[15]
When the armament was in Aulis, after a
sacrifice to Apollo, a serpent darted from the altar beside the neighboring plane-tree, in
which there was a nest; and having consumed the eight sparrows in the nest, together with
the mother bird, which made the ninth, it was turned to stone. Calchas said that this sign
was given them by the will of Zeus, and he inferred from what had happened that Troy was destined to be taken in a period of ten
years.1 And they made ready to sail against Troy.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 Compare Hom. Il. 2.299-330; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18; Cicero, De divinatione ii.30.63-65; Ov. Met. 12.11-23.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.