Page 66 - the-iliad

his honour.’
His fool’s heart was persuaded, and he took his bow
from its case. This bow was made from the horns of a wild
ibex which he had killed as it was bounding from a rock;
he had stalked it, and it had fallen as the arrow struck it to
the heart. Its horns were sixteen palms long, and a worker
in horn had made them into a bow, smoothing them well
down, and giving them tips of gold. When Pandarus had
strung his bow he laid it carefully on the ground, and his
brave followers held their shields before him lest the Achae-
ans should set upon him before he had shot Menelaus. Then
he opened the lid of his quiver and took out a winged ar-
row that had not yet been shot, fraught with the pangs of
death. He laid the arrow on the string and prayed to Lycian
Apollo, the famous archer, vowing that when he got home
to his strong city of Zelea he would offer a hecatomb of first-
ling lambs in his honour. He laid the notch of the arrow on
the oxhide bowstring, and drew both notch and string to
his breast till the arrow-head was near the bow; then when
the bow was arched into a half-circle he let fly, and the bow
twanged, and the string sang as the arrow flew gladly on
over the heads of the throng.
But the blessed gods did not forget thee, O Menelaus,
and Jove’s daughter, driver of the spoil, was the first to stand
before thee and ward off the piercing arrow. She turned it
from his skin as a mother whisks a fly from off her child
when it is sleeping sweetly; she guided it to the part where
the golden buckles of the belt that passed over his double
cuirass were fastened, so the arrow struck the belt that went