Troy

by Stephen Fry

Every army, every company, every office, every school classroom, every sports team has its savage joker, its mocking critic. The Greek army had Thersites, the ugliest (so Homer insisted) and the most cruelly satirical of all the Achaeans.fn50 Odysseus had had cause in the past to thwack him with Agamemnon’s sceptre and threaten to strip him naked and beat him some more if he couldn’t control his tongue. But such types never learn their lesson.fn51 On this occasion, hearing Achilles mourning the death of Penthesilea, Thersites really did go too far.

  ‘Look at him, the heroic Peleides, mooning over a woman. You’re all the same, you great warriors. The moment you see a pretty face, you melt into a puddle.’ He spat on Penthesilea’s corpse. ‘That bitch was slaughtering her way through us like Death himself. Good riddance to her.’

  Enraged, Achilles lashed out at Thersites, striking his head so violently that the man’s teeth flew out. He was dead before they or he hit the ground. No one in the Greek camp minded, save his cousin Diomedes, who might well have fought Achilles had the troops around them not begged them to make peace. Achilles, to atone for killing a Greek of noble lineage, agreed to sail to Lesbos to be purified.fn52

  The Atreides, meanwhile – Agamemnon and Menelaus – mindful of the appalling carnage that had erupted over the bodies of Sarpedon, Patroclus and Hector, consented to the Trojan plea that they might receive Penthesilea’s corpse. It was borne into the city, where Priam ordered her ashes to be buried alongside those of his father Laomedon. At the same time, the Achaeans fell to mourning over the death of Podarces, speared by Penthesilea. He was the well-loved brother of Protesilaus, the first Greek to fall in the war and his loss was keenly felt.fn53

  Now another hero arrived to fight for the Trojan cause: Memnon, King of the Ethiopians, a nephew of Priam.fn54 Like Achilles, he was semi-divine – his mother was Eos, goddess of the dawn, and his father Tithonus, the unfortunate mortal who had been granted immortality but not eternal youth.fn55 Also like Achilles, Memnon wore armour that had been made by Hephaestus himself. He and his Ethiopians, fresh blood to the Trojan forces, made real inroads against the Achaeans, killing amongst other notables Nestor’s son Antilochus. A grief-stricken Nestor sent one of his other sons, Thrasymedes, into the carnage to recover the body. The old man would have buckled on his own armour and thrown himself into the fighting too had not the honourable Memnon called out to him, urging him to respect his own years and fall back. In his despair Nestor sought out Achilles, who had just returned from his purification on Lesbos. Achilles loved Antilochus and was eager to avenge himself on Memnon. It had been Antilochus, you may remember, who had run so tearfully along the sand to bring Achilles the terrible news of the death of Patroclus. He had stayed to hold Achilles by the hands while all that grief, rage and self-recrimination had poured out. These things form a bond.

  The dark Memnon and golden Achilles fought all day in what became the longest man-on-man duel of the war. In the end Achilles’ fitness and speed prevailed and he ran through the exhausted Memnon with his sword.

  Now the jubilant Achaeans streamed forward to the walls of Troy. Achilles joined them, slaughtering his way through Trojans all the way to the Scaean Gate. Did he recall the dying words of Hector?

  ‘I see you at the Scaean Gates, brought down by Apollo and Paris …’

  The voice of Phoebus Apollo himself now called on Achilles to turn back, but the blood was singing in the hero’s ears. Achilles knew Apollo favoured Troy, but perhaps he had forgotten that the god of arrows had a special, personal reason for hating him. Apollo could not overlook the contemptuously blasphemous manner in which Achilles had so brutally slaughtered young Troilus in Apollo’s own temple, on his own sacred altar.

  Paris sat high up on the walls, looking down at the frenzy of killing. No one could deny that he was amongst the finest of all the Trojan archers. His aim was always true, and if his bow was well tuned he could send an arrow further than any man – with the exception of his cousin Teucer, who fought on the Achaean side.

  But with such a confused melee beneath him, there was surely little chance that Paris would be able to pick out a single man. He saw Achilles, though – how could he not? So many men were falling down all around him, and that armour …

  Paris nocked an envenomed arrow and raised his bow.

