Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
“Meriones, fleet son of Molus, best of comrades, why have you left
the field? Are you wounded, and is the point of the weapon
hurting you? or have you been sent to fetch me? I want no fetching;
I had far rather fight than stay in my tent.”
“Idomeneus,” answered Meriones, “I come for a spear, if I can find
one in my tent; I have broken the one I had, in throwing it at the
shield of Deiphobus.”
And Idomeneus captain of the Cretans answered, “You will find
one spear, or twenty if you so please, standing up against the end
wall of my tent. I have taken them from Trojans whom I have
killed, for I am not one to keep my enemy at arm’s length; therefore
I have spears, bossed shields, helmets, and burnished corslets.”
Then Meriones said, “I too in my tent and at my ship have spoils
taken from the Trojans, but they are not at hand. I have been at all
times valorous, and wherever there has been hard fighting have
held my own among the foremost. There may be those among the
Achaeans who do not know how I fight, but you know it well
enough yourself.”
Idomeneus answered, “I know you for a brave man: you need not
tell me. If the best men at the ships were being chosen to go on an
ambush- and there is nothing like this for showing what a man is
made of; it comes out then who is cowardly and who brave; the
coward will change colour at every touch and turn; he is full of
fears, and keeps shifting his weight first on one knee and then on
the other; his heart beats fast as he thinks of death, and one can hear
the chattering of his teeth; whereas the brave man will not change
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