"For now my pleasant waters, in their flow,
Are choked with heaps of dead, and I no more
Can pour them into the great deep, so thick
The corpses clog my bed, while thou dost slay
And sparest not."
Bryant, Iliad, Book XXI.
Achilles answered that he would not cease to slay the treaty-breaking Trojans until they were punished as they deserved. At this the river god was so enraged that he sent his waters with tremendous force against the hero. The waves now surged around Achilles, beating upon his shield, and buffeting him so violently that he was in danger of being overwhelmed. He saved himself only by grasping the bough of an elm tree which grew on the river's edge, and so gaining the bank. Then the angry god, rising in greater fury, swept his mighty billows out upon the plain. The Greek hero bravely attempted to fight this new enemy, but his valor and his weapons were powerless against such an attack.
As often as the noble son
Of Peleus made a stand in hope to know
Whether the deathless gods of the great heaven
Conspired to make him flee, so often came
A mighty billow of the Jove-born stream
And drenched his shoulders. Then again he sprang
Away; the rapid torrent made his knees
To tremble, while it swept, where'er he trod,
The earth from underneath his feet.
Bryant, Iliad, Book XXI.
Achilles now prayed to the gods for help, and Neptune and Minerva came and encouraged him, saying that he was not to be thus conquered. Still as Xanthus called upon his brother river, Simois, to join him in defense of King Priam's noble city, it might have fared badly with the Greeks, had not Vulcan come to their help. At the request of Juno the god of fire sent down a vast quantity of flames, which scorched and dried up the plain, and burned the trees and reeds on the banks of the rivers. Vulcan began to dry up even the rivers themselves. Then Xanthus became terrified and begged for mercy, promising that he would not again interfere in the fight on either side.
"Oh Vulcan! oh! what power resists thy might?
I faint, I sink, unequal to the fight—
I yield—Let Ilion fall; if fate decree—
Ah—bend no more thy fiery arms on me!"
Pope, Iliad, Book XXI.
It was not, however, until Juno entreated him to do so, that Vulcan withdrew his flames, and the rivers were permitted to flow on again in peace and safety. Achilles now renewed his attack on the Trojans. The gods also rushed into the conflict. Mars launched his brazen spear at Minerva, but, with the terrible ægis, the goddess warded off the blow. Then Minerva lifted up a great rough stone and hurled it at Mars, striking him on the neck, and stretching him senseless on the ground.
He fell
With nerveless limbs, and covered, as he lay,
Seven acres of the field.