The Iliad

by Robert Fagels

  and the columns were only just now forming, moving out,

  stallion-breaking Trojans and long lines of Achaeans.

  So the Cephallenians held their ground there, poised ...

  when would some other Argive unit make its charge,

  engage the Trojan front and open up in battle?

  Spotting them now the lord of men Agamemnon

  dressed them down with a winging burst of scorn:

  “You there, Peteos’ son, a king, dear to the gods!

  And you, the captain of craft and cunning, shrewd with greed!

  Why are you cowering here, skulking out of range?

  Waiting for others to do your fighting for you?

  You—it’s your duty to stand in the front ranks

  and take your share of the scorching blaze of battle.

  First you are, when you hear of feasts from me,

  when Achaeans set out banquets for the chiefs.

  Then you’re happy enough to down the roast meats

  and cups of honeyed, mellow wine—all you can drink.

  But now you’d gladly watch ten troops of Achaeans

  beat you to this feast,

  first to fight with the ruthless bronze before you!”

  The great tactician Odysseus gave him a dark glance

  and shot back at once, “Now what’s this, Atrides,

  this talk that slips through your clenched teeth?

  How can you say I hang back from the fighting

  when Argive units spur the slashing god of war

  against these Trojan horsemen? Just you watch,

  if you’ll take the time and care to taste some action,

  watch Telemachus’ loving father lock and fight

  with enemy champions, stallion-breaking Trojans.

  You and your bluster—you are talking nonsense!”

  Seeing his anger flare, field marshal Agamemnon

  smiled broadly and took back his taunts at once:

  “Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, great tactician,

  I must not bait you so beyond the limit ...

  must not give you orders. I know for a fact

  the spirit in your heart is well-disposed

  to me and all my efforts. We see eye-to-eye.

  Come, we’ll set these things to rights later—

  if any offense has passed between us now.

  May the gods make all our bluster come to nothing.”

  He left him there in place, heading for other chiefs.

  And he came on Tydeus’ son, impetuous Diomedes

  standing by in his bolted car behind his team

  with Sthenelus flanked beside him, Capaneus’ son.

  And spotting Tydides there, field marshal Agamemnon

  gave him a winging burst of scorn: “What’s this?—

  you, the son of Tydeus, that skilled breaker of horses?

  Why cringing here? Gazing out on the passageways of battle!

  That was never Tydeus’ way, shy behind the lines—

  he’d grapple enemies, bolting ahead of comrades.

  Or so they claim who watched him at his work.

  I never met the man myself, never saw him,

  but they say he had no equal. True enough,

  he came to Mycenae once but not at war with us—

  a guest, a friend, with the royal Polynices

  raising troops that time they geared to attack

  the holy walls of Thebes. They pressed us hard,

  they begged us to give them battle-tested allies.

  My kin were glad to oblige and grant them their requests—

  till Zeus changed our minds with a flash of bad omens.

  So off they went, getting some distance on their way

  and reached the Asopus’ grassy banks and reedbeds.

  From that point the men sent Tydeus on ahead,

  bearing their message. He marched out at once

  and came on crowds, menacing bands of Thebans

  feasting away in the halls of mighty Eteocles.

  There, 450

  a total stranger, the horseman Tydeus had no fear,

  alone in the midst of Theban hordes. Undaunted,

  Tydeus challenged them all to tests of strength

  and beat them all with ease, in each event,

  Athena urged him on with so much winning force.

  But the Thebans rose in anger, lashed their teams

  and packed an ambush to meet him heading back—

  full fifty fighters with two chiefs in the lead,

  Hunter the son of Bloodlust, strong as the gods,

  and Killerman’s son, the gifted cutthroat Slaughter.

  But Tydeus treated them all to a shameful fate,

  finished them all but let one run for home,

  heeding the gods’ signs he let the hunter off.

  Now there was a man, that Tydeus, that Aetolian.

  But he bore a son who’s not the half of him in battle—

  better only in wrangling, wars of words!”

  Taunting so,

  and steadfast Diomedes offered no reply ...

  overawed by the king’s majestic scorn.

  But Capaneus’ headstrong son lashed back in style:

  “Don’t lie, Atrides! You know the truth—say it!

  We claim we are far, far greater than our fathers.

  We are the ones who stormed the seven gates of Thebes,

  heading a weaker force and facing stronger walls

  but obeying the gods’ signs and backed by Zeus.

  Our fathers? Fools. Their own bravado killed them.

  Don’t tell me you rank our fathers with ourselves!”

