Then piercing, as he turn’d to flight, the
spine
Of Areithoeus his charioteer,
600
He thrust him from his seat; wild with dismay
Back flew the fiery coursers at his fall.
As a devouring fire within the glens
Of some dry mountain ravages the trees,
While, blown around, the flames roll to all sides,
605
So, on all sides, terrible as a God,
Achilles drove the death-devoted host
Of Ilium, and the champain ran with blood.
As when the peasant his yoked steers employs
To tread his barley, the broad-fronted pair
610
With ponderous hoofs trample it out with ease,
So, by magnanimous Achilles driven,
His coursers solid-hoof’d stamp’d as
they ran
The shields, at once, and bodies of the slain;
Blood spatter’d all his axle, and with blood
615
From the horse-hoofs and from the fellied wheels
His chariot redden’d, while himself, athirst
For glory, his unconquerable hands
Defiled with mingled carnage, sweat, and dust.
THE ILIAD.
ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST
BOOK.
Achilles having separated the Trojans, and driven
one part of them to the city and the other into the
Scamander, takes twelve young men alive, his intended
victims to the manes of Patroclus. The river
overflowing his banks with purpose to overwhelm him,
is opposed by Vulcan, and gladly relinquishes the
attempt. The battle of the gods ensues.
Apollo, in the form of Agenor, decoys Achilles from
the town, which in the mean time the Trojans enter
and shut the gates against him.
[1]But when they came, at length, where
Xanthus winds His stream vortiginous from Jove derived,
There, separating Ilium’s host, he drove Part
o’er the plain to Troy in the same road By
which the Grecians had so lately fled
5 The fury of illustrious Hector’s
arm. That way they fled pouring themselves
along Flood-like, and Juno, to retard them, threw
Darkness as night before them. Other part,
Push’d down the sides of Xanthus, headlong
plunged 10 With dashing sound into
his dizzy stream, And all his banks re-echoed loud
the roar. They, struggling, shriek’d
in silver eddies whirl’d. As when, by
violence of fire expell’d, Locusts uplifted
on the wing escape 15
To some broad river, swift the sudden blaze Pursues
them, they, astonish’d, strew the flood,[2]
So, by Achilles driven, a mingled throng Of horses
and of warriors overspread Xanthus, and glutted
all his sounding course 20 He,
chief of heroes, leaving on the bank His spear against
a tamarisk reclined, Plunged like a God, with falchion
arm’d alone But fill’d with thoughts
of havoc. On all sides Down came his edge;
groans follow’d dread to hear 25
