Hear Prayer

So then beside their ships the Danaans halted, and were stayed, calling one upon the other, and lifting up their hands to all the gods they made fervent prayer, each man of them; and most of all prayed Nestor of Gerenia, the warder of the Achaeans, stretching forth his two hands to the starry heaven: "O father Zeus, if ever any man of us in wheat-bearing Argos burned to thee fat thigh-pieces of bull or of ram with the prayer that he might return, and thou didst promise and nod thy head thereto, be thou now mindful of these things, and ward from us, O Olympian god, the pitiless day of doom, nor suffer the Achaeans thus to be vanquished by the Trojans."

So he spake in prayer, and Zeus the counsellor thundered aloud, hearing the prayer of the aged son of Neleus.


- Homer, The Iliad, Book 15