Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
of his men, looking round him on every side lest he should be
wounded. But Meriones aimed a bronze-tipped arrow at him as he
was leaving the field, and hit him on the right buttock; the arrow
pierced the bone through and through, and penetrated the bladder,
so he sat down where he was and breathed his last in the arms of
his comrades, stretched like a worm upon the ground and watering
the earth with the blood that flowed from his wound. The brave
Paphlagonians tended him with all due care; they raised him into
his chariot, and bore him sadly off to the city of Troy; his father
went also with him weeping bitterly, but there was no ransom that
could bring his dead son to life again.
Paris was deeply grieved by the death of Harpalion, who was his
host when he went among the Paphlagonians; he aimed an arrow,
therefore, in order to avenge him. Now there was a certain man
named Euchenor, son of Polyidus the prophet, a brave man and
wealthy, whose home was in Corinth. This Euchenor had set sail for
Troy well knowing that it would be the death of him, for his good
old father Polyidus had often told him that he must either stay at
home and die of a terrible disease, or go with the Achaeans and
perish at the hands of the Trojans; he chose, therefore, to avoid
incurring the heavy fine the Achaeans would have laid upon him,
and at the same time to escape the pain and suffering of disease.
Paris now smote him on the jaw under his ear, whereon the life
went out of him and he was enshrouded in the darkness of death.
Thus then did they fight as it were a flaming fire. But Hector had
not yet heard, and did not know that the Argives were making
havoc of his men on the left wing of the battle, where the Achaeans
ere long would have triumphed over them, so vigorously did
257