Your country free, your children free, your wives!
The altars of your native gods deliver,
And your ancestral tombs—all’s now at stake!”
A like salute from our whole line back-rolled
In Persian speech. Nor more delay, but straight
Trireme on trireme, brazen beak on beak
Dashed furious. A Greek ship led on the attack,[f26]
And from the prow of a Phœnician struck
The figure-head; and now the grapple closed
Of each ship with his adverse desperate.