by Glyn Iliffe
‘The Trojans have enough problems of their own. But whoever the rightful owner is, Athena said he is destined to take Achilles’s place in the army and that the walls of Troy won’t fall without him. I suppose I’ll know who to give the armour to when I see him.’
‘So is this what you’ve been thinking about all this time?’
‘No, I’ve been thinking about home. This war isn’t infinite, Eperitus. The end must come and I’ve been wondering how I can hasten it along. I keep thinking of Astynome getting through the gates in the back of that old farmer’s cart, and the story Omeros concocted about how I got past those Taphian guards concealed in a pithos of wine. You remember that one? The only problem is I’m not sure how I’m going to smuggle an army inside the Scaean Gate.’
He looked quizzically at Eperitus, who nodded without comprehending a word of what Odysseus was saying.
‘But suddenly my mind is full of Ithaca again,’ Odysseus continued. ‘I’ve been trying to remember how it looks from the prow of a galley, sailing up from the south – the shape of the hills, the channel between Samos and Ithaca, the harbour below the town, and then the road that leads all the way up to the palace gates. And I can picture what Penelope looks like again, Eperitus. I haven’t been able to recall her face for so long, and then I saw her in a dream the night before Ajax killed himself, as clear as if I had only seen her that morning. And I’m going to see her again soon, I’m sure of it.’
‘Good,’ Eperitus said.
He smiled despite the pain he felt. Odysseus’s renewed desire for his home and family reminded him that he had lost his own love, and that all his dreams of marriage and children had been ripped apart by Astynome’s betrayal. And yet he could not bring himself to stop loving her, and he knew they would meet again one day – even though the walls of Troy lay between them.
‘And there’s something else,’ Odysseus added, ominously. ‘A new prophecy.’
Eperitus shifted round in the sand and looked at his friend.
‘Calchas?’
Odysseus nodded. ‘Before we left to fetch Ajax’s body, Agamemnon took me aside. Calchas came to him early in the morning, while we were fighting your father in the temple of Thymbrean Apollo. He says Zeus will not bring an end to the war until a number of conditions are met, but Apollo has only shown the first one to him. I suspect one might be the identity of the rightful owner of Achilles’s armour, but, either way, these oracles will only be revealed by another seer – a Trojan – though Calchas doesn’t know who or when.’
‘Then what does he know?’
‘That for Troy to fall Paris must first be killed by the arrows of Heracles.’
Eperitus’s eyes narrowed in thought.
‘But . . . but they belong to Philoctetes,’ he said, ‘whom we abandoned on Lemnos ten years ago!’
‘Yes,’ Odysseus said. ‘The problem is, we’re the only ones who know where he was marooned, and now Agamemnon wants us to fetch him back. We leave at dawn tomorrow.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The first two books in this series, King of Ithaca and The Gates of Troy, retold some of the earlier myths associated with Odysseus and the beginnings of the Trojan War. They drew on a handful of lesser-known tales that allowed my imagination plenty of room for manoeuvre. The Armour of Achilles, however, is set at the peak of the war, the epic events from which have been told and retold by countless poets, playwrights and other storytellers, both Greek and Roman. Rather than being able to pick over a few myths like a guest at a modest buffet, I now had a feast to choose from and was forced – often reluctantly – to restrict myself to those myths I thought most important and relevant to the tale I wanted to tell.
Chief among the ancient sources for the Trojan War is, of course, Homer. His is the name behind the oldest works of Western literature, The Iliad and The Odyssey, in which such themes as glory, wrath, fate and homecoming are explored in the brutal and uncertain lives of figures such as Achilles, Hector and Odysseus. Ironically, The Iliad covers only a brief, if bloody, period of the war: nearly seven weeks in total. Twenty-one of its twenty-four chapters cover just eight days. It begins with Chryses’s appeal to the Greeks for the return of his daughter, Chryseis (also known as Astynome) and ends with the funeral pyre of Hector. Naturally, much of The Armour of Achilles follows the action in The Iliad, though I have made the gods less prevalent and highlighted Odysseus’s part in the story. The events before and after come from a variety of other Greek and Roman sources, some of which are lost and are known today only from quotes and references by later writers.
