The Iliad of Homer
Page 59
360 could take the edge of such masses of men and fight a way through them.
But what I can do with hands and feet and strength I tell you
I will do, and I shall not hang back even a little
but go straight on through their formation, and I think that no man
of the Trojans will be glad when he comes within my spear’s range.”
He spoke, urging them on, but glorious Hektor called out
365 in a great voice to the Trojans, and was minded to face Achilleus:
“Do not be afraid of Peleion, O high-hearted Trojans.
I myself could fight in words against the immortals,
but with the spear it were hard, since they are far stronger than we are.
Even Achilleus will not win achievement of everything
370 he says. Part he will accomplish, but part shall be baulked halfway done.
I am going to stand against him now, though his hands are like flame,
though his hands are like flame, and his heart like the shining of iron.”
He spoke, urging the Trojans, and they lifted their spears to face them.
Their fury gathered into bulk and their battle cry rose up.
375 But now Phoibos Apollo stood by Hektor and spoke to him:
“Hektor, do not go out all alone to fight with Achilleus,
but wait for him in the multitude and out of the carnage
lest he hit you with the spear or the stroke of the sword from close in.”
He spoke, and Hektor plunged back into the swarm of the fighting
380 men, in fear, when he heard the voice of the god speaking.
But Achilleus, gathering the fury upon him, sprang on the Trojans
with a ghastly cry, and the first of them he killed was Iphition
the great son of Otrynteus and a lord over numbers of people,
born of a naiad nymph to Otrynteus, sacker of cities,
385 under the snows of Tmolos in the rich countryside of Hydē.
Great Achilleus struck him with the spear as he came in fury,
in the middle of the head, and all the head broke into two pieces.
He fell, thunderously. Great Achilleus vaunted above him:
“Lie there, Otrynteus’ son, most terrifying of all men.
390 Here is your death, but your generation was by the lake waters
of Gyge, where is the allotted land of your fathers
by fish-swarming Hyllos and the whirling waters of Hermos.”
He spoke, vaunting, but darkness shrouded the eyes of the other,
and the running-rims of Achaian chariots cut him to pieces
395 in the van of the onrush. Next, after him, facing Demoleon
lord defender of battle and son of Antenor, Achilleus
stabbed him in the temple through the brazen sides of the helmet,
and the brazen helmet could not hold, but the bronze spearhead
driven on through smashed the bone apart, and the inward
400 brain was all spattered forth. So he beat him down in his fury.
Next he stabbed with a spear-stroke in the back Hippodamas
as he fled away before him and sprang from behind his horses.
He blew his life away, bellowing, as when a bull
bellows as he is dragged for Poseidon, lord of Helikē,
405 and the young men drag him. In such bulls the earth shaker glories.
Such was his bellowing as the proud spirit flitted from his bones.
Next he went with the spear after godlike Polydoros,
Priam’s son, whom his father would not let go into battle
because he was youngest born of all his sons to him, and also
410 the most beloved, and in speed of his feet outpassed all the others.
But now, in his young thoughtlessness and display of his running
he swept among the champions until thus he destroyed his dear life.
For as he shot by swift-footed brilliant Achilleus hit him
with a spear thrown in the middle of the back where the clasps of the war belt
415 were golden and came together at the joining halves of the corselet.
The spearhead held its way straight on and came out by the navel,
and he dropped, moaning, on one knee as the dark mist gathered
about him, and sagged, and caught with his hands at his bowels in front of him.
But now when Hektor saw Polydoros, his own brother,
420 going limp to the ground and catching his bowels in his hands,
the mist closed about his eyes also, he could stand no longer
to turn there at a distance, but went out to face Achilleus
hefting his sharp spear, like a flame. Seeing him Achilleus
balanced his spear in turn, and called out to him, and challenged him:
425 “Here is the man who beyond all others has troubled my anger,
who slaughtered my beloved companion. Let us no longer
shrink away from each other along the edgeworks of battle.”
He spoke, and looking darkly at brilliant Hektor spoke to him:
“Come nearer, so that sooner you may reach your appointed destruction.”
430 But with no fear Hektor of the shining helm answered him:
“Son of Peleus, never hope by words to frighten me
as if I were a baby. I myself understand well enough
how to speak in vituperation and how to make insults.
I know that you are great and that I am far weaker than you are.
435 Still, all this lies upon the knees of the gods; and it may be
that weaker as I am I might still strip the life from you
with a cast of the spear, since my weapon too has been sharp before this.”
