Provided by The Internet Classics Archive. See bottom for copyright ...

one whom they saw to be remiss. "My friends," they cried, "Argives
one and all-­‐ good bad and indifferent, for there was never fight yet,
in which all were of equal prowess-­‐ there is now work enough, as you
very well know, for all of you. See that you none of you turn in flight
towards the ships, daunted by the shouting of the foe, but press forward
and keep one another in heart, if it may so be that Olympian Jove
the lord of lightning will vouchsafe us to repel our foes, and drive
them back towards the city."
Thus did the two go about shouting and cheering the Achaeans on. As
the flakes that fall thick upon a winter's day, when Jove is minded
to snow and to display these his arrows to mankind-­‐ he lulls the wind
to rest, and snows hour after hour till he has buried the tops of
the high mountains, the headlands that jut into the sea, the grassy
plains, and the tilled fields of men; the snow lies deep upon the
forelands, and havens of the grey sea, but the waves as they come
rolling in stay it that it can come no further, though all else is
wrapped as with a mantle so heavy are the heavens with snow-­‐ even
thus thickly did the stones fall on one side and on the other, some
thrown at the Trojans, and some by the Trojans at the Achaeans; and
the whole wall was in an uproar.
Still the Trojans and brave Hector would not yet have broken down
the gates and the great bar, had not Jove turned his son Sarpedon
against the Argives as a lion against a herd of horned cattle. Before
him he held his shield of hammered bronze, that the smith had beaten
so fair and round, and had lined with ox hides which he had made fast
with rivets of gold all round the shield; this he held in front of