Iliad

on you cowardly creatures, brave in semblance only; where are now our vaunts that we should prove victorious - the vaunts we made so vaingloriously in Lemnos , when we ate the flesh of horned cattle and filled our mixing-bowls to the brim? You vowed that you would each of you stand against a hundred or two hundred men, and now you prove no match even for one- for Hektor, who will be ere long setting our ships in a blaze. Father Zeus, did you ever before cause the ruin [ atê ] of a great king to such an extent and rob him so utterly of his greatness? yet, when to my sorrow I was coming hither, I never let my ship pass your altars without offering the fat and thigh-bones of heifers upon every one of them, so eager was I to sack the city of Troy . Vouchsafe me then this prayer- suffer us to escape at any rate with our lives, and let not the Achaeans be so utterly vanquished by the Trojans."

IliadBook 8, Line 228Samuel ButlerEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 8

HomerProseID iliad-iliad-butler-en-prose-8-228