Yea, mighty Achilles, safe this day will we bear back thee; Yet nigh is the day of thy doom. Not guilty thereof be we, But a mighty God, and the overmastering Doom shall be cause. For not by our slowness of foot, neither slackness of will it was That the Trojans availed from Patroclus’ shoulders thine armour to tear; Nay, but a God most mighty, whom fair-tressed Lêto bare, Slew him in forefront of fight, giving Hector the glory meed. But for us, we twain as the blast of the West-wind fleetly could speed, Which they name for the lightest-winged of the winds; but for thee indeed, Even thee, is it doomed that by might of a God and a man shalt thou fall.[120] Footnote 119: _Iliad_, xix. 400-403 (Way’s trans.). Footnote 120: _Ib._ xix. 408-17 (Way’s trans.). But here the Erinyes, guardians of the natural order, interposed, and Xanthus’s brief burst of eloquence was brought to a close. The arrested prophecy, however, was only too intelligible; it could not deter, but it exasperated; and provoked the ensuing fiery rejoinder—a ‘passionate outcry of a soul in pain,’ if ever there was one— Xanthus, why bodest thou death unto me? Thou needest not so. Myself well know my weird, in death to be here laid low, Far-off from my dear loved sire, from the mother that bare me afar; Yet cease will I not till I give to the Trojans surfeit of war. He spake, and with shouts sped onward the thunder-foot steeds of his car.[121] Footnote 121: _Iliad_, xix. 420-24 (Way’s trans.). The aged Peleus was, indeed, destined to leave unredeemed his vow of flinging to the stream of the Spercheus the yellow locks of his safely-returned son; they were laid instead on the pyre of Patroclus. Nor was their wearer ever to revisit the forest fastnesses of Pelion, where he had learned from Chiron to draw the bow and cull healing herbs; yet of the short time allotted to him for vengeance not a moment should be lost. Although Homer tells us nothing as to the eventual fate of Xanthus and Balius, supplementary legends fill up the blank left by his silence. It appears hence that they were divinely restrained from carrying out their purpose of retiring, after the death of Achilles, to their birthplace by the Ocean-stream, and awaited instead the arrival of Neoptolemus at Troy.[122] For he was their appointed charioteer on the Elysian plains, which they may scour to this day, for anything that is known to the contrary, in friendly emulation with Pegasus, the hippogriff, and rutilæ manifestus Arion Igne jubæ: