pursuit as far as the camp and took it by assault, together with the baggage and slaves and baggage animals. Directly the rout of the enemy had begun, as I have described, and while we kept up a hot pursuit, they were driven towards the left, where the river was on the right of the victors. And there the greatest slaughter took place, and the river was choked with the bodies of men and horses, indiscriminately. For the Drave was not like the Scamander, nor so kind to the fugitives; it did not put ashore and cast forth from its waters the dead in their armour, nor cover up and hide securely in its eddies those who escaped alive. For that is what the Trojan river did(277), perhaps out of kindness, perhaps it was only that it was so small that it offered an easy crossing to one who tried to swim or walk. In fact, when a single poplar was thrown into it, it formed a bridge,(278) and the whole river roared with foam and blood and beat upon the shoulders of Achilles,(279) if indeed we may believe even this, but it never did anything more violent. When a slight fire scorched it, it gave up fighting at once and swore not to play the part of ally. However this, too, was probably a jest on Homer’s part, when he invented that strange and unnatural sort of duel. For in the rest of the poem also he evidently favours Achilles, and he sets the army there as mere spectators while he brings Achilles on to the field as the only invincible and resistless warrior, and makes him slay all whom he encounters and put every one of the foe to flight, simply by his voice and bearing and the glance of his eyes, both when the battle begins and on the banks of the Scamander, till the fugitives were glad to gather within the wall of the city. Many verses he devotes to relating this, and then he invents the battles of the gods, and by embellishing his poem with such tales he corrupts his critics and prevents us from giving a fair and honest vote. But if there be any one who refuses to be beguiled by the beauty of the words and the fictions that are imported into the poem ...(280), then, though he is as strict as a member of the Areopagus, I shall not dread his decision. For we are convinced by the poem that the son of Peleus is a brave soldier. He slays twenty men; then) Ζωοὺς δ᾽ ἐκ ποταμοῖο δυώδεκα λέξατο κούρους, Τοὺς ἐξῆγε θύραζε τεθηπότας ἠύτε νεβρούς, Ποινὴν Πατρόκλοιο Μενοιτιάδαο θανόντος. (“He chose twelve youths alive out of the river and led them forth amazed like fawns to atone for the death of Patroclus, son of Menoitius.”)(281)