The Iliad, Homer [big screen ebook reader .txt] 📗

of plunder, and prayed
saying, "Accept these, goddess, for we give them to you in preference
to all the gods in Olympus: therefore speed us still further towards
the horses and sleeping-ground of the Thracians."

With these words he took the spoils and set them upon a tamarisk tree,
and they marked the place by pulling up reeds and gathering boughs of
tamarisk that they might not miss it as they came back through the
flying hours of darkness. The two then went onwards amid the fallen
armour and the blood, and came presently to the company of Thracian
soldiers, who were sleeping, tired out with their day's toil; their
goodly armour was lying on the ground beside them all orderly in three
rows, and each man had his yoke of horses beside him. Rhesus was
sleeping in the middle, and hard by him his horses were made fast to
the topmost rim of his chariot. Ulysses from some way off saw him and
said, "This, Diomed, is the man, and these are the horses about which
Dolon whom we killed told us. Do your very utmost; dally not about your
armour, but loose the horses at once--or else kill the men yourself,
while I see to the horses."

Thereon Minerva put courage into the heart of Diomed, and he smote them
right and left. They made a hideous groaning as they were being hacked
about, and the earth was red with their blood. As a lion springs
furiously upon a flock of sheep or goats when he finds them without
their shepherd, so did the son of Tydeus set upon the Thracian soldiers
till he had killed twelve. As he killed them Ulysses came and drew them
aside by their feet one by one, that the horses might go forward freely
without being frightened as they passed over the dead bodies, for they
were not yet used to them. When the son of Tydeus came to the king, he
killed him too (which made thirteen), as he was breathing hard, for by
the counsel of Minerva an evil dream, the seed of Oeneus, hovered that
night over his head. Meanwhile Ulysses untied the horses, made them
fast one to another and drove them off, striking them with his bow, for
he had forgotten to take the whip from the chariot. Then he whistled as
a sign to Diomed.

But Diomed stayed where he was, thinking what other daring deed he
might accomplish. He was doubting whether to take the chariot in which
the king's armour was lying, and draw it out by the pole, or to lift
the armour out and carry it off; or whether again, he should not kill
some more Thracians. While he was thus hesitating Minerva came up to
him and said, "Get back, Diomed, to the ships or you may be driven
thither, should some other god rouse the Trojans."

Diomed knew that it was the goddess, and at once sprang upon the
horses. Ulysses beat them with his bow and they flew onward to the
ships of the Achaeans.

But Apollo kept no blind look-out when he saw Minerva with the son of
Tydeus. He was angry with her, and coming to the host of the Trojans he
roused Hippocoon, a counsellor of the Thracians and a noble kinsman of
Rhesus. He started up out of his sleep and saw that the horses were no
longer in their place, and that the men were gasping in their
death-agony; on this he groaned aloud, and called upon his friend by
name. Then the whole Trojan camp was in an uproar as the people kept
hurrying together, and they marvelled at the deeds of the heroes who
had now got away towards the ships.

When they reached the place where they had killed Hector's scout,
Ulysses stayed his horses, and the son of Tydeus, leaping to the
ground, placed the blood-stained spoils in the hands of Ulysses and
remounted: then he lashed the horses onwards, and they flew forward
nothing loth towards the ships as though of their own free will. Nestor
was first to hear the tramp of their feet. "My friends," said he,
"princes and counsellors of the Argives, shall I guess right or
wrong?--but I must say what I think: there is a sound in my ears as of
the tramp of horses. I hope it may be Diomed and Ulysses driving in
horses from the Trojans, but I much fear that the bravest of the
Argives may have come to some harm at their hands."

He had hardly done speaking when the two men came in and dismounted,
whereon the others shook hands right gladly with them and congratulated
them. Nestor knight of Gerene was first to question them. "Tell me,"
said he, "renowned Ulysses, how did you two come by these horses? Did
you steal in among the Trojan forces, or did some god meet you and give
them to you? They are like sunbeams. I am well conversant with the
Trojans, for old warrior though I am I never hold back by the ships,
but I never yet saw or heard of such horses as these are. Surely some
god must have met you and given them to you, for you are both of you
dear to Jove, and to Jove's daughter Minerva."

And Ulysses answered, "Nestor son of Neleus, honour to the Achaean
name, heaven, if it so will, can give us even better horses than these,
for the gods are far mightier than we are. These horses, however, about
which you ask me, are freshly come from Thrace. Diomed killed their
king with the twelve bravest of his companions. Hard by the ships we
took a thirteenth man--a scout whom Hector and the other Trojans had
sent as a spy upon our ships."

