That splendid shield he gripped before his chest
and shaking a pair of spears went stalking out
like a mountain lion starved for meat too long
and the lordly heart inside him fires him up
to raid some stormproof fold, to go at the sheep,
and even if he should light on herdsmen at the spot,
guarding their flocks with dogs and bristling spears,
the marauder has no mind to be driven off that steading,
not without an attack. All or nothing – he charges flocks
and hauls off bloody prey or he’s run through himself
at the first assault with a fast spear driven home.
So how the heart of Sarpedon stalwart as a god
impelled him to charge the wall and break it down.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 12, lines 346-358. The demi-god Sarpedon, son of Zeus and a Trojan ally from Lycia, charges the Achaean wall to attempt to break through it. The image of a mountain lion starved of meat and charging flocks of sheep and hauling off its bloody prey is used in an epic simile to describe Sarpedon, one of the big heroes of the Trojan War.