BOOK THE FOURTEENTH.
THE ARGUMENT.
But the shouting did not entirely escape the notice of Nestor, although drinking, but he addressed winged words to the son of Æsculapius: "Consider, noble Machaon, how these things will be; greater, certainly, [grows] the shouting of the blooming youths at the ships. But sitting here at present, drink indeed the dark wine, until fair-haired Hecamede has warmed the tepid baths, and washed away the bloody gore; while I, going with speed to a watch-tower, will gain information."
So saying, he took the well-made shield of his own son, horse-breaking Thrasymedes, [which was] lying in the tent, all shining with brass (for he had the shield of his sire); and seized a strong spear, pointed with sharp brass; and stood without the tent, and soon beheld an unseemly deed—these [the Greeks] in confusion, and those, the haughty Trojans, routing them in the rear; but the wall of the Greeks had fallen. And as when the vast deep blackens with the noiseless[1] wave, foreboding with no effect, the rapid courses of the shrill blasts, nor yet is it rolled forward or backward, before some decisive blast comes down from Jove; so meditated the old man, distracted in his mind between two opinions: whether he should go among the throng of
- ↑ Literally, "deaf." So "surdi fluctus." Ovid, Epist. xviii. 211; "Omnia surda tacent," Propert. iv. 3, 53; "Surdaque vota condidit Ionio," Pers. Sat. vi. 28.
