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His nation was the Trojan, who dwelt on the east coast of the Ægean Sea, and were of the Pelasgic race. Their chief city was Troy, with the citadel Ilium, lying near the banks of the rivers Simois and Scamander, between the sea shore and the wooded mount of Ida, in the north-east of the peninsula we call Asia Minor.
Hector did not yet know what Ajax was doing, for he was fighting on the extreme left of the battle by the banks of the river Scamander, where the carnage was thickest and the war-cry loudest round Nestor and brave Idomeneus.
We have a faithful and beautiful reproduction of this Greek legend, both in theme and spirit, in a poem by BAYARD TAYLOR, from which the following extracts are taken: Hylas. Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water. No cloud was seen: on blue and craggy Ida The hot noon lay, and on the plains enamel; Cool in his bed, alone, the swift Scamander.
Achilles answered, "So be it, Scamander, Jove-descended; but I will never cease dealing out death among the Trojans, till I have pent them up in their city, and made trial of Hector face to face, that I may learn whether he is to vanquish me, or I him." As he spoke he set upon the Trojans with a fury like that of the gods.
So saying, she drew Mars out of the battle, and set him down upon the steep banks of the Scamander. Upon this the Danaans drove the Trojans back, and each one of their chieftains killed his man. First King Agamemnon flung mighty Odius, captain of the Halizoni, from his chariot.
Down to the Scamander he drove the fleeing Trojans, and the water reddened with blood, as he smote and spared not. Merciless was Achilles; pitilessly did he exult as one brave man after another was sent by him to dye red the swift flood of the Scamander. At length, at his lack of mercy, did even the river grow wrathful. "Choked is my stream with dead men!" it cried, "and still thou slayest!"
As flies that swarm in the spring when the herdsmen's milk-pails are full, so did the Greeks throng to battle, unnumbered as the leaves and the flowers upon which they trod in the flowery plain by the banks of the river Scamander. To meet the great Greek host came the men of Troy.
With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-bed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke a great sea-chimæra, chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander.
V. The party of Hippias, defeated, not by the swords of the enemy, but by the soft impulses of nature, took their way across the stream of the immemorial Scamander, and sought refuge at Sigeum, still under the government of Hegesistratus, the natural brother of the exiled prince.
Twelve ships he had with him twelve he had brought to Troy and in each there were some fifty men, being scarce half of those that had sailed in them in the old days, so many valiant heroes slept the last sleep by Simoïs and Scamander, and in the plain and on the seashore, slain in battle or by the shafts of Apollo.
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