“Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having
heart of a deer, thou!
Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press
of the conflict,
Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of
Achaia
Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have
looked as a death-stroke.
Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array
of Achaians,
Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been
lifted against thee.
Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy
rule over abjects;
Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy
last one.
Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on
it likewise:
Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches
and leaf-buds
Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk
on the mountains,
No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the
sharp metal clipped off
Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of
Achaia,
Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing
the judgement,
Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have
its portent;
Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons
of Achaia
Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though
in an anguish,
How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying
Hector
Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear
at thy heart-strings,
Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour
the flower of Achaians.”
Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians
[Iliad, B. II V. 455]
Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates
round far,
So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march
did the splendour
Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up
to the sky-vault.
They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous
winged flocks,
Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops
of the wild-swans,
Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of
Kaistros;
Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of
their pinions,
Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about
them resoundeth;
So those numerous tribes from their ships and their
shelterings poured forth
On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath
them
Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp
of the horse-hooves.
Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field
of Scamander, their thousands
Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful
season.
Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes
traverse,
Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s wonning,
where then are the milk-pails
Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season
of spring-time;
Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the
plain held,
Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion
to crush them.
Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast