ojans might be seen deep in the ranks of the
Greeks; and the swords of the bravest Greeks rose and fell in the ranks
of the Trojans, and all the while the arrows showered like rain. But at
noon-day, when the weary woodman rests from cutting trees, and takes his
dinner in the quiet hills, the Greeks of the first line made a charge,
Agamemnon running in front of them, and he speared two Trojans, and took
their breastplates, which he laid in his chariot, and then he speared one
brother of Hector and struck another down with his sword, and killed two
more who vainly asked to be made prisoners of war. Footmen slew footmen,
and chariot men slew chariot men, and they broke into the Trojan line as
fire falls on a forest in a windy day, leaping and roaring and racing
through the trees. Many an empty chariot did the horses hurry madly
through the field, for the charioteers were lying dead, with the greedy
vultures hovering above them, flapping their wide wings. Still Agamemnon
followed and slew the hindmost Trojans, but the rest fled till they came
to the gates, and the oak tree that grew outside the gates, and there
they stopped.

But Hector held his hands from fighting, for in the meantime he was
making his men face the enemy and form up in line and take breath, and
was encouraging them, for they had retreated from the wall of the Greeks
across the whole plain, past the hill that was the tomb of Ilus, a king
of old, and past the place of the wild fig-tree. Much ado had Hector to
rally the Trojans, but he knew that when men do turn again they are hard
to beat. So it proved, for when the Trojans had rallied and formed in
line, Agamemnon slew a Thracian chief who had come to fight for Troy
before King Rhesus came. But the eldest brother of the slain man smote
Agamemnon through the arm with his spear, and, though Agamemnon slew him
in turn, his wound bled much and he was in great pain, so he leaped into
his chariot and was driven back to the ships.

Then Hector gave the word to charge, as a huntsman cries on his hounds
against a lion, and he rushed forward at the head of the Trojan line,
slaying as he went. Nine chiefs of the Greeks he slew, and fell upon the
spearmen and scattered them, as the spray of the waves is scattered by
the wandering wind.

Now the ranks of the Greeks were broken, and they would have been driven
among their ships and killed without mercy, had not Ulysses and Diomede
stood firm in the centre, and