Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/126

BOOK VI

THE ARGUMENT

THE EPISODES OF GLAUCUS AND DIOMED, AND OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE

The gods having left the field, the Grecians prevail. Helenus, the chief augur of Troy, commands Hector to return to the city, in order to appoint a solemn procession of the queen and the Trojan matrons to the temple of Minerva, to entreat her to remove Diomed from the fight. The battle relaxing during the absence of Hector, Glaucus and Diomed have an interview between the two armies; where, coming to the knowledge of the friendship and hospitality past between their ancestors, they make exchange of their arms. Hector, having performed the orders of Helenus, prevailed upon Paris to return to the battle, and taken a tender leave of his wife Andromache, hastens again to the field.

The scene is first in the field of battle, between the rivers Simoïs and Scamander, and then changes to Troy.

Now heaven forsakes the fight; the immortals yield
To human force and human skill the field:
Dark showers of javelins fly from foes to foes;
Now here, now there, the tide of combat flows;
While Troy's famed streams,^[1] that bound the deathful plain,
On either side run purple to the main.
Great Ajax first to conquest led the way,
Broke the thick ranks, and turned the doubtful day.
The Thracian Acamas his faulchion found,
And hewed the enormous giant to the ground;
His thundering arm a deadly stroke impressed
Where the black horse-hair nodded o'er his crest:
Fixed in his front the brazen weapon lies,
And seals in endless shades his swimming eyes.
Next Teuthras' son distained the sands with blood,
Axylus, hospitable, rich, and good:
In fair Arisba's walls, his native place,
He held his seat; a friend to human race.
Fast by the road, his ever-open door
Obliged the wealthy, and relieved the poor.
To stern Tydides now he falls a prey,
No friend to guard him in the dreadful day;
Breathless the good man fell, and by his side

1. Scamander and Simoïs.

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