thou shouldst grant me temples and days
of sacrifice, and altars to be heated with fires. But if thou
considerest how much I, a female, perform for thee, at the time when,
with the early dawn, I keep the confines of the night, thou wouldst
think that some reward ought to be given to me. But that is not my care,
nor is such now the condition of Aurora such that she should demand the
honours deserved by her. Bereft of my Memnon am I come; {of him} who,
in vain, wielded valiant arms for his uncle, and who in his early years
('twas thus ye willed it,) was slain by the brave Achilles. Give him,
I pray, supreme ruler of the Gods, some honour, as a solace for his
death, and ease the wounds of a mother."

Jove nods his assent; when {suddenly} the lofty pile of Memnon sinks
with its towering fires, and volumes of black smoke darken the {light
of} day. Just as when the rivers exhale the rising fogs, and the sun is
not admitted below them. The black embers fly, and rolling into one
body, they thicken, and take a form, and assume heat and life from the
flames. Their own lightness gives them wings; and first, like birds,
{and} then real birds, they flutter with their wings. At once
innumerable sisters are fluttering, whose natal origin is the same. And
thrice do they go around the pile, and thrice does their clamour rise in
concert into the air. In the fourth flight they separate their company.
Then two fierce tribes wage war from opposite sides, and with their
beaks and crooked claws expend their rage, and weary their wings and
opposing breasts; and down their kindred bodies fall, a sacrifice to the
entombed ashes, and they remember that from a great man they have
received their birth. Their progenitor gives a name to these birds so
suddenly formed, called Memnonides after him; when the Sun has run
through the twelve signs {of the Zodiac}, they fight, doomed to perish
in battle, in honou