Dawn rose from beside lord Tithonos to bring light to immortals and mortals, and Zeus sent hateful Strife down to the Achaean ships with the sign of war in her hands. She stood on Odysseus's black ship in the middle, so her voice could reach both ends of the camp, toward Aias and toward Achilles.
She shouted terribly and put great strength in every Achaean heart, so war became sweeter to them than returning home.
Agamemnon cried to the Argives to arm, and he himself put bronze about his body. First he set fair greaves around his legs, then a breastplate Kinyras had given him, dark with enamel, gold, and tin, with blue serpents rising toward the neck.
He slung on his sword with gold studs, took up the shield worked with rings and a Gorgon's face, set a four-horned helmet on his head with horsehair nodding above, and grasped two strong spears tipped with bronze. Hera and Athena thundered to honor the king of rich Mycenae.
Each driver held his horses by the ditch while the infantry advanced before them. Zeus rained dew mixed with blood from the air because he meant to send many strong heads down to Hades. The Trojans stood on the rising ground with Hector, Polydamas, Aeneas, and the sons of Antenor, while the Achaeans came on in ranks.
As reapers drive opposite swaths through a rich man's field and handfuls fall thick, so Trojans and Achaeans fell on one another and neither side remembered flight.
They fought like wolves, and Strife rejoiced as she alone of the gods stood near; the others sat apart on Olympus, blaming Zeus because he gave glory to the Trojans.
All morning the missiles flew and men kept falling.
But when a woodcutter in the mountain glen prepares his meal because his arms are tired from cutting tall trees, then the Danaans broke the Trojan battalions by their courage.
Agamemnon was first to leap in and kill Bienor, shepherd of the people, and Oileus his comrade, who sprang down from the chariot only to be struck in the forehead.
The lord of men stripped them and left their chests bare.
Then he went after Isos and Antiphos, sons of Priam, one born in wedlock and one from a concubine. Achilles had once captured them on Ida and released them for ransom; now Agamemnon struck Isos in the chest and Antiphos by the ear, and knew them as he stripped their armor.
As a lion crushes the young of a swift deer while the mother runs helpless, so Agamemnon killed the sons of Priam.
He also killed Peisandros and Hippolochos, sons of Antimachos, who once had urged the Trojans to kill Menelaus when he came as envoy. They begged for ransom, but Agamemnon remembered their father's counsel and cut them down without pity.