Hippothoos tied a strap around Patroclus's ankles and tried to drag him toward Troy to please Hector. Aias sprang through the crowd and struck him through the bronze-cheeked helmet. Brain and bone crushed together; he let the feet fall and dropped across the corpse, far from Larisa.
Hector cast at Aias, missed, and killed Schedios, best of the Phokians. Aias answered by killing Phorkys, who had bent over Hippothoos; the spear broke the plate of his corselet, and he fell clutching the earth. The Trojans fell back, and the Achaeans began to strip the dead.
Then the Trojans would have gone back into Troy, and the Argives would have won glory beyond Zeus's portion, had not Apollo stirred Aeneas in the likeness of Periphas the herald. Aeneas knew the god and called Hector and the leaders to shame, saying Zeus himself wished victory for Troy if they would only fight for the body.
Aeneas and Hector led them back. The Argives braced around Patroclus as men build a wall of shields over a friend. Zeus stretched deadly night over that hard struggle, so that far off the sun might shine, but around Patroclus the men fought in gloom, straining one way and then the other like tanners stretching a great bull's hide.
Men killed and were killed in the press. Asteropaios and others tried to drag bodies for stripping, but Aias kept calling the Danaans never to give back from Patroclus and never to let any Trojan haul him off in triumph. The iron din went up through the barren air, and horses stood with chariots in disorder while men fought hand to hand over the dead.