Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 18

GRIPLA18
Quo furor Herculeus Vulcanidis ossa retundit,
Ille fero patrios ructat ab ore focos;
Quove genu stomachum seu calcibus ilia rumpit,
fumifluum clava guttur et ora quatit…
‘there Hercules’ fury batters the bones of Vulcan’s son,
He belches his father’s fires from his savage mouth;
there too Hercules smashes his stomach with a knee and his guts
with his heels,
shatters his smoke-spouting throat and face with his club…’
Quo Alcides, Calidonque amnis, nessusque biformis
Certant pro specie, deianira, tua.
Inlita nesseo feralis sanguine vestis
Cernitur et miseri fata pavenda Lichae.
Perdit et Anteus dura inter brachia vitam,
Qui solito sterni more vetatur humo.
‘there Alceus, the river of Calydon, and the centaur nessus
fight over your beauty, deianira.
the deadly shirt smeared with the blood of nessus
Can be made out, along with the terrible fate of wretched Lichas.
Likewise Antaeus loses his life in the powerful arms of Hercules,
for he is not permitted to be thrown to the ground in the usual
fashion.’75
this is followed up by the other would-be presenter’s description of the
images of a calf, cow, heifer and bull on the fine rug he has brought. Both
these objects could perfectly well have existed. the vase might have been
of Late Antique Roman type76 and the stories of Hercules were certainly
a favourite in Carolingian secular and ecclesiastical culture.77 the rug for
its part, allegedly conveyed to the suppliant by an Arabic middleman and
75 Lines 185–8, 197–202: translation mine; cf. dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 101–2.
76 dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 101.
77 Lawrence nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian
Court, Middle Ages series (Philadelphia: university of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).