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Achilles drives the Trojans before him:
But when they came to the crossing place of the fair-running river
of whirling Xanthos, a stream whose father was Zeus the immortal,
there Achilleus split them and chased some back over the flat land
toward the city, where the Achaians themselves had stampeded in terror
on the day before, when glorious Hektor was still in his fury.
Along this ground they were streaming in flight; but Hera let fall
a deep mist before them to stay them. Meanwhile the other half
were crowded into the silvery whirls of the deep running river
and tumbled into it in huge clamour, and the steep running water
sounded, and the banks echoed hugely about them, as they out-crying
tried to swim this way and that, spun about in the eddies.
As before the blast of a fire the locusts escaping
into a river swarm in the air, and the fire unwearied
blazes from a sudden start, and the locusts huddle in water;
so before Achilleus the murmuring waters of Xanthos
the deep-whirling were filled with confusion of men and horses.
But heaven-descended Achilleus left his spear there on the bank
leaning against the tamarisks, and leapt in like some immortal,
with only his sword, but his heart was bent on evil actions,
and he struck in a circle around him. The shameful sound of their groaning
rose as they were struck with the sword, and the water
was reddened with blood. As before a huge-gaping dolphin the other fishes
escaping cram the corners of a deepwater harbour
in fear, for he avidly eats up any he can catch;
so the Trojans along the course of the terrible river
shrank under the bluffs. |
