l have laid itself down
in sweet sleep. But she herself guided it to that part where the golden
clasps of the girdle bound it, and the double-formed corslet met.[175]
The bitter arrow fell on his well-fitted belt, and through the
deftly-wrought belt was it driven, and it stuck in the variegated
corslet and the brazen-plated belt which he wore, the main defence of
his body, a guard against weapons, which protect him most; through even
this did it pass onwards, and the arrow grazed the surface of the hero's
skin, and straightway black gore flowed from the wound. And as when some
Maeonian[176] or Carian woman tinges ivory with purple colour, to be a
cheek-trapping for steeds; in her chamber it lies, and many charioteers
desire to bear it, but it lies by as an ornament for the king, both as a
decoration to the steed, and a glory to the rider: so, Menelaus, were
thy well-proportioned thighs, and legs, and fair feet below, stained
with gore.

[Footnote 174: It is elegantly observed by Coleridge, p. 160,
that "it is principally owing to our sense of the dramatic
probability of the action of the divinities in the Iliad that the
heroes do not seem dwarfed by their protectors; on the contrary,
the manifest favourite of the gods stands out in a dilated and
more awful shape before our imagination, and seems, by the
association, to be lifted up into the demigod."]

[Footnote 175: "Occurrebat sagittae, obvius erat ei
penetranti."--Heyne. But it is better to understand, "where the
plates of the cuirass meet and overlay the [Greek: zoma]."--Arnold.]

[Footnote 176: _I.e._ Lydian.]

Then Agamemnon, the king of men, shuddered, as he beheld the black gore
flowing from the wound, and Mars-beloved Menelaus himself shuddered. But
when he saw the string[177] and the barbs still outside, his courage was
once more collected in his breast. But Agamemnon, deeply sighing, and
holding Menelaus with his hand, spoke thus amidst them, and all his
companions kept groaning with him:

[Footnote 177: With which the iron head was fastened to the
shaft.]

"O dear brother, now have I ratified a treaty which will prove thy
death, exposing thee alone to fight with the Trojans for the Greeks;
since the Trojans have thus wounded thee, and trampled on the faithful
league. But by no means shall the league and the blood of the lambs be
in vain, and the pure libations, and the right hands in which we
confided. For even