Dappled were they, with a hair here and there like a snow-smitten fleck.
They that in traces without round the perilous turning-post swept,
Bays were they, spotted their fetlocks: Peleides beside them on-leapt:
Sheathed in his harness, unflagging by car-rail and axle he kept. 230
And I came where the host of the war-ships lies,—
A marvel past telling,—
To fill with the vision my maiden eyes
And my heart joy-swelling.
And there, on the rightward wing arrayed,
Was Phlia's Myrmidon battle-aid,
Fifty galleys swift for the war,
With the ranks of oars by their bulwarks swayed,
And high on their sterns in effigies golden
The Nereid Goddesses gleamed afar, 240
The sign by Achilles' host upholden.
Hard by, keels equal by tale unto these
Did the Argives gather;
With Talaüs' fosterling passed they the seas,
Mekisteus his father,—
And with Sthenelus, Kapaneus' son, at his side.
And there did the galleys of Attica ride
With the scion of Theseus, the next to the left,—
Ships threescore,—and the peerless pride
Of their blazonry was a winged car, bearing 250
Pallas, with horses of hooves uncleft,
A blessed sign unto folk sea-faring.