He laughed as he spoke and drove the horses over the ditch, while the
other Achaeans followed him gladly. When they reached the strongly
built quarters of the son of Tydeus, they tied the horses with thongs
of leather to the manger, where the steeds of Diomed stood eating their
sweet corn, but Ulysses hung the blood-stained spoils of Dolon at the
stern of his ship, that they might prepare a sacred offering to
Minerva. As for themselves, they went into the sea and washed the sweat
from their bodies, and from their necks and thighs. When the sea-water
had taken all the sweat from off them, and had refreshed them, they
went into the baths and washed themselves. After they had so done and
had anointed themselves with oil, they sat down to table, and drawing
from a full mixing-bowl, made a drink-offering of wine to Minerva.


BOOK XI

In the forenoon the fight is equal, but Agamemnon turns the
fortune of the day towards the Achaeans until he gets
wounded and leaves the field--Hector then drives everything
before him till he is wounded by Diomed--Paris wounds
Diomed--Ulysses, Nestor, and Idomeneus perform prodigies
of valour--Machaon is wounded--Nestor drives him off in
his chariot--Achilles sees the pair driving towards the camp
and sends Patroclus to ask who it is that is wounded--This
is the beginning of evil for Patroclus--Nestor makes a long
speech.

AND now as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus, harbinger of light
alike to mortals and immortals, Jove sent fierce Discord with the
ensign of war in her hands to the ships of the Achaeans. She took her
stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses' ship which was middlemost of
all, so that her voice might carry farthest on either side, on the one
hand towards the tents of Ajax son of Telamon, and on the other towards
those of Achilles--for these two heroes, well-assured of their own
strength, had valorously drawn up their ships at the two ends of the
line. There she took her stand, and raised a cry both loud and shrill
that filled the Achaeans with courage, giving them heart to fight
resolutely and with all their might, so that they had rather stay there
and do battle than go home in their ships.

The son of Atreus shouted aloud and bade the Argives gird themselves
for battle while he put on his armour. First he girded his goodly
greaves about his legs, making them fast with ankle-clasps of silver;
and about his chest he set the breastplate which Cinyras had once given
him as a guest-gift. It had been noised abroad as far as Cyprus that
the Achaeans were about to sail for Troy, and therefore he gave it to
the king. It had ten courses of dark cyanus, twelve of gold, and ten of
tin. There were serpents of cyanus that reared themselves up towards
the neck, three upon either side, like the rainbows which the son of
Saturn has set in heaven as a sign to mortal men. About his shoulders
he threw his sword, studded with bosses of gold; and the scabbard was
of silver with a chain of gold wherewith to hang it. He took moreover
the richly-dight shield that covered his body when he was in
battle--fair to see, with ten circles of bronze running all round it.
On the body of the shield there were twenty bosses of white tin, with
another of dark cyanus in the middle: this last was made to show a
Gorgon's head, fierce and grim, with Rout and Panic on either side. The
band for the arm to go through was of silver, on which there was a
writhing snake of cyanus with three heads that sprang from a single
neck, and went in and out among one another. On his head Agamemnon set
a helmet, with a peak before and behind, and four plumes of horse-hair
that nodded menacingly above it; then he grasped two redoubtable
bronze-shod spears, and the gleam of his armour shot from him as a
flame into the firmament, while Juno and Minerva thundered in honour of
the king of rich Mycene.

Every man now left his horses in charge of his charioteer to hold them
in readiness by the trench, while he went into battle on foot clad in
full armour, and a mighty uproar rose on high into the dawning. The
chiefs were armed and at the trench before the horses got there, but
these came up presently. The son of Saturn sent a portent of evil sound
about their host, and the dew fell red with blood, for he was about to
send many a brave man hurrying down to Hades.

The Trojans, on the other side upon the rising slope of the plain, were
gathered round great Hector, noble Polydamas, Aeneas who was honoured
by the Trojans like an immortal, and the three sons of Antenor,
Polybus, Agenor, and young Acamas beauteous as a god. Hector's round
shield showed in the front rank, and as some baneful star that shines
for a moment through a rent in the clouds and is again hidden beneath
them; even so was Hector now seen in the front ranks and now again in
the hindermost, and his bronze armour gleamed like the lightning of
aegis-bearing Jove.

And now as a band of reapers mow swathes of wheat or barley upon a rich
man's land, and the sheaves fall thick before them, even so did the
Trojans and Achaeans fall upon one another; they were in no mood for
yielding but fought like wolves, and neither side got the better of the
other. Discord was glad as she beheld them, for she was the only god
that went among them; the others were not there, but stayed quietly
each in his own home among the dells and valleys of Olympus. All of