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

now to prove yourself indeed a bold soldier and man of
war. You have no more chance, and Pallas Minerva will forthwith
vanquish you by my spear: you shall now pay me in full for the grief
you have caused me on account of my comrades whom you have killed in
battle."

He poised his spear as he spoke and hurled it. Hector saw it coming and
avoided it; he watched it and crouched down so that it flew over his
head and stuck in the ground beyond; Minerva then snatched it up and
gave it back to Achilles without Hector's seeing her; Hector thereon
said to the son of Peleus, "You have missed your aim, Achilles, peer of
the gods, and Jove has not yet revealed to you the hour of my doom,
though you made sure that he had done so. You were a false-tongued liar
when you deemed that I should forget my valour and quail before you.
You shall not drive your spear into the back of a runaway--drive it,
should heaven so grant you power, drive it into me as I make straight
towards you; and now for your own part avoid my spear if you can--would
that you might receive the whole of it into your body; if you were once
dead the Trojans would find the war an easier matter, for it is you who
have harmed them most."

He poised his spear as he spoke and hurled it. His aim was true for he
hit the middle of Achilles' shield, but the spear rebounded from it,
and did not pierce it. Hector was angry when he saw that the weapon had
sped from his hand in vain, and stood there in dismay for he had no
second spear. With a loud cry he called Deiphobus and asked him for
one, but there was no man; then he saw the truth and said to himself,
"Alas! the gods have lured me on to my destruction. I deemed that the
hero Deiphobus was by my side, but he is within the wall, and Minerva
has inveigled me; death is now indeed exceedingly near at hand and
there is no way out of it--for so Jove and his son Apollo the
far-darter have willed it, though heretofore they have been ever ready
to protect me. My doom has come upon me; let me not then die
ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great
thing that shall be told among men hereafter."

As he spoke he drew the keen blade that hung so great and strong by his
side, and gathering himself together be sprang on Achilles like a
soaring eagle which swoops down from the clouds on to some lamb or
timid hare--even so did Hector brandish his sword and spring upon
Achilles. Achilles mad with rage darted towards him, with his wondrous
shield before his breast, and his gleaming helmet, made with four
layers of metal, nodding fiercely forward. The thick tresses of gold
with which Vulcan had crested the helmet floated round it, and as the
evening star that shines brighter than all others through the stillness
of night, even such was the gleam of the spear which Achilles poised in
his right hand, fraught with the death of noble Hector. He eyed his
fair flesh over and over to see where he could best wound it, but all
was protected by the goodly armour of which Hector had spoiled
Patroclus after he had slain him, save only the throat where the
collar-bones divide the neck from the shoulders, and this is a most
deadly place: here then did Achilles strike him as he was coming on
towards him, and the point of his spear went right through the fleshy
part of the neck, but it did not sever his windpipe so that he could
still speak. Hector fell headlong, and Achilles vaunted over him
saying, "Hector, you deemed that you should come off scatheless when
you were spoiling Patroclus, and recked not of myself who was not with
him. Fool that you were: for I, his comrade, mightier far than he, was
still left behind him at the ships, and now I have laid you low. The
Achaeans shall give him all due funeral rites, while dogs and vultures
shall work their will upon yourself."

Then Hector said, as the life ebbed out of him, "I pray you by your
life and knees, and by your parents, let not dogs devour me at the
ships of the Achaeans, but accept the rich treasure of gold and bronze
which my father and mother will offer you, and send my body home, that
the Trojans and their wives may give me my dues of fire when I am dead."

Achilles glared at him and answered, "Dog, talk not to me neither of
knees nor parents; would that I could be as sure of being able to cut
your flesh into pieces and eat it raw, for the ill you have done me, as
I am that nothing shall save you from the dogs--it shall not be, though
they bring ten or twenty-fold ransom and weigh it out for me on the
spot, with promise of yet more hereafter. Though Priam son of Dardanus
should bid them offer me your weight in gold, even so your mother shall
never lay you out and make lament over the son she bore, but dogs and
vultures shall eat you utterly up."

Hector with his dying breath then said, "I know you what you are, and
was sure that I should not move you, for your heart is hard as iron;
look to it that I bring not heaven's anger upon you on the day when
Paris and Phoebus Apollo, valiant though you be, shall slay you at the
Scaean gates."

