Now when he heard this prayer, Phoibos Apollo walked with storm in his heart from Olympos’ crest, quiver and bow at his back, and the bundled arrows clanged on the sky behind as he rocked in his anger, descending like night itself.
No, now like callow boys or widowed women they wail to one another to go home!
Remember, though, your spirit’s like an ax-edge whetted sharp that goes through timber, when a good shipwright hews out a beam: the tool triples his power.
Round his heart resentment welled, and his eyes shone out like licking fire.
See these four, all fearless of attack or Trojan power, patient in battle – motionless as clouds that Zeus may station on high mountaintops in a calm heaven, while the north wind sleeps and so do all the winds whose gusty blowing rifts and dispels shade-bearing cloud.
Mount my chariot, and you’ll see how fast these horses of the line of Tros can run: they know our plain and how to wheel upon it this way and that way in pursuit or flight like wind veering.
Many a time I’ve borne a hand in combat, but never have I seen the enemy in such array, committed, every man, uncountable as leaves, or grains of sand, advancing on the city through the plain!
Like a dark cloud a shepherd from a hilltop sees, a storm, a gloom over the ocean, traveling shoreward under the west wind; distant from his eyes more black than pitch it seems, though far at sea, with lightning squalls driven along its front.
Like a black vapor from a thunderhead riding aloft on stormwind brewed by heat, so brazen Ares looked to Diomedes as he rose heavenward amid the clouds.
Like a wild boar, with his great heart, this captain in the van harangued his companies, and in the rear Meriones did likewise.
Like bees innumerable from ships and huts down the deep foreshore streamed those regiments toward the assembly ground – and Rumor blazed among them like a crier sent from Zeus.
Lovely that gliding river that runs on into the Peneios with silver eddies and rides it for a while as clear as oil – a branch of Styx, on which great oaths are sworn.
So these went down before the weapons of Aineias, falling like lofty pines before the ax.
So thunderously groaned the earth under the trampling of their coming on, and they consumed like fire the open plain.
Wearing gold, blithe as a girl, Nastes had gone to war, but gold would not avail the fool to save him from a bloody end.
They sounded like cicada in dry summer that cling on leafy trees and send out voices rhythmic and long – so droned and murmured these old leaders of the Trojans on the tower, and watching Helen as she climbed the stair in undertones they said to one another: “We cannot rage at her, it is no wonder that Trojans and Akhaians under arms should for so long have borne the pains of war for one like this.”
When he had said all this, the phantasm departed like a bird ….
Will you be netted, caught like helpless game your enemies can feast on?
With shield and spear Aineias, now on foot, in dread to see the Akhaians drag the dead man, came and bestrode him, like a lion at bay.
Then, cowering down in fear and pain, he blinked like an imbecile and wiped his tears upon his arms.
The Trojans were not silent; like the flocks that huddle countless in a rich man’s pens, waiting to yield white milk, and bleating loud continually as they hear their own lambs cry, just so the warcry of the Trojans rose through all that army – not as a single note, not in a single tongue, but mingled voices of men from many countries.
The brazen Ares howled to heaven, terrible to hear as roaring from ten thousand men in battle when long battalions clash.
So, too, like clouds of buzzing, fevered flies that swarm about a cattle stall in summer when pails are splashed with milk: so restlessly by thousands moved the fighters of Akhaia over the plain, lusting to rend the Trojans.
The dream departed as his word, descending swift as wind to where the long ships lay ….
The goddesses gliding in a straight line like quivering doves approached the battle to defend the Argives, but once arrived where their best spearmen fought at the flank of Diomedes, giving ground like lions or boars, like carnivores at bay, no feeble victims – Hera took her stand with a loud cry.
The Trojan squadrons flanked by officers drew up and sortied, in a din of arms and shouting voices – wave on wave, like cranes in clamorous lines before the face of heaven, beating away from winter’s gloom and storms, over the streams of Ocean, hoarsely calling, to bring a slaughter on the Pygmy warriors – cranes at dawn descending, beaked in cruel attack.
Lamentable, the way you men have talked, like boys, like children, strangers to stern war ….
Just as a lion leaps to crunch the neck of ox or heifer, grazing near a thicket, Diomedes, leaping, dragged them down convulsed out of their car, and took their armor, sending their horses to the rear.
