Page 364 - the-iliad

for he cannot fight without armour. What then will be our
best plan both as regards rescuing the dead, and our own
escape from death amid the battle-cries of the Trojans?’
Ajax answered, ‘Menelaus, you have said well: do you,
then, and Meriones stoop down, raise the body, and bear
it out of the fray, while we two behind you keep off Hector
and the Trojans, one in heart as in name, and long used to
fighting side by side with one another.’
On this Menelaus and Meriones took the dead man in
their arms and lifted him high aloft with a great effort. The
Trojan host raised a hue and cry behind them when they
saw the Achaeans bearing the body away, and flew after
them like hounds attacking a wounded boar at the loo of a
band of young huntsmen. For a while the hounds fly at him
as though they would tear him in pieces, but now and again
he turns on them in a fury, scaring and scattering them in
all directions—even so did the Trojans for a while charge in
a body, striking with sword and with spears pointed ai both
the ends, but when the two Ajaxes faced them and stood
at bay, they would turn pale and no man dared press on to
fight further about the dead.
In this wise did the two heroes strain every nerve to bear
the body to the ships out of the fight. The battle raged round
them like fierce flames that when once kindled spread like
wildfire over a city, and the houses fall in the glare of its
burning— even such was the roar and tramp of men and
horses that pursued them as they bore Patroclus from the
field. Or as mules that put forth all their strength to draw
some beam or great piece of ship’s timber down a rough