Even Homer Sometimes Nods
Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.—Horace.
Jugurtha
The effect of Mr. Longfellow’s fine poem, “Jugurtha,” is impaired by a curious mistake. The first of the two stanzas composing it are as follows:
“‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow,
Dark dungeons of death he descended,
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended,
‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’”
As a matter of fact, Jugurtha’s exclamation when thrust into the cold, dark prison was “Heracles, how cold your [plural, humon] bath is!” (see Plutarch, Marius, c. 12). “Heracles” (the Greek form of Hercules) is the ordinary Greek interjection, not an address to a god. The most natural explanation of this odd mistake seems to be the following: Mr. Longfellow substituted the name of one god for another by a slip of the memory. When Apollo thus replaced Heracles, it was natural to make the further supposition that he was directly addressed, and that the ambiguous “your” was singular.