These two were missing in the grand review of the forces which was now held in anticipation of a victorious march upon Troy, and their places were supplied by others. But there was one whose place none could fill, and whose absence was soon to make itself felt in dire and deadly fashion. Achilles sat idle in his tent, brooding over the insult which he had received two weeks before. His ponderous spear, which none but he could wield, was resting from slaughter, and his squires were polishing the armour which he was not to wear that day. He started when he heard the great shout of the Greeks, as the word was given to march, and his heart burned with longing for battle; but remembering his wrongs, he sank back in his seat, frowning darkly, and muttered the single word "Revenge!"
Greeks and Trojans face to face: The Duel
I
Priam was sitting in council with all his elders before the doors of his palace, when a messenger rushed breathless up with the tidings that the Greeks were marching in full force against the city. Instantly the meeting broke up, and the Trojan leaders, with Hector at their head, set out with the whole body of native warriors and their allies to bar the way of the invader.
Halting before a solitary mound, the tomb of the Amazon Myrine, within sight of the walls of Troy, they drew up their forces in order of battle. The native Trojans, who fought under Hector, son of Priam, formed the flower of the army; but in numbers they were far exceeded by the troops which had assembled, at the call of Priam, from the adjacent provinces and coastlands of western Asia—from Lydia, Mysia, Paphlagonia, and far-off Lycia—from Sestos and Abydos and Thrace. After Hector, the most famous leaders were Æneas, son of Anchises and Aphrodite; Pandarus, unrivalled for his skill in archery; Paris, whose crime had brought all these woes on his country, and above all the two captains of the Lycians—Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, and Glaucus, the most knightly figure among all the heroes of Greece and Troy.
When the various members of that motley host had taken their appointed stations, the defenders of Troy advanced with clamour and with tumult, like flocks of cranes winging their way to the shores of the ocean stream to make war on the Pygmies. Presently the van of the Greeks came in sight, moving on in silence, like men with one mind and one heart.
Foremost among the Trojan champions was seen the gay and beautiful Paris. He was clad in a panther's skin, over which hung his bow and arrows, and besides these weapons, in the use of which he excelled, he was armed with two long spears and a sword. Menelaus marked him as he came on with long strides, and rejoiced in spirit, like a hungry lion when he catches sight of his prey; and leaping down from his car he advanced with uplifted spear to take vengeance on his treacherous foe. But when Paris saw him coming his guilty heart quailed within him, and he shrank back among the ranks of his comrades, like one who has trodden on a snake while walking in a mountain glen.
"Now curse on thy fair, false face!" cried Hector to his cowardly brother, "thou carpet-knight, thou foul deceiver! Better for thee to have died childless and unwed than thus to bring shame on thy father and all thy kinsfolk and people. Thou art a fit foe for women, whom thou beguilest with witchcraft of thy wit, and wicked gifts; but all thy gifts—thy curling locks, thy smooth, white brow, thy sweet voice, and cunning minstrelsy—avail thee naught when thou lookest upon the face of a man. Verily the Trojans are as dastardly as thyself, or long ere this thou wouldst have put on a doublet of stone[[1]] for all the ills that thou hast wrought."
[[1]] That is, "Wouldst have been stoned to death."