Demoleon next, Antenor's offspring, laid.
Breathless in dust, the price of rashness paid.
The impatient steed with full descending sway
Forced through his brazen helm its furious way,
Resistless drove the battered skull before,
And dashed and mingled all the brains with gore.
This sees Hippodamas, and, seized with fright,
Deserts his chariot for a swifter flight:
The lance arrests him; an ignoble wound
The panting Trojan rivets to the ground.
He groans away his soul: not louder roars
At Neptune's shrine on Helicé's[1] high shores
The victim bull: the rocks rebellow round,
And ocean listens to the grateful sound.
Then fell on Polydore his vengeful rage,
The youngest hope of Priam's stooping age,
Whose feet for swiftness in the race surpassed;
Of all his sons, the dearest and the last.
To the forbidden field he takes his flight
In the first folly of a youthful knight;
To vaunt his swiftness wheels around the plain,
But vaunts not long, with all his swiftness slain;
Struck where the crossing belts unite behind,
And golden rings the double back-plate joined;
Forth through the navel burst the thrilling steel;
And on his knees with piercing shrieks he fell;
The rushing entrails poured upon the ground
His hands collect: and darkness wraps him round.
When Hector viewed, all ghastly in his gore,
Thus sadly slain, the unhappy Polydore;
A cloud of sorrow overcast his sight,
His soul no longer brooked the distant fight;
Full in Achilles' dreadful front he came,
And shook his javelin like a waving flame.
The son of Peleus sees, with joy possessed,
His heart high-bounding in his rising breast:
And, "Lo! the man, on whom black fates attend;
The man that slew Achilles in bis friend!
No more shall Hector's and Pelides' spear
Turn from each other in the walks of war."
Then with revengeful eyes he scanned him o'er
"Come, and receive thy fate!" He spake no more.
Hector, undaunted, thus: "Such words employ
To one that dreads thee, some unwarlike boy:
Such we could give, defying and defied,
Mean intercourse of obloquy and pride!
- ↑ Helice has been mentioned in Book viii. as a seat of the worship of Neptune. The popular belief was that the bellowing of the bull indicated the favour of the god.
