The Iliad of Homer

by Richmond Lattimore

  ‘My child, for the matter of strength, Athene and Hera will give it

  255 if it be their will, but be it yours to hold fast in your bosom

  the anger of the proud heart, for consideration is better.

  Keep from the bad complication of quarrel, and all the more for this

  the Argives will honor you, both their younger men and their elders.

  ’ So the old man advised, but you have forgotten. Yet even now

  260 stop, and give way from the anger that hurts the heart. Agamemnon

  offers you worthy recompense if you change from your anger.

  Come then, if you will, listen to me, while I count off for you

  all the gifts in his shelter that Agamemnon has promised:

  Seven unfired tripods; ten talents’ weight of gold; twenty

  265 shining cauldrons; and twelve horses, strong, race-competitors

  who have won prizes in the speed of their feet. That man would not be

  poor in possessions, to whom were given all these have won him,

  nor be unpossessed of dearly honored gold, were he given

  all the prizes Agamemnon’s horses won in their speed for him.

  270 He will give you seven women of Lesbos, the work of whose hands

  is blameless, whom when you yourself captured strong-founded Lesbos

  he chose, and who in their beauty surpassed the races of women.

  He will give you these, and with them shall go the one he took from you,

  the daughter of Briseus. And to all this he will swear a great oath

  275 that he never entered into her bed and never lay with her

  as is natural for human people, between men and women.

  All these gifts shall be yours at once; but again, if hereafter

  the gods grant that we storm and sack the great city of Priam,

  you may go to your ship and load it deep as you please with

  280 gold and bronze, when we Achaians divide the war spoils,

  and you may choose for yourself twenty of the Trojan women,

  who are the loveliest of all after Helen of Argos.

  And if we come back to Achaian Argos, pride of the tilled land,

  you could be his son-in-law; he would honor you with Orestes,

  285 his growing son, who is brought up there in abundant luxury.

  Since, as he has three daughters there in his strong-built castle,

  Chrysothemis and Laodikē and Iphianassa,

  you may lead away the one of these that you like, with no bride-price,

  to the house of Peleus; and with the girl he will grant you as dowry

  290 many gifts, such as no man ever gave with his daughter.

  He will grant you seven citadels, strongly settled:

  Kardamyle and Enopē and Hire of the grasses,

  Pherai the sacrosanct, and Antheia deep in the meadows,

  with Aipeia the lovely, and Pedasos of the vineyards.

  295 All these lie near the sea, at the bottom of sandy Pylos,

  and men live among them rich in cattle and rich in sheepflocks,

  who will honor you as if you were a god with gifts given

  and fulfill your prospering decrees underneath your scepter.

  All this he will bring to pass for you, if you change from your anger.

  300 But if the son of Atreus is too much hated in your heart,

  himself and his gifts, at least take pity on all the other

  Achaians, who are afflicted along the host, and will honor you

  as a god. You may win very great glory among them.

  For now you might kill Hektor, since he would come very close to you

  305 with the wicked fury upon him, since he thinks there is not his equal

  among the rest of the Danaäns the ships carried hither.”

  Then in answer to him spoke Achilleus of the swift feet:

  “Son of Laërtes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus:

  without consideration for you I must make my answer,

  310 the way I think, and the way it will be accomplished, that you may not

  come one after another, and sit by me, and speak softly.

  For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who

  hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.

  But I will speak to you the way it seems best to me: neither

  315 do I think the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, will persuade me,

  nor the rest of the Danaäns, since there was no gratitude given

  for fighting incessantly forever against your enemies.

  Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.

  We are all held in a single honor, the brave with the weaklings.

  320 A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.

  Nothing is won for me, now that my heart has gone through its afflictions

  in forever setting my life on the hazard of battle.

  For as to her unwinged young ones the mother bird brings back

  morsels, wherever she can find them, but as for herself it is suffering,

  325 such was I, as I lay through all the many nights unsleeping,

  such as I wore through the bloody days of the fighting,

  striving with warriors for the sake of these men’s women.

  But I say that I have stormed from my ships twelve cities

  of men, and by land eleven more through the generous Troad.

  330 From all these we took forth treasures, goodly and numerous,

  and we would bring them back, and give them to Agamemnon,

  Atreus’ son; while he, waiting back beside the swift ships,

  would take them, and distribute them little by little, and keep many.

  All the other prizes of honor he gave the great men and the princes

  335 are held fast by them, but from me alone of all the Achaians

  he has taken and keeps the bride of my heart. Let him lie beside her

  and be happy. Yet why must the Argives fight with the Trojans?

