9: ‘As when a dragon ... wasted effort.’ Kochanowski creates a simile from an episode from Homer’s Iliad. The Greeks, amassed in Aulis, sacrifice to the gods before their pending invasion of Troy. Following the sacrifice, there appears a great sign: „...a snake with a blood-red back, a fearful thing, sent up to the light by the Olympian himself, slid from under an altar and darted for the plane-tree. In the tree there were a sparrow’s chicks, little babies, out on the topmost branch cowering under the leaves, eight of them, and the mother who bore the brood made nine. Then the snake ate the chicks as they screamed pitifully, and their mother fluttered round it crying for her dear children: but the snake coiled out and caught her by the wing as she shrieked above it. When it had eaten her children and the sparrow herself, the god who had brought the snake to light made it a miracle, plain for all to see - it was turned into stone by the son of devious-minded Kronos." Iliad II 299-330, cf. Apollodorus, Epitome XIII-XVI; Cicero, On Divination II.xxx.63-65; Ovid, Metamorphoses XII 11-23.