Page 458 - the-iliad

they reached the heights of many-fountained Ida, they laid
their axes to the roots of many a tall branching oak that
came thundering down as they felled it. They split the trees
and bound them behind the mules, which then wended
their way as they best could through the thick brushwood
on to the plain. All who had been cutting wood bore logs,
for so Meriones squire to Idomeneus had bidden them, and
they threw them down in a line upon the seashore at the
place where Achilles would make a mighty monument for
Patroclus and for himself.
When they had thrown down their great logs of wood
over the whole ground, they stayed all of them where they
were, but Achilles ordered his brave Myrmidons to gird on
their armour, and to yoke each man his horses; they there-
fore rose, girded on their armour and mounted each his
chariot—they and their charioteers with them. The chariots
went before, and they that were on foot followed as a cloud
in their tens of thousands after. In the midst of them his
comrades bore Patroclus and covered him with the locks of
their hair which they cut off and threw upon his body. Last
came Achilles with his head bowed for sorrow, so noble a
comrade was he taking to the house of Hades.
When they came to the place of which Achilles had told
them they laid the body down and built up the wood. Achil-
les then bethought him of another matter. He went a space
away from the pyre, and cut off the yellow lock which he
had let grow for the river Spercheius. He looked all sorrow-
fully out upon the dark sea, and said, ‘Spercheius, in vain
did my father Peleus vow to you that when I returned home