noble Achilles cease from
toil, and avert destruction from the Trojans. But the son of Peleus
leaped back as far as is the cast of a spear, having the impetuosity of
a dark eagle, a hunter, which is at once the strongest and the swiftest
of birds. Like unto it he rushed, but the brass clanked dreadfully upon
his breast; but he, inclining obliquely, fled from it, and it, flowing
from behind, followed with a mighty noise. As when a ditch-worker leads
a stream of water from a black-flowing fountain through plantations and
gardens, holding a spade in his hands, and throwing out the obstructions
from the channel; all the pebbles beneath are agitated as it flows
along, and, rapidly descending, it murmurs down a sloping declivity, and
outstrips even him who directs it: so the water of the river always
overtook Achilles, though being nimble; for the gods are more powerful
than mortals. As often as swift-footed, noble Achilles attempted to
oppose it, and to know whether all the immortals who possess the wide
heaven put him to flight, so often did a great billow of the river,
flowing from Jove, lave his shoulders from above; whilst he leaped up
with his feet, sad in mind, and the rapid stream subdued his knees under
him, and withdrew the sand from beneath his feet. But Pelides groaned,
looking toward the wide heaven:

[Footnote 680: _I.e._ in the river. One translator absurdly
renders it "through him," _i.e._ through Achilles.]

[Footnote 681: "The circumstance of a fallen tree, which is by
Homer described as reaching from one of its banks to the other,
affords a very just idea of the breadth of the Scamander at the
season when we saw it."--Wood on Homer, p. 328.]

"O father Jove, how does none of the gods undertake to save me,
miserable, from the river! Hereafter, indeed, I would suffer
anything.[682] But no other of the heavenly inhabitants is so culpable
to me as my mother, who soothed me with falsehoods, and said that I
should perish by the fleet arrows of Apollo, under the wall of the armed
Trojans. Would that Hector had slain me, who here was nurtured the
bravest; then a brave man would he have slain, and have despoiled a
brave man. But now it is decreed that I be destroyed by an inglorious
death, overwhelmed in a mighty river, like a swine-herd's boy, whom, as
he is fording it, the torrent overwhelms in wintry weather."

[Footnote 682: _I.e._ grant that I may but escape a disgraceful
death by d