s horsemanship should surely win
Renown: yet victory gladdened not his heart
In that great struggle for Achilles' prizes;
Nay, swift albeit he was, the King of Men
By skill outraced him. Shouted all the folk,
"Glory to Agamemnon!" Yet they acclaimed
The steed of valiant Sthenelus and his lord,
For that the fiery flying of his feet
Still won him second place, albeit oft
Wide of the course he swerved. Then Thetis gave
To Atreus' son, while laughed his lips for joy,
God-sprung Polydorus' breastplate silver-wrought.
To Sthenelus Asteropaeus' massy helm,
Two lances, and a taslet strong, she gave.
Yea, and to all the riders who that day
Came at Achilles' funeral-feast to strive
She gave gifts. But the son of the old war-lord,
Laertes, inly grieved to be withheld
From contests of the strong, how fain soe'er,
By that sore wound which Alcon dealt to him
In the grim fight around dead Aeacas' son.

BOOK V

How the Arms of Achilles were cause of madness and death unto Aias.

So when all other contests had an end,
Thetis the Goddess laid down in the midst
Great-souled Achilles' arms divinely wrought;
And all around flashed out the cunning work
Wherewith the Fire-god overchased the shield
Fashioned for Aeacus' son, the dauntless-souled.

Inwrought upon that labour of a God
Were first high heaven and cloudland, and beneath
Lay earth and sea: the winds, the clouds were there,
The moon and sun, each in its several place;
There too were all the stars that, fixed in heaven,
Are borne in its eternal circlings round.
Above and through all was the infinite air
Where to and fro flit birds of slender beak:
Thou hadst said they lived, and floated on the breeze.
Here Tethys' all-embracing arms were wrought,
And Ocean's fathomless flow. The outrushing flood
Of rivers crying to the echoing hills
All round, to right, to left, rolled o'er the land.

Round it rose league-long mountain-ridges, haunts
Of terrible lions and foul jackals: there
Fierce bears and panthers prowled; with these were seen
Wild boars that whetted deadly-clashing tusks
In grimly-frothing jaws. There hunters sped
After the hounds: beaters with stone and dart,
To the life portrayed, toiled in the woodland sport.

And there were man-devouring wars, and all
Horrors of fight: slain men were falling down
Mid horse-hoofs; and the likeness of a plain
Blood