the sword into the scabbard, and Athené went her way to Olympus.
Then he turned him to King Agamemnon, and spake again, for his anger was not spent: "Drunkard, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer! never fighting in the front of the battle, nor daring to lie in the ambush! 'Tis a race of dastards that thou rulest, or this had been thy last wrong. But this I tell thee, and confirm my words with a mighty oath—by this sceptre do I swear. Once it was the branch of a tree, but now the sons of the Greeks bear it in their hands, even they who maintain the laws of Zeus; as surely as it shall never again have bark, or leaves, or shoot, so surely shall the Greeks one day miss Achilles, when they fall in heaps before the dreadful Hector; and thou shalt eat thy heart for rage, to think that thou hast wronged the bravest of thy host."
And as he spake he dashed the sceptre, all embossed with studs of gold, upon the ground, and sat down. And on the other side Agamemnon sat in furious anger. Then Nestor rose, an old man of a hundred years and more,
