He said; and sank Lycaon’s limbs and heart; He loos’d the spear, and sat, with both his hands Uprais’d, imploring; but Achilles drew, And on his neck beside the collar-bone Let fall his trenchant sword; the two-edg’d blade Was buried deep; prone on the earth he lay; Forth gush’d the crimson blood, and dyed the ground. Him, dragging by the feet, Achilles threw In the mid stream, and thus with vaunting speech: “Lie there amid the fishes, who shall cleanse, But not with kindly thought, thy gory wounds: O’er thee, extended on thy bier, shall rise No mother’s wail; Scamander’s eddying stream Shall to the sea’s broad bosom roll thee down; And, springing through the darkly rippling wave, Fishes shall rise, and banquet on thy flesh. On now the work of death! till, flying ye, And slaught’ring I, we reach the city wall. Nor this fair-flowing, silver-eddying stream, Shall aught avail ye, though to him ye pay In sacrifice the blood of countless bulls, And living horses in his waters sink. Ye all shall perish, till Patroclus’ death Be fully aveng’d, and slaughter of the Greeks, Whom, in my absence, by the ships ye slew.” He said: the mighty River at his words Indignant chaf’d, and ponder’d in his mind How best to check Achilles’ warlike toil, And from destruction guard the Trojan host. Meantime Achilles with his pond’rous spear Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon, Assail’d with deadly purpose; Pelegon To broadly-flowing Axius ow’d his birth, The River-God commingling with the blood Of Periboea, daughter eldest born Of Acessamenus: on him he sprang; He, from the river rising, stood oppos’d. Two lances in his hand; his courage rous’d By Xanthus, who, indignant, saw his stream Polluted by the blood of slaughter’d youths, By fierce Achilles’ hand, unpitying, slain. When near the warriors, each to other, came, Achilles, swift of foot, took up the word: “What man, and whence art thou, who dar’st to stand Oppos’d to me? of most unhappy sires The children they, who my encounter meet!” To whom th’ illustrious son of Pelegon: “Great son of Peleus, why enquire my race? From far Paeonia’s fertile fields I come, The leader of the long-spear’d Paeon host. Ten days have pass’d since I to Ilium came. From widely-flowing Axius my descent, Axius, the purest stream on earth that flows. He Pelegon begot, the spear-renown’d; Of Pelegon I boast me sprung; and now Address thee, brave Achilles, to the fight.”