Page 207 - the-iliad

the Achaeans, while the Argives on their part strengthened
their battalions. The battle was now in array and they stood
face to face with one another, Agamemnon ever pressing
forward in his eagerness to be ahead of all others.
Tell me now ye Muses that dwell in the mansions of
Olympus, who, whether of the Trojans or of their allies, was
first to face Agamemnon? It was Iphidamas son of Antenor,
a man both brave and of great stature, who was brought
up in fertile Thrace, the mother of sheep. Cisses, his moth-
er’s father, brought him up in his own house when he was
a child—Cisses, father to fair Theano. When he reached
manhood, Cisses would have kept him there, and was for
giving him his daughter in marriage, but as soon as he had
married he set out to fight the Achaeans with twelve ships
that followed him: these he had left at Percote and had come
on by land to Ilius. He it was that now met Agamemnon son
of Atreus. When they were close up with one another, the
son of Atreus missed his aim, and Iphidamas hit him on
the girdle below the cuirass and then flung himself upon
him, trusting to his strength of arm; the girdle, however,
was not pierced, nor nearly so, for the point of the spear
struck against the silver and was turned aside as though it
had been lead: King Agamemnon caught it from his hand,
and drew it towards him with the fury of a lion; he then
drew his sword, and killed Iphidamas by striking him on
the neck. So there the poor fellow lay, sleeping a sleep as
it were of bronze, killed in the defence of his fellow-citi-
zens, far from his wedded wife, of whom he had had no joy
though he had given much for her: he had given a hundred-

0 The Iliad