“Lie there! A perilous task it was for thee To combat with a son of Jove, though born Thyself to a great River. I can boast Descent from sovereign Jove. I owe my birth To Peleus, ruler of the Myrmidons. His father was Aeacus, who was born To Jupiter, a god more potent far Than all the rivers flowing to the sea. And mightier is the race of Jupiter Than that of any stream. Here close at hand Is a great river, if such aid can aught Avail thee; but to strive with Jupiter Is not permitted. Acheloüs, king Of rivers, cannot vie with him, nor yet The great and mighty deep from which proceed All streams and seas and founts and watery depths. He trembles at the bolt of mighty Jove And his hoarse thunder crashing in the sky.”
As thus he spake he plucked from out the bank His brazen spear, and left the lifeless chief Stretched in the sand, where the dark water steeped His limbs, and eels and fishes came and gnawed The warrior’s reins. Achilles hastened on, Pursuing the Pseonian knights, who now, When they beheld their bravest overthrown In desperate battle by the mighty arm And falchion of Pelides, took to flight Along the eddying river. There he slew Mydon, Thersilochus, Astypylus, Mnesus, and Thrasius, and struck down in death Aenius and Ophelestes. Many more Of the Pseonians the swift-footed Greek Had slain, had not the eddying River, roused To anger, put a human semblance on, And uttered from its whirling deeps a voice:—
“O son of Peleus! Thou who dost excel All other men in might and dreadful deeds— For the gods aid thee ever—if the son Of Saturn gives thee to destroy the race Of Trojans, drive them from me to the plain, And there perform thy terrible exploits. 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. Now then, withhold thy hand, Prince of the people! I am horror-struck.”