So was Menœtius’ gallant son employ’d Healing Eurypylus. The Greeks, meantime, And Trojans with tumultuous fury fought. Nor was the foss ordain’d long time to exclude The host of Troy, nor yet the rampart built5 Beside it for protection of the fleet; For hecatomb the Greeks had offer’d none, Nor prayer to heaven, that it might keep secure Their ships with all their spoils. The mighty work As in defiance of the Immortal Powers10 Had risen, and could not therefore long endure. While Hector lived, and while Achilles held His wrathful purpose; while the city yet Of royal Priam was unsack’d, so long The massy structure stood; but when the best15 And bravest of the Trojan host were slain, And of the Grecian heroes, some had fallen And some survived, when Priam’s towers had blazed In the tenth year, and to their native shores The Grecians with their ships, at length, return’d,20 Then Neptune, with Apollo leagued, devised Its ruin; every river that descends From the Idæan heights into the sea They brought against it, gathering all their force. Rhesus, Caresus, Rhodius, the wide-branch’d25 Heptaporus, Æsepus, Granicus, Scamander’s sacred current, and thy stream Simöis, whose banks with helmets and with shields Were strew’d, and Chiefs of origin divine; All these with refluent course Apollo drove30 Nine days against the rampart, and Jove rain’d Incessant, that the Grecian wall wave-whelm’d Through all its length might sudden disappear. Neptune with his tridental mace, himself, Led them, and beam and buttress to the flood35 Consigning, laid by the laborious Greeks, Swept the foundation, and the level bank Of the swift-rolling Hellespont restored. The structure thus effaced, the spacious beach He spread with sand as at the first; then bade40 Subside the streams, and in their channels wind With limpid course, and pleasant as before, Apollo thus and Neptune, from the first, Design’d its fall; but now the battle raved And clamors of the warriors all around45 The strong-built turrets, whose assaulted planks Rang, while the Grecians, by the scourge of Jove Subdued, stood close within their fleet immured, At Hector’s phalanx-scattering force appall’d. He, as before, with whirlwind fury fought.50 As when the boar or lion fiery-eyed Turns short, the hunters and the hounds among, The close-embattled troop him firm oppose, And ply him fast with spears; he no dismay Conceives or terror in his noble heart,55 But by his courage falls; frequent he turns Attempting bold the ranks, and where he points Direct his onset, there the ranks retire; So, through the concourse on his rolling wheels Borne rapid, Hector animated loud60 His fellow-warriors to surpass the trench. But not his own swift-footed steeds would dare That hazard; standing on the dangerous brink They neigh’d aloud, for by its breadth the foss Deterr’d them; neither was the effort slight65 To leap that gulf, nor easy the attempt To pass it through; steep were the banks profound