Page 221 - the-iliad

to come in; he that sent me is not one to be trifled with, and
he bade me ask who the wounded man was whom you were
bearing away from the field. I can now see for myself that he
is Machaon, shepherd of his people. I must go back and tell
Achilles. You, sir, know what a terrible man he is, and how
ready to blame even where no blame should lie.’
And Nestor answered, ‘Why should Achilles care to
know how many of the Achaeans may be wounded? He
recks not of the dismay that reigns in our host; our most
valiant chieftains lie disabled, brave Diomed, son of Tyde-
us, is wounded; so are Ulysses and Agamemnon; Eurypylus
has been hit with an arrow in the thigh, and I have just been
bringing this man from the field—he too wounded with
an arrow. Nevertheless, Achilles, so valiant though he be,
cares not and knows no ruth. Will he wait till the ships, do
what we may, are in a blaze, and we perish one upon the
other? As for me, I have no strength nor stay in me any lon-
ger; would that I were still young and strong as in the days
when there was a fight between us and the men of Elis about
some cattle-raiding. I then killed Itymoneus, the valiant
son of Hypeirochus, a dweller in Elis, as I was driving in the
spoil; he was hit by a dart thrown by my hand while fighting
in the front rank in defence of his cows, so he fell and the
country people around him were in great fear. We drove off
a vast quantity of booty from the plain, fifty herds of cattle
and as many flocks of sheep; fifty droves also of pigs, and
as many wide-spreading flocks of goats. Of horses, more-
over, we seized a hundred and fifty, all of them mares, and
many had foals running with them. All these did we drive

0 The Iliad