The Iliad

by Robert Fagels

  But if fighting’s flaring up in your own sector,

  at least let the rugged giant Ajax come alone

  with Teucer the master archer at his side!”

  And Telamon’s giant son agreed at once.

  He called out to his smaller, faster brother

  with orders flying, “Ajax, you stay here,

  you and the burly Lycomedes stand your ground,

  keep our Danaans fighting here with all they’ve got.

  I’m on my way over there to meet this new assault—

  I’ll soon be back, once I’ve helped our friends.”

  And with that Telamonian Ajax strode off

  with his brother Teucer, his own father’s son,

  and Pandion cradling Teucer’s long curved bow.

  Holding close to the wall, they picked their way

  until they reached the brave Menestheus’ bastion.

  There they found the defenders packed, hard-pressed

  as the Lycians’ stalwart lords and captains stormed

  like a black tornado up against the breastworks—

  both men flung themselves in attack, the war cries broke.

  And Telamon’s son was the first to kill his man,

  Sarpedon’s comrade, Epicles great with heart.

  He brought him down with a glinting jagged rock,

  massive, top of the heap behind the rampart’s edge,

  no easy lift for a fighter even in prime strength,

  working with both hands, weak as men are now.

  Giant Ajax hoisted it high and hurled it down,

  crushed the rim of the fighter’s four-homed helmet

  and cracked his skull to splinters, bloody pulp—

  and breakneck down like a diver went the Trojan

  plunging off and away from the steep beetling tower

  as life breath left his bones.

  And Glaucus next ...

  Hippolochus’ brawny son was scrambling up the wall

  when Teucer’s arrow winged him from high aloft,

  just where he saw his shoulder blade laid bare,

  and stopped his lust for battle. Down he jumped

  from the wall in secret, fast, so no Achaean

  could see him hit and bellow out in triumph.

  Soon as he noticed Glaucus slipping clear,

  the pain overcame Sarpedon

  but even so he never forgot his lust for battle.

  He lunged in with a spear at Thestor’s son Alcmaon,

  stabbed him, dragged out the shaft as the victim,

  caving into the spear’s pull, pitched headfirst

  and his fine bronze armor clashed against his corpse.

  And Sarpedon clawing the rampart now with powerful hands,

  wrenched hard and the whole wall came away, planks and all

  and the rampart stood exposed, top defenses stripped—

  Sarpedon had made a gaping breach for hundreds.

  But Teucer and Ajax, aiming at him together,

  shot!—Teucer’s arrow hitting the gleaming belt

  that cinched his body-shield around his chest—

  but Zeus brushed from his son the deadly spirits:

  not by the ships’ high stems would his Sarpedon die.

  Ajax lunged at the man, he struck his shield but the point

  would not pierce through, so he beat him back in rage

  and he edged away from the breastwork just a yard.

  Not that Sarpedon yielded all the way, never,

  his heart still raced with hopes of winning glory,

  whirling, shouting back to his splendid Lycians,

  “Lycians—why do you slack your fighting-fury now?

  It’s hard for me, strong as I am, single-handed

  to breach the wall and cut a path to the ships—

  come, shoulder-to-shoulder!

  The more we’ve got, the better the work will go!”

  So he called, and dreading their captain’s scorn

  they bore down fiercer, massing round Sarpedon now

  but against their bulk the Argives closed ranks,

  packed tight behind the wall,

  and a desperate battle flared between both armies.

  Lycian stalwarts could not force the Achaeans back,

  breach their wall and burst through to the ships,

  nor could Achaean spearmen hurl the Lycians back,

  clear of the rampart, once they’d made their stand.

  As two farmers wrangle hard over boundary-stones,

  measuring rods in hand, locked in a common field,

  and fight it out on the cramped contested strip

  for equal shares of turf—so now the rocky bastion

  split the troops apart and across the top they fought,

  hacked at each other, chopped the oxhides round their chests,

  the bucklers full and round, skin-shields, tassels flying.

