Homer, Iliad (Orange Street).pdf

Homer’s Iliad
with milk- even so did they gather round Sarpedon; nor did Jove
turn his keen eyes away for one moment from the fight, but kept
looking at it all the time, for he was settling how best to kill
Patroclus, and considering whether Hector should be allowed to
end him now in the fight round the body of Sarpedon, and strip
him of his armour, or whether he should let him give yet further
trouble to the Trojans. In the end, he deemed it best that the brave
squire of Achilles son of Peleus should drive Hector and the
Trojans back towards the city and take the lives of many. First,
therefore, he made Hector turn fainthearted, whereon he mounted
his chariot and fled, bidding the other Trojans fly also, for he saw
that the scales of Jove had turned against him. Neither would the
brave Lycians stand firm; they were dismayed when they saw their
king lying struck to the heart amid a heap of corpses- for when the
son of Saturn made the fight wax hot many had fallen above him.
The Achaeans, therefore stripped the gleaming armour from his
shoulders and the brave son of Menoetius gave it to his men to
take to the ships. Then Jove lord of the storm-cloud said to Apollo,
“Dear Phoebus, go, I pray you, and take Sarpedon out of range of
the weapons; cleanse the black blood from off him, and then bear
him a long way off where you may wash him in the river, anoint
him with ambrosia, and clothe him in immortal raiment; this done,
commit him to the arms of the two fleet messengers, Death, and
Sleep, who will carry him straightway to the rich land of Lycia,
where his brothers and kinsmen will inter him, and will raise both
mound and pillar to his memory, in due honour to the dead.”
Thus he spoke. Apollo obeyed his father’s saying, and came down
from the heights of Ida into the thick of the fight; forthwith he took
Sarpedon out of range of the weapons, and then bore him a long
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