The Illiad - Book Two - 65

by Homer

And those that held Methone and Thaumacia, with Meliboea and
rugged Olizon, these were led by the skilful archer Philoctetes,
and they had seven ships, each with fifty oarsmen all of them
good archers; but Philoctetes was lying in great pain in the
Island of Lemnos, where the sons of the Achaeans left him, for he
had been bitten by a poisonous water snake. There he lay sick and
sorry, and full soon did the Argives come to miss him. But his
people, though they felt his loss were not leaderless, for Medon,
the bastard son of Oileus by Rhene, set them in array.

Those, again, of Tricca and the stony region of Ithome, and they
that held Oechalia, the city of Oechalian Eurytus, these were
commanded by the two sons of Aesculapius, skilled in the art of
healing, Podalirius and Machaon. And with them there came thirty
ships.

The men, moreover, of Ormenius, and by the fountain of Hypereia,
with those that held Asterius, and the white crests of Titanus,
these were led by Eurypylus, the son of Euaemon, and with them
there came forty ships.

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Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

More About This Book

From the earliest days of Ancient Greece, the author(s) of this poem were contemporaries of the writers of the Bible's Old Testament.

Summary of Second Book: Jove sends a lying dream to Agamemnon, who thereon calls the chiefs in assembly, and proposes to sound the mind of his
army--In the end they march to fight--Catalogue of the Achaean and Trojan forces.

Painting: The Wrath of Achilles by Michael Drolling, 1819.

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