Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
Pandarus had strung his bow he laid it carefully on the ground,
and his brave followers held their shields before him lest the
Achaeans should set upon him before he had shot Menelaus. Then
he opened the lid of his quiver and took out a winged arrow that
had yet been shot, fraught with the pangs of death. He laid the
arrow on the string and prayed to Lycian Apollo, the famous
archer, vowing that when he got home to his strong city of Zelea he
would offer a hecatomb of firstling lambs in his honour. He laid the
notch of the arrow on the oxhide bowstring, and drew both notch
and string to his breast till the arrow-head was near the bow; then
when the bow was arched into a half-circle he let fly, and the bow
twanged, and the string sang as the arrow flew gladly on over the
heads of the throng.
But the blessed gods did not forget thee, O Menelaus, and Jove’s
daughter, driver of the spoil, was the first to stand before thee and
ward off the piercing arrow. She turned it from his skin as a mother
whisks a fly from off her child when it is sleeping sweetly; she
guided it to the part where the golden buckles of the belt that
passed over his double cuirass were fastened, so the arrow struck
the belt that went tightly round him. It went right through this and
through the cuirass of cunning workmanship; it also pierced the
belt beneath it, which he wore next his skin to keep out darts or
arrows; it was this that served him in the best stead, nevertheless
the arrow went through it and grazed the top of the skin, so that
blood began flowing from the wound.
As when some woman of Meonia or Caria strains purple dye on to
a piece of ivory that is to be the cheek-piece of a horse, and is to be
laid up in a treasure house- many a knight is fain to bear it, but the
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