MESS.  The success of the country before the towers indeed thou knowest; for the circuit of the wall is not of such vast extent, but that thou must know all that has taken place.  But after that the sons of the aged Oedipus had clad their limbs in brazen armor, they came and stood in the midst of the plain between the two armies, ready for the contest, and the fierceness of the single battle.  And having cast a look toward Argos, Polynices uttered his prayer; “O venerable Juno (for I am thine, since in marriage I joined myself with the daughter of Adrastus, and dwell in that land), grant me to slay my brother, and to cover with blood my hostile hand bearing the victory.”  And Eteocles looking at the temple of Pallas, glorious in her golden shield, prayed; “O Daughter of Jove, grant me with my hand to hurl my victorious spear from this arm home to the breast of my brother, [and slay him who came to lay waste my country.”] And when the sound of the Tuscan trumpet was raised, as the torch, the signal for the fierce battle, they sped with dreadful rush toward each other; and like wild boars whetting their savage tusks, they met, their cheeks all moist with foam; and they rushed forward with their lances; but they couched beneath the orbs of their shields, in order that the steel might fall harmless.  But if either perceived the other’s eye raised above the verge, he drove the lance at his face, intent to be beforehand with him:  but dexterously they shifted their eyes to the open ornaments of their shields, so that the spear was made of none effect.  And more sweat trickled down the spectators than the combatants, through the fear of their friends.  But Eteocles, stumbling with his foot against a stone, which rolled under his tread,[46] places his limb without the shield.  But Polynices ran up with his spear, when he saw a stroke open to his steel, and the Argive spear passed through the shank.  And all the host of the Danai shouted for joy.  And the hero who first was wounded, when he perceived his shoulder exposed in this effort, pierced the breast of Polynices with his lance, and gave joy to the citizens of Cadmus, but he broke the point of his spear.  But being come to a strait for a spear, he retreated backward on his leg, and taking a stone of marble, he hurled it and crashed his antagonist’s spear in the middle:  and the battle was on equal terms, both being deprived of the spear in their hands.  Then seizing the handles of their swords they met at close quarters, and, as they clashed their shields together, raised a great tumult of battle around them.  And Eteocles having a sort of idea of its success, made use of a Thessalian stratagem, which he had learned from his connection with that country.  For giving up his present mode of attack, he brings his left foot behind, protecting well the pit of his own stomach; and stepping forward his right leg, he plunged the sword through the navel, and drove it to the vertebrae.  But the unhappy Polynices bending