alour, whereon he took his place among his comrades, who
were overjoyed at seeing him alive, sound, and of a good courage; but
they could not ask him how it had all happened, for they were too busy
with the turmoil raised by Mars and by Strife, who raged insatiably in
their midst.

The two Ajaxes, Ulysses and Diomed, cheered the Danaans on, fearless of
the fury and onset of the Trojans. They stood as still as clouds which
the son of Saturn has spread upon the mountain tops when there is no
air and fierce Boreas sleeps with the other boisterous winds whose
shrill blasts scatter the clouds in all directions--even so did the
Danaans stand firm and unflinching against the Trojans. The son of
Atreus went about among them and exhorted them. "My friends," said he,
"quit yourselves like brave men, and shun dishonour in one another's
eyes amid the stress of battle. They that shun dishonour more often
live than get killed, but they that fly save neither life nor name."

As he spoke he hurled his spear and hit one of those who were in the
front rank, the comrade of Aeneas, Deicoon son of Pergasus, whom the
Trojans held in no less honour than the sons of Priam, for he was ever
quick to place himself among the foremost. The spear of King Agamemnon
struck his shield and went right through it, for the shield stayed it
not. It drove through his belt into the lower part of his belly, and
his armour rang rattling round him as he fell heavily to the ground.

Then Aeneas killed two champions of the Danaans, Crethon and
Orsilochus. Their father was a rich man who lived in the strong city of
Phere and was descended from the river Alpheus, whose broad stream
flows through the land of the Pylians. The river begat Orsilochus, who
ruled over much people and was father to Diocles, who in his turn begat
twin sons, Crethon and Orsilochus, well skilled in all the arts of war.
These, when they grew up, went to Ilius with the Argive fleet in the
cause of Menelaus and Agamemnon sons of Atreus, and there they both of
them fell. As two lions whom their dam has reared in the depths of some
mountain forest to plunder homesteads and carry off sheep and cattle
till they get killed by the hand of man, so were these two vanquished
by Aeneas, and fell like high pine-trees to the ground.

Brave Menelaus pitied them in their fall, and made his way to the
front, clad in gleaming bronze and brandishing his spear, for Mars
egged him on to do so with intent that h