To whom again Menoetius’ noble son: “How may this be? say, brave Eurypylus, What must I do? a messenger am I, Sent by Gerenian Nestor, prop of Greece, With tidings to Achilles; yet ev’n so I will not leave thee in this weary plight.” He said, and passing his supporting hand Beneath his breast, the wounded warrior led Within the tent; th’ attendant saw, and spread The ox-hide couch; then as he lay reclin’d, Patroclus, with his dagger, from the thigh Cut out the biting shaft; and from the wound With tepid water cleans’d the clotted blood; Then, pounded in his hands, a root applied Astringent, anodyne, which all his pain Allay’d; the wound was dried, and stanch’d the blood. ARGUMENT. THE BATTLE AT THE GRECIAN WALL. The Greeks having retired into their entrenchments, Hector attempts to force them; but it proving impossible to pass the ditch, Polydamas advises to quit their chariots, and manage the attack on foot. The Trojans follow his counsel, and having divided their army into five bodies of foot, begin the assault. But upon the signal of an eagle with a serpent in his talons, which appeared on the left hand of the Trojans, Polydamas endeavours to withdraw them again. This Hector opposes, and continues the attack; in which, after many actions, Sarpedon makes the first breach in the wall: Hector also, casting a stone of a vast size, forces open one of the gates, and enters at the head of his troops, who victoriously pursue the Grecians even to their ships. BOOK XII. Thus o’er the wounded chief Eurypylus Watch’d in his tent Menoetius’ noble son; But hand to hand the Greeks and Trojans fought; Nor longer might the ditch th’ assault repel, Nor the broad wall above, which Greeks had built, To guard their ships, and round it dug the ditch; But to the Gods no hecatombs had paid, That they the ships and all the stores within Might safely keep; against the will of Heav’n The work was done, and thence not long endur’d. While Hector liv’d, and Peleus’ son his wrath Retain’d, and Priam’s city untaken stood; So long the Grecian wall remain’d entire: But of the Trojans when the best had fall’n, Of Greeks, when some were slain, some yet surviv’d; When the tenth year had seen the fall of Troy, And Greeks, embark’d, had ta’en their homeward way, Then Neptune and Apollo counsel took To sap the wall by aid of all the streams That seaward from the heights of Ida flow; Rhesus, Caresus, and Heptaporus, Granicus, and Æsepus, Rhodius, Scamander’s stream divine, and Simois, Where helms and shields lay buried in the sand, And a whole race of warrior demigods: These all Apollo to one channel turn’d; Nine days against the wall the torrent beat; And Jove sent rain continuous, that the wall Might sooner be submerg’d; while Neptune’s self, His trident in his hand, led on the stream, Washing away the deep foundations, laid, Laborious, by the Greeks, with logs and stones, Now by fast-flowing Hellespont dispers’d. The wall destroy’d, o’er all the shore he spread