Page 328 - the-iliad

to catch him up out of the fight and set him down safe and
sound in the fertile land of Lycia, or to let him now fall by
the hand of the son of Menoetius.’
And Juno answered, ‘Most dread son of Saturn, what is
this that you are saying? Would you snatch a mortal man,
whose doom has long been fated, out of the jaws of death?
Do as you will, but we shall not all of us be of your mind.
I say further, and lay my saying to your heart, that if you
send Sarpedon safely to his own home, some other of the
gods will be also wanting to escort his son out of battle, for
there are many sons of gods fighting round the city of Troy,
and you will make every one jealous. If, however, you are
fond of him and pity him, let him indeed fall by the hand
of Patroclus, but as soon as the life is gone out of him, send
Death and sweet Sleep to bear him off the field and take him
to the broad lands of Lycia, where his brothers and his kins-
men will bury him with mound and pillar, in due honour
to the dead.’
The sire of gods and men assented, but he shed a rain of
blood upon the earth in honour of his son whom Patro-
clus was about to kill on the rich plain of Troy far from his
home.
When they were now come close to one another Patro-
clus struck Thrasydemus, the brave squire of Sarpedon, in
the lower part of the belly, and killed him. Sarpedon then
aimed a spear at Patroclus and missed him, but he struck
the horse Pedasus in the right shoulder, and it screamed
aloud as it lay, groaning in the dust until the life went out
of it. The other two horses began to plunge; the pole of the