  Would the shot he prepared to unloose be his own work or that of Apollo? Apollo was the god of archery, so anyone who fired accurately might say, ‘Apollo guided my hand with that one,’ just as even now a writer often says, ‘The Muse was with me that day.’

  The feathers of Paris’s arrow were drawn level with his eye. So many men were getting in his way as he tracked Achilles’ movements. He breathed in and out softly. The first requirement for a sniping bowman was patience.

  Achilles reared over a panicking young Trojan. The Trojan fell. Achilles stood exposed in Paris’s eyeline. He let the arrow fly.

  THE ACHILLES HEEL

  Achilles was already turning as the arrow flew from the bow. Looking down, Paris’s page, whose job was to keep passing fresh shafts to his master, thought that the arrow had fallen short and buried itself in the ground. But Paris gave a cry of triumph, and now the page saw that the arrow had indeed struck Achilles, low down, on the back of the foot. It had pierced the flesh of his left heel. This was the heel that Thetis had held him by when dipping him as a baby in the River Styx. The one vulnerable place on all his body.

  Achilles staggered. He knew instantly that his hour had come. But his spear was still in his hand, and even as the venom spread through his body he thrust and thrust at the Trojans that began to surround him, coming at him in quick, stabbing charges, like jackals circling and snapping at a wounded lion. Four, five, six he speared and hacked before his legs buckled under him. Even as he breathed his last breath he killed more Trojans.

  Terrified by the sight of a mortally wounded man with such implacable strength and will, most held back, unsure that such a man could really die. That priceless armour was irresistible, however, and they began to creep uncertainly forward. Then a terrible roar caused all but the bravest to scatter and run.

  Ajax, huge, towering Ajax, charged through, bellowing with grief and rage. He took up a station by the body, cutting to pieces any who dared come too near. Amongst those who fell before his wild defence was Glaucus, the Lycian lieutenant of Sarpedon; his body was rescued by Aeneas.

  Paris loosed off a volley of arrows at Ajax. The thought of accounting for him and Achilles in the same hot hour was thrilling to him. He could almost hear the cheers of the admiring Trojans who would bear him in triumph to the temple of Apollo … The angle was wrong, however – Ajax was too near the city walls – so Paris stood on the highest part of the battlements and took careful aim downwards.

  Ajax saw a flash from up high and swayed aside as an arrow sped past, missing him by a hand’s breadth. When he saw who it was that had fired, he gave a mighty roar and hurled a great granite rock. It flew up and struck Paris on the helmet. The hard bronze saved him from death, but the force of the missile stunned him and sent up a great ringing in his ears. Enough for one day, he thought, and dropped down out of sight.

  Odysseus helped Ajax convey the body of Achilles back to the Greek camp. Both sides were now given over to sorrow and lamentation. The Trojans and their Ethiopian and Lycian allies mourned the loss of Memnon and Glaucus, the Achaeans wept for Achilles.

  Once more the Myrmidons cut off locks of their hair to make a shroud for the corpse. Briseis laid her own shorn tresses on the pyre and tore at her own flesh in the violence of her grief.

  ‘You were my day, my sunlight, my hope, my defence,’ she cried.

  Incense, sandalwood, scented oil, honey, amber, gold and armour were heaped up on the pyre. Trojan prisoners were executed. Agamemnon, Nestor, Ajax, Idomeneus, Diomedes, all groaned and keened openly and beat their breasts. Even Odysseus was seen to weep.

  The smoke rose in the air and the cries of every soldier, servant and slave mingled to make
a noise louder than the greatest clamour of the war. The smoke and the sound reached Olympus where the gods wept too.

  Golden Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, was gone from the world. His death meant more than the loss to the Achaeans of their foremost warrior and champion. Humanity had lost a mortal of greater glory than had ever been known. Wild, petulant, headstrong, stubborn, sentimental and cruel as he could be, his leaving marked a change in the human world. Something great had gone that could never – and would never – be replaced.

  The vulnerability, the flaw that every human has recalls the first Achilles heel. Every great champion ever since, in war and in sport, has been a miniature of Achilles, a simulacrum, a tiny speck of a reminder of what real glory can be. He could have chosen for himself a long life of tranquil ease in obscurity, but he knowingly threw himself into a brief, dazzling blaze of glory. His reward is the eternal fame that is both priceless and worthless. In our world all athletes know that their years are short; they understand too that they have to be mean, passionate, merciless and unrelenting if they wish to rise to their own kind of lasting fame. Achilles will always be their patron and their guardian divinity.

