Now Clytios grew bold with hope of victory undisputed. He challenged the slayer of Dexiochos in a madman’s voice, and uttered fatal words with insulting tongue :
“Stand, dog! Flee not from me, Corymbasos ! I will show you what javelin-throwers are the servants of Lyaios! I will lead you all captive into Phrygia —this my spear shall devastate the cities of India— after the Indian-slaying victory I will make Deriades the lackey of Dionysos! The virgin shall loose her maidenhood without bridegifts—she shall accept a shaggychested Satyr for husband, an Indian ravished beside Mygdonian Hermos !
Corymbasos was infuriated by these words. Clytios was too late—the other shore through his throat as he spoke. The head bounded high with a leap of fate, raining drops of blood on the dust.
Corymbasos left the dead body dancing and rolling on the ground, and scattered the Seilenoi, Corymbasos chief of the Indians pre-eminent for valour next to Morrheus and their king. He struck Sebes the spearman above the circle of his breast, and drove the spear of bronze into the flesh, drew out the bloody spear and left him there in a heap of dust. He leapt upon Oinomaos : he was retreating quick as the wind with startled foot towards the army of Bromios, but the other saw him and pursued, and thrust his spear into the middle of his back—the point leapt in and went through the belly with the thrust and out at the midnipple. The man transfixed with the bloody steel and new-slain sprawled flat on his face in the dust; the mist of death came down on his eyelids. But the prodigious hero did not cease from slaughter. Four helmeted warriors were killed by this one slayer, Tyndarios and Thoén and Autesion and Onites, yet he fell not forward to the ground, he lay not stretched out on his back : no, though dead he stood firmly on the earth, like a warrior fighting in the front, as if poising a spear, as if drawing bow and aiming a quick shot at a mark. The valiant dead, yearning for battle after fate had found him, compelled the threads of the Fates, like one casting a light spear, pierced from head to foot with arrows from countless bows, a standing image of Ares. The warriors gazed with wondering eyes at the dead spearman, who still held his spear and had not dropt his oxhide, a spearman corpse, a targeteer without life.
One struck an Athenian, and shore off his right arm with the dreadful steel, cutting through the top of the shoulder ; the limb just cut off with shoulder attached, fell rolling in the dance of death and scoring along a stretch of yellow dust. The man would have pulled the long spear out of the rolling hand and made fight again with a long throw, battling with spear throwing left instead of right ; but an enemy blocked his way and got in first, cutting off the left at the shoulder in its turn. The arm fell to the ground, and a farshot spout of bloody dew struck the slayer and drenched him with crimson drops ; on the ground the poor hand went madly rolling and jumping, reddened with blood, while the curved fingers caught a good handful of earth in its imprisoning clutch, as if gripping again the shieldstrap. The man shed a soldier’s tears, and spoke :
“What I want is another hand, that with three hands I may do deeds worthy of Tritogeneia ! Never mind—I will pursue the enemy, if I leave my hands behind. So much remains for my valour ! Then all may tell a double-handed glory for Athens, how her sons are heroes when their hands are cut off and they have nothing but feet!”
So saying, he rushed like the wind into the battle, and attacked his destroyer unarmed. The enemy stared at him in amazement one and all, and surrounded the half-soldier on all sides; he quite alone received stab after stab, as the steel struck again and again with merciless blows, until at last he fell to the ground, a warlike image preserving the memory of the progenitor for a citizen of later days.
Not only those who fought on foot were cut down ; there was death for the horsemen too. On they went, one bringing fate for another. Rider caught rider, piercing his back with a spear as he fled before, or striking him face to face on the breast ; he shook him away in the dust, new-slain, as he sat his horse. One horse struck by an arrow in the flank, shook off his rider headlong upon the ground, even as Pegasos flying high in the air as swift in his course as the wandering wind, threw Bellerophontes. Another in terror slipt off the horse’s back and fell to the ground at full length over the horse’s belly and hung by his side like a tumbler, and rolled along dragging his head on the ground with his feet on the horse’s back.
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