The Armour of Achilles begins with the sacking of Lyrnessus, something that happens off-stage as far as the main myths are concerned. As for the stoning of Palamedes, the original version has Odysseus planting gold in his tent to frame him for an act of treason he did not commit, purely out of spite. The ancient writers were often divided in their portrayals of Odysseus: some depicted his keen wits and great oratory as heroic, while others saw his cunning nature as quite the opposite. For obvious reasons, I have tried to make him appear in a more positive light.
The battles with the Amazons and the Aethiopes that follow Hector’s funeral are epic stories in their own right and, by necessity, have been curtailed in my own version of them. The death of Achilles happened differently in different sources – some have him stabbed from behind while others say he was shot down with an arrow; in either case, he remained undefeated in individual combat, as befits a hero of his stature. Similarly, the only man who could kill Ajax was himself. He was driven to self-destruction out of pride, unable to bear the humiliation of losing the armour of Achilles to Odysseus. In the original myths, Odysseus wanted the armour for his own personal gain, but again I have tried to save his credibility by giving him a more worthy motive.
There are other threads in The Armour of Achilles that are entirely my own invention. The story of Eperitus and his ruthlessly ambitious father, Apheidas, is one of them. So is the romance between Eperitus and Astynome, though Astynome does appear as a minor figure in the original tales. Equally, the background events on Ithaca can be found nowhere in the myths, even if Penelope’s longing for her husband’s return is very Homeric. But unfortunately for her, she cannot be reunited with Odysseus until the Trojans are defeated and their city razed to the ground. For that to happen, Odysseus must first fulfil the oracles set down by the gods and find a way to breach the impenetrable walls of Troy.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts!
PRAISE FOR GLYN ILIFFE
‘A must read for those who enjoy good old epic battles,
chilling death scenes and the extravagance of ancient Greece’
Lifestyle Magazine
‘It has suspense, treachery, and bone-crunching action
. . . It will leave fans of the genre eagerly awaiting
the rest of the series’
Harry Sidebottom, Times Literary Supplement
‘The reader does not need to be a classicist by any means to
enjoy this epic and stirring tale. It makes a great novel
and would be an even better film’
Historical Novels Review
Glyn Iliffe studied English and Classics at Reading University, where he developed a passion for the ancient stories of Greek history and mythology. Well travelled, Glyn has visited nearly forty countries, trekked in the Himalayas, spent six weeks hitchhiking across North America and had his collarbone broken by a bull in Pamplona.
He is married with two daughters and lives in Leicestershire. King of Ithaca was his first novel, followed by The Gates of Troy.
Also by Glyn Iliffe
King of Ithaca
The Gates of Troy
GLOSSARY
A
Achilles
– Myrmidon prince
Adramyttium
– city in south-eastern Ilium, allied to Troy
Adrestos
– Trojan soldier
Aeneas
– Darda
nian prince, the son of Anchises
Aethiopes
– black-skinned warriors from northern Africa
Agamemnon
– king of Mycenae, leader of the Greeks
Ajax (greater)
– king of Salamis, and Achilles’s cousin
Ajax (lesser)
– king of Locris
Alybas
– home city of Eperitus, in northern Greece
Andromache
– wife of Hector and daughter of King Eëtion
Antenor
– Trojan elder
Antícleia
– mother of Odysseus
Antilochus
– Greek warrior, son of Nestor
Antimachus
– Trojan elder
Antinous
– son of Eupeithes
Antiphus
– Ithacan guardsman
Apheidas
– Trojan commander, father of Eperitus
Aphrodite
– goddess of love
Apollo
– archer god, associated with music, song and healing
Arceisius
– Ithacan soldier, formerly squire to Eperitus
Ares
– god of war
Argus
– Odysseus’s hunting dog
Artemis
