fold, and then
laid the raw flesh upon them. And they roasted them upon leafless
billets. Next, having pierced the entrails with spits, they held them
over the fire. But then, after the thighs were roasted, and they had
tasted the entrails, they cut the rest of them into small pieces, and
fixed them on spits, and roasted them skilfully, and drew them all off
[the spits]. But when they had ceased from labour, and had prepared the
banquet, they feasted; nor did their soul in anywise lack a due
allowance of the feast. But when they had dismissed the desire of drink
and food, them the Gerenian knight Nestor began to address:

"Most glorious son of Atreus, Agamemnon, king of men, let us now no
longer sit prating[115] here, nor let us long defer the work which the
deity now delivers into our hands. But come, let the heralds of the
brazen-mailed Greeks, summoning the people, assemble them at the ships,
and let us thus in a body pass through the wide army of the Greeks, that
we may the sooner awaken keen warfare."

[Footnote 115: See Buttm. Lexil. p. 398, Anthon, and Arnold.]

Thus he spoke, nor did Agamemnon, king of men, refuse compliance.
Immediately he ordered the clear-voiced heralds to summon the
waving-crested Greeks to battle. These then gave the summons, and they
were hastily assembled, and the Jove-nurtured kings, who were with the
son of Atreus, kept hurrying about arranging them. But amongst them was
azure-eyed Minerva, holding the inestimable aegis, which grows not old,
and is immortal: from which one hundred golden fringes were suspended,
all well woven, and each worth a hundred oxen in price. With this she,
looking fiercely about,[116] traversed the host of the Greeks, inciting
them to advance, and kindled strength in the breast of each to fight and
contend unceasingly. Thus war became instantly sweeter to them than to
return in the hollow ships to their dear native land.

As when a destructive[117] fire consumes an immense forest upon the tops
of a mountain, and the gleam is seen from afar: so, as they advanced,
the radiance from the beaming brass glittering on all sides reached
heaven through the air.

[Footnote 116: See Liddell and Scott.]

[Footnote 117: Literally "invisible." Hence "making invisible,
destructive." Cf. Buttm. Lex. s. v. [Greek: aidelos].]

And of these--like as the numerous nations of winged fowl, of geese, or
cranes, or long-necked swans, on the Asian mead, by the waters o