  And why was it the son of Atreus assembled and led here

  these people? Was it not for the sake of lovely-haired Helen?

  340 Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones

  who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful,

  loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now

  loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her.

  Now that he has deceived me and taken from my hands my prize of honor,

  345 let him try me no more. I know him well. He will not persuade me.

  Let him take counsel with you, Odysseus, and the rest of the princes

  how to fight the ravening fire away from his vessels.

  Indeed, there has been much hard work done even without me;

  he has built himself a wall and driven a ditch about it,

  350 making it great and wide, and fixed the sharp stakes inside it.

  Yet even so he cannot hold the strength of manslaughtering

  Hektor; and yet when I was fighting among the Achaians

  Hektor would not drive his attack beyond the wall’s shelter

  but would come forth only so far as the Skaian gates and the oak tree.

  355 There once he endured me alone, and barely escaped my onslaught.

  But, now I am unwilling to fight against brilliant Hektor;

  tomorrow, when I have sacrificed to Zeus and to all gods,

  and loaded well my ships, and rowed out onto the salt water,

  you will see, if you have a mind to it and if it concerns you,

  360 my ships in the dawn at sea on the Hellespont where the fish swarm

  and my men manning them with good will to row. If the glorious

  shaker of the earth should grant us a favoring passage

  on the third day thereafter we might raise generous Phthia.

/>   I have many possessions there that I left behind when I came here

  365 on this desperate venture, and from here there is more gold, and red bronze,

  and fair-girdled women, and gray iron I will take back;

  all that was allotted to me. But my prize: he who gave it,

  powerful Agamemnon, son of Atreus, has taken it back again

  outrageously. Go back and proclaim to him all that I tell you,

  370 openly, so other Achaians may turn against him in anger

  if he hopes yet one more time to swindle some other Danaän,

  wrapped as he is forever in shamelessness; yet he would not,

  bold as a dog though he be, dare look in my face any longer.

  I will join with him in no counsel, and in no action.

  375 He cheated me and he did me hurt. Let him not beguile me

  with words again. This is enough for him. Let him of his own will

  be damned, since Zeus of the counsels has taken his wits away from him.

  I hate his gifts. I hold him light as the strip of a splinter.

  Not if he gave me ten times as much, and twenty times over

  380 as he possesses now, not if more should come to him from elsewhere,

  or gave all that is brought in to Orchomenos, all that is brought in

  to Thebes of Egypt, where the greatest possessions lie up in the houses,

  Thebes of the hundred gates, where through each of the gates two hundred

  fighting men come forth to war with horses and chariots;

  385 not if he gave me gifts as many as the sand or the dust is,

  not even so would Agamemnon have his way with my spirit

  until he had made good to me all this heartrending insolence.

  Nor will I marry a daughter of Atreus’ son, Agamemnon,

  not if she challenged Aphrodite the golden for loveliness,

  390 not if she matched the work of her hands with gray-eyed Athene;

  not even so will I marry her; let him pick some other Achaian,

  one who is to his liking and is kinglier than I am.

  For if the gods will keep me alive, and I win homeward,

  Peleus himself will presently arrange a wife for me.

  395 There are many Achaian girls in the land of Hellas and Phthia,

  daughters of great men who hold strong places in guard. And of these

  any one that I please I might make my beloved lady.

  And the great desire in my heart drives me rather in that place

  to take a wedded wife in marriage, the bride of my fancy,

  400 to enjoy with her the possessions won by aged Peleus. For not

  worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable

  were won for Ilion, that strong-founded citadel, in the old days

  when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians;

  not all that the stone doorsill of the Archer holds fast within it,

  405 of Phoibos Apollo in Pytho of the rocks. Of possessions

  cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting,

  and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses,

  but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted

  nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.

  410 For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me

  I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,

  if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,

  my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;

  but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers,

  415 the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life

  left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

  And this would be my counsel to others also, to sail back

  home again, since no longer shall you find any term set

  on the sheer city of Ilion, since Zeus of the wide brows has strongly

  420 held his own hand over it, and its people are made bold.

  Do you go back therefore to the great men of the Achaians,

  and take them this message, since such is the privilege of the princes:

  that they think out in their minds some other scheme that is better,

  which might rescue their ships, and the people of the Achaians

  425 who man the hollow ships, since this plan will not work for them

  which they thought of by reason of my anger. Let Phoinix

  remain here with us and sleep here, so that tomorrow

  he may come with us in our ships to the beloved land of our fathers,

  if he will; but I will never use force to hold him.”

