Nor did the blessed immortal gods forget thee, O Menelaus; 174 but chiefly the spoil-hunting daughter of Jove, who, standing before thee, averted the deadly weapon. She as much repelled it from thy body, as a mother repels a fly from her infant, when it shall have laid itself down in sweet sleep. But she herself guided it to that part where the golden clasps of the girdle bound it, and the double-formed corslet met. 175 The bitter arrow fell on his well-fitted belt, and through the deftly-wrought belt was it driven, and it stuck in the variegated corslet and the brazen-plated belt which he wore, the main defence of his body, a guard against weapons, which protect him most; through even this did it pass onwards, and the arrow grazed the surface of the hero’s skin, and straightway black gore flowed from the wound. And as when some Mæonian 176 or Carian woman tinges ivory with purple colour, to be a cheek-trapping for steeds; in her chamber it lies, and many charioteers desire to bear it, but it lies by as an ornament for the king, both as a decoration to the steed, and a glory to the rider: so, Menelaus, were thy well-proportioned thighs, and legs, and fair feet below, stained with gore. Footnote 174: (return) It is elegantly observed by Coleridge, p. 160, that “it is principally owing to our sense of the dramatic probability of the action of the divinities in the Iliad that the heroes do not seem dwarfed by their protectors; on the contrary, the manifest favourite of the gods stands out in a dilated and more awful shape before our imagination, and seems, by the association, to be lifted up into the demigod.” Footnote 175: (return) “Occurrebat sagittæ, obvius erat ei penetranti.”—Heyne. But it is better to understand, “where the plates of the cuirass meet and overlay the ζωμα].”—Arnold. Footnote 176: (return) _I.e._ Lydian. Then Agamemnon, the king of men, shuddered, as he beheld the black gore flowing from the wound, and Mars-beloved Menelaus himself shuddered. But when he saw the string 177 and the barbs still outside, his courage was once more collected in his breast. But Agamemnon, deeply sighing, and holding Menelaus with his hand, spoke thus amidst them, and all his companions kept groaning with him: Footnote 177: (return) With which the iron head was fastened to the shaft.