Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
BOOK XIV
Nestor was sitting over his wine, but the cry of battle did not
escape him, and he said to the son of Aesculapius, “What, noble
Machaon, is the meaning of all this? The shouts of men fighting by
our ships grow stronger and stronger; stay here, therefore, and sit
over your wine, while fair Hecamede heats you a bath and washes
the clotted blood from off you. I will go at once to the look-out
station and see what it is all about.”
As he spoke he took up the shield of his son Thrasymedes that was
lying in his tent, all gleaming with bronze, for Thrasymedes had
taken his father’s shield; he grasped his redoubtable bronze-shod
spear, and as soon as he was outside saw the disastrous rout of the
Achaeans who, now that their wall was overthrown, were flying
pell-mell before the Trojans. As when there is a heavy swell upon
the sea, but the waves are dumb- they keep their eyes on the watch
for the quarter whence the fierce winds may spring upon them, but
they stay where they are and set neither this way nor that, till some
particular wind sweeps down from heaven to determine themeven
so did the old man ponder whether to make for the crowd of
Danaans, or go in search of Agamemnon. In the end he deemed it
best to go to the son of Atreus; but meanwhile the hosts were
fighting and killing one another, and the hard bronze rattled on
their bodies, as they thrust at one another with their swords and
spears.
The wounded kings, the son of Tydeus, Ulysses, and Agamemnon
son of Atreus, fell in Nestor as they were coming up from their
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