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Rh and cruelly taunts him with his reappearance: the dead Trojans whom he has slain will surely next come to life again, if the captives thus cross the seas to swell the ranks of his enemies. In vain Lycaon pleads for his life, that he is not the son of the same mother as Hector—that his brother Polydorus has just been slain, which may well content the Greek's vengeance. There is a gloomy irony in the words with which Achilles rejects his prayer. Before Patroclus fell, he had spared many a Trojan; but henceforth, all appeal to his mercy is vain—most of all from a son of Priam. But, in fact, the wish to escape one's fate he holds to be utterly unreasonable;

At last the great river-god—whom the gods call Xanthus, but men Scamander—rises in his might, indignant at seeing his stream choked with corpses, and stained with blood. He hurls the whole force of his waves against Achilles, and the hero is fain to save himself by grasping an elm that overhangs the bank, and so swinging himself to land. But here Scamander pursues him, and, issuing from his banks, rolls in a deluge over the plain. Even the soul of Achilles is terror-stricken at this new aspect of death. Is he to die thus, like some vile churl—

Neptune and Minerva appear to encourage him, and give him strength to battle with the flood: and when