bone, but
his father as yet warded off destruction from him.

His comrades bore Sarpedon out of the fight, in great pain by the
weight of the spear that was dragging from his wound. They were in such
haste and stress as they bore him that no one thought of drawing the
spear from his thigh so as to let him walk uprightly. Meanwhile the
Achaeans carried off the body of Tlepolemus, whereon Ulysses was moved
to pity, and panted for the fray as he beheld them. He doubted whether
to pursue the son of Jove, or to make slaughter of the Lycian rank and
file; it was not decreed, however, that he should slay the son of Jove;
Minerva, therefore, turned him against the main body of the Lycians. He
killed Coeranus, Alastor, Chromius, Alcandrus, Halius, Noemon, and
Prytanis, and would have slain yet more, had not great Hector marked
him, and sped to the front of the fight clad in his suit of mail,
filling the Danaans with terror. Sarpedon was glad when he saw him
coming, and besought him, saying, "Son of Priam, let me not be here to
fall into the hands of the Danaans. Help me, and since I may not return
home to gladden the hearts of my wife and of my infant son, let me die
within the walls of your city."

Hector made him no answer, but rushed onward to fall at once upon the
Achaeans and kill many among them. His comrades then bore Sarpedon away
and laid him beneath Jove's spreading oak tree. Pelagon, his friend and
comrade, drew the spear out of his thigh, but Sarpedon fainted and a
mist came over his eyes. Presently he came to himself again, for the
breath of the north wind as it played upon him gave him new life, and
brought him out of the deep swoon into which he had fallen.

Meanwhile the Argives were neither driven towards their ships by Mars
and Hector, nor yet did they attack them; when they knew that Mars was
with the Trojans they retreated, but kept their faces still turned
towards the foe. Who, then, was first and who last to be slain by Mars
and Hector? They were valiant Teuthras, and Orestes the renowned
charioteer, Trechus the Aetolian warrior, Oenomaus, Helenus the son of
Oenops, and Oresbius of the gleaming girdle, who was possessed of great
wealth, and dwelt by the Cephisian lake with the other Boeotians who
lived near him, owners of a fertile country.

Now when the goddess Juno saw the Argives thus falling, she said to
Minerva, "Alas, daughter of aegis-bearing Jove, unweariable, the
promise we made Menelaus that h