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

is war's steward, weighs the
upshot, it may well prove that the straw which our sickles have reaped
is far heavier than the grain. It may not be that the Achaeans should
mourn the dead with their bellies; day by day men fall thick and
threefold continually; when should we have respite from our sorrow? Let
us mourn our dead for a day and bury them out of sight and mind, but
let those of us who are left eat and drink that we may arm and fight
our foes more fiercely. In that hour let no man hold back, waiting for
a second summons; such summons shall bode ill for him who is found
lagging behind at our ships; let us rather sally as one man and loose
the fury of war upon the Trojans."

When he had thus spoken he took with him the sons of Nestor, with Meges
son of Phyleus, Thoas, Meriones, Lycomedes son of Creontes, and
Melanippus, and went to the tent of Agamemnon son of Atreus. The word
was not sooner said than the deed was done: they brought out the seven
tripods which Agamemnon had promised, with the twenty metal cauldrons
and the twelve horses; they also brought the women skilled in useful
arts, seven in number, with Briseis, which made eight. Ulysses weighed
out the ten talents of gold and then led the way back, while the young
Achaeans brought the rest of the gifts, and laid them in the middle of
the assembly.

Agamemnon then rose, and Talthybius whose voice was like that of a god
came to him with the boar. The son of Atreus drew the knife which he
wore by the scabbard of his mighty sword, and began by cutting off some
bristles from the boar, lifting up his hands in prayer as he did so.
The other Achaeans sat where they were all silent and orderly to hear
the king, and Agamemnon looked into the vault of heaven and prayed
saying, "I call Jove the first and mightiest of all gods to witness, I
call also Earth and Sun and the Erinyes who dwell below and take
vengeance on him who shall swear falsely, that I have laid no hand upon
the girl Briseis, neither to take her to my bed nor otherwise, but that
she has remained in my tents inviolate. If I swear falsely may heaven
visit me with all the penalties which it metes out to those who perjure
themselves."

He cut the boar's throat as he spoke, whereon Talthybius whirled it
round his head, and flung it into the wide sea to feed the fishes. Then
Achilles also rose and said to the Argives, "Father Jove, of a truth
you blind men's eyes and bane them. The son of Atreus had not else
stirred me to so fierce an anger, nor so stubbornly taken Briseis from
me against my will. Surely Jove must have counselled the destruction of
many an Argive. Go, now, and take your food that we may begin fighting."

On this he broke up the assembly, and every man went back to his own
ship. The Myrmidons attended to the presents and took them away to the
ship of Achilles. They placed them in his tents, while the stable-men
drove the horses in among the others.

Briseis, fair as Venus, when she saw the mangled body of Patroclus,
flung herself upon it and cried aloud, tearing her breast, her neck,
and her lovely face with both her hands. Beautiful as a goddess she
wept and said, "Patroclus, dearest friend, when I went hence I left you
living; I return, O prince, to find you dead; thus do fresh sorrows
multiply upon me one after the other. I saw him to whom my father and
mother married me, cut down before our city, and my three own dear
brothers perished with him on the self-same day; but you, Patroclus,
even when Achilles slew my husband and sacked the city of noble Mynes,
told me that I was not to weep, for you said you would make Achilles
marry me, and take me back with him to Phthia, we should have a wedding
feast among the Myrmidons. You were always kind to me and I shall never
cease to grieve for you."

She wept as she spoke, and the women joined in her lament-making as
though their tears were for Patroclus, but in truth each was weeping
for her own sorrows. The elders of the Achaeans gathered round Achilles
and prayed him to take food, but he groaned and would not do so. "I
pray you," said he, "if any comrade will hear me, bid me neither eat
nor drink, for I am in great heaviness, and will stay fasting even to
the going down of the sun."

On this he sent the other princes away, save only the two sons of
Atreus and Ulysses, Nestor, Idomeneus, and the knight Phoenix, who
stayed behind and tried to comfort him in the bitterness of his sorrow:
but he would not be comforted till he should have flung himself into
the jaws of battle, and he fetched sigh on sigh, thinking ever of
Patroclus. Then he said--

"Hapless and dearest comrade, you it was who would get a good dinner
ready for me at once and without delay when the Achaeans were hasting
to fight the Trojans; now, therefore, though I have meat and drink in
my tents, yet will I fast for sorrow. Grief greater than this I could
not know, not even though I were to hear of the death of my father, who
is now in Phthia weeping for the loss of me his son, who am here
fighting the Trojans in a strange land for the accursed sake of Helen,
nor yet though I should hear that my son is no more--he who is being
brought up in Scyros--if indeed Neoptolemus is still living. Till now I
made sure that I alone was to fall here at Troy away from Argos, while
you were to return to Phthia, bring back my son with you in your own
ship, and show him all my property, my bondsmen, and the greatness of
my house--for Peleus must surely be either dead, or what little life
remains to him is oppressed alike with the infirmities of age and ever
present fear lest he should hear the sad tidings of my death."

