Marshalling of the Achaians
ILIAD, B. II V. 455
LIKE as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did thesplendourGleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks,Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of thewild-swans,Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about themresoundeth;So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings pouredforthOn that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath themEarth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of thehorse-hooves.Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field of Scamander, theirthousandsMany as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s wonning, where then are themilk-pailsAlso, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crushthem.Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats,knowEasily one from the other when all get mixed o’er the pasture,So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places foronslaught,Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder,He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.