The Myrmidons poured out with Patroclus and Automedon in front, of one mind to lead. When the Trojans saw the armor of Achilles flashing among them, their hearts shook; each man looked for the son of Peleus himself and found his courage failing.
Patroclus first cast into the press by the stern of Protesilaos's ship and struck Pyraichmes, leader of the Paionians, in the right shoulder. He fell with a crash, and his men fled in fear. The Trojans recoiled from the ships, and the Argives put out the fire and drew breath again.
The fight scattered across the plain. Chieftains killed one another as they could. Patroclus kept driving wherever men fled in thickest panic, cheering the Myrmidons on, and chariots smashed in the ditch among broken poles and plunging horses.
As when a cloud rises from Olympus out of a clear sky when Zeus is brewing a gale, so the Trojans fled in panic from the ships toward the city, and the ditch held many who could not climb out.
When Sarpedon saw his Lycians falling, men who wore ungirdled tunics, he rebuked them for shame and leapt from his chariot to meet Patroclus. Patroclus sprang down also, and the two came together like eagles screaming over a high rock with crooked claws and hooked beaks.
Zeus looked down in pity on his son and said to Hera that his heart was divided: should he snatch Sarpedon alive from the fighting and set him down in rich Lycia, or let him fall under Patroclus's hands?
Hera answered sternly. "Most dread son of Cronus, what is this you say? Would you snatch a mortal man whose doom was fixed long ago? Do it if you will, but none of us other gods will praise you. If you save Sarpedon, many will want to save their own sons from the war under Troy's walls."
Zeus yielded to her, but he shed a rain of blood upon the earth in honor of his dear son whom Patroclus was about to kill on the rich soil of Troy, far from his own country.
When they came close, Patroclus struck Thrasymelos, Sarpedon's brave squire, in the lower belly and took the life from him. Sarpedon cast at Patroclus and missed; the spear passed over the left shoulder. Patroclus cast again and struck him where the midriff closes about the beating heart.
Sarpedon fell like an oak or a tall pine or a poplar that shipwrights cut down in the mountains with sharpened axes for timber. He called to Glaucus to rally the Lycians and fight for his body, lest the Achaeans strip his armor and shame him. Then death closed his eyes, and Patroclus set his foot on the chest and drew out the spear; the life came with it.