The Achaean bronze flashed like a forest fire on mountain peaks. The army poured into the Scamander plain like flocks of birds by Cayster’s streams, like leaves and flowers in spring, like swarms of flies around milk pails. The leaders separated them as goatherds divide mingled flocks. Agamemnon shone among them like a bull among cattle, Zeus-like in eyes and head, Ares-like in belt, Poseidon-like in chest.
The singer calls on the Muses, who know all things, to name the captains and ships. Boeotians came under Peneleos, Leitus, Arcesilaus, Prothoenor, and Clonius from Hyria, Aulis, Thespia, Thebes below the walls, Onchestus, Arne, Anthedon, and many towns: fifty ships. Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Ares, brought thirty from Aspledon and Orchomenus. Schedius and Epistrophus brought forty Phocian ships from Pytho, Crisa, Daulis, Panopeus, and the Cephisus lands. Swift Aias son of Oileus led forty Locrian ships.
Elephenor led forty ships of Abantes from Euboea. Menestheus led fifty Athenian ships from Athens of Erechtheus, and none was better at ordering horsemen and shieldmen except old Nestor. Telamonian Aias brought twelve ships from Salamis. Diomedes, with Sthenelus and Euryalus, led eighty from Argos, Tiryns, Hermione, Epidaurus, Aegina, and their towns. Agamemnon himself led one hundred ships from Mycenae, Corinth, Sicyon, Aegium, Helice, and the shore, and he was most powerful because he brought the most men.
Menelaus led sixty from Lacedaemon, Sparta, Amyclae, Helos, Laas, and Oetylus, eager to avenge Helen. Nestor led ninety from Pylos, Arene, Thryon, Cyparisseis, Amphigeneia, and Dorium, where the Muses stopped Thamyris’s song after his boast. Agapenor led sixty Arcadian ships supplied by Agamemnon. Amphimachus, Thalpius, Diores, and Polyxenus brought forty from Elis. Meges led forty from Dulichium and the Echinaean islands. Odysseus led twelve red-prowed ships from Ithaca, Neritum, Zacynthus, Samos, and the mainland opposite.
Thoas led forty Aetolian ships; Idomeneus and Meriones led eighty from Crete’s hundred cities. Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, led nine Rhodian ships after fleeing the killing of Licymnius. Nireus brought three from Syme, beautiful but weak and followed by few. Pheidippus and Antiphus led thirty from Cos and the islands. Achilles’s fifty ships from Phthia, Hellas, and the Myrmidons lay idle, for he raged over Briseis and would not fight; his men played by the shore while their horses stood beside covered chariots.
Protesilaus’s forty ships were now led by Podarces, for Protesilaus had been first ashore and first killed, leaving his wife in Phylace. Eumelus brought eleven ships and the mares Apollo had raised for Admetus. Philoctetes lay on Lemnos in pain from a snake wound, so Medon led his seven ships. Podalirius and Machaon, sons of Asclepius, led thirty; Eurypylus led forty; Polypoetes and Leonteus led forty; Gouneus brought twenty-two from Dodona and Titaresius; Prothous led forty Magnet ships from Peneius and Pelion. Best of horses were Eumelus’s mares; best of men while Achilles was absent was Telamonian Aias, though Achilles and his horses were better still.