Helenus told Hector and Aeneas that the burden rested on them, best in fighting and counsel. They must hold the people before the gates and keep men from falling fleeing into their women’s arms. Hector must go into the city, tell Hecuba to gather the old women at Athena’s temple on the citadel, lay her loveliest robe on the goddess’s knees, and vow twelve unbroken yearling heifers if Athena would pity the city, wives, and little children and hold back Diomedes, that savage spearman — whom Helenus said had proved the mightiest of the Achaeans; they had not even so feared Achilles, and this man raged beyond measure.
Hector obeyed. He went through the army, roused the Trojans, and then set off for the city. The black rim of his shield struck his ankles and neck as he moved. He told the Trojans to be men and remember strength while he asked the elders and women to pray.
Glaucus son of Hippolochus and Diomedes met in the middle. Diomedes asked who he was; if he was a god, Diomedes would not fight him. Even strong Lycurgus son of Dryas did not live long when he drove the nurses of mad Dionysus down over sacred Nysa; Dionysus fled into the sea, and Thetis received him trembling. The gods hated Lycurgus, and Zeus made him blind; he did not live long, hated by all the deathless gods. So Diomedes would not fight the blessed gods. But if Glaucus was a mortal who ate the fruit of the earth, let him come nearer destruction.
Glaucus answered with the great word: why ask of lineage? As leaves are, so are men. Wind scatters leaves on the ground, and the forest grows others when spring comes; so one generation grows and another passes. Still, if Diomedes wished to know his family — many men knew it — there was a city Ephyre in a corner of horse-pasturing Argos, and there lived Sisyphus, craftiest of men, son of Aeolus. He fathered Glaucus, and Glaucus fathered blameless Bellerophon, to whom the gods gave beauty and lovely manhood.
Proetus’s wife Anteia desired Bellerophon and lied against him to the king. Proetus shrank from killing him, but sent him to Lycia with deadly signs scratched on a folded tablet. The Lycian king entertained him nine days, then on the tenth read the tokens and ordered him to kill the Chimaera — lion in front, serpent behind, goat in the middle, breathing terrible fire. Bellerophon killed her, trusting the gods’ signs; then fought the Solymi, killed the Amazons, and survived an ambush of the best Lycians. When the king knew he was of divine stock, he gave him his daughter, half his honor, and a choice domain of orchard and plowland.
The king’s daughter bore Bellerophon three children — Isander, Hippolochus, and Laodameia, who bore Sarpedon to Zeus. When the gods came to hate even Bellerophon, he wandered alone over the Aleian plain, eating out his heart. Ares killed Isander among the Solymi, and Artemis killed Laodameia. Hippolochus fathered me and sent me to Troy, charging me always to be best and excel beyond others, and not to shame the stock of my fathers, best men in Ephyre and broad Lycia. That blood and parentage I claim.