ὄτριχας, οἰέτεας, σταφύλῃ ἐπὶ νῶτον ἐΐσας.
Again, we are met by the same feeling which, in a bolder flight, made the horses of Rhesus weep, when Pandarus falls headlong from the chariot of Æneas, and his arms rattle over him in death. The horses, instead of plunging or starting off, with a finer feeling tremble by the corpse[770];
παρέτρεσσαν δέ οἱ ἵπποι
ὠκύποδες.
We may trace the same disposition, under a lighter and more amusing form, in what had already passed between Æneas and Pandarus. Pandarus had excused himself for not having brought a chariot and horses to Troy, on account of his fears about finding forage for them where such crowds were to be gathered into a small space; at the same time describing, rather boastfully, his father Lycaon’s eleven carriages with a pair for each. (Il. v. 192-203.) Æneas replies by inviting him into his chariot when he will see what Trojan horses are like. Then, he continues, do you fight, and I will drive; or, as you may choose, do you drive, and I will fight. Pandarus immediately replies, that Æneas had better by all means be the driver of his own horses.
Then again, Homer will have the utmost care taken of them; and, so to speak, he looks to it himself. When he describes them as unemployed, he specifies their food; those of Achilles during the Wrath stand[771],
λωτὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι ἐλεόθρεπτόν τε σέλινον.
But those of Lycaon, which had remained at home, were[772]
κρῖ λευκὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι καὶ ὀλύρας.
To each he gives the appropriate provender: to the former, in an encampment, what the grassy marsh by its side afforded: to the latter, in a king’s palace, the grain, or hard food, of their proper home.