Thus did he speak, and Agamemnon heeded his words. He at oncesent the criers round to call the people in assembly. So they
called them, and the people gathered thereon. The chiefs about
the son of Atreus chose their men and marshalled them, while
Minerva went among them holding her priceless aegis that knows
neither age nor death. From it there waved a hundred tassels of
pure gold, all deftly woven, and each one of them worth a hundred
oxen. With this she darted furiously everywhere among the hosts
of the Achaeans, urging them forward, and putting courage into
the heart of each, so that he might fight and do battle without
ceasing. Thus war became sweeter in their eyes even than
returning home in their ships. As when some great forest fire is
raging upon a mountain top and its light is seen afar, even so as
they marched the gleam of their armour flashed up into the
firmament of heaven.
They were like great flocks of geese, or cranes, or swans on the
plain about the waters of Cayster, that wing their way hither and
thither, glorying in the pride of flight, and crying as they
settle till the fen is alive with their screaming. Even thus did
their tribes pour from ships and tents on to the plain of the
Scamander, and the ground rang as brass under the feet of men and
horses. They stood as thick upon the flower-bespangled field as
leaves that bloom in summer.
Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
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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