Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
The sun was beginning to beat upon the fields, fresh risen into the
vault of heaven from the slow still currents of deep Oceanus, when
the two armies met. They could hardly recognise their dead, but
they washed the clotted gore from off them, shed tears over them,
and lifted them upon their waggons. Priam had forbidden the
Trojans to wail aloud, so they heaped their dead sadly and silently
upon the pyre, and having burned them went back to the city of
Ilius. The Achaeans in like manner heaped their dead sadly and
silently on the pyre, and having burned them went back to their
ships.
Now in the twilight when it was not yet dawn, chosen bands of the
Achaeans were gathered round the pyre and built one barrow that
was raised in common for all, and hard by this they built a high
wall to shelter themselves and their ships; they gave it strong gates
that there might be a way through them for their chariots, and close
outside it they dug a trench deep and wide, and they planted it
within with stakes.
Thus did the Achaeans toil, and the gods, seated by the side of Jove
the lord of lightning, marvelled at their great work; but Neptune,
lord of the earthquake, spoke, saying, “Father Jove, what mortal in
the whole world will again take the gods into his counsel? See you
not how the Achaeans have built a wall about their ships and
driven a trench all round it, without offering hecatombs to the
gods? The The fame of this wall will reach as far as dawn itself, and
men will no longer think anything of the one which Phoebus
Apollo and myself built with so much labour for Laomedon.”
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