lease his prisoner, unless he has Briseis in her stead. After long
contestations, wherein Agamemnon gives a glorious character of Achilles'
valour, he determines to restore Briseis to her father, and sends two
heralds to fetch away Chryseis from Achilles, who abandons himself to
sorrow and despair. His mother Thetis came to comfort him under his
affliction, and promises to represent his sorrowful lamentations to
Jupiter; but he could not attend it; for the evening before, he had
appointed to divert himself for two days beyond the seas with the
harmless AEthiopians.

It was the twenty-first day after Chryseis' arrival to the camp, that
Thetis went very early to demand an audience of Jupiter. The means he
uses to satisfy her were, to persuade the Greeks to attack the Trojans;
that so they might perceive the consequence of condemning Achilles and
the miseries they suffer if he does not head them. The next night he
orders Agamemnon, in a dream, to attack them; who was deceived with the
hopes of obtaining a victory, and also taking the city, without sharing
the honour with Achilles.

On the 22nd, in the morning, he assembles the council, and having made a
feint of raising the siege and retiring, he declares to them his dream;
and, together with Nestor and Ulysses, resolves on an engagement.

This was the twenty-third day, which is full of incidents, and which
continues from almost the beginning of the second canto to the eighth.
The armies being then drawn up in view of one another, Hector brings it
about that Menelaus and Paris, the two persons concerned in the quarrel,
should decide it by a single combat; which tending to the advantage of
Menelaus, was interrupted by a cowardice infused by Minerva: then both
armies engage, where the Trojans have the disadvantage; but being
afterwards animated by Apollo, they repulse the enemy, yet they are once
again forced to give ground; but their affairs were retrieved by Hector,
who has a single combat with Ajax. The gods threw themselves into the
battle, Juno and Minerva took the Grecians' part, and Apollo and Mars
the Trojans': but Mars and Venus are both wounded by Diomedes.

The truce for burying the slain ended the twenty-third day; after which
the Greeks threw up a great entrenchment to secure their navy from
danger. Councils are held on both sides. On the morning of the
twenty-fourth day the battle is renewed, but in a very disadvantageous
manner to the Greeks, who were beate