by Homer
too since no man born escapes from his own death.
Better to die on Trojan land, facing your end there
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enjoying all the esteem and gain you had mastered:
then all the Akhaians could raise a mound in your honor.
In time you’d have won a great name for your son too.
Now your doom was to die most wretchedly back home.”
Death-Rites at Troy
The ghost of Atreus’s son answered by saying,
“Well-blessed Peleus’s son, you godlike Akhilleus!
♦ You died at Troy, far from Argos, and others around you
died there too, outstanding sons of Akhaians and Trojans
fighting over your body. You lay in the swirling
dust so greatly, a great man!—all your knowledge
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of horses forgotten. We fought all day and we’d never
have stopped that struggling, but Zeus stopped us with high winds.
After we took you away to the ships from that battle,
we set you down on a bed and wiped your handsome
body with lukewarm water and oil. Many Danaans
around you shed warm tears, cutting their long hair.
Thetis, Her Nymphs, and the Old Man of the Sea
“Your mother heard the news and came with her deathless
Nymphs from the sea. A wondrous thing on the water,
their rising cries! The Akhaians were taken by shudders
and now they all would have leaped up and left in the hollow
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ships if an older and far wiser man had not stopped them:
Nestor had shown before that his plans were the best way.
Meaning well he stood in the assembly and called out,
‘Stop, don’t run, young men of Akhaia and Argos!
That’s his mother: she came from the sea with her deathless
Nymphs to face and mourn her child who is dead now.’
“He stopped and the great-hearted Akhaians did not flee.
The Old Man of the Sea’s daughters were standing around you,
deeply mourning. They dressed you in clothes lasting forever
and all nine Muses bewailed you with beautiful voices
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that answered each other. A tearless Argive was not seen,
the Muses’ clear-toned singing moved them so deeply.
The Last Fire
“For seven and ten more days, nighttime and daytime,
we death-bound men and the deathless Gods were in mourning.
We gave you to fire on the eighteenth day and we slaughtered
plenty of fattened rams and bulls with their curved horns.
You burned in the Gods’ clothes, in plenty of ointment
and good sweet honey. Many Akhaian war-chiefs
moved slowly in armor circling the death-fire
on foot or horseback. The uproar there was enormous.
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“After Hephaistos’s flames were done with you clearly,
we gathered your white bones in the morning, Akhilleus,
and set them in unmixed wine and oil as your mother
brought us a gold, two-handled urn. She said Dionusos
gave her that amphora, worked by well-known Hephaistos.
Your own white bones are inside there, shining Akhilleus,
blended with Patroklos’s bones, the dead son of Menoitios.
Antilokhos’s bones are a ways off, the man you esteemed most
among all your friends after Patroklos perished.
A Death-Mound, Games, and Prizes
“Over you all we piled a gigantic and flawless
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death-mound. Our holy army, the spearmen of Argos,
worked on a jutting point by the Hellespont’s broad sea,
so to be viewed by men from far over the water—
those who are born that time and those of the next age.
“Your mother had asked the Gods for the handsomest prizes.
She set them down in our midst for the heads of the Argives.
By now you’d taken part in the death-rites of many
war-chiefs. Whenever a king died and went under
young men strapped on belts and got ready for prizes.
Gazing on those awards would have lifted your heart most
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for silver-footed Thetis, a Goddess, had laid out
stunning awards for her son, so loved by the great Gods.
“And so your name’s not lost in spite of your dying,
you’ll always be widely known among people, Akhilleus.
Yet what joy is mine since we wound up the fighting?
Zeus plotted a wretched death when I came home
under Aigisthos’s hand and a wife’s that I still curse.”
How Did These Men All Die?
All the while they spoke that way with each other
the Messenger came closer, the Splendor of Argos,
guiding down the ghosts of suitors killed by Odysseus.
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Both were amazed, soon as they saw them, and came close:
Atreus’s son, Agamemnon’s ghost, recognized well-known
Amphimedon, son of Melaneus, loved by his father—
once his host when he stayed in that Ithakan household.
The ghost of the son of Atreus started by asking,
“What happened, Amphimedon? Why are you under the dark earth
now with all these choice young men of the same age?
Who would not choose these men as the best in a city?
Maybe Poseidon downed you all in your black ships,
raising riotous gales and mountainous rollers.
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Or men on land? By chance did enemies harm you
for rustling beautiful flocks of sheep and their oxen?
Or fight you off around their wives and their city?
I say you should tell me, my claim is close as a house-guest.
Don’t you remember the day I walked in your household
with godlike Menelaos? We encouraged Odysseus
to join us and sail for Troy on our strong-decked vessels.
Crossing the wide sea had taken a whole month.
♦ We barely prevailed on Odysseus, wrecker of cities.”
Then Amphimedon’s ghost answered by saying,
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“Best-known son of Atreus, lord of men, Agamemnon,
nourished by Zeus! I remember it all, just as you told it.
