Menelaos with body of Patroklos

By Epigonos, perhaps in Athena Sanctuary at Pergamon (bronze), baroque Homer, Iliad 17.1 ff. and 17.722 ff. (8th century B.C. epic) [1] Brave Menelaos son of Atreus now came to know that Patroklos had fallen, and made his way through the front ranks clad in full armor to bestride him. As a cow stands lowing over her first calf, even so did yellow-haired Menelaos bestride Patroklos... [The Trojans get Patroklos' body and strip Achilles' armor from it. Then the Greeks recover the now-naked body.] [722] On this Menelaos and Meriones (a Cretan) took the dead man in their arms and lifted him high aloft with a great effort. The Trojan host raised a hue and cry behind them when they saw the Achaeans bearing the body away, and flew after them like hounds attacking a wounded boar at the loo (game of stakes) of a band of young huntsmen. For a while the hounds fly at him as though they would tear him in pieces, but now and again he turns on them in a fury, scaring and scattering them in all directions—even so did the Trojans for a while charge in a body, striking with sword and with spears pointed at both the ends, but when the two Ajaxes faced them and stood at bay, they would turn pale and no man dared press on to fight further about the dead.