The Iliad of Homer
Page 24
that wild spear-fighter, the strong one who drives men to thoughts of terror.
So go yourself to the temple of the spoiler Athene,
280 while I go in search of Paris, to call him, if he will listen
to anything I tell him. How I wish at this moment the earth might
open beneath him. The Olympian let him live, a great sorrow
to the Trojans, and high-hearted Priam, and all of his children.
If only I could see him gone down to the house of the death god,
285 then I could say my heart had forgotten its joyless affliction.”
So he spoke, and she going into the great house called out
to her handmaidens, who assembled throughout the city the highborn
women; while she descended into the fragrant store-chamber.
There lay the elaborately wrought robes, the work of Sidonian
290 women, whom Alexandros himself, the godlike, had brought home
from the land of Sidon, crossing the wide sea, on that journey
when he brought back also gloriously descended Helen.
Hekabē lifted out one and took it as gift to Athene,
that which was the loveliest in design and the largest,
295 and shone like a star. It lay beneath the others. She went on
her way, and a throng of noble women hastened about her.
When these had come to Athene’s temple on the peak of the citadel,
Theano of the fair cheeks opened the door for them, daughter
of Kisseus, and wife of Antenor, breaker of horses,
300 she whom the Trojans had established to be Athene’s priestess.
With a wailing cry all lifted up their hands to Athene,
and Theano of the fair cheeks taking up the robe laid it
along the knees of Athene the lovely haired, and praying
she supplicated the daughter of powerful Zeus: “O lady,
305 Athene, our city’s defender, shining among goddesses:
break the spear of Diomedes, and grant that the man be
hurled on his face in front of the Skaian gates; so may we
instantly dedicate within your shrine twelve heifers,
yearlings, never broken, if only you will have pity
310 on the town of Troy, and the Trojan wives, and their innocent children.”
She spoke in prayer, but Pallas Athene turned her head from her.
So they made their prayer to the daughter of Zeus the powerful.
But Hektor went away to the house of Alexandros,
a splendid place he had built himself, with the men who at that time
315 were the best men for craftsmanship in the generous Troad,
who had made him a sleeping room and a hall and a courtyard
near the houses of Hektor and Priam, on the peak of the citadel.
There entered Hektor beloved of Zeus, in his hand holding
the eleven-cubit-long spear, whose shaft was tipped with a shining
320 bronze spearhead, and a ring of gold was hooped to hold it.
He found the man in his chamber busy with his splendid armor,
the corselet and the shield, and turning in his hands the curved bow,
while Helen of Argos was sitting among her attendant women
directing the magnificent work done by her handmaidens.
325 But Hektor saw him, and in words of shame he rebuked him:
“Strange man! It is not fair to keep in your heart this coldness.
The people are dying around the city and around the steep wall
as they fight hard; and it is for you that this war with its clamor
has flared up about our city. You yourself would fight with another
330 whom you saw anywhere hanging back from the hateful encounter.
Up then, to keep our town from burning at once in the hot fire.”
Then in answer the godlike Alexandros spoke to him:
“Hektor, seeing you have scolded me rightly, not beyond measure,
therefore I will tell, and you in turn understand and listen.
335 It was not so much in coldness and bitter will toward the Trojans
that I sat in my room, but I wished to give myself over to sorrow.
But just now with soft words my wife was winning me over
and urging me into the fight, and that way seems to me also
the better one. Victory passes back and forth between men.
340 Come then, wait for me now while I put on my armor of battle,
or go, and I will follow, and I think I can overtake you.”
He spoke, but Hektor of the shining helm gave him no answer,
but Helen spoke to him in words of endearment: “Brother
by marriage to me, who am a nasty bitch evil-intriguing,
345 how I wish that on that day when my mother first bore me
the foul whirlwind of the storm had caught me away and swept me
to the mountain, or into the wash of the sea deep-thundering
where the waves would have swept me away before all these things had happened.
Yet since the gods had brought it about that these vile things must be,
350 I wish I had been the wife of a better man than this is,
one who knew modesty and all things of shame that men say.
But this man’s heart is no steadfast thing, nor yet will it be so
ever hereafter; for that I think he shall take the consequence.
But come now, come in and rest on this chair, my brother,
355 since it is on your heart beyond all that the hard work has fallen
for the sake of dishonored me and the blind act of Alexandros,
us two, on whom Zeus set a vile destiny, so that hereafter
we shall be made into things of song for the men of the future.”
Then tall Hektor of the shining helm answered her: “Do not, Helen,
360 make me sit with you, though you love me. You will not persuade me.
