Homer, Iliad

Now when they were met together and come into one place, then dashed they together shields and spears and the fury of bronze-mailed warriors; and the bossed shields closed each with each, and a great din arose. [450] Then were heard alike the sound of groaning and the cry of triumph of the slayers and the slain, and the earth flowed with blood. As when winter torrents, flowing down the mountains from their great springs to a place where two valleys meet, join their mighty floods in a deep gorge, [455] and far off amid the mountains the shepherd heareth the thunder thereof; even so from the joining of these in battle came shouting and toil. Antilochus was first to slay a warrior of the Trojans in full armour, a goodly man amid the foremost fighters, Echepolus, son of Thalysius. Him was he first to smite upon the horn of his helmet with crest of horse-hair, [460] and into his forehead drave the spear, and the point of bronze passed within the bone; and darkness enfolded his eyes, and he crashed as doth a wall, in the mighty conflict. As he fell lord Elephenor caught him by the feet, the son he of Chalcodon, and captain of the great-souled Abantes, [465] and sought to drag him from beneath the missiles, fain with all speed to strip off his armour; yet but for a scant space did his striving endure; for as he was haling the corpse great-souled Agenor caught sight of him, and where his side was left uncovered of his shield, as he stooped, even there; he smote him with a thrust of his bronze-shod spear, and loosed his limbs. [470] So his spirit left him, and over his body was wrought grievous toil of Trojans and Achaeans. Even as wolves leapt they one upon the other, and man made man to reel. Then Telamonian Aias smote Anthemion's son, the lusty youth Simoeisius, whom on a time his mother [475] had born beside the banks of Simois, as she journeyed down from Ida, whither she had followed with her parents to see their flocks. For this cause they called him Simoeisius; yet paid he not back to his dear parents the recompense of his upbringing, and but brief was the span of his life, for that he was laid low by the spear of great-souled Aias. [480] For, as he strode amid the foremost, he was smitten on the right breast beside the nipple; and clean through his shoulder went the spear of bronze, and he fell to the ground in the dust like a poplar tree that hath grown up in the bottom land of a great marsh, smooth of stem, but from the top thereof branches grow: [485] this hath some wainwright felled with the gleaming iron that he might bend him a felloe for a beauteous chariot, and it lieth drying by a river's banks.