Page:The Story of the Iliad.djvu/182

152 hand; and Athené and Hera thundered as he went to do him honour.

On the other side Hector set in order the men of Troy. As a baleful star now shineth from the clouds, and now is hidden, so Hector now shone among the foremost ranks, and now ordered the rearward.

Then the men of Troy and the Greeks leapt upon each other. As reapers reap in a rich man's field, making the barley and the wheat fall in long swathes, so did the Trojans and the Greeks slay one another. So long as the day was waxing the battle was equal, and the people fell alike on either side; but at noon, at the hour when he that cutteth wood among the hills groweth weary of his work and craveth for food, then the Greeks with a great onset brake the Trojan line, and Agamemnon leapt first into the breach. First he slew two men in one chariot, Bienor and his charioteer; and next to these two sons of Priam, Isus and Antiphus. These two Achilles had taken aforetime as they fed their flocks on the slopes of Ida, and had let them go for a ransom. Now Agamemnon came