hly-dight shield that covered his body when he was in
battle--fair to see, with ten circles of bronze running all round it.
On the body of the shield there were twenty bosses of white tin, with
another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to show a
Gorgon's head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side. The
band for the arm to go through was of silver, on which there was a
writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that sprang from a single
neck, and went in and out among one another. On his head Agamemnon set
a helmet, with a peak before and behind, and four plumes of horse-hair
that nodded menacingly above it; then he grasped two redoubtable
bronze-shod spears, and the gleam of his armour shot from him as a
flame into the firmament, while Juno and Minerva thundered in honour of
the king of rich Mycene.

Every man now left his horses in charge of his charioteer to hold them
in readiness by the trench, while he went into battle on foot clad in
full armour, and a mighty uproar rose on high into the dawning. The
chiefs were armed and at the trench before the horses got there, but
these came up presently. The son of Saturn sent a portent of evil sound
about their host, and the dew fell red with blood, for he was about to
send many a brave man hurrying down to Hades.

The Trojans, on the other side upon the rising slope of the plain, were
gathered round great Hector, noble Polydamas, Aeneas who was honoured
by the Trojans like an immortal, and the three sons of Antenor,
Polybus, Agenor, and young Acamas beauteous as a god. Hector's round
shield showed in the front rank, and as some baneful star that shines
for a moment through a rent in the clouds and is again hidden beneath
them; even so was Hector now seen in the front ranks and now again in
the hindermost, and his bronze armour gleamed like the lightning of
aegis-bearing Jove.

And now as a band of reapers mow swathes of wheat or barley upon a rich
man's land, and the sheaves fall thick before them, even so did the
Trojans and Achaeans fall upon one another; they were in no mood for
yielding but fought like wolves, and neither side got the better of the
other. Discord was glad as she beheld them, for she was the only god
that went among them; the others were not there, but stayed quietly
each in his own home among the dells and valleys of Olympus. All of
them blamed the son of Saturn for wanting to give victory to the
Trojans, but father Jove he