Whom answer’d thus great Ajax Telamon: “Illustrious Menelaus, all thy words Are just and true; then from amid the press, Thou and Meriones, take up in haste, And bear away the body; while behind We two, in heart united, as in name, Who side by side have still been wont to fight, Will Hector and his Trojans hold at bay.” He said; they, lifting in their arms the corpse, Uprais’d it high in air; then from behind Loud yell’d the Trojans, as they saw the Greeks Retiring with their dead; and on they rush’d, As dogs that in advance of hunter youths Pursue a wounded boar; awhile they run, Eager for blood; but when, in pride of strength, He turns upon them, backward they recoil, This way and that in fear of death dispers’d: So onward press’d awhile the Trojan crowd, With thrust of swords, and double-pointed spears; But ever as th’ Ajaces turn’d to bay, Their colour chang’d to pale, not one so bold As, dashing on, to battle for the corpse. Thus they, with anxious care, from off the field Bore tow’rd the ships their dead; but on their track Came sweeping on the storm of battle, fierce, As, on a sudden breaking forth, the fire Seizes some populous city, and devours House after house amid the glare and blaze, While roar the flames before the gusty wind; So fiercely pressed upon the Greeks’ retreat The clatt’ring tramp of steeds and armed men. But as the mules, with stubborn strength endued, That down the mountain through the trackless waste Drag some huge log, or timber for the ships; And spent with toil and sweat, still labour on Unflinching; so the Greeks with patient toil Bore on their dead; th’ Ajaces in their rear Stemming the war, as stems the torrent’s force Some wooded cliff, far stretching o’er the plain; Checking the mighty river’s rushing stream, And flinging it aside upon the plain, Itself unbroken by the strength of flood: So firmly, in the rear, th’ Ajaces stemm’d The Trojan force; yet these still onward press’d, And, ’mid their comrades proudly eminent, Two chiefs, Æneas, old Anchises’ son, And glorious Hector, in the van were seen. Then, as a cloud of starlings or of daws Fly screaming, as they see the hawk approach, To lesser birds the messenger of death; So before Hector and Æneas fled, Screaming, forgetful of their warlike fame, The sons of Greece; and scatter’d here and there Around the ditch lay store of goodly arms, By Greeks abandon’d in their hasty flight. Yet still, unintermitted, rag’d the war. ARGUMENT. THE GRIEF OF ACHILLES, AND NEW ARMOUR MADE HIM BY VULCAN.