He spoke, and balanced the spear and let it fly. But Athene
blew against it and turned it back from renowned Achilleus
440 with an easy blast. It came back again to glorious Hektor
and dropped to the ground in front of his feet. Meanwhile Achilleus
made a furious charge against him, raging to kill him
with a terrible cry, but Phoibos Apollo caught up Hektor
easily, since he was a god, and wrapped him in thick mist.
445 Three times swift-footed brilliant Achilleus swept in against him
with the brazen spear. Three times his stroke went into the deep mist.
But as a fourth time, like something more than a man, he charged in,
Achilleus with a terrible cry called in winged words after him:
“Once again now you escaped death, dog. And yet the evil
450 came near you, but now once more Phoibos Apollo has saved you,
he to whom you must pray when you go into the thunder of spears thrown.
Yet I may win you, if I encounter you ever hereafter,
if beside me also there is some god who will help me.
Now I must chase whoever I can overtake of the others.”
455 He spoke, and with the spear full in the neck stabbed Dryops
so that he dropped in front of his feet. He left him to lie there
and with a spear thrown against the knee stopped the charge of Demouchos,
Philetor’s son, a huge man and powerful. After the spearcast
460 with an inward plunge of the great sword he took the life from him.
Then Achilleus swooping on Dardanos and Laogonos, sons both
of Bias, dashed them to the ground from behind their horses,
one with a spearcast, one with a stroke of the sword from close up.
Now Tros, Alastor’s son: he had come up against Achilleus’
465 knees, to catch them and be spared and his life given to him
if Achilleus might take pity upon his youth and not kill him;
fool, and did not see there would be no way to persuade him,
since this was a man with no sweetness in his heart, and not kindly
but in a strong fury; now Tros with his hands was reaching
470 for the knees, bent on supplication, but he stabbed with his sword at the liver
so that the liver was torn from its place, and from it the black blood
drenched the fold of his tunic and his eyes were shrouded in darkness
as the life went. Next from close in he thrust at Moulios
with the pike at the ear, so the bronze spearhead pushed through and came out
475 at the other ear. Now he hit Echeklos the son of Agenor
with the hilted sword, hewing against his head in the middle
so all the sword was smoking with blood, and over both eyes
closed the red death and the strong destiny. Now Deukalion
was struck in the arm, at a place in the elbow where the tendons
480 come together. There through the arm Achilleus transfixed him
with the bronze spearhead, and he, arm hanging heavy, waited
and looked his death in the face. Achilleus struck with the sword’s edge
at his neck, and swept the helmed head far away, and the marrow
gushed from the neckbone, and he went down to the ground at full length.
485 Now he went on after the blameless son of Peires,
Rhigmos, who had come over from Thrace where the soil is rich. This man
he stabbed in the middle with the spear, and the spear stuck fast in his belly.
He dropped from the chariot, but as Areïthoös his henchman
turned the horses away Achilleus stabbed him with the sharp spear
in the back, and thrust him from the chariot. And the horses bolted.
490 As inhuman fire sweeps on in fury through the deep angles
of a drywood mountain and sets ablaze the depth of the timber
and the blustering wind lashes the flame along, so Achilleus
swept everywhere with his spear like something more than a mortal
harrying them as they died, and the black earth ran blood.
495 Or as when a man yokes male broad-foreheaded oxen
to crush white barley on a strong-laid threshing floor, and rapidly
the barley is stripped beneath the feet of the bellowing oxen,
so before great-hearted Achilleus the single-foot horses
trampled alike dead men and shields, and the axle under
500 the chariot was all splashed with blood and the rails which encircled
the chariot, struck by flying drops from the feet of the horses,
from the running rims of the wheels. The son of Peleus was straining
to win glory, his invincible hands spattered with bloody filth.
BOOK TWENTY-ONE
But when they came to the crossing place of the fair-running river
of whirling Xanthos, a stream whose father was Zeus the immortal,
there Achilleus split them and chased some back over the flat land
toward the city, where the Achaians themselves had stampeded in terror
5 on the day before, when glorious Hektor was still in his fury.
Along this ground they were streaming in flight; but Hera let fall
a deep mist before them to stay them. Meanwhile the other half
were crowded into the silvery whirls of the deep-running river
and tumbled into it in huge clamor, and the steep-running water
10 sounded, and the banks echoed hugely about them, as they out-crying
tried to swim this way and that, spun about in the eddies.
As before the blast of a fire the locusts escaping
into a river swarm in air, and the fire unwearied
blazes from a sudden start, and the locusts huddle in water;
15 so before Achilleus the murmuring waters of Xanthos
the deep-whirling were filled with confusion of men and of horses.
