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I say that it is my clearest law to sprinkle you with praises whenever I set foot on this island. Countless continuous roads have been cut a hundred feet wide for your fine deeds, both beyond the springs of the Nile and through the land of the Hyperboreans. There is no city so barbarous or so strange in its speech
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that it does not know the fame of the hero Peleus, the fortunate in-law of gods,
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or of Aias and his father Telamon. The son of Alcmena led him in ships to Troy, the toil of heroes, for war that delights in bronze, as an eager ally along with the men of Tiryns because of Laomedon’s wrongdoing.
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He took Pergamos, and with Telamon’s help he slew the tribes of Meropes, and the herdsman Alcyoneus, huge as a mountain, whom he found at Phlegrae, and he did not keep his hands off the deep-voiced bow-string, not
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Heracles. But when he came to summon the son of Aeacus to that expedition, he found them feasting. Standing in a lion’s skin, the strong warrior, son of Amphitryon, was asked to pour the first libation of nectar by incomparable Telamon, who lifted up to him
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the wine-bearing goblet bristling with gold. And Heracles stretched his invincible hands up to heaven and said, “Father Zeus, if you have ever heard my prayers with a willing heart,
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now, now with divine prayers
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I entreat you to grant this man a brave son from Eriboea, a son fated to be my guest-friend. May he have a body as invulnerable as this skin that is now wrapped around me, from the beast whom I killed that day in Nemea as the very first of my labors. And may he have spirit to match.” When he had spoken, the god sent to him
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the king of birds, a great eagle. He felt thrilled inside with sweet joy,
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and he spoke like a prophet: “Telamon, you will have the son that you ask for. Name him after the bird that appeared: wide-ruling Aias, awesome in the war-toils of the people.” Compare Aias with Greek αἰετός, eagle
