Down the plain he stormed like a stream in spate,
a routing winter torrent sweeping away the dikes:
the tight, piled dikes can’t hold it back any longer,
banks shoring the blooming vineyards cannot curb its course –
a flash flood bursts as the rains from Zeus pour down their power,
acre on acre the well-dug work of farmers crumbling under it –
so under Tydides’ force the Trojan columns panicked now,
no standing their ground, massed, packed as they were.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 5, lines 96-104. Diomedes continues to rage through the battle attacking the panicked Trojans – just before he is wounded in the shoulder from an arrow shot by Pandarus. An epic simile describes the Greek warrior’s rampage like a river swollen by rains from the god Zeus causing a flash flood and bursting through dikes and farmers’ vineyards.