all the chiefs leaped down and advanced in line, the chariots following
them, while the spearmen and bowmen followed the chariots. The Trojan
army advanced, all shouting in their different languages, but the Greeks
came on silently. Then the two front lines clashed, shield against
shield, and the noise was like the roaring of many flooded torrents among
the hills. When a man fell he who had slain him tried to strip off his
armour, and his friends fought over his body to save the dead from this
dishonour.

Ulysses fought above a wounded friend, and drove his spear through head
and helmet of a Trojan prince, and everywhere men were falling beneath
spears and arrows and heavy stones which the warriors threw. Here
Menelaus speared the man who built the ships with which Paris had sailed
to Greece; and the dust rose like a cloud, and a mist went up from the
fighting men, while Diomede stormed across the plain like a river in
flood, leaving dead bodies behind him as the river leaves boughs of trees
and grass to mark its course. Pandarus wounded Diomede with an arrow,
but Diomede slew him, and the Trojans were being driven in flight, when
Sarpedon and Hector turned and hurled themselves on the Greeks; and even
Diomede shuddered when Hector came on, and charged at Ulysses, who was
slaying Trojans as he went, and the battle swayed this way and that, and
the arrows fell like rain.

But Hector was sent into the city to bid the women pray to the goddess
Athene for help, and he went to the house of Paris, whom Helen was
imploring to go and fight like a man, saying: "Would that the winds had
wafted me away, and the tides drowned me, shameless that I am, before
these things came to pass!"

Then Hector went to see his dear wife, Andromache, whose father had been