  430 So he spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence

  in amazement at his words. He had spoken to them very strongly.

  But at long last Phoinix the aged horseman spoke out

  in a stormburst of tears, and fearing for the ships of the Achaians:

  “If it is going home, glorious Achilleus, you ponder

  435 in your heart, and are utterly unwilling to drive the obliterating

  fire from the fast ships, since anger has descended on your spirit,

  how then shall I, dear child, be left in this place behind you

  all alone? Peleus the aged horseman sent me forth with you

  on that day when he sent you from Phthia to Agamemnon

  440 a mere child, who knew nothing yet of the joining of battle

  nor of debate where men are made pre-eminent. Therefore

  he sent me along with you to teach you of all these matters,

  to make you a speaker of words and one accomplished in action.

  Therefore apart from you, dear child, I would not be willing

  445 to be left behind, not were the god in person to promise

  he would scale away my old age and make me a young man blossoming

  as I was that time when I first left Hellas, the land of fair women,

  running from the hatred of Ormenos’ son Amyntor,

  my father, who hated me for the sake of a fair-haired mistress.

  450 For he made love to her himself, and dishonored his own wife,

  my mother; who was forever taking my knees and entreating me

  to lie with this mistress instead so that she would hate the old man.

  I was persuaded and did it; and my father when he heard of it straightway

  called down his curses, and invoked against me the dreaded furies

  455 that I might never have any son born of my seed to dandle

  on my knees; and the divinities, Zeus of the underworld

  and Persephonē the honored goddess, accomplished his curses.

  Then I took it into my mind to cut him down with the sharp bronze,

  but some one of the immortals checked my anger, reminding me

  460 of rumor among the people and men’s maledictions repeated,

  that I might not be called a parricide among the Achaians.

  But now no more could the heart in my breast be ruled entirely

  to range still among these halls when my father was angered.

  Rather it was the many kinsmen and cousins about me

  465 who held me closed in the house, with supplications repeated,

  and slaughtered fat sheep in their numbers, and shambling horn-curved

  cattle, and numerous swine with the fat abundant upon them

  were singed and stretched out across the flame of Hephaistos,

  and much wine was drunk that was stored in the jars of the old man.

  470 Nine nights they slept nightlong in their places beside me,

  and they kept up an interchange of watches, and the fire was never

  put out; one below the gate of the strong-closed courtyard,

  and one in the ante-chamber before the doors of the bedroom.

  But when th
e tenth night had come to me in its darkness,

  475 then I broke the close-compacted doors of the chamber

  and got away, and overleapt the fence of the courtyard

  lightly, unnoticed by the guarding men and the women servants.

  Then I fled far away through the wide spaces of Hellas

  and came as far as generous Phthia, mother of sheepflocks,

  480 and to lord Peleus, who accepted me with a good will

  and gave me his love, even as a father loves his own son

  who is a single child brought up among many possessions.

  He made me a rich man, and granted me many people,

  and I lived, lord over the Dolopes, in remotest Phthia,

  485 and, godlike Achilleus, I made you all that you are now,

  and loved you out of my heart, for you would not go with another

  out to any feast, nor taste any food in your own halls

  until I had set you on my knees, and cut little pieces

  from the meat, and given you all you wished, and held the wine for you.

  490 And many times you soaked the shirt that was on my body

  with wine you would spit up in the troublesomeness of your childhood.

  So I have suffered much through you, and have had much trouble,

  thinking always how the gods would not bring to birth any children

  of my own; so that it was you, godlike Achilleus, I made

  495 my own child, so that some day you might keep hard affliction from me.

  Then, Achilleus, beat down your great anger. It is not

  yours to have a pitiless heart. The very immortals

  can be moved; their virtue and honor and strength are greater than ours are

  and yet with sacrifices and offerings for endearment,

  500 with libations and with savor men turn back even the immortals

  in supplication, when any man does wrong and transgresses.

  For there are also the spirits of Prayer, the daughters of great Zeus,

  and they are lame of their feet, and wrinkled, and cast their eyes sidelong,

  who toil on their way left far behind by the spirit of Ruin:

  505 but she, Ruin, is strong and sound on her feet, and therefore

  far outruns all Prayers, and wins into every country

  to force men astray; and the Prayers follow as healers after her.

  If a man venerates these daughters of Zeus as they draw near,

  such a man they bring great advantage, and hear his entreaty;

  510 but if a man shall deny them, and stubbornly with a harsh word

  refuse, they go to Zeus, son of Kronos, in supplication