Before dawn fully came, chosen Achaeans gathered around the pyre, heaped one common mound, and built a wall and high towers as defense for ships and men. They fitted gates for chariots and dug a wide deep ditch outside, planting stakes in it.
The gods marveled at the work. Poseidon complained to Zeus: was there any man on the wide earth who would still declare his thought to the immortals? The long-haired Achaeans had built a wall before their ships and drawn a ditch about it without giving glorious hecatombs to the gods. Surely its fame would reach as far as dawn, and men would forget the wall he and Apollo built with toil for Laomedon. Zeus answered, troubled: another god might fear that thought, one far weaker; but Poseidon’s fame would reach as far as dawn. When the Achaeans went home with their ships, let him break the wall, sweep it into the salt sea, and cover the great shore with sand, so the Achaeans’ great wall would be destroyed.
The Achaeans finished by sunset. Ships came from Lemnos with wine sent by Euneus, Jason’s son by Hypsipyle; he sent a thousand measures for the sons of Atreus, and the rest of the Achaeans bought wine with bronze, iron, hides, cattle, and slaves.
All night the Achaeans feasted, and the Trojans and allies feasted in the city. Zeus planned evils against them, thundering terribly through the night. Pale fear seized them; they poured wine from their cups to the ground and dared not drink before offering to the almighty son of Cronus. Then they lay down and took the gift of sleep.