Think how a lion, mauling the soft weak young
of a running deer, clamped in his massive jaws,
cracks their backbones with a snap – she’s stormed in,
invading the lair to tear their tender hearts out
and the mother doe, even if she’s dose by,
what can she do to save her fawns? She’s helpless –
terrible trembling racks her body too – and suddenly
off she bounds through the glades and the thick woods,
drenched in sweat, leaping clear of the big eat’s pounce.
So not a single Trojan could save those two from death,
they fled themselves before the Argive charge.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 11, lines 132-142. Comparing Agamemnon to a predatory lion mauling and tearing apart weak and young deer, this epic simile describes how the Achaean king brutally kills Isus and Antiphus, two of Trojan king Priam’s sons. The mother doe, like the Trojans, is unable to save her young deer from the lion. The Iliad is full of epic similes, especially ones like this involving predators and their prey.