Page:Iliad Buckley.djvu/61

 

BOOK THE THIRD.

 

ARGUMENT.

Just as the armies are on the point of engaging, Paris proposes a single combat, but, on Menelaus advancing, retires in affright. Being rebuked by Hector, he consents to engage Menelaus, and a treaty is arranged. Paris is vanquished, but is brought back safe to Ilium by Venus, who appeases the anger of Helen. Menelaus, as conqueror, calls upon the Trojans to fulfill the conditions of the challenge.

But after they had each been marshaled along with their leaders, the Trojans, on the one hand, moved along with both clamor and battle-shout, like birds; just as is the noise of cranes forth under heaven, which, after they have escaped the winter and immeasurable^[1] shower, with a clamor do these wing their way toward the streams of the ocean, bearing slaughter and fate to the Pygmæan men; and they then at early dawn bring fatal strife. But the Greeks, on the other hand, breathing might,^[2] advanced in silence, anxious in mind to aid one another.

As when the south wind sheds a mist over the top of a mountain, by no means friendly to the shepherds, but more serviceable even than night to the robber, and one can see [only] so far as he hurls a stone. So under the feet of them proceeding an eddying dust kept rising: and very speedily they traversed the plain.

But when they now were near, approaching each other, godlike Alexander advanced in front of the Trojans, having a panther's skin on his shoulders, and his crooked bow, and a

1. See Alberti on Hesych. s. v., t. i. p. 126; lit. "what even a god would not say."—Buttm. Lexil. p. 359.
2. Paradise Lost, i. 559:—

   ⁠"―――thus they,
   ⁠Breathing united force with fixed thought,
   ⁠Moved on in silence."