hemselves were put
to flight by the Greeks. Next [he attacked] Pisander and Hippolochus,
brave in battle, the sons of warlike Antimachus, who having accepted
gold from Paris, rich gifts, would not suffer them to restore Helen to
yellow-haired Menelaus. His two sons, then, Agamemnon, king of men,
seized, being in one chariot, for they drove their fleet horses
together; for the splendid reins had fallen from their hands, and they
were confounded. But the son of Atreus rushed against them like a lion,
and they, on the contrary, supplicated [him] from the chariot:

"Take us alive, O son of Atreus, and thou shalt receive worthy ransoms.
For many treasures lie in the houses of Antimachus, brass, gold, and
variously-wrought iron. From these would our father give infinite
ransoms, if he should hear that we were alive at the ships of the
Greeks."

[Footnote 366: Compare the similar allusion to rustic pursuits in
xvi. 779, with Buttm. Lexil. p. 89.]

Thus both weeping addressed the king with soothing words; but heard an
unsoothing reply: "If indeed ye be the sons of warlike Antimachus, who
once in an assembly of the Trojans, ordered that they should there put
to death Menelaus, coming as an ambassador along with godlike Ulysses,
and not send him back to the Greeks--now surely shall ye pay the penalty
of the unmerited insolence of your father."

He said, and hurled Pisander from his horses to the ground, striking him
on the breast with his spear; and he was stretched supine upon the soil.
But Hippolochus leaped down, whom next he slew upon the ground, having
lopped off his hands with his sword, and cut off his neck; and it (the
head) like a cylinder, he hurled forward, to be rolled through the
crowd. These then he left there; and where very many phalanxes were
thrown into confusion, there he rushed, and at the same time other
well-greaved Greeks. Infantry slew infantry, flying from necessity, and
horse [slew] horse, slaughtering with the brass (whilst the dust was
raised by them from the plain, which the loud-sounding feet of the
horses excited); but king Agamemnon, constantly slaying, pursued,
cheering on the Greeks. And as when a destructive fire falls upon a
woody forest, and the wind whirling carries it on all sides, whilst the
branches fall with the roots, overwhelmed by the violence of the flame;
so fell the heads of the flying Trojans, at the hand of Agamemnon, son
of Atreus, and many lofty-necked steeds rattled t