The Illiad - Book Two - 54

by Homer

As countless swarms of flies buzz around a herdsman's homestead
in the time of spring when the pails are drenched with milk, even
so did the Achaeans swarm on to the plain to charge the Trojans
and destroy them.

The chiefs disposed their men this way and that before the fight
began, drafting them out as easily as goatherds draft their
flocks when they have got mixed while feeding; and among them
went King Agamemnon, with a head and face like Jove the lord of
thunder, a waist like Mars, and a chest like that of Neptune. As
some great bull that lords it over the herds upon the plain, even
so did Jove make the son of Atreus stand peerless among the
multitude of heroes.

And now, O Muses, dwellers in the mansions of Olympus, tell me--
for you are goddesses and are in all places so that you see all
things, while we know nothing but by report--who were the chiefs
and princes of the Danaans? As for the common soldiers, they were
so that I could not name every single one of them though I had
ten tongues, and though my voice failed not and my heart were of
bronze within me, unless you, O Olympian Muses, daughters of
aegis-bearing Jove, were to recount them to me. Nevertheless, I
will tell the captains of the ships and all the fleet together.

---

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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