wered, "Menelaus, you have said well: do you, then, and
Meriones stoop down, raise the body, and bear it out of the fray, while
we two behind you keep off Hector and the Trojans, one in heart as in
name, and long used to fighting side by side with one another."

On this Menelaus and Meriones took the dead man in their arms and
lifted him high aloft with a great effort. The Trojan host raised a hue
and cry behind them when they saw the Achaeans bearing the body away,
and flew after them like hounds attacking a wounded boar at the loo of
a band of young huntsmen. For a while the hounds fly at him as though
they would tear him in pieces, but now and again he turns on them in a
fury, scaring and scattering them in all directions--even so did the
Trojans for a while charge in a body, striking with sword and with
spears pointed at both the ends, but when the two Ajaxes faced them and
stood at bay, they would turn pale and no man dared press on to fight
further about the dead.

In this wise did the two heroes strain every nerve to bear the body to
the ships out of the fight. The battle raged round them like fierce
flames that when once kindled spread like wildfire over a city, and the
houses fall in the glare of its burning--even such was the roar and
tramp of men and horses that pursued them as they bore Patroclus from
the field. Or as mules that put forth all their strength to draw some
beam or great piece of ship's timber down a rough mountain-track, and
they pant and sweat as they go--even so did Menelaus and pant and sweat
as they bore the body of Patroclus. Behind them the two Ajaxes held
stoutly out. As some wooded mountain-spur that stretches across a plain
will turn water and check the flow even of a great river, nor is there
any stream strong enough to break through it--even so did the two
Ajaxes face the Trojans and stem the tide of their fighting though they
kept pouring on towards them and foremost among them all was Aeneas son
of Anchises with valiant Hector. As a flock of daws or starlings fall
to screaming and chattering when they see a falcon, foe to all small
birds, come soaring near them, even so did the Achaean youth raise a
babel of cries as they fled before Aeneas and Hector, unmindful of
their former prowess. In the rout of the Danaans much goodly armour
fell round about the trench, and of fighting there was no end.

BOOK XVIII

The grief of Achilles over Patroclus--The visit of Thetis
to Vul