But heaven-descended Achilleus left his spear there on the bank
leaning against the tamarisks, and leapt in like some immortal,
with only his sword, but his heart was bent upon evil actions,
20 and he struck in a circle around him. The shameful sound of their groaning
rose as they were struck with the sword, and the water was reddened
with blood. As before a huge-gaping dolphin the other fishes
escaping cram the corners of a deepwater harbor
in fear, for he avidly eats up any he can catch;
25 so the Trojans along the course of the terrible river
shrank under the bluffs. He, when his hands grew weary with killing,
chose out and took twelve young men alive from the river
to be vengeance for the death of Patroklos, the son of Menoitios.
These, bewildered with fear like fawns, he led out of the water
30 and bound their hands behind them with thongs well cut out of leather,
with the very belts they themselves wore on their ingirt tunics,
and gave them to his companions to lead away to the hollow ships,
then himself whirled back, still in a fury to kill men.
And there he came upon a son of Dardanian Priam
35 as he escaped from the river, Lykaon, one whom he himself
had taken before and led him unwilling from his father’s gardens
on a night foray. He with the sharp bronze was cutting young branches
from a fig tree, so that they could make him rails for a chariot,
when an unlooked-for evil thing came upon him, the brilliant
40 Achilleus, who that time sold him as slave in strong-founded Lemnos
carrying him there by ship, and the son of Jason paid for him;
from there a guest and friend who paid a great price redeemed him,
Eëtion of Imbros, and sent him to shining Arisbe;
and from there he fled away and came to the house of his father.
45 For eleven days he pleasured his heart with friends and family
after he got back from Lemnos, but on the twelfth day once again
the god cast him into the hands of Achilleus, who this time
was to send him down unwilling on his way to the death god.
Now as brilliant swift-footed Achilleus saw him and knew him
50 naked and without helm or shield, and he had no spear left
but had thrown all these things on the ground, being weary and sweating
with the escape from the river, and his knees were beaten with weariness,
disturbed, Achilleus spoke to his own great-hearted spirit:
“Can this be? Here is a strange thing that my eyes look on.
55 Now the great-hearted Trojans, even those I have killed already,
will stand and rise up again out of the gloom and the darkness
as this man has come back and escaped the day without pity
though he was sold into sacred Lemnos; but the main of the gray sea
could not hold him, though it holds back many who are unwilling.
60 But come now, he must be given a taste of our spearhead
so that I may know inside my heart and make certain
whether he will come back even from there, or the prospering
earth will hold him, she who holds back even the strong man.”
So he pondered, waiting, and the other in terror came near him
65 in an agony to catch at his knees, and the wish in his heart was
to get away from the evil death and the dark fate. By this
brilliant Achilleus held the long spear uplifted above him
straining to stab, but he under-ran the stroke and caught him
by the knees, bending, and the spear went over his back and stood fast
70 in the ground, for all its desire to tear a man’s flesh. Lykaon
with one hand had taken him by the knees in supplication
and with the other held and would not let go of the edged spear
and spoke alou
d to him and addressed him in winged words: “Achilleus,
I am at your knees. Respect my position, have mercy upon me.
75 I am in the place, illustrious, of a suppliant who must be honored,
for you were the first beside whom I tasted the yield of Demeter
on that day you captured me in the strong-laid garden
and took me away from my father and those near me, and sold me
away into sacred Lemnos, and a hundred oxen I fetched you.
80 My release was ransom three times as great; and this is
the twelfth dawn since I came back to Ilion, after
much suffering. Now again cursed destiny has put me
in your hands; and I think I must be hated by Zeus the father
who has given me once more to you, and my mother bore me
85 to a short life, Laothoë, daughter of aged Altes,
Altes, lord of the Leleges, whose delight is in battle,
and holds headlong Pedasos on the river Satnioeis.
His daughter was given to Priam, who had many wives beside her.
We are two who were born to her. You will have cut the throats
90 of both, since one you beat down in the forefront of the foot-fighters,
Polydoros the godlike, with a cast of the sharp spear. This time
the evil shall be mine in this place, since I do not think
I shall escape your hands, since divinity drove me against them.
Still, put away in your heart this other thing I say to you.
95 Do not kill me. I am not from the same womb as Hektor,
he who killed your powerful and kindly companion.”
So the glorious son of Priam addressed him, speaking
in supplication, but heard in turn the voice without pity:
“Poor fool, no longer speak to me of ransom, nor argue it.
100 In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny
then it was the way of my heart’s choice to be sparing
of the Trojans, and many I took alive and disposed of them.
Now there is not one who can escape death, if the gods send
him against my hands in front of Ilion, not one
105 of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam.
So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamor about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are.
Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal?
110 Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,