Middle Ring: BATTLE! From the Shield of Achilles by Kathleen Vail
© All Rights Reserved

“Upon the riverbanks fighting began as foes threw spears at each other.
Then Strife and Tumult entered the skirmish, together with terrible Fate,
Who kept barely living a man with wounds, and preserved another unwounded;
And yet another she grasped by the foot and dragged him to death in the clamor.
Fate wore a cloak fully covered in blood, and appeared a gruesome figure,
And the warriors fought as in real war and pulled their dead away.”

[Homer’s Iliad, Book 18, Lines 533-540, Vail’s translation]