Page 241 - the-iliad

go clean through, though it hustled him back that he could
come on no further. He therefore retired a little space from
the battlement, yet without losing all his ground, for he still
thought to cover himself with glory. Then he turned round
and shouted to the brave Lycians saying, ‘Lycians, why do
you thus fail me? For all my prowess I cannot break through
the wall and open a way to the ships single-handed. Come
close on behind me, for the more there are of us the better.’
The Lycians, shamed by his rebuke, pressed closer round
him who was their counsellor and their king. The Argives
on their part got their men in fighting order within the wall,
and there was a deadly struggle between them. The Lycians
could not break through the wall and force their way to the
ships, nor could the Danaans drive the Lycians from the
wall now that they had once reached it. As two men, mea-
suring-rods in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a
field that they own in common, and stickle for their rights
though they be but in a mere strip, even so did the battle-
ments now serve as a bone of contention, and they beat one
another’s round shields for their possession. Many a man’s
body was wounded with the pitiless bronze, as he turned
round and bared his back to the foe, and many were struck
clean through their shields; the wall and battlements were
everywhere deluged with the blood alike of Trojans and of
Achaeans. But even so the Trojans could not rout the Achae-
ans, who still held on; and as some honest hard-working
woman weighs wool in her balance and sees that the scales
be true, for she would gain some pitiful earnings for her
little ones, even so was the fight balanced evenly between

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