THE TAKING OF ILIOS 



I inienting over the shameful dragging of Hector, 

 had not only their domestic pain, but groaning for 

 the woes of men of alien speech they wept in turn 

 for their many-tongued allies. The Lycians wept 

 for Sarpedon" whom his mother, glorying in the 

 bed of Zeus, had sent to Troy ; howbeit he fell by 

 the spear of Patroclus, son of Menoetius, and there 

 was shed about him by his sire a mist that wept tears 

 of blood. The Thracians wailed for Rhesus * that in 

 the guileful night was fettered by an evil sleep. 

 And for the fate of Meranon"^ Eos, his mother, hung 

 aloft a cloud in heaven and stole away the light of 

 shaniefast day. The women from Thermodon ^ dear 

 to Ares, beating the unripe, unsucked circle of their 

 breasts, mourned the warlike maiden Penthesileia, 

 who came unto the dance of war, that war of many 

 guests, and with her woman's hand scattered the 

 cloud of men back to their ships beside the sea ; only 

 Achilles withstood her with his ashen spear and slew 

 and despoiled her and gave her funeral. 



And still all Ilios stood, by reason of her god-built 

 towers, established u}X)n unshaken foundations, and at 

 the tedious delay the people of the Achaeans chafed. 



told in the Aethiopis of Arctinus, and is described in Qu. 

 Srayrnaeus ii. 542 f., as also the miraculous darkness which 

 enabled his friends to recover his body, 550 f. 



■* The Amazons, a race of warrior women, whose chief 

 home was Theraiscyra on the Thermodon in Pontus. They 

 were reputed to mutilate one or both breasts to enable them 

 better to draw the bow and throw the spear ; hence they 

 got their name (a + /iafoj) " without breasts." (Here Tryph. 

 seems to take the word to mean "not giving suck." 

 Philostr. Her. xx. +2 makes it " unsuckled.") They were in 

 art represented usually with right breast bare. Their queeu 

 Penthesileia was slain at Troy by Achilles, who was smitten 

 with love for her as she died and gave her honourable burial. 



583 



