“Thrice was his onset made, with murd’rous aim,
And thrice Apollo struck his glittering shield;
But when with godlike force he sought to make
His fourth attempt, the Far-destroyer spake
In terms of awful menace; ‘Be advised,
Tydides, and retire; nor as a god
Thyself esteem, since not alike the race
Of gods immortal and of earth-born men.’” (D.)
Diomed accepts the warning, and Æneas is carried off to the temple of Apollo in the citadel, where Latona and Diana tend and heal him. Apollo meanwhile replaces him in the battle by a phantom likeness, round which Greeks and Trojans continue the fight. Then he calls his brother deity the War-god to the rescue of the hard-prest Trojans, and entreats him to scare from the field this irreverent and outrageous champion, who, he verily believes, would lift his spear against Olympian Jove himself. In the likeness of a Thracian chief, Mars calls Hector to the rescue; and the Trojan prince leaps from his chariot, and, crying his battle-cry, turns the tide of war. Æneas is restored, sound and well, to his place in the mêlée—somewhat indeed to the astonishment of his friends, who had seen him lying so long grievously wounded; but, as the poet pithily remarks, little time had they to ask him questions. The two Ajaxes, Ulysses, Menelaus, and Agamemnon himself, “king of men,” come to the forefront of the Greek battle: and the young Antilochus, son of the venerable Nestor, notably wins his spurs. But the Trojans have supernatural aid: and Diomed, of the purged vision, cries to his friends to beware, for that he sees the War-god in their front brandishing his huge spear. The Greek line warily gives ground before this immortal adversary. The Queen of Heaven can no longer endure to be a mere spectatress of the peril of her favourites. She obtains permission from Jupiter to send Minerva against Mars: and the two goddesses, seated in Juno’s chariot of state, glide down from Olympus—
“Midway between the earth and starry heaven”—
and alight upon the plain of Troy. There Juno, taking human shape, taunts the Greek troops with cowardice—
“In form of Stentor of the brazen voice,
Whose shout was as the shout of fifty men”—
and whose name has made a familiar place for itself in our English vocabulary.
“Shame on ye, Greeks, base cowards! brave alone
In outward semblance: while Achilles yet
Went forth to battle, from the Dardan gates
The Trojans never ventured to advance.”
Minerva seeks out Diomed, whom she finds leaning on his chariot, resting awhile from the fight, and bathing the wound made by the arrow of Pandarus. She taunts him with his inferiority to his great father Tydeus, who was, she reminds him, “small in stature, but every inch a soldier.” Diomed excuses himself by reference to her own charge to him—to fight with none of the immortals save Venus only. But now the goddess withdraws the prohibition, and herself—putting on the “helmet of darkness,” to hide herself from Mars—takes her place beside him in the chariot, instead of Sthenelus, his henchman and charioteer: and the chariot-axle groans beneath the more than mortal load. They drive in full career against the War-god: in vain he hurls his spear against Diomed, for the hand of the goddess turns it safely aside. The mortal champion is more successful: his spear strikes Mars in the flank, piercing the flesh, and drawing from him, as from Venus, the heavenly “ichor.” And the wounded god cries out with a shout like that of ten thousand men, so that both hosts listen to the sound with awe and trembling. He too, like Venus, flies to Olympus, and there makes piteous complaint of the impious deeds which, at the instigation of Minerva, this headstrong mortal is permitted to do. His father Jupiter rates him soundly, as the outlaw of the Olympian family, inheriting his mother Juno’s headstrong temper. However, he bids Pæon, the physician of the immortals, heal the wound, and Hebe prepares him a bath. Juno and Minerva have done their work, having driven Mars from the field, and they too quit the plains of Troy, and leave the mortal heroes to themselves.
While Diomed still pursues his career of slaughter, Menelaus gives token of that easy and pliant disposition which half explains his behaviour to Helen. He has at his mercy a Trojan who has been thrown from his chariot, and begs his life. The fair-haired king is about to spare him,—as none in the whole story of the fight is spared,—when his brother Agamemnon comes up, and after chiding him for such soft-heartedness, pins the wretched suppliant to the ground with his ashen spear.
So the fight goes on through the sixth book; which is, however, chiefly remarkable for two of the most striking episodes in the poem. The first is the meeting of Diomed with the young Lycian captain, Glaucus. Encountering him in the field, and struck by his bold bearing, he asks his name and race. Glaucus replies with that pathetic simile which, found under many forms in many poets, has its earliest embodiment in the verse of the Hebrew Psalmist and the Greek bard. “The days of man are but as grass.”