King Priam received him with great honors, and
listened with admiration to his narrative of the wonders of the
ocean shore.
The very day after his arrival, Memnon, impatient of repose, led
his troops to the field. Antilochus, the brave son of Nestor, fell
by his hand, and the Greeks were put to flight, when Achilles
appeared and restored the battle. A long and doubtful contest
ensued between him and the son of Aurora; at length victory
declared for Achilles, Memnon fell, and the Trojans fled in
dismay.
Aurora, who from her station in the sky had viewed with
apprehension the danger of her son, when she saw him fall,
directed his brothers, the Winds, to convey his body to the banks
of the river Esepus in Paphlagonia. In the evening Aurora came,
accompanied by the Hours and the Pleiads, and wept and lamented
over her son. Night, in sympathy with her grief, spread the heaven
with clouds; all nature mourned for the offspring of the Dawn. The
Aethiopians raised his tomb on the banks of the stream in the
grove of the Nymphs, and Jupiter caused the sparks and cinders of
his funeral pile to be turned into birds, which, dividing into two
flocks, fought over the pile till they fell into the flame. Every
year at the anniversary of his death they return and celebrate his
obsequies in like manner.
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