Brave Trojan friends, but mend your hands; up, and break through the wall, And make a bonfire of their fleet.” All heard, and all in heaps Got scaling-ladders, and aloft. In mean space, Hector leaps Upon the port, from whose out-part he tore a massy stone, Thick downwards, upward edg’d; it was so huge an one That two vast yeomen of most strength, such as these times beget,[6] Could not from earth lift to a cart, yet he did brandish it Alone, Saturnius made it light; and swinging it as nought, He came before the planky gates, that all for strength were wrought, And kept the port; two-fold they were, and with two rafters barr’d, High, and strong-lock’d; he rais’d the stone, bent to the hurl so hard, And made it with so main a strength, that all the gates did crack, The rafters left them, and the folds one from another brake, The hinges piecemeal flew, and through the fervent little rock Thunder’d a passage; with his weight th’ inwall his breast did knock, And in rush’d Hector, fierce and grim as any stormy night; His brass arms round about his breast reflected terrible light; Each arm held-up held each a dart; his presence call’d up all The dreadful spirits his being held, that to the threaten’d wall None but the Gods might check his way; his eyes were furnaces; And thus he look’d back, call’d in all. All fir’d their courages, And in they flow’d. The Grecians fled, their fleet now and their freight Ask’d all their rescue. Greece went down; Tumult was at his height. THE END OF THE TWELFTH BOOK. [1] Such maketh Virgil Pandaras and Bitias. [2] Apta ad rem comparatio. [3] Sarpedon’s speech to Glaucus, neither equalled by any (in this kind) of all that have written. [4] _Admiranda et penè inimitabilis comparatio_ (saith Spond.); and yet in the explication of it, he thinks all superfluous but three words, ὀλίγῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ, _exiguo in loco_, leaving out other words more expressive, with his old rule, _uno pede, etc_. [5] A simile superior to the other, in which, comparing mightiest things with meanest, and the meanest illustrating the mightiest, both meeting in one end of this life’s preservation and credit, our Homer is beyond comparison and admiration. [6] Δύ ἀνέρε δήμου, Duo viri plebei. THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF HOMER’S ILIADS THE ARGUMENT Neptune (in pity of the Greeks’ hard plight) Like Calchas, both th’ Ajaces doth excite, And others, to repel the charging foe. Idomenëus bravely doth bestow His kingly forces, and doth sacrifice Othryonëus to the Destinies, With divers others. Fair Deiphobus, And his prophetic brother Helenus, Are wounded. But the great Priamides. Gath’ring his forces, heartens their address Against the enemy; and then the field A mighty death on either side doth yield. ANOTHER ARGUMENT The Greeks, with Troy’s bold pow’r dismay’d, Are cheer’d by Neptune’s secret aid.