“Take us alive, O son of Atreus, and thou shalt receive worthy ransoms. For many treasures lie in the houses of Antimachus, brass, gold, and variously-wrought iron. From these would our father give infinite ransoms, if he should hear that we were alive at the ships of the Greeks.” Footnote 366: (return) Compare the similar allusion to rustic pursuits in xvi. 779, with Buttm. Lexil. p. 89. Thus both weeping addressed the king with soothing words; but heard an unsoothing reply: “If indeed ye be the sons of warlike Antimachus, who once in an assembly of the Trojans, ordered that they should there put to death Menelaus, coming as an ambassador along with godlike Ulysses, and not send him back to the Greeks—now surely shall ye pay the penalty of the unmerited insolence of your father.” He said, and hurled Pisander from his horses to the ground, striking him on the breast with his spear; and he was stretched supine upon the soil. But Hippolochus leaped down, whom next he slew upon the ground, having lopped off his hands with his sword, and cut off his neck; and it (the head) like a cylinder, he hurled forward, to be rolled through the crowd. These then he left there; and where very many phalanxes were thrown into confusion, there he rushed, and at the same time other well-greaved Greeks. Infantry slew infantry, flying from necessity, and horse [slew] horse, slaughtering with the brass (whilst the dust was raised by them from the plain, which the loud-sounding feet of the horses excited); but king Agamemnon, constantly slaying, pursued, cheering on the Greeks. And as when a destructive fire falls upon a woody forest, and the wind whirling carries it on all sides, whilst the branches fall with the roots, overwhelmed by the violence of the flame; so fell the heads of the flying Trojans, at the hand of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and many lofty-necked steeds rattled their empty chariots through the ranks 367 of the battle, longing for their faultless charioteers; but they lay upon the earth, far more agreeable to the vultures than to their wives. Footnote 367: (return) Literally, “the bridges,” _i. e._ the open spaces between the lines.