Achaeans into security, and gave
victory to Hector and to the Trojans, who, trusting to their own might
and to the signs he had shown them, essayed to break through the great
wall of the Achaeans. They tore down the breastworks from the walls,
and overthrew the battlements; they upheaved the buttresses, which the
Achaeans had set in front of the wall in order to support it; when they
had pulled these down they made sure of breaking through the wall, but
the Danaans still showed no sign of giving ground; they still fenced
the battlements with their shields of ox-hide, and hurled their
missiles down upon the foe as soon as any came below the wall.

The two Ajaxes went about everywhere on the walls cheering on the
Achaeans, giving fair words to some while they spoke sharply to any one
whom they saw to be remiss. "My friends," they cried, "Argives one and
all--good bad and indifferent, for there was never fight yet, in which
all were of equal prowess--there is now work enough, as you very well
know, for all of you. See that you none of you turn in flight towards
the ships, daunted by the shouting of the foe, but press forward and
keep one another in heart, if it may so be that Olympian Jove the lord
of lightning will vouchsafe us to repel our foes, and drive them back
towards the city."

Thus did the two go about shouting and cheering the Achaeans on. As the
flakes that fall thick upon a winter's day, when Jove is minded to snow
and to display these his arrows to mankind--he lulls the wind to rest,
and snows hour after hour till he has buried the tops of the high
mountains, the headlands that jut into the sea, the grassy plains, and
the tilled fields of men; the snow lies deep upon the forelands, and
havens of the grey sea, but the waves as they come rolling in stay it
that it can come no further, though all else is wrapped as with a
mantle, so heavy are the heavens with snow--even thus thickly did the
stones fall on one side and on the other, some thrown at the Trojans,
and some by the Trojans at the Achaeans; and the whole wall was in an
uproar.

Still the Trojans and brave Hector would not yet have broken down the
gates and the great bar, had not Jove turned his son Sarpedon against
the Argives as a lion against a herd of horned cattle. Before him he
held his shield of hammered bronze, that the smith had beaten so fair
and round, and had lined with ox hides which he had made fast with
rivets of gold all round the shie