Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
you thus fail me? For all my prowess I cannot break through the
wall and open a way to the ships single-handed. Come close on
behind me, for the more there are of us the better.”
The Lycians, shamed by his rebuke, pressed closer round him who
was their counsellor their king. The Argives on their part got their
men in fighting order within the wall, and there was a deadly
struggle between them. The Lycians could not break through the
wall and force their way to the ships, nor could the Danaans drive
the Lycians from the wall now that they had once reached it. As two
men, measuring-rods in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a
field that they own in common, and stickle for their rights though
they be but in a mere strip, even so did the battlements now serve
as a bone of contention, and they beat one another’s round shields
for their possession. Many a man’s body was wounded with the
pitiless bronze, as he turned round and bared his back to the foe,
and many were struck clean through their shields; the wall and
battlements were everywhere deluged with the blood alike of
Trojans and of Achaeans. But even so the Trojans could not rout the
Achaeans, who still held on; and as some honest hard-working
woman weighs wool in her balance and sees that the scales be true,
for she would gain some pitiful earnings for her little ones, even so
was the fight balanced evenly between them till the time came
when Jove gave the greater glory to Hector son of Priam, who was
first to spring towards the wall of the Achaeans. As he did so, he
cried aloud to the Trojans, “Up, Trojans, break the wall of the
Argives, and fling fire upon their ships.”
Thus did he hound them on, and in one body they rushed straight
at the wall as he had bidden them, and scaled the battlements with
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