spear at Alcmaon the son
of Thestor and hit him. He drew his spear back again and Alcmaon came
down headlong after it with his bronzed armour rattling round him. Then
Sarpedon seized the battlement in his strong hands, and tugged at it
till it all gave way together, and a breach was made through which many
might pass.

Ajax and Teucer then both of them attacked him. Teucer hit him with an
arrow on the band that bore the shield which covered his body, but Jove
saved his son from destruction that he might not fall by the ships'
sterns. Meanwhile Ajax sprang on him and pierced his shield, but the
spear did not go clean through, though it hustled him back that he
could come on no further. He therefore retired a little space from the
battlement, yet without losing all his ground, for he still thought to
cover himself with glory. Then he turned round and shouted to the brave
Lycians saying, "Lycians, why do you thus fail me? For all my prowess I
cannot break through the wall and open a way to the ships
single-handed. Come close on behind me, for the more there are of us
the better."

The Lycians, shamed by his rebuke, pressed closer round him who was
their counsellor and their king. The Argives on their part got their
men in fighting order within the wall, and there was a deadly struggle
between them. The Lycians could not break through the wall and force
their way to the ships, nor could the Danaans drive the Lycians from
the wall now that they had once reached it. As two men, measuring-rods
in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a field that they own in
common, and stickle for their rights though they be but in a mere
strip, even so did the battlements now serve as a bone of contention,
and they beat one another's round shields for their possession. Many a
man's body was wounded with the pitiless bronze, as he turned round and
bared his back to the foe, and many were struck clean through their
shields; the wall and battlements were everywhere deluged with the
blood alike of Trojans and of Achaeans. But even so the Trojans could
not rout the Achaeans, who still held on; and as some honest
hard-working woman weighs wool in her balance and sees that the scales
be true, for she would gain some pitiful earnings for her little ones,
even so was the fight balanced evenly between them till the time came
when Jove gave the greater glory to Hector son of Priam, who was first
to spring towards the wall of the Achaeans. When he