They held tight as a working widow holds the scales, painstakingly grips the beam and lifts the weight and the wool together, balancing both sides even, struggling to win a grim subsistence for her children. So powerful armies drew their battle line dead even till, at last, Zeus gave Hector the son of Priam the greater glory - the first to storm the wall.

They held tight as a working widow holds the scales,
painstakingly grips the beam and lifts the weight
and the wool together, balancing both sides even,
struggling to win a grim subsistence for her children.
So powerful armies drew their battle line dead even
till, at last, Zeus gave Hector the son of Priam
the greater glory – the first to storm the wall.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 12, lines 502-508. As Lycians and Achaeans fight it out on the rampart, neither side of getting the better of the other, until Zeus decides to intervene to give Hector the greater glory – the first to storm the wall. The standoff between the forces is likened in an epic simile to a widow measuring out wool on a scales until the scales balance.

Homer Quotes