The skirmish of the first day was only the preliminary to a more important engagement, and with what success to the Egyptians, and what loss to the Asiatics, has already been told. The poet does not give any details of this second affair. He describes it in a few lines dedicated entirely to praise of the king. The subject, in fact, is not the victory at Kadesh and the defeat of the Syrian armies, important as these may be to the historian; but the poet sings the indomitable courage of Ramses, his faith in the aid of the gods, the irresistible strength of his arm. He wished to portray him surprised, abandoned, and compensating for the faults of the generals by his bravery. All the facts which could lessen the general impression or diminish the glory of the royal bravery are put in the background. The household troops are mentioned only once; of the second day of the battle there is but an insufficient description. The king of the Kheta implores peace, Ramses grants it, and returns in triumph to Thebes. “Come, our beloved son, O Ramses Meri-Amen! The gods have given him infinite periods of eternity upon the double throne of his father Tmu, and all the nations are put under his feet.”[b] THE KINGDOM OF THE KHETA AND THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY [Sidenote: [_ca._ 1345-1285 B.C.]] After the preceding eulogy by Maspero, it is well to read Eduard Meyer’s more cynical account of the reign of the great Ramses. It will enable us the better to preserve a mental balance. It should not, however, lead us to forget that we are in the presence of one of the great epochs of civilisation; for all such great epochs have had their iconoclasts as well as their adulators.[a] Ramses II exaggerated his own praises in inscriptions, saying that, already in the womb, he had been acknowledged king and that his father had handed him over the government when he was yet a child. This is correct in so far as he was solemnly proclaimed successor to the throne in his early youth, and probably raised to be co-regent by Seti toward the end of his reign; as crown-prince he accompanied his father in the wars against the Libyans.