And level poised the wings of victory;

Then with a change of form eludes their sight,

Perch’d like a swallow on a rafter’s height,

And unperceived enjoys the rising fight.


Damastor’s son, bold Agelaus, leads,

The guilty war, Eurynomus succeeds;

With these, Pisander, great Polyctor’s son,

Sage Polybus, and stern Amphimedon,

With Demoptolemus: these six survive:

The best of all the shafts had left alive.

Amidst the carnage, desperate as they stand,

Thus Agelaus roused the lagging band:


“The hour has come, when yon fierce man no more

With bleeding princes shall bestrew the floor;

Lo! Mentor leaves him with an empty boast;

The four remain, but four against an host.

Let each at once discharge the deadly dart,

One sure of six shall reach Ulysses’ heart:

The rest must perish, their great leader slain:

Thus shall one stroke the glory lost regain.”


Then all at once their mingled lances threw,

And thirsty all of one man’s blood they flew;

In vain! Minerva turned them with her breath,

And scattered short, or wide, the points of death!

With deaden’d sound one on the threshold falls,

One strikes the gate, one rings against the walls:

The storm passed innocent. The godlike man

Now loftier trod, and dreadful thus began:

“‘Tis now (brave friends) our turn, at once to throw,

(So speed them Heaven) our javelins at the foe.

That impious race to all their past misdeeds

Would add our blood, injustice still proceeds.”


He spoke: at once their fiery lances flew:

Great Demoptolemus Ulysses slew;

Euryades received the prince’s dart;

The goatherd’s quiver’d in Pisander’s heart;

Fierce Elatus by thine, Eumaeus, falls;

Their fall in thunder echoes round the walls.

The rest retreat: the victors now advance,

Each from the dead resumes his bloody lance.

Again the foe discharge the steely shower;

Again made frustrate by the virgin-power.

Some, turn’d by Pallas, on the threshold fall,