“Stay, men of Ithaca; withhold your hands From deadly combat. Part, and shed no blood.”
So Pallas spake, and they grew pale with awe, And fear-struck; as they heard her words they dropped Their weapons all upon the earth.
They fled Townward as if for life, while terribly The much-enduring chief Ulysses raised His voice, and shouted after them, and sprang Upon them as an eagle darts through air.
Then Saturn’s son sent down a bolt of fire; It fell before his blue-eyed daughter’s feet, And thus the goddess to Ulysses called:—
“Son of Laertes, nobly born and wise, Ulysses, hold thy hand; restrain the rage Of deadly combat, lest the god who wields The thunder, Saturn’s son, be wroth with thee.”
She spake, and gladly he obeyed; and then Pallas, the child of aegis-bearing Jove, Plighted, in Mentor’s form with Mentor’s voice, A covenant of peace between the foes.