Achilles (Mythological character) -- Poetry; Classical literature; Epic poetry, Greek -- Translations into English; Trojan War -- Poetry
Then Ajax Telamon a stalwart youth,
Son of Anthemion, Simoisius, slew;
Whose mother gave him birth on Simois’ banks,
When with her parents down from Ida’s heights
She drove her flock; thence Simoisius nam’d:
Not destined he his parents to repay
Their early care; for short his term of life,
By godlike Ajax’ mighty spear subdued.
Him, to the front advancing, in the breast,
By the right nipple, Ajax struck; right through,
From front to back, the brass-tipp’d spear was driv’n,
Out through the shoulder; prone in dust he fell;
As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead,
Smooth-stemm’d, with branches tapering tow’rd the head;
Which with the biting axe the wheelwright fells,
To bend the felloes of his well-built car;
Sapless, beside the river, lies the tree;
So lay the youthful Simoisius, felled
By godlike Ajax’ hand. At him, in turn,
The son of Priam, Antiphus, encas’d
In radiant armour, from amid the crowd
His jav’lin threw; his mark, indeed, he miss’d;
But through the groin Ulysses’ faithful friend,
Leucus, he struck, in act to bear away
The youthful dead; down on the corpse he fell,
And, dying, of the dead relax’d his grasp.
Fierce anger, at his comrade’s slaughter, filled
Ulysses’ breast; in burnished armour clad
Forward he rush’d; and standing near, around
He look’d, and pois’d on high his glitt’ring lance:
Beneath his aim the Trojans back recoil’d;
Nor vainly flew the spear; Democoon,
A bastard son of Priam, met the blow:
He from Abydos came, his high-bred mares
There left to pasture; him Ulysses, fill’d
With fury at his lov’d companion’s death,
Smote on the head; through either temple pass’d
The pointed spear, and darkness veil’d his eyes.
Thund’ring he fell, and loud his armour rang.
At this the Trojan chiefs, and Hector’s self,
’Gan to give ground: the Greeks with joyful shouts
Seiz’d on the dead, and forward urg’d their course.
From Ilium’s heights Apollo, filled with wrath,
Look’d down, and to the Trojans shouted loud:
“Uprouse ye, valiant Trojans! give not way
Before the Greeks; their bodies are not stone,
Nor iron, to defy your trenchant swords;
And great Achilles, fair-hair’d Thetis’ son,
Fights not, but o’er his anger broods apart.”
So from the city call’d the heav’nly voice;
The Greeks, meanwhile, all-glorious Pallas fir’d,
Mov’d ’mid the tumult, and the laggards rous’d.
Then fell Diores, Amarynceus’ son:
A rugged fragment of a rock had crush’d
His ancle and right leg; from Ænon came
The Thracian chief who hurl’d it, Peirous, son
Of Imbrasus; the tendons both, and bones,
The huge mass shatter’d; backward in the dust
He fell, both hands extending to his friends,
Gasping his life away; then quick up-ran
He who the blow had dealt, and with his spear
Thrust through him, by the navel; from the wound
His bowels gush’d, and darkness veil’d his eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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