Then thus the Thunderer checks the imperial dame: “Let not thy wrath the court of heaven inflame; Their merits, nor their honours, are the same. But mine, and every god’s peculiar grace Hector deserves, of all the Trojan race: Still on our shrines his grateful offerings lay, (The only honours men to gods can pay,) Nor ever from our smoking altar ceased The pure libation, and the holy feast: Howe’er by stealth to snatch the corse away, We will not: Thetis guards it night and day. But haste, and summon to our courts above The azure queen; let her persuasion move Her furious son from Priam to receive The proffer’d ransom, and the corse to leave.”