But they who held the middle space around The friend of swift Aeacides, maintained A desperate strife all day; the knees, the thighs, The feet, the hands, the eyes of those who fought Were faint with weariness and foul with sweat. As when an ample ox-hide, steeped in fat, Is given to workmen to be stretched, they stand Around it in a circle, pulling it, Till forth the moisture issues, and the oil Enters the skin, and by that constant strain From many hands the hide is duly stretched, So in small space the warriors drew the dead Hither and thither; they of Ilium strove To drag it to the city, they of Greece To bear it to the fleet. The tumult then Was terrible, and neither Mars himself, The musterer of hosts, nor Pallas, roused To her intensest wrath, had they been near The struggle, would have seen it with disdain. Such deadly strife of steeds and men was held O’er slain Patroclus by the will of Jove.
The great Achilles knew not yet the fate Of his Patroclus, for the warriors fought Far from the fleet, beside the wall of Troy. He never thought of him as one whose death Was near, but trusted that, when once he reached The Trojan wall, he would return alive; Nor ever deemed he that without his aid, Or even with it, would Patroclus sack The city. This was what he oft had heard From Thetis, who disclosed to him apart The counsel of Almighty Jupiter. Yet had his mother never once revealed The present evil—that the one whom most He loved of all his friends should perish thus.
Still round the dead they fought with their keen spears, And slew each other. Then of the mailed Greeks Someone would say: “O friends, it were disgrace Should we fall back upon our roomy ships. First let the dark earth swallow us; for this Were better than to let the Trojan knights Drag off the dead in triumph to their town.”