Bowlegged, with one limping leg, and shoulders rounded above his chest, he had a skull quite conical, and mangy fuzz like mold.
Athena made him bold, and gave him ease to tower amid Argives, to win glory, and on his shield and helm she kindled fire most like midsummer’s purest flaming star in heaven rising, bathed by the Ocean stream.
But as for Diomedes, you could not tell if he were with Akhaians or Trojans, for he coursed along the plain most like an April torrent fed by snow, a river in flood that sweeps away his bank; no piled-up dyke will hold him, no revetment shielding the bloom of orchard land, this river suddenly at crest when heaven pours down the rain of Zeus; many a yeoman’s field of beautiful grain is ravaged: even so before Diomedes were the crowded ranks of Trojans broken, many as they were, and none could hold him.
But not a Trojan there, not one of all the allies, could produce him for the wargod’s friend, Menelaos – and none for love would ever hide him if he saw him, the man being abhorred like death itself.
But now the marching host devoured the plain as though it were a prairie fire ….
As wild fig sap when dripped in liquid milk will curdle it as quickly as you stir it in, so quickly Paieon healed impetuous Ares’ wound.
As in dark forests, measureless along the crests of hills, a conflagration soars, and the bright bed of fire glows for miles, now fiery lights from this great host in bronze played on the earth and flashed high into heaven.
And as migrating birds, nation by nation, wild geese and arrow-throated cranes and swans, over Asia’s meadowland and marshes around the streams of Kaystrios, with giant flight and glorying wings keep beating down in tumult on that verdant land that echoes to their pinions, even so, nation by nation, from the ships and huts, this host debouched upon Skamander plain.
All being mustered, all in place and quiet, Akhilleus, fast in battle as a lion, rose ….
Ares wielding a gigantic spear by turns led Hektor on or backed him up, and as he watched this figure, Diomedes felt like a traveler halted on a plain, helpless to cross, before a stream in flood that roars and spumes down to the sea.
As for the battle horses, those were the best that came from Pheres’ pastures, and Eumelos drove those mares, as fleet as birds – a team perfectly matched in color and in age, and level to a hair across the cruppers.
As he died a bitter combat raged over his body between the Trojan spearmen and Akhaians, going for one another like wolves, like wolves whirling upon each other, man to man.
But when he launched the strong voice from his chest, and words came driving on the air as thick and fast as winter snowflakes, then Odysseus could have no mortal rival as an orator!
“… First he attempted Kypris and cut her lovely hand, then like a fury came at me.”
His gear lies on the ground, but still he goes like a bellwether up and down the ranks.
Here all the same I am, sending my Lykians forward, and going in to fight myself, though I have no least stake in Troy: no booty for Akhaians to carry off – while you stand like a sheep.
How can you stand there stunned as deer that have been chased all day over a plain and are used up at last, and droop and halt, broken in heart and wind?
I combat I neither see nor hear of them – like dogs making themselves scarce around a lion.
In the melee he toppled like a tower.
Hera, whose arms are white as ivory, moved him to it, as she took pity on Danaans dying.
He slung a sword of bronze with silver-studded hilt by a baldric on his shoulder; over this a shield strap and the many-layered shield; then drew a helmet with a horsetail crest upon his head, upon his gallant brow, the tall plume like a wave-crest grimly tossing.
Given orders to do her own will, grey-eyed Athena left Olympos, dropping downward from the crests – as though the son of crooked-minded Kronos had flung a shooting star, to be a sign for men on the deep sea, or some broad army – a streak of radiance and a sparkling track.
From the camp the troops were turning out now, thick as bees that issue from some crevice in a rock face, endlessly pouring forth, to make a cluster and swarm on blooms of summer here and there, glinting and droning, busy in bright air.
Gliding she rose and broke like mist from the inshore grey sea face ….
Greater desire now lifts me like a tide.
He made their hearts leap in their breasts, the rank and file, who had no warning of his plan, and all that throng, aroused, began to surge as ground swells do on dark Ikarian deeps under the south and east wind heeling down from Father Zeus’s cloudland ….
A pain like grief weighed on the son of Peleus ….

Featured Simile

Downstream recurving shore currents chased in a deckle light wave on wave like silver spawn.
-- Suttree - McCarthy, Cormac - 1979