After a murderous contest, protracted to the very end of the day, at nightfall the body, which had with difficulty been protected amid heaps of slain and streams of blood, was dragged off under cover of darkness, as once upon a time before Troy his companions contended in a fierce struggle over the lifeless comradePatroclus, comrade of Achilles. of the Thessalian leader.

By this death the palace was saddened, and all the nobles, as well as the father, were stunned by the sudden calamity; accordingly a truce was declared and the young man, honoured for his high birth and beloved, was mourned after the fashion of his own nation. Accordingly he was carried out, armed in his usual manner, and placed upon a large and lofty platform, and about him were spread ten couches bearing figures of dead men, so carefully made ready that the images were like bodies already in the tomb. For the space of seven days all men by communities and companiesThat is, those that were associated by their living quarters or their places in the ranks. feasted (lamenting the young prince) with dances and the singing of certain sorrowful dirges.

The women for their part, woefully beating their breasts and weeping after their wonted manner, loudly bewailed the hope of their nation cut off in the bloom of youth, just as the priestesses of Venus are often seen to weep at the annual festival of Adonis, which, as the mystic lore of religion tells us, is a kind of symbol of the ripened grain.