He spoke, and foremost to the combat flew: The bold example all his hosts pursue. Then, first, Leocritus beneath him bled, In vain beloved by valiant Lycomede; Who view’d his fall, and, grieving at the chance, Swift to revenge it sent his angry lance; The whirling lance, with vigorous force address’d, Descends, and pants in Apisaon’s breast; From rich Paeonia’s vales the warrior came, Next thee, Asteropeus! in place and fame. Asteropeus with grief beheld the slain, And rush’d to combat, but he rush’d in vain: Indissolubly firm, around the dead, Rank within rank, on buckler buckler spread, And hemm’d with bristled spears, the Grecians stood, A brazen bulwark, and an iron wood. Great Ajax eyes them with incessant care, And in an orb contracts the crowded war, Close in their ranks commands to fight or fall, And stands the centre and the soul of all: Fix’d on the spot they war, and wounded, wound; A sanguine torrent steeps the reeking ground: On heaps the Greeks, on heaps the Trojans bled, And, thickening round them, rise the hills of dead.