But to pass over the variety displayed in the wounds and other smaller points, consider the actual fighting. For the maneuvers we may refer to two interesting chapters in Lang’s _World of Homer_, where the variety and consistency of Homeric warfare are well described and defended against the dissectionists. The point, however, we are working toward is the variety shown in even the external circumstances of the warfare. A closer study than we can afford to give would reveal more variety, but we may mention the plain, the wall, the river, the night as in the tenth book, the mist. These are the various circumstances which the poet introduces into his battles, relieving the monotony and sustaining the interest. There is no falling off. The different heroes, too, succeed one another; the victory alternates from one side to the other; the battle on earth has its echo among the gods. The interest rises. Patroclos enters the fight, and then his fallen body becomes the center of the struggle, as the wall and the ships had been before. Something, too, is left for Achilles. Ferocious as may have been the fighting before, it becomes a veritable shambles when Achilles enters the fray. Never were such frightful wounds, never such rivers of blood as may be witnessed in Book XX “when the black earth ran blood,” “when beneath the great-hearted Achilles his whole-hooved horses trampled corpses and shields together; and with blood all the axle-tree below was sprinkled and the rims that ran around the car, for blood-drops from the horses’ hooves splashed them and blood-drops from the tires of the wheels. But the son of Peleus pressed on to win his glory, flecking with gore his irresistible hands.” Then follows the battle in the river, and finally the battle of the gods themselves, and after the necessary relief and lull and reawakening of interest comes the last battle of all and the climax of the poem in the conflict of Achilles and Hector.