Page 252 - the-iliad

in fighting. Get your armour and go, we must make all
haste together if we may be of any use, though we are only
two. Even cowards gain courage from companionship, and
we two can hold our own with the bravest.’
Therewith the god went back into the thick of the fight,
and Idomeneus when he had reached his tent donned his
armour, grasped his two spears, and sallied forth. As the
lightning which the son of Saturn brandishes from bright
Olympus when he would show a sign to mortals, and its
gleam flashes far and wide—even so did his armour gleam
about him as he ran. Meriones his sturdy squire met him
while he was still near his tent (for he was going to fetch his
spear) and Idomeneus said:
‘Meriones, fleet son of Molus, best of comrades, why have
you left the field? Are you wounded, and is the point of the
weapon hurting you? or have you been sent to fetch me?
I want no fetching; I had far rather fight than stay in my
tent.’
‘Idomeneus,’ answered Meriones, ‘I come for a spear, if
I can find one in my tent; I have broken the one I had, in
throwing it at the shield of Deiphobus.’
And Idomeneus captain of the Cretans answered, ‘You
will find one spear, or twenty if you so please, standing up
against the end wall of my tent. I have taken them from Tro-
jans whom I have killed, for I am not one to keep my enemy
at arm’s length; therefore I have spears, bossed shields, hel-
mets, and burnished corslets.’
Then Meriones said, ‘I too in my tent and at my ship have
spoils taken from the Trojans, but they are not at hand. I

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