– moon-goddess associated with childbirth, noted for her virginity and vengefulness
Astyanax
– infant son of Hector and Andromache
Astynome
– daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo
Athena
– goddess of wisdom and warfare
Aulis
– sheltered bay in the Euboean Straits
B
Balius
– famed horse of Achilles, sibling of Xanthus
Briseis
– daughter of Briseus the priest, captured by Achilles at Lyrnessus
C
Calchas
– priest of Apollo, adviser to Agamemnon
Cassandra
– Trojan princess, daughter of Priam
Chryse
– small island off the coast of Ilium
Chryses
– a priest of Apollo on the island of Chryse
Clymene
– Trojan woman, hostage of Apheidas
Clytaemnestra
– queen of Mycenae and wife of Agamemnon
D
Dardanus
– city to the north of Troy
Deidameia
– wife of Achilles
Deiphobus
– Trojan prince, younger brother of Hector and Paris
Democoön
– Trojan prince
Diocles
– Spartan soldier
Diomedes
– king of Argos
Dolon
– Trojan spy
Dulichium
– Ionian island, forming northernmost part of Odysseus’s kingdom
E
Eëtion
– king of the Cilicians, allies of Troy, and father of Andromache
Elpenor
– Ithacan soldier
Eperitus
– captain of Odysseus’s guard
Eteoneus
– squire to Menelaus
Eupeithes
– member of the Kerosia
Euryalus
– companion of Diomedes
Eurybates
– Odysseus’s squire
Eurylochus
– Ithacan soldier, cousin of Odysseus
Eurypylus
– Thessalian king
Eurysaces
– infant son of Great Ajax
Evandre
– cousin of Queen Penthesilea
G
Gyrtias
– warrior from Rhodes
H
Hades
– god of the Underworld
Halitherses
– former captain of Ithacan royal guard, given joint charge of Ithaca in Odysseus’s absence
Hecabe
– Trojan queen, wife of King Priam
Hector
– Trojan prince, oldest son of King Priam
Helen
– former queen of Sparta, now wife of Paris
Hephaistos
– god of fire; blacksmith to the Olympians
Heracles
– greatest of all Greek heroes
Hermes
– messenger of the gods; his duties also include shepherding the souls of the dead to the Underworld
I
Ida (Mount)
– principal mountain in Ilium
Idaeus
– herald to King Priam
Idomeneus
– king of Crete
Ilium
– region of which Troy was the capital
Iphigenia
– daughter of Eperitus and Clytaemnestra, sacrificed by Agamemnon
Ithaca
– island in the Ionian Sea
L
Lacedaemon
– Sparta
Laertes
– Odysseus’s father
Lemnos
– island in the Aegean Sea
Leothoë
– daughter of King Altes of the Leleges, allies of Troy
Lethos
– Trojan prisoner
Lycaon
– Trojan prince
Lyrnessus
– city in south-eastern Ilium, allied to Troy
M
Machaon
– famed healer, son of Asclepius and brother to Podaleirius
Medon
– Malian commander
Melantho
– Ithacan girl, wife of Arceisius
Memnon
– king of the Aethiopes, allies of Troy
Menelaus
– king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon and cuckolded husband of Helen
Menestheus
– king of Athens
Menoetius
– father of Patroclus
Mentes
– Taphian chieftain
Mentor
– close friend of Odysseus, given joint charge of Ithaca in Odysseus’s absence
Mycenae
– most powerful city in Greece, situated in north-eastern Peloponnese
Myrmidons
– the followers of Achilles
N
Nestor
– king of Pylos
Nisus
– Ithacan elder
O
Odysseus
– king of Ithaca
Oenops
– Ithacan noble
Omeros
– Ithacan soldier and bard
P
Palamedes
– Nauplian prince
Palladium
– sacred image of Athena’s companion, Pallas
Pandarus
– prince of the Zeleians, allies of Troy
Pandion
– murdered king of Alybas
Paris
– Trojan prince, second eldest son of King Priam
Patroclus
– cousin of Achilles and captain of the Myrmidons
Pedasus
– horse captured by Achilles at Thebe
Peisandros
– Myrmidon commander
Peleus
– father of Achilles
Penelope
– queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus
Penthesilea
– queen of the Amazons
Pergamos
– the citadel of Troy
Philoctetes
– Malian archer, deserted by the Greeks on Lemnos
Phronius
– Ithacan elder
Phthia
– region of northern Greece
Pleisthenes
– youngest son of Menelaus and Helen
Podaleirius
– famed healer, son of Asclepius and brother to Machaon
Podarces
– Thessalian leader
Podes
– Hector’s best friend, brother of Andromache
Polites
– Ithacan warrior
Polyctor
– Ithacan noble
Poseidon
– god of the sea
Priam
– king of Troy