  We each of us know, or have known, someone with a glimmer of Achilles’ flame in them. We have loved and loathed them. We have admired them, sometimes even shyly worshipped them, often needed them.

  We recognize that if we had ever encountered the real demon demigod Achilles, we would have feared and dreaded him, hated his temper, despised his pride and been repelled by his savagery. But we know too that we could not have helped loving him.

  THE ARMOUR OF ACHILLES

  As the body of Achilles burned and the Achaeans mourned the loss of their hero, Thetis stepped from the waves of the sea and joined them in their tears. Funeral games were held, with prizes from Achilles’ vast collection of treasure distributed to the winners. After the last race was run, Thetis addressed the senior Greeks.

  ‘The greatest prize of all has yet to be awarded. The shield, breastplate, greaves and helmet that Hephaestus made for him. The sword and spear of his father Peleus. Only the bravest and best is worthy of these great objects. Of those who fought for and rescued the body of my beloved boy, who is the most deserving? I shall let you all decide.’

  Everyone instinctively looked towards two men – Ajax and Odysseus. They had been the warriors at the heart of the fighting over the dead Achilles.

  Ajax stood. ‘Let the kings of Mycenae, Crete and Pylos be the judges,’ he said.

  Odysseus looked across at Agamemnon, Idomeneus and Nestor, and nodded. ‘A perfect choice,’ he said.

  ‘We consent,’ said Agamemnon.

  But Nestor put up his hand. ‘No, my lord. I do not consent, and nor should you and neither should King Idomeneus. This is an intolerable burden to put on us. How can we be asked to choose between two men that we love and value so highly? The prize is too great. Whoever wins our vote will rejoice in his possession of the most valuable treasure the world has seen. Whoever loses will simmer in fury. They will hate and resent us. No, Odysseus, it’s all very well to shrug, but I think I know something of human nature. How can you have forgotten the destructive madness that erupted when Achilles and the King of Men squabbled over their prizes, Chryseis and Briseis?’

  They turned towards Thetis for guidance, but she had disappeared. No one had seen her leave, but gone she was.

  Agamemnon sighed. ‘Well, what do you propose?’ he asked Nestor. ‘She has bequeathed the armour and stated the terms of the bequest.’

  ‘Rather than us being put in the position of having to decide,’ said Nestor, ‘why don’t we ask the Trojans?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have plenty of prisoners here. They’ve had every chance to rate the bravery and strength of our fighters. Surely the best way to determine the most valuable amongst us is to ask our enemy whom they most dread meeting on the field of battle?’

  Agamemnon smiled. ‘Ingenious. Let it be so.’

  When the Trojan prisoners of war declared that they regarded Odysseus as their most feared adversary, the Greeks let out a collective groan. They were afraid that Ajax would prove the sorer loser.

  They were right. Ajax exploded with instant indignant fury.

  ‘This is a joke! Odysseus? A greater warrior than me? How can you possibly believe that? Didn’t you all see me fighting over Achilles’ body? I killed a dozen Trojans. Odysseus slunk in to pull the corpse free, I’ll grant you that. But only when I had made it safe for him to do so. He’s all talk. He’s all scheming and contrivance. He’s not a warrior. He’s a coward and a weasel and a … a rat and a … snivelling dog …’

  ‘I expect I’m all kinds of animal, Ajax,’ said Odysseus with a smile, ‘but I think I do know how to fight. I seem to remember winning the wrestling match in the games we held for Patroclus’s funeral.fn56 I seem to remember killing more than my share of Trojans over the years.’

  ‘You didn’t even want to come here!’ yelled Ajax. ‘We all know how you pretended to be mad so that you could oil your way out of your oath. If it wasn’t for Palamedes seeing through your deception … Oh, and yes, we all know who framed Palamedes, don’t we? We all know who hid gold by his tent so that he’d be taken for a –’

  ‘Dear me, Ajax. And you accuse me of being all talk! Who was it who sailed for all those months in search of Achilles? Would you have found him, identified him, persuaded him to fight for us? Give me leave to doubt it. You’re a big fellow, Ajax, and very strong, but our most valuable asset? I don’t think so.’