Already my heart within is hastening me to defend
the Trojans, who when I am away long greatly to have me.
Rather rouse this man, and let himself also be swift to action
so he may overtake me while I am still in the city.
365 For I am going first to my own house, so I can visit
my own people, my beloved wife and my son, who is little,
since I do not know if ever again I shall come back this way,
or whether the gods will strike me down at the hands of the Achaians.”
So speaking Hektor of the shining helm departed
370 and in speed made his way to his own well-established dwelling,
but failed to find in the house Andromachē of the white arms;
for she, with the child, and followed by one fair-robed attendant,
had taken her place on the tower in lamentation, and tearful.
When he saw no sign of his perfect wife within the house, Hektor
375 stopped in his way on the threshold and spoke among the handmaidens:
“Come then, tell me truthfully as you may, handmaidens:
where has Andromachē of the white arms gone?
Is she with any of the sisters of her lord or the wives of his brothers?
Or has she gone to the house of Athene, where all the other
380 lovely-haired women of Troy propitiate the grim goddess?”
Then in turn the hard-working housekeeper gave him an answer:
“Hektor, since you have urged me to tell you the truth, she is not
with any of the sisters of her lord or the wives of his brothers,
nor has she gone to the house of Athene, where all the other
385 lovely-haired women of Troy propitiate the grim goddess,
but she has gone to the great bastion of Ilion, because she heard that
the Trojans were losing, and great grew the strength of the Achaians.
Therefo
re she has gone in speed to the wall, like a woman
gone mad, and a nurse attending her carries the baby.”
390 So the housekeeper spoke, and Hektor hastened from his home
backward by the way he had come through the well-laid streets. So
as he had come to the gates on his way through the great city,
the Skaian gates, whereby he would issue into the plain, there
at last his own generous wife came running to meet him,
395 Andromachē, the daughter of high-hearted Eëtion;
Eëtion, who had dwelt underneath wooded Plakos,
in Thebe below Plakos, lord over the Kilikian people.
It was his daughter who was given to Hektor of the bronze helm.
She came to him there, and beside her went an attendant carrying
400 the boy in the fold of her bosom, a little child, only a baby,
Hektor’s son, the admired, beautiful as a star shining,
whom Hektor called Skamandrios, but all of the others
Astyanax—lord of the city; since Hektor alone saved Ilion.
Hektor smiled in silence as he looked on his son, but she,
405 Andromachē, stood close beside him, letting her tears fall,
and clung to his hand and called him by name and spoke to him: “Dearest,
your own great strength will be your death, and you have no pity
on your little son, nor on me, ill-starred, who soon must be your widow;
for presently the Achaians, gathering together,
410 will set upon you and kill you; and for me it would be far better
to sink into the earth when I have lost you, for there is no other
consolation for me after you have gone to your destiny—only
grief; since I have no father, no honored mother.
It was brilliant Achilleus who slew my father, Eëtion,
415 when he stormed the strong-founded citadel of the Kilikians,
Thebe of the towering gates. He killed Eëtion
but did not strip his armor, for his heart respected the dead man,
but burned the body in all its elaborate war-gear
and piled a grave mound over it, and the nymphs of the mountains,
420 daughters of Zeus of the aegis, planted elm trees about it.
And they who were my seven brothers in the great house all went
upon a single day down into the house of the death god,
for swift-footed brilliant Achilleus slaughtered all of them
as they were tending their white sheep and their lumbering oxen;
425 and when he had led my mother, who was queen under wooded Plakos,
here, along with all his other possessions, Achilleus
released her again, accepting ransom beyond count, but Artemis
of the showering arrows struck her down in the halls of her father.
Hektor, thus you are father to me, and my honored mother,
430 you are my brother, and you it is who are my young husband.
Please take pity upon me then, stay here on the rampart,
that you may not leave your child an orphan, your wife a widow,
but draw your people up by the fig tree, there where the city
is openest to attack, and where the wall may be mounted.
435 Three times their bravest came that way, and fought there to storm it
about the two Aiantes and renowned Idomeneus,
about the two Atreidai and the fighting son of Tydeus.
Either some man well skilled in prophetic arts had spoken,
or the very spirit within themselves had stirred them to the onslaught.”
440 Then tall Hektor of the shining helm answered her: “All these
things are in my mind also, lady; yet I would feel deep shame
before the Trojans, and the Trojan women with trailing garments,
if like a coward I were to shrink aside from the fighting;
and the spirit will not let me, since I have learned to be valiant
445 and to fight always among the foremost ranks of the Trojans,
winning for my own self great glory, and for my father.
For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it:
there will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,
and Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear.
