Page:The Story of the Iliad.djvu/85

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THE VALIANT DEEDS OF DIOMED.
69

When it was drawn out he fainted, but the cool north wind blew and revived him, and he breathed again.

But all the while Hector, with Ares at his side, dealt death and destruction through the ranks of the Greeks. Hera and Athené saw him where they sat on the top of Olympus, and were wroth. So they went to Father Zeus, and prayed that it might be lawful to them to stop him in his fury. And Zeus said, "Be it as you will." So they yoked the horses to the chariot of Hera and passed down to earth, the horses flying at every stride over so much space as a man sees who sits upon a cliff and looks across the sea to where it meets the sky. They alighted on the spot where the two rivers Simoïs and Scamander join their streams. There they loosed the horses from the yoke, and then sped like doves to where the bravest of the Greeks stood round King Diomed. There Hera took the shape of Stentor with the lungs of bronze, whose voice was as the voice of fifty men, and cried: "Shame, men of Greece! When Achilles went to the battle, the men of Troy came not beyond the