Faithlessness (1904)

Then though we find much to praise in Homer, we should not
praise him for [this].... nor shall we praise the passage in
Aeschylus where Thetis says that Apollo sang at her wedding,
dwelling on her happy motherhood: 
          The span of life from sickness free,
     And telling all my fate that gods had blest,
     He sang a song of gladness to my heart.
     I dreamed the lips of Phoebus could not lie
     Being divine, touched with the seer's skill.
     But he the singer,..........................
The same who sang these words, is he who slew
My own dear son.
Plato, The Republic, Book II

When Thetis and Peleus married,
Apollo stood up at the rich wedding feast;
for their offspring, the fruit of their union's
future, he gave to the newly-wed couple his blessing.
He said: "He will never be touched by ill health,
and his life will be long." -  How Thetis rejoiced
when he said this; the words of Apollo,
renowned for his prophecies,
seemed to secure her child's future.
As Achilles grew up, and his beauty
was famed throughout Thessaly,
Thetis remembered the words of the god.
But one day came old men with tidings,
told of Achilles' death at Troy.

Thetis tore her purple robes to shreds,
and shedding them hurled all her rings
and bracelets in the dust.
And in her lamentations she recalled the past;
she asked what wise Apollo had been doing,
where the poet was who gave such pretty
after-dinner speeches, where the prophet was when,
in his youth's first bloom, her son was killed.
And the old men told her how Apollo
had himself gone down to Troy,
and with the Trojans slain Achilles.

Note.

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