450 But it is not so much the pain to come of the Trojans
that troubles me, not even of Priam the king nor Hekabē,
not the thought of my brothers who in their numbers and valor
shall drop in the dust under the hands of men who hate them,
as troubles me the thought of you, when some bronze-armored
455 Achaian leads you off, taking away your day of liberty,
in tears; and in Argos you must work at the loom of another,
and carry water from the spring Messeis or Hypereia,
all unwilling, but strong will be the necessity upon you;
and some day seeing you shedding tears a man will say of you:
460 ‘This is the wife of Hektor, who was ever the bravest fighter
of the Trojans, breakers of horses, in the days when they fought about Ilion.
’ So will one speak of you; and for you it will be yet a fresh grief,
to be widowed of such a man who could fight off the day of your slavery.
But may I be dead and the piled earth hide me under before I
465 hear you crying and know by this that they drag you captive.”
So speaking glorious Hektor held out his arms to his baby,
who shrank back to his fair-girdled nurse’s bosom
screaming, and frightened at the aspect of his own father,
terrified as he saw the bronze and the crest with its horse-hair,
470 nodding dreadfully, as he thought, from the peak of the helmet.
Then his beloved father laughed out, and his honored mother,
and at once glorious Hektor lifted from his head the helmet
and laid it in all its shining upon the ground. Then taking
up his dear son he tossed him about in his arms, and kissed him,
475 and lifted his voice in prayer to Zeus and the other immortals:
“Zeus, and you other immortals, grant that this boy, who is my son,
may be as I am, pre-eminent among the Trojans,
great in strength, as am I, and rule strongly over Ilion;
and some day let them say of him: ‘He is better by far than his father,’
480 as he comes in from the fighting; and let him kill his enemy
and bring home the blooded spoils, and delight the heart of his mother.”
So speaking he set his child again in the arms of his beloved
wife, who took him back again to her fragrant bosom
smiling in her tears; and her husband saw, and took pity upon her,
485 and stroked her with his hand, and called her by name and spoke to her:
“Poor Andromachē! Why does your heart sorrow so much for me?
No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is fated,
but as for fate, I think that no man yet has escaped it
once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor coward.
490 Go therefore back to our house, and take up your own work,
the loom and the distaff, and see to it that your handmaidens
ply their work also; but the men must see to the fighting,
all men who are the people of Ilion, but I beyond others.”
So glorious Hektor spoke and again took up the helmet
495 with its crest of horse-hair, while his beloved wife went homeward,
turning to look back on the way, letting the live tears fall.
And as she came in speed into the well-settled household
of Hektor the slayer of men, she found numbers of handmaidens
within, and her coming stirred a
ll of them into lamentation.
500 So they mourned in his house over Hektor while he was living
still, for they thought he would never again come back from the fighting
alive, escaping the Achaian hands and their violence.
But Paris in turn did not linger long in his high house,
but when he had put on his glorious armor with bronze elaborate
505 he ran in the confidence of his quick feet through the city.
As when some stalled horse who has been corn-fed at the manger
breaking free of his rope gallops over the plain in thunder
to his accustomed bathing place in a sweet-running river
and in the pride of his strength holds high his head, and the mane floats
510 over his shoulders; sure of his glorious strength, the quick knees
carry him to the loved places and the pasture of horses;
so from uttermost Pergamos came Paris, the son of
Priam, shining in all his armor of war as the sun shines,
laughing aloud, and his quick feet carried him; suddenly thereafter
515 he came on brilliant Hektor, his brother, where he yet lingered
before turning away from the place where he had talked with his lady.
It was Alexandros the godlike who first spoke to him:
“Brother, I fear that I have held back your haste, by being
slow on the way, not coming in time, as you commanded me.”
520 Then tall Hektor of the shining helm spoke to him in answer:
“Strange man! There is no way that one, giving judgment in fairness,
could dishonor your work in battle, since you are a strong man.
But of your own accord you hang back, unwilling. And my heart
is grieved in its thought, when I hear shameful things spoken about you
525 by the Trojans, who undergo hard fighting for your sake.
Let us go now; some day hereafter we will make all right
with the immortal gods in the sky, if Zeus ever grant it,
setting up to them in our houses the wine-bowl of liberty
after we have driven out of Troy the strong-greaved Achaians.”
BOOK SEVEN
So speaking Hektor the glorious swept on through the gates,
and with him went Alexandros his brother, both of them minded
in their hearts to do battle and take their part in the fighting.
And as to men of the sea in their supplication the god sends
5 a fair wind, when they are breaking their strength at the smoothed oar-sweeps,