With force united; after whom the host
Of Troy, seeing the body borne away,
875
Shouted, and with impetuous onset all
Follow’d them. As the hounds,
urged from behind
By youthful hunters, on the wounded boar
Make fierce assault; awhile at utmost
speed
They stretch toward him hungering, for
the prey, 880
But oft as, turning sudden, the stout
brawn
Faces them, scatter’d on all sides
escape;
The Trojans so, thick thronging in the
rear,
Ceaseless with falchions and spears double-edged
Annoy’d them sore, but oft as in
retreat 885
The dauntless heroes, the Ajaces turn’d
To face them, deadly wan grew every cheek,
And not a Trojan dared with onset rude
Molest them more in conflict for the dead.
Thus they, laborious, forth
from battle bore 890
Patroclus to the fleet, tempestuous war
Their steps attending, rapid as the flames
Which, kindled suddenly, some city waste;
Consumed amid the blaze house after house
Sinks, and the wind, meantime, roars through
the fire; 895
So them a deafening tumult as they went
Pursued, of horses and of men spear-arm’d.
And as two mules with strength for toil
endued,
Draw through rough ways down from the
distant hills
Huge timber, beam or mast; sweating they
go, 900
And overlabor’d to faint weariness;
So they the body bore, while, turning
oft,
The Ajaces check’d the Trojans.
As a mound
Planted with trees and stretch’d
athwart the mead
Repels an overflow; the torrents loud
905
Baffling, it sends them far away to float
The level land, nor can they with the
force
Of all their waters burst a passage through;
So the Ajaces, constant, in the rear
Repress’d the Trojans; but the Trojans
them 910
Attended still, of whom AEneas most
Troubled them, and the glorious Chief
of Troy.
They as a cloud of starlings or of daws
Fly screaming shrill, warn’d timely
of the kite
Or hawk, devourers of the smaller kinds,
915
So they shrill-clamoring toward the fleet,
Hasted before AEneas and the might
Of Hector, nor the battle heeded more.
Much radiant armor round about the foss
Fell of the flying Grecians, or within
920
Lay scatter’d, and no pause of war
they found.
THE ILIAD.
ARGUMENT OF THE
EIGHTEENTH BOOK.
Achilles, by command of Juno, shows himself to the
Trojans, who fly at his appearance; Vulcan, at the
insistence of Thetis, forges for him a suit of armor.
