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combat fighting in full armour, your bow and your arrows would serve
you in little stead. Vain is your boast in that you have scratched
the sole of my foot. I care no more than if a girl or some silly boy
had hit me. A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound; when
I wound a man though I but graze his skin it is another matter, for
my weapon will lay him low. His wife will tear her cheeks for grief
and his children will be fatherless: there will he rot, reddening
the earth with his blood, and vultures, not women, will gather round
him."
Thus he spoke, but Ulysses came up and stood over him. Under this
cover he sat down to draw the arrow from his foot, and sharp was the
pain he suffered as he did so. Then he sprang on to his chariot and
bade the charioteer drive him to the ships, for he was sick at heart.
Ulysses was now alone; not one of the Argives stood by him, for they
were all panic-­‐stricken. "Alas," said he to himself in his dismay,
"what will become of me? It is ill if I turn and fly before these
odds, but it will be worse if I am left alone and taken prisoner,
for the son of Saturn has struck the rest of the Danaans with panic.
But why talk to myself in this way? Well do I know that though cowards
quit the field, a hero, whether he wound or be wounded, must stand
firm and hold his own."
While he was thus in two minds, the ranks of the Trojans advanced
and hemmed him in, and bitterly did they come to me it. As hounds
and lusty youths set upon a wild boar that sallies from his lair whetting
his white tusks-­‐ they attack him from every side and can hear the