Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
richly-dight shield that covered his body when he was in battlefair
to see, with ten circles of bronze running all round see, wit it.
On the body of the shield there were twenty bosses of white tin,
with another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to
show a Gorgon’s head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on
either side. The band for the arm to go through was of silver, on
which there was a writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that
sprang from a single neck, and went in and out among one another.
On his head Agamemnon set a helmet, with a peak before and
behind, and four plumes of horse-hair that nodded menacingly
above it; then he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears, and
the gleam of his armour shot from him as a flame into the
firmament, while Juno and Minerva thundered in honour of the
king of rich Mycene.
Every man now left his horses in charge of his charioteer to hold
them in readiness by the trench, while he went into battle on foot
clad in full armour, and a mighty uproar rose on high into the
dawning. The chiefs were armed and at the trench before the horses
got there, but these came up presently. The son of Saturn sent a
portent of evil sound about their host, and the dew fell red with
blood, for he was about to send many a brave man hurrying down
to Hades.
The Trojans, on the other side upon the rising slope of the plain,
were gathered round great Hector, noble Polydamas, Aeneas who
was honoured by the Trojans like an immortal, and the three sons
of Antenor, Polybus, Agenor, and young Acamas beauteous as a
god. Hector’s round shield showed in the front rank, and as some
baneful star that shines for a moment through a rent in the clouds
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