Apollo sent Aeneas back from the sanctuary. The Trojans rejoiced to see him alive, but labor pressed them hard. Ares covered the fight with darkness. The Aiantes, Odysseus, and Diomedes held the Danaans firm like motionless clouds on mountain peaks.
Agamemnon urged the Argives to be men and feel shame before one another. He killed Deicoon, companion of Aeneas. Aeneas killed Orsilochus and Crethon; Menelaus pitied them and advanced, but Antilochus came beside him, and Aeneas drew back from two men standing together.
Menelaus and Antilochus killed Pylaemenes and his driver Mydon. Hector saw and rushed with Ares and Enyo. Diomedes shuddered at Ares and told the Achaeans to give ground facing the Trojans, not to fight gods by force.
Hector killed Menesthes and Anchialus. Aias killed Amphius but could not strip him under the press of Trojan spears. Then fate drove Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, to meet Sarpedon. They drew near, son and grandson of Zeus. Tlepolemus taunted him: they lied who called Sarpedon son of Zeus; far other was Heracles, who came for Laomedon’s horses with six ships only and sacked Ilios. Sarpedon would pass the gates of Hades vanquished by his hand.
Sarpedon answered that Heracles overthrew Ilios by Laomedon’s folly in refusing the horses he had come so far to fetch; as for Tlepolemus, he would meet death by Sarpedon’s spear and yield glory to him and his soul to Hades. They threw together. Sarpedon killed Tlepolemus with a spear through the throat; Tlepolemus wounded Sarpedon in the left thigh, the point grazing the bone, but Zeus still warded off destruction. The Lycians carried Sarpedon out; Pelagon drew the spear from his thigh, and the North Wind’s breath revived his spirit though he still gasped hard.