reproaches from you."
So spoke Sarpedon, and Hector smarted under his words. He sprang
from his chariot clad in his suit of armour, and went about among
the host brandishing his two spears, exhorting the men to fight and
raising the terrible cry of battle. Then they rallied and again
faced the Achaeans, but the Argives stood compact and firm, and were
not driven back. As the breezes sport with the chaff upon some
goodly threshing-floor, when men are winnowing- while yellow Ceres
blows with the wind to sift the chaff from the grain, and the chaff-
heaps grow whiter and whiter- even so did the Achaeans whiten in the
dust which the horses' hoofs raised to the firmament of heaven, as
their drivers turned them back to battle, and they bore down with
might upon the foe. Fierce Mars, to help the Trojans, covered them
in a veil of darkness, and went about everywhere among them,
inasmuch as Phoebus Apollo had told him that when he saw Pallas,
Minerva leave the fray he was to put courage into the hearts of the
Trojans- for it was she who was helping the Danaans. Then Apollo
sent Aeneas forth from his rich sanctuary, and filled his heart with
valour, whereon he took his place among his comrades, who were
overjoyed at seeing him alive, sound, and of a good courage; but
they could not ask him how it had all happened, for they were too busy
with the turmoil raised by Mars and by Strife, who raged insatiably in
their midst.
The two Ajaxes, Ulysses and Diomed, cheered the Danaans on, fearless
of the fury and onset of the Trojans. They stood as still as clouds
which the son of Saturn has spread upon the mountain tops when there
is no air and fierce Boreas sleeps with the other boisterous winds
whose shrill blasts scatter the clouds in all directions- even so
did the Danaans stand firm and unflinching against the Trojans. The
son of Atreus went about among them and exhorted them. "My friends,"
said he, "quit yourselves like brave men, and shun dishonour in one
another's eyes amid the stress of battle. They that shun dishonour
more often live than get killed, but they that fly save neither life
nor name."
As he spoke he hurled his spear and hit one of those who were in the
front rank, the comrade of Aeneas, Deicoon son of Pergasus, whom the
Trojans held in no less honour than the sons of Priam, for he was ever
quick to place himself among the foremost. The spear of King Agamemnon
struck his shield and went right through it, for the shield stayed
it not. It drove through his belt into the lower part of his belly,
and his armour rang rattling round him as he fell heavily to the
ground.
Then Aeneas killed two champions of the Danaans, Crethon and
Orsilochus. Their father was a rich man who lived in the strong city
of Phere and was descended from the river Alpheus, whose broad
stream flows through the land of the Pylians. The river begat
Orsilochus, who ruled over much people and was father to Diocles,
who in his turn begat twin sons, Crethon and Orsilochus, well
skilled in all the arts of war. These, when they grew up, went to
Ilius with the Argive fleet in the cause of Menelaus and Agamemnon
sons of Atreus, and there they both of them fell. As two lions whom
their dam has reared in the depths of some mountain forest to
plunder homesteads and carry off sheep and cattle till they get killed
by the hand of man, so were these two vanquished by Aeneas, and fell
like high pine-trees to the ground.
Brave Menelaus pitied them in their fall, and made his way to the
front, clad in gleaming bronze and brandishing his spear, for Mars
egged him on to do so with intent that he should be killed by
Aeneas; but Antilochus the son of Nestor saw him and sprang forward,
fearing that the king might come to harm and thus bring all their
labour to nothing; when, therefore Aeneas and Menelaus were setting
their hands and spears against one another eager to do battle,
Antilochus placed himself by the side of Menelaus. Aeneas, bold though
he was, drew back on seeing the two heroes side by side in front of