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To the suitor who wins at the trial of the bow Penelope vows to give herself in marriage. Odysseus, with as little trouble as a minstrel fits a new cord to his lyre, bends the mighty bow with an arrow caught up from the table at his side. Even when the bronze-tipped shaft goes clean through twelve axes set up in a row, the blinded Penelope fails to know her lord.
The first was Arcas. He was dressed in the skin of a bear; he had red hair and savage-looking eyes, and for arms he carried a mighty bow with bronze-tipped arrows. The folk were watching an eagle as he came into the city, an eagle that was winging its way far, far up in the sky. Arcas drew his bow, and with one arrow he brought the eagle down. The other hunter was a girl, Atalanta.
And he loosened the pine from the ground with his bronze-tipped club and grasped the trunk with both hands at the bottom, relying on his strength; and he pressed it against his broad shoulder with legs wide apart; and clinging close he raised it from the ground deep-rooted though it was, together with clods of earth.
A big leather shield could keep out stone-tipped arrows; but as bronze-tipped arrows came in and also heavy bronze-pointed spears, defensive armour was necessarily strengthened; the shield was plated with bronze, and, if it did not exist before, the bronze corslet was developed. To keep out stone-tipped arrows was the business of the Mycenaean wooden or leather shield.
But Meriones aimed a bronze-tipped arrow at him as he was leaving the field, and hit him on the right buttock; the arrow pierced the bone through and through, and penetrated the bladder, so he sat down where he was and breathed his last in the arms of his comrades, stretched like a worm upon the ground and watering the earth with the blood that flowed from his wound.
Militarily speaking, the lack of knowledge of iron hampered them, but it must be kept in mind that a well-disciplined and reasonably large army, armed with bronze-tipped spears, bronze swords, axes, and maces, can make a formidable foe, even against a much better equipped group.
Limping came two of Ares' company, Tydeus' son staunch in fight and noble Odysseus, each leaning on his spear, for their wounds were grievous still; and they went and sate them down in the forefront of the assembly. And last came Agamemnon king of men, with his wound upon him, for him too in the stress of battle Kooen Antenor's son had wounded with his bronze-tipped spear.
This is the man I am fain to praise, and trust that not outside the ring shall I hurl the bronze-tipped javelin I brandish in my hand, but with far throw outdo my rivals in the match. Would that his whole life may give him, even as now, good luck and wealth right onward, and of his pains forgetfulness.
Yet but for a little endured his essay; great-hearted Agenor saw him haling away the corpse, and where his side was left uncovered of his buckler as he bowed him down, there smote he him with bronze-tipped spear-shaft and unstrung his limbs. So his life departed from him, and over his corpse the task of Trojans and Achaians grew hot; like wolves leapt they one at another, and man lashed at man.
Then laying the arrow on the arch, he drew the string and arrow notches, and forth from the bench on which he sat let fly the shaft, with careful aim, and did not miss an axe's ring from first to last, but clean through all sped on the bronze-tipped arrow; and to Telemachus he said, "Telemachus, the guest now sitting in your hall brings you no shame.
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