He wept as he spoke, and the elders sighed in concert as each thought
on what he had left at home behind him. The son of Saturn looked down
with pity upon them, and said presently to Minerva, "My child, you have
quite deserted your hero; is he then gone so clean out of your
recollection? There he sits by the ships all desolate for the loss of
his dear comrade, and though the others are gone to their dinner he
will neither eat nor drink. Go then and drop nectar and ambrosia into
his breast, that he may know no hunger."

With these words he urged Minerva, who was already of the same mind.
She darted down from heaven into the air like some falcon sailing on
his broad wings and screaming. Meanwhile the Achaeans were arming
throughout the host, and when Minerva had dropped nectar and ambrosia
into Achilles so that no cruel hunger should cause his limbs to fail
him, she went back to the house of her mighty father. Thick as the
chill snow-flakes shed from the hand of Jove and borne on the keen
blasts of the north wind, even so thick did the gleaming helmets, the
bossed shields, the strongly plated breastplates, and the ashen spears
stream from the ships. The sheen pierced the sky, the whole land was
radiant with their flashing armour, and the sound of the tramp of their
treading rose from under their feet. In the midst of them all Achilles
put on his armour; he gnashed his teeth, his eyes gleamed like fire,
for his grief was greater than he could bear. Thus, then, full of fury
against the Trojans, did he don the gift of the god, the armour that
Vulcan had made him.

First he put on the goodly greaves fitted with ancle-clasps, and next
he did on the breastplate about his chest. He slung the silver-studded
sword of bronze about his shoulders, and then took up the shield so
great and strong that shone afar with a splendour as of the moon. As
the light seen by sailors from out at sea, when men have lit a fire in
their homestead high up among the mountains, but the sailors are
carried out to sea by wind and storm far from the haven where they
would be--even so did the gleam of Achilles' wondrous shield strike up
into the heavens. He lifted the redoubtable helmet, and set it upon his
head, from whence it shone like a star, and the golden plumes which
Vulcan had set thick about the ridge of the helmet, waved all around
it. Then Achilles made trial of himself in his armour to see whether it
fitted him, so that his limbs could play freely under it, and it seemed
to buoy him up as though it had been wings.

He also drew his father's spear out of the spear-stand, a spear so
great and heavy and strong that none of the Achaeans save only Achilles
had strength to wield it; this was the spear of Pelian ash from the
topmost ridges of Mt. Pelion, which Chiron had once given to Peleus,
fraught with the death of heroes. Automedon and Alcimus busied
themselves with the harnessing of his horses; they made the bands fast
about them, and put the bit in their mouths, drawing the reins back
towards the chariot. Automedon, whip in hand, sprang up behind the
horses, and after him Achilles mounted in full armour, resplendent as
the sun-god Hyperion. Then with a loud voice he chided with his
father's horses saying, "Xanthus and Balius, famed offspring of
Podarge--this time when we have done fighting be sure and bring your
driver safely back to the host of the Achaeans, and do not leave him
dead on the plain as you did Patroclus."

Then fleet Xanthus answered under the yoke--for white-armed Juno had
endowed him with human speech--and he bowed his head till his mane
touched the ground as it hung down from under the yoke-band. "Dread
Achilles," said he, "we will indeed save you now, but the day of your
death is near, and the blame will not be ours, for it will be heaven
and stern fate that will destroy you. Neither was it through any sloth
or slackness on our part that the Trojans stripped Patroclus of his
armour; it was the mighty god whom lovely Leto bore that slew him as he
fought among the foremost, and vouchsafed a triumph to Hector. We two
can fly as swiftly as Zephyrus who they say is fleetest of all winds;
nevertheless it is your doom to fall by the hand of a man and of a god."

When he had thus said the Erinyes stayed his speech, and Achilles
answered him in great sadness, saying, "Why, O Xanthus, do you thus
foretell my death? You need not do so, for I well know that I am to
fall here, far from my dear father and mother; none the more, however,
shall I stay my hand till I have given the Trojans their fill of
fighting."

So saying, with a loud cry he drove his horses to the front.


BOOK XX

The gods hold a council and determine to watch the fight, from
the hill Callicolone, and the barrow of Hercules--A fight
between Achilles and AEneas is interrupted by Neptune,