A magnificent image of a proud and then crashing wave, thundering up a shaken coast, and used to signify the answering cheer of troops.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘And why, I cannot say, but as he sat

Our answering cheer was like the wave foreseen,

When, crest held high, it folds

And down cloud thunders up the shaken coast.’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music: An account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 77