  Many were wounded, flesh ripped by the ruthless bronze

  whenever some fighter wheeled and bared his back

  but many right through the buckler’s hide itself.

  Everywhere—rocks, ramparts, breastworks swam

  with the blood of Trojans, Argives, both sides,

  but still the Trojans could not rout the Argives.

  They held tight as a working widow holds the scales,

  painstakingly grips the beam and lifts the weight

  and the wool together, balancing both sides even,

  struggling to win a grim subsistence for her children.

  So powerful armies drew their battle line dead even

  till, at last, Zeus gave Hector the son of Priam

  the greater glory—the first to storm the wall.

  Hector loosed a piercing cry at his men:

  “Drive, drive, my stallion-breaking Trojans!

  Breach the Achaean rampart! Hurl your fire now—

  a blazing inferno of fire against their ships!”

  So he cried,

  driving them on, and all ears rang with his cries

  and a tight phalanx launched straight at the wall,

  brandishing sharp spears, swarming the bastions

  as Hector grappled a boulder, bore it up and on.

  It stood at the gates, huge, blunt at the base

  but spiked to a jagged point

  and no two men, the best in the whole realm,

  could easily prize it up from earth and onto a wagon,

  weak as men are now—but he quickly raised and shook it

  as Zeus the son of Cronus with Cronus’ twisting ways

  made it a light lift for Hector all on his own.

  As a shepherd lifts a ram’s fleece with ease,

  plucks it up with a hand—no weight at all to him—

  so Hector raised the rock, bore it straight for the doors

  that blocked the gateway, powerful, thickset, the pair

  towering up with two bars on the inside, crossing over

  each other, shot home with a bolt to pin them firm.

  Planting his body right in front, legs spread wide,

  his weight in the blow to give it total impact,

  Hector hurled at the gates, full center, smashing

  the hinges left and right and the boulder tore through,

  dropped with a crash and both gates groaned and thundered—

  the doorbars could not hold, the planking shattered up

  in a flying storm of splinters under the rock’s force

  and Hector burst through in glory, his face dark

  as the sudden rushing night but he blazed on in bronze

  and terrible fire broke from the gear that wrapped his body,

  two spears in his fists. No one could fight him, stop him,

  none but the gods as Hector hurtled through the gates

  and his eyes flashed fire. And whirling round

  he cried to his Trojans, shouting through the ruck,

  “The wall, storm the wall!”

 
They rushed to obey him,

  some swarming over the top at once, others streaming in

  through the sturdy gateways—Argives scattering back in terror,

  back by the hollow hulls, the uproar rising, no way out, no end—

  BOOK THIRTEEN

  Battling for the Ships

  But once Zeus had driven Hector and Hector’s Trojans

  hard against the ships, he left both armies there,

  milling among the hulls to bear the brunt

  and wrenching work of war—no end in sight—

  while Zeus himself, his shining eyes turned north,

  gazed a world away to the land of Thracian horsemen,

  the Mysian fighters hand-to-hand and the lordly Hippemolgi

  who drink the milk of mares, and the Abii, most decent men alive.

  But not a moment more would he turn his shining eyes to Troy.

  Zeus never dreamed in his heart a single deathless god

  would go to war for Troy’s or Achaea’s forces now.

  But the mighty god of earthquakes was not blind.

  He kept his watch, enthralled by the rush of battle,

  aloft the summit of timbered Samos facing Thrace.

  From there the entire Ida ridge swung clear in view,

  the city of Priam clear and the warships of Achaea.

  Climbing out of the breakers, there Poseidon sat

  and pitied the Argives beaten down by Trojan troops

  and his churning outrage rose against the Father.

  Suddenly down from the mountain’s rocky crags

  Poseidon stormed with giant, lightning strides

  and the looming peaks and tall timber quaked

  beneath his immortal feet as the sea lord surged on.

  Three great strides he took, on the fourth he reached his goal,

  Aegae port where his famous halls are built in the green depths,

  the shimmering golden halls of the god that stand forever.

