Jupiter rates him soundly, as the outlaw of the Olympian family, inheriting his mother Juno's headstrong temper. However, he bids Pæon, the physician of the immortals, heal the wound, and Hebe prepares him a bath. Juno and Minerva have done their work, having driven Mars from the field, and they too quit the plains of Troy, and leave the mortal heroes to themselves.
While Diomed still pursues his career of slaughter, Menelaus gives token of that easy and pliant disposition which half explains his behaviour to Helen. He has at his mercy a Trojan who has been thrown from his chariot, and begs his life. The fair-haired king is about to spare him,—as none in the whole story of the fight is spared,—when his brother Agamemnon comes up, and after chiding him for such soft-heartedness, pins the wretched suppliant to the ground with his ashen spear.
So the fight goes on through the sixth book; which is, however, chiefly remarkable for two of the most striking episodes in the poem. The first is the meeting of Diomed with the young Lycian captain, Glaucus. Encountering him in the field, and struck by his bold bearing, he asks his name and race. Glaucus replies with that pathetic simile which, found under many forms in many poets, has its earliest embodiment in the verse of the Hebrew Psalmist and the Greek bard. "The days of man are but as grass."
My race to know? the generations are
As of the leaves, so also of mankind.
As the leaves fall, now withering in the wind,
And others are put forth, and spring descends,
Such on the earth the race of men we find;
Each in his order a set time attends;
F
