d of counsel, lay with
Laodameia, and she bore him noble Sarpedon; but when Bellerophon came
to be hated by all the gods, he wandered all desolate and dismayed upon
the Alean plain, gnawing at his own heart, and shunning the path of
man. Mars, insatiate of battle, killed his son Isander while he was
fighting the Solymi; his daughter was killed by Diana of the golden
reins, for she was angered with her; but Hippolochus was father to
myself, and when he sent me to Troy he urged me again and again to
fight ever among the foremost and outvie my peers, so as not to shame
the blood of my fathers who were the noblest in Ephyra and in all
Lycia. This, then, is the descent I claim."

Thus did he speak, and the heart of Diomed was glad. He planted his
spear in the ground, and spoke to him with friendly words. "Then," he
said, "you are an old friend of my father's house. Great Oeneus once
entertained Bellerophon for twenty days, and the two exchanged
presents. Oeneus gave a belt rich with purple, and Bellerophon a double
cup, which I left at home when I set out for Troy. I do not remember
Tydeus, for he was taken from us while I was yet a child, when the army
of the Achaeans was cut to pieces before Thebes. Henceforth, however, I
must be your host in middle Argos, and you mine in Lycia, if I should
ever go there; let us avoid one another's spears even during a general
engagement; there are many noble Trojans and allies whom I can kill, if
I overtake them and heaven delivers them into my hand; so again with
yourself, there are many Achaeans whose lives you may take if you can;
we two, then, will exchange armour, that all present may know of the
old ties that subsist between us."

With these words they sprang from their chariots, grasped one another's
hands, and plighted friendship. But the son of Saturn made Glaucus take
leave of his wits, for he exchanged golden armour for bronze, the worth
of a hundred head of cattle for the worth of nine.

Now when Hector reached the Scaean gates and the oak tree, the wives
and daughters of the Trojans came running towards him to ask after
their sons, brothers, kinsmen, and husbands: he told them to set about
praying to the gods, and many were made sorrowful as they heard him.

Presently he reached the splendid palace of King Priam, adorned with
colonnades of hewn stone. In it there were fifty bedchambers--all of
hewn stone--built near one another, where the sons of Priam slept, each
with hi