Page:The Story of the Iliad.djvu/49

Rh and Ulysses; but Menelaüs, good at need, came uncalled, knowing that he would be welcome.

Then King Agamemnon stood up and prayed: "O Zeus, let not the sun set and the darkness fall before I humble Priam's roof-tree in the dust, and burn his doors with fire, and rend the coat of Hector on his breast!"

So he prayed, but Zeus hearkened not as yet.

And when the feast was ended, the chiefs marshalled their hosts for the battle; and Athené in the midst swept through the host, urging them to the conflict; and in every heart she roused delight of battle, so that there was no man but would have chosen war rather than to return to his home. As is the flare of a great fire when a wood is burning on a hilltop, so was the flash of their arms and their armour, as they thronged to the field. And as the countless flocks of wild geese or cranes or swans now wheel and now settle in the great Asian fen by the stream of Caÿster, or as the bees swarm in the spring, when the milk-pails are full, so thick the Greeks thronged to the battle in the great plain by the banks of the Scamander.