  Odysseus’s smiling modesty was more than Ajax could bear. He stormed from the meeting, leaving behind a stunned and sorrowful silence.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Odysseus. ‘What a pity. I’ve always liked Ajax, you know. My deputy Eurylochus will stop by to transfer the armour to my ship. I’ll see you all for supper later on?’

  Ajax, meanwhile, stamped off to his tent, convinced that he had been deliberately snubbed and insulted.fn57 So maddened with jealous rage was he that he arose in the night, insanely certain that Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus were his enemies. He stole through the camp intending to set fire to their ships. Reaching their quarters he stabbed them and their retinues to death in a wild frenzy of killing.

  Then Ajax awoke to find himself in the camp’s livestock enclosure, surrounded by dead sheep, their throats cut, blood running in rivers.

  Distraught at the madness that had overcome him and terrified at how close he had come to murdering those he truly held most dear, Ajax stumbled to a lonely part of the shore, planted his sword – the silver sword of Hector – in the sand and threw himself upon it.fn58

  His body was found by Tecmessa, the captive Phrygian princess with whom Ajax had lived and by whom he had fathered a son, Eurysaces.fn59 When she saw the terrible wound – out of which Ajax’s entrails had spilled – she stripped off her own clothing to cover the sight. All the Greeks were desolated when they learned that their beloved giant had died in so pitiable a fashion. Odysseus seemed shaken too and told anyone who would listen that he would happily have given the armour to Ajax had he known the poor fellow was going to take it all so badly. It was notable, however, that his regret did not extend to offering the armour to Tecmessa and Eurysaces. Perhaps he had already calculated that he would need it for a greater purpose, soon to come.

  Agamemnon and Menelaus ruled that, while the suicide was tragic, it could by no means be regarded as a warrior’s death. It warranted no cleansing, no great pyre, no ceremonial burning. The body must, according to the code by which they all lived and fought, be left on open ground.

  Ajax’s half-brother Teucer was horrified by the thought of wild dogs scavenging the corpse and whipped up such anger in the ranks against the ruling that the Atreides were forced to relent. Ajax had been greatly loved by the men; and, it should not be forgotten, he was a cousin of Achilles.fn60

  So it was that Telamonian Ajax, Ajax the Great, was cremated with full honours. His
charred bones were sealed in a gold coffin that the soldiers buried in a great mound by the banks of the River Simoeis at Rhoiteion, where for many hundreds of years the tomb remained a popular place of pilgrimage for visitors from all over the Mediterranean world, until the sea finally washed it away.fn61 We honour different kinds of courage and achievement: the golden glory of an Achilles is marvellous, but the unquestioning loyalty, tireless courage and massive steadfastness of an Ajax is no less to be admired.

  PROPHECIES

  ‘Achilles and now Ajax!’ said Menelaus, wringing his hands. ‘They were our sword and our shield! It’s my fault, my fault, all my fault.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said his brother. ‘No one is blaming you.’

  ‘I am blaming myself, Agamemnon! I have asked too much. All for Helen. So many dead. It is time for us to board our ships and leave. We must sail home.’

  Before a disgusted Diomedes could reach for his sword, Agamemnon turned on Calchas with a snarl.

  ‘Ten years, you said. Ten years. Nine full years have gone by and the tenth is nearly over, and still we have not taken Troy.’

  ‘We will, great king, it is foretold that we will,’ said Calchas. ‘But we must have Achilles’ son with us. Without him there can be no victory.’

  ‘Achilles’ son?’

  ‘“Pyrrhus” he was called when he was born. He answers to the name “Neoptolemus” now. He is not yet bearded, but I know that he is already a great warrior. He lives on Skyros with his mother Deidamia. I have seen that without him we cannot hope to prevail.’

  Agamemnon stamped his foot in frustration. ‘There’s always “one more thing”, isn’t there? One more little detail that is suddenly revealed to you. Why have you never mentioned this boy to us before?’

  ‘The vision of him and his place in things was only vouchsafed to me this morning,’ replied Calchas imperturbably. ‘I cannot command the gods to disclose all their plans at once. They have their reasons.’