♦ Now I’ll tell you myself the whole of our story.
Our deaths were a ghastly end. How did they happen?
The Guileful Web
“We courted Odysseus’s wife. Her man had been long gone.
She never refused her hated marriage, nor did she end things.
In fact the lady planned on death, on our black doom.
Meanwhile her mind invented another deception.
She stood a huge loom in the palace for weaving,
a broad and fine-threaded web. She spoke to us briskly:
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‘Young men, my suitors, now that godlike Odysseus
is dead you’re anxious to marry. Wait till I finish
the shroud—don’t let yarn be useless or wasted.
The shroud’s for Laertes, the time when that war-chief
is taken down by his doom’s blight, a remorseless
death. No Akhaian woman must scowl in my country
because he gained such wealth but lies unshrouded.’
“Those were her words. Our hearts were proud but we nodded.
So every day at the huge loom she was weaving—
and every night with torches nearby she unwove it.
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Her guile convinced and escaped us Akhaians for three years.
Then when the fourth year came with its rolling of seasons,
fading months and plenty of days t
hat were ending,
one of her maids who knew of her cunning informed us.
We caught the lady at night unwinding her bright web.
She stopped working against her will—she was forced to.
In time she displayed the shroud, worked on its huge web,
washed and glowing like Helios’s light or the moonlight.
The Beggar Is Maltreated
“Then from somewhere the wrong Power was guiding
Odysseus back to an outlying farm, the home of a swineherd.
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The well-loved son of godlike Odysseus arrived there
too in his black ship from deep-sanded Pulos.
After the two of them planned a sorry end for the suitors,
they came to the well-known city—Odysseus later,
Telemakhos leading the way, going before him.
“The swineherd led Odysseus, wearing some bad clothes.
He looked like an old man, the wretchedest pauper
propped on a staff. The clothes on his body were old rags.
No one could know this man was truly Odysseus,
he came so suddenly—even the elders did not know.
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We taunted the man harshly and hit him with footstools.
He let himself be struck for a while in his own hall.
Scolded and beaten, he showed a spirit that bore up.
Final Vengeance
“But moved by the mind of Zeus who carries the great shield,
at last he helped Telemakhos carry his stunning
weapons away to their room and fasten the door-bolts.
He also told his wife—the man was a wizard—
to set his bow and some gray iron in front of the suitors,
testing us doomed men, the start of our own deaths.
Not one man could stretch that powerful weapon
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and string it right. How very much we were lacking!
“Soon as the large bow was nearing the hands of Odysseus
all of us cried out loudly, saying the weapon
should not be allowed that man, however he babbled.
Only Telemakhos heartened and told him to take it.
Now the hands of long-suffering, godlike Odysseus
deftly strung the bow. He shot through the iron
and went to stand on the threshold. He poured out the nimble
arrows and glared frightfully, piercing a king first,
young Antinoos. Aiming groan-carrying shafts at the others,
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he shot so well that our men toppled in dense heaps.
“By now we knew one of the Gods was their helper.
They suddenly dashed through the hall madly and caught us,
striking on every side. Wretched groans were rising,
skulls were battered, blood was awash on the whole floor.
A Song of Praise for Penelopeia
“So we died, Agamemnon. Our bodies are lying
still untended there in Odysseus’s great hall.
As yet our friends don’t know in the household of each man—
those who’d wash the black-red blood from our deep wounds,
lay us out and mourn us—all that’s due to a dead man.”
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Then the ghost of Atreus’s son answered by saying,
♦ “Happy son of Laertes, widely resourceful Odysseus,
blessed with the marvelous, upright woman you married,
what goodness of mind in faultless Penelopeia!
Ikarios’s daughter truly remembered Odysseus,
the man she’d married: so now her name and her goodness
will never die. The deathless Gods will fashion a joyful
song for men on the earth about thoughtful Penelopeia.
But not Tundareos’s daughter: evilly plotting,
killing the man she married, her song will be hateful
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to everyone. Klutaimnestre brought on a bad name
to every woman, even the woman who acts well.”
So the two men spoke that way with each other,
standing under the earth in the household of Aides.
Beautiful Farmland
Meanwhile Odysseus’s men went down from the city
and shortly came to the beautiful, laid-out farm of Laertes,
won by that king before with plenty of struggle.
There was the house; around it were running on every
side the sheds for bonded helpers who sat there,
ate there, worked for Laertes gladly and slept there.
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An old Sicilian woman who lived in the farmhouse
gently cared for the aging man far from the city.
The Orchard
Shortly Odysseus told his son and the two slaves,
“You men go on to the well-built house and get ready
for dinner soon. Kill the best of the swine there.
I’m going myself to put a test to my Father,
to find out whether he’ll know me now with his own eyes.
Or maybe he’ll fail to. I’ve been gone for a long time.”