Diomedes stormed through the plain like a winter river sweeping away dikes and walls. Pandarus saw him and shot him through the right shoulder plate. He boasted that the best of the Achaeans would not long endure the arrow.
Diomedes only stepped back and asked Sthenelus to draw the arrow out. Blood spurted through his tunic. He prayed to Athena to stand by him as she had stood by his father, and to bring within his spear-cast the man who hit him and boasted. Athena heard, made his limbs light, removed the mist from his eyes so he could know god from man, and commanded him not to fight immortals except Aphrodite, if she entered battle.
Diomedes returned with threefold fury. He killed Astynous, Hypeiron, Abas, Polyidus, Xanthus, Thoon, and Priam’s sons Echemmon and Chromius, leaving grief for fathers and companions. He stripped armor and sent horses back with his men.
Aeneas searched out Pandarus and urged him to shoot the raging man again, unless he was a god. Pandarus said he thought it was Diomedes — he knew him by shield, helmet-visor, and horses — but a god must be beside him; his bow had wounded Menelaus and Diomedes but only made them stronger. He regretted leaving chariot and horses in Lycia when he came as an archer. Aeneas offered his own chariot and the famous horses of Tros’s line. Pandarus chose to fight while Aeneas handled the reins, saying the horses would go better for their own driver if they had to fly. Sthenelus saw them coming and urged Diomedes to withdraw, but Diomedes refused: he was of a race that knew neither flight nor fear, and Athena would not let him tremble. He told Sthenelus that if both Trojans fell, he must seize Aeneas’s horses — of the stock Zeus gave Tros — and drive them to the Achaeans.