Page 71 - the-iliad

promised you from the first I would be. Urge on the other
Achaeans, that we may join battle at once, for the Trojans
have trampled upon their covenants. Death and destruc-
tion shall be theirs, seeing they have been the first to break
their oaths and to attack us.’
The son of Atreus went on, glad at heart, till he came
upon the two Ajaxes arming themselves amid a host of foot-
soldiers. As when a goat-herd from some high post watches
a storm drive over the deep before the west wind—black as
pitch is the offing and a mighty whirlwind draws towards
him, so that he is afraid and drives his flock into a cave—
even thus did the ranks of stalwart youths move in a dark
mass to battle under the Ajaxes, horrid with shield and
spear. Glad was King Agamemnon when he saw them. ‘No
need,’ he cried, ‘to give orders to such leaders of the Argives
as you are, for of your own selves you spur your men on to
fight with might and main. Would, by father Jove, Minerva,
and Apollo that all were so minded as you are, for the city
of Priam would then soon fall beneath our hands, and we
should sack it.’
With this he left them and went onward to Nestor, the
facile speaker of the Pylians, who was marshalling his men
and urging them on, in company with Pelagon, Alastor,
Chromius, Haemon, and Bias shepherd of his people. He
placed his knights with their chariots and horses in the front
rank, while the foot-soldiers, brave men and many, whom
he could trust, were in the rear. The cowards he drove into
the middle, that they might fight whether they would or no.
He gave his orders to the knights first, bidding them hold

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