When he had thus said the shrouds of death enfolded him, whereon his
soul went out of him and flew down to the house of Hades, lamenting its
sad fate that it should enjoy youth and strength no longer. But
Achilles said, speaking to the dead body, "Die; for my part I will
accept my fate whensoever Jove and the other gods see fit to send it."

As he spoke he drew his spear from the body and set it on one side;
then he stripped the blood-stained armour from Hector's shoulders while
the other Achaeans came running up to view his wondrous strength and
beauty; and no one came near him without giving him a fresh wound. Then
would one turn to his neighbour and say, "It is easier to handle Hector
now than when he was flinging fire on to our ships"--and as he spoke he
would thrust his spear into him anew.

When Achilles had done spoiling Hector of his armour, he stood among
the Argives and said, "My friends, princes and counsellors of the
Argives, now that heaven has vouchsafed us to overcome this man, who
has done us more hurt than all the others together, consider whether we
should not attack the city in force, and discover in what mind the
Trojans may be. We should thus learn whether they will desert their
city now that Hector has fallen, or will still hold out even though he
is no longer living. But why argue with myself in this way, while
Patroclus is still lying at the ships unburied, and unmourned--he whom
I can never forget so long as I am alive and my strength fails not?
Though men forget their dead when once they are within the house of
Hades, yet not even there will I forget the comrade whom I have lost.
Now, therefore, Achaean youths, let us raise the song of victory and go
back to the ships taking this man along with us; for we have achieved a
mighty triumph and have slain noble Hector to whom the Trojans prayed
throughout their city as though he were a god."

On this he treated the body of Hector with contumely: he pierced the
sinews at the back of both his feet from heel to ancle and passed
thongs of ox-hide through the slits he had made: thus he made the body
fast to his chariot, letting the head trail upon the ground. Then when
he had put the goodly armour on the chariot and had himself mounted, he
lashed his horses on and they flew forward nothing loth. The dust rose
from Hector as he was being dragged along, his dark hair flew all
abroad, and his head once so comely was laid low on earth, for Jove had
now delivered him into the hands of his foes to do him outrage in his
own land.

Thus was the head of Hector being dishonoured in the dust. His mother
tore her hair, and flung her veil from her with a loud cry as she
looked upon her son. His father made piteous moan, and throughout the
city the people fell to weeping and wailing. It was as though the whole
of frowning Ilius was being smirched with fire. Hardly could the people
hold Priam back in his hot haste to rush without the gates of the city.
He grovelled in the mire and besought them, calling each one of them by
his name. "Let be, my friends," he cried, "and for all your sorrow,
suffer me to go single-handed to the ships of the Achaeans. Let me
beseech this cruel and terrible man, if maybe he will respect the
feeling of his fellow-men, and have compassion on my old age. His own
father is even such another as myself--Peleus, who bred him and reared
him to be the bane of us Trojans, and of myself more than of all
others. Many a son of mine has he slain in the flower of his youth, and
yet, grieve for these as I may, I do so for one--Hector--more than for
them all, and the bitterness of my sorrow will bring me down to the
house of Hades. Would that he had died in my arms, for so both his
ill-starred mother who bore him, and myself, should have had the
comfort of weeping and mourning over him."

Thus did he speak with many tears, and all the people of the city
joined in his lament. Hecuba then raised the cry of wailing among the
Trojans. "Alas, my son," she cried, "what have I left to live for now
that you are no more? Night and day did I glory in you throughout the
city, for you were a tower of strength to all in Troy, and both men and
women alike hailed you as a god. So long as you lived you were their
pride, but now death and destruction have fallen upon you."

Hector's wife had as yet heard nothing, for no one had come to tell her
that her husband had remained without the gates. She was at her loom in
an inner part of the house, weaving a double purple web, and
embroidering it with many flowers. She told her maids to set a large
tripod on the fire, so as to have a warm bath ready for Hector when he
came out of battle; poor woman, she knew not that he was now beyond the
reach of baths, and that Minerva had laid him low by the hands of
Achilles. She heard the cry coming as from the wall, and trembled in
every limb; the shuttle fell from her hands, and again she spoke to her
waiting-women. "Two of you," she said, "come with me that I may learn
what it is that has befallen; I heard the voice of my husband's
honoured mother; my own heart beats as though it would come into my
mouth and my limbs refuse to carry me; some great misfortune for
Priam's children