  Down Poseidon dove and yoked his bronze-hoofed horses

  onto his battle-car, his pair that raced the wind

  with their golden manes streaming on behind them,

  and strapping the golden armor round his body,

  seized his whip that coils lithe and gold

  and boarded his chariot launching up and out,

  skimming the waves, and over the swells they came,

  dolphins leaving their lairs to sport across his wake,

  leaping left and right—well they knew their lord.

  And the sea heaved in joy, cleaving a path for him

  and the team flew on in a blurring burst of speed,

  the bronze axle under the war-car never flecked with foam,

  the stallions vaulting, speeding Poseidon toward Achaea’s fleet.

  There is a vast cave, down in the dark sounding depths,

  mid-sea between Tenedos and Imbros’ rugged cliffs ...

  Here the god of the earthquake drove his horses down,

  he set them free of the yoke and flung before them

  heaps of ambrosia, fodder for them to graze.

  Round their hoofs he looped the golden hobbles

  never broken, never slipped, so there they’d stand,

  stock-still on the spot to wait their lord’s return

  and off Poseidon strode to Achaea’s vast encampment.

  But the Trojans swarmed like flame, like a whirlwind

  following Hector son of Priam blazing on nonstop,

  their war cries shattering, crying as one man—

  their hopes soaring to take the Argive ships

  and slaughter all their best against the hulls.

  But the ocean king who grips and shakes the earth,

  rising up from the offshore swell, urged the Argives,

  taking the build and tireless voice of Calchas.

  First the god commanded the Great and Little Ajax,

  hungry for war as both men were already, “Ajax, Ajax!

  Both of you—fight to save the Achaean armies,

  call up your courage, no cringing panic now!

  At other points on the line I have no fear

  of the Trojans’ hands, invincible as they seem—

  troops who had stormed our massive wall in force—

  our men-at-arms will hold them all at bay.

  But here I fear the worst, I dread a breakthrough.

  Here this firebrand, rabid Hector leads the charge,

  claiming to be the son of high and mighty Zeus.

  But the two of you, if only a god could make you

  stand fast yourselves, tense with all your power,

  and command the rest of your men to stand fast too—

  then you could hurl him back from the deep-sea ships,

  hard as he hurls against you, even if Zeus himself

  impels the madman on.”

  In the same breath the god

  who shakes the mainland struck both men with his staff

  and filled their hearts with strength and striking force,

  put spring in their limbs, their feet and fighting hands.

  Then off he sped himself with the speed of a darting hawk

  that soaring up from a sheer rock face, hovering high,

  swoops at the plain to harry larks and swallows—

  so the lord of the earthquake sped away from both.

  First of the two to know the god was rapid Ajax.

  Oileus’ son alerted Telamon’s son at once:

  “Ajax, since one of the gods who hold Olympus,

  a god in a prophet’s shape, spurs us on to fight

  beside the ships—and I tell you he’s not Calchas,

  seer of the gods who scans the flight of birds ...

  The tracks in his wake, his stride as he sped away—

  I know him at once, with ease—no mistaking the gods.

  And now, what’s more, the courage inside my chest

  is racing faster for action, full frontal assault—

  feet quiver beneath me, hands high for the onset!”

  And Telamonian Ajax joined him, calling out,

  “I can feel it too, now, the hands on my spear,

  invincible hands quivering tense for battle, look—

  the power rising within me, feet beneath me rushing me on!

  I even long to meet this Hector in single combat,

  blaze as he does nonstop for bloody war!”

  So they roused each other, exulting in the fire,

  the joy of battle the god excited in their hearts.

  And he sped to the rear to stir more ranks of Argives,

  men refreshing their strength against the fast ships,

  dead on their feet from the slogging work of war—

  and anguish caught their hearts to see the Trojans,

  troops who had stormed their massive wall in force.

  They watched that assault, weeping freely now ...

  they never thought they would fight free of death.

  But a light urging sent by the god of earthquakes

  rippled through their lines and whipped battalions on.

  Spurring Teucer and Leitus first with bracing orders,