who
stayed behind and tried to comfort him in the bitterness of his sorrow:
but he would not be comforted till he should have flung himself into
the jaws of battle, and he fetched sigh on sigh, thinking ever of
Patroclus. Then he said--

"Hapless and dearest comrade, you it was who would get a good dinner
ready for me at once and without delay when the Achaeans were hasting
to fight the Trojans; now, therefore, though I have meat and drink in
my tents, yet will I fast for sorrow. Grief greater than this I could
not know, not even though I were to hear of the death of my father, who
is now in Phthia weeping for the loss of me his son, who am here
fighting the Trojans in a strange land for the accursed sake of Helen,
nor yet though I should hear that my son is no more--he who is being
brought up in Scyros--if indeed Neoptolemus is still living. Till now I
made sure that I alone was to fall here at Troy away from Argos, while
you were to return to Phthia, bring back my son with you in your own
ship, and show him all my property, my bondsmen, and the greatness of
my house--for Peleus must surely be either dead, or what little life
remains to him is oppressed alike with the infirmities of age and ever
present fear lest he should hear the sad tidings of my death."

He wept as he spoke, and the elders sighed in concert as each thought
on what he had left at home behind him. The son of Saturn looked down
with pity upon them, and said presently to Minerva, "My child, you have
quite deserted your hero; is he then gone so clean out of your
recollection? There he sits by the ships all desolate for the loss of
his dear comrade, and though the others are gone to their dinner he
will neither eat nor drink. Go then and drop nectar and ambrosia into
his breast, that he may know no hunger."

With these words he urged Minerva, who was already of the same mind.
She darted down from heaven into the air like some falcon sailing on
his broad wings and screaming. Meanwhile the Achaeans were arming
throughout the host, and when Minerva had dropped nectar and ambrosia
into Achilles so that no cruel hunger should cause his limbs to fail
him, she went back to the house of her mighty father. Thick as the
chill snow-flakes shed from the hand of Jove and borne on the keen
blasts of the north wind, even so thick did the gleaming helmets, the
bossed shields, the strongly plated breastplates, and the ashen spears
stream from the ships. The sheen pier