BOOK XIV
Nestor was sitting over his wine, but the cry of the battle did not escape him, and he said to the son of Æsculapius, "What, noble Machaon, is the meaning of all this? The shouts of men fighting by our ships grow stronger and stronger; stay here, therefore, and sit over your wine, while fair Hecamedé heats you a bath a washes the clotted blood from off you. I will go at once to the look-out station and see what it is all about."
9As he spoke he took up the shield of his son Thrasymedes that was lying in his tent, all gleaming with bronze, for Thrasymedes had taken his father's shield; he grasped his redoubtable bronze-shod spear, and as soon as he was outside saw the disastrous rout of the Achæans who, now that their wall was overthrown, were flying pellmell before the Trojans. As when there is a heavy swell upon the sea, but the waves are dumb-they keep their eyes on the watch for the quarter whence the fierce winds may spring upon them, but they stay where they are and set neither this way nor that, till some particular wind seeps down from heaven to determine them-even so did the old man ponder whether to make for the crowd of Danaans, or go in search of Agamemnon. In the end he deemed it best to go to the son of Atreus; but meanwhile the hosts were fighting and killing one another, and the hard bronze rattled on their bodies, as they thrust at o one another with their swords and spears.
27The wounded kings, the son of Tydeus, Ulysses, and
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