  But resolute Diomedes gave him a dark glance:

  “Sit down, my friend, be quiet. Listen to me.

  I don’t blame Agamemnon, our commander in chief,

  for goading his combat-ready Argives into battle.

  The glory goes to him if the Argive fighters

  lay the Trojans low and take their sacred city,

  but immense grief is his if comrades die in droves.

  Up now, rouse our fighting-fury!”

  With that challenge

  he sprang from his chariot fully armed and hit the ground.

  A terrific din of bronze rang from the captain’s chest,

  striding toward attack. Fear would have gripped

  the staunchest man and made his knees give way.

  As a heavy surf assaults some roaring coast,

  piling breaker on breaker whipped by the West Wind,

  and out on the open sea a crest first rears its head

  then pounds down on the shore with hoarse, rumbling thunder

  and in come more shouldering crests, arching up and breaking

  against some rocky spit, exploding salt foam to the skies—

  so wave on wave they came, Achaean battalions ceaseless,

  surging on to war. Each captain ordered his men

  and the ranks moved on in silence ...

  You’d never think so many troops could march

  holding their voices in their chests, all silence,

  fearing their chiefs who called out clear commands,

  and the burnished blazoned armor round their bodies flared,

  the formations trampling on.

  But not the Trojans, no ...

  like flocks of sheep in a wealthy rancher’s steadings,

  thousands crowding to have their white milk drained,

  bleating nonstop when they hear their crying lambs—

  so the shouts rose up from the long Trojan lines

  and not one cry, no common voice to bind them

  all together, their tongues mixed and clashed,

  their men hailed from so many far-flung countries.

  Ares drove them, fiery-eyed Athena drove the Argives,

  and Terror and Rout and relentless Strife stormed too,

  sister of manslaughtering Ares, Ares’ comrade-in-arms—

&n
bsp; Strife, only a slight thing when she first rears her head

  but her head soon hits the sky as she strides across the earth.

  Now Strife hurled down the leveler Hate amidst both sides,

  wading into the onslaught, flooding men with pain.

  At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,

  they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike

  with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze

  and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,

  and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.

  Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,

  fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.

  Wildly as two winter torrents raging down from the mountains,

  swirling into a valley, hurl their great waters together,

  flash floods from the wellsprings plunging down in a gorge

  and miles away in the hills a shepherd hears the thunder—

  so from the grinding armies broke the cries and crash of war.

  Antilochus was the first to kill a Trojan captain,

  tough on the front lines, Thalysias’ son Echepolus.

  Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet

  right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged

  in the man’s forehead, smashing through his skull

  and the dark came whirling down across his eyes—

  he toppled down like a tower in the rough assault.

  As he fell the enormous Elephenor grabbed his feet,

  Chalcodon’s son, lord of the brave-hearted Abantes,

  dragged him out from under the spears, rushing madly

  to strip his gear but his rush was short-lived.

  Just as he dragged that corpse the brave Agenor

  spied his ribs, bared by his shield as he bent low—

  Agenor stabbed with a bronze spear and loosed his limbs,

  his life spirit left him and over his dead body now

  the savage work went on, Achaeans and Trojans

  mauling each other there like wolves, leaping,

  hurtling into each other, man throttling man.

  And Telamonian Ajax struck Anthemion’s son,

  the hardy stripling Simoisius, still unwed ...

  His mother had borne him along the Simois’ banks

  when she trailed her parents down the slopes of Ida

  to tend their flocks, and so they called him Simoisius.

  But never would he repay his loving parents now

  for the gift of rearing—his life cut short so soon,

  brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.

  At the first charge he slashed his right nipple,

  clean through the shoulder went the brazen point

  and down in the dust he fell like a lithe black poplar

  shot up tall and strong in the spreading marshy flats,

  the trunk trimmed but its head a shock of branches.

  A chariot-maker fells it with shining iron ax

  as timber to bend for handsome chariot wheels

  and there it lies, seasoning by the river . . .

  So lay Anthemion’s son Simoisius, cut down

  by the giant royal Ajax.

  Antiphus hurled at him—

  the son of Priam wearing a gleaming breastplate

  let fly through the lines but his sharp spear missed

  and he hit Leucus instead, Odysseus’ loyal comrade,

  gouging his groin as the man hauled off a corpse—

  it dropped from his hands and Leucus sprawled across it.

  Enraged at his friend’s death Odysseus sprang in fury,

  helmed in fiery bronze he plowed through the front

  and charging the enemy, glaring left and right

  he hurled his spear—a glinting brazen streak—

  and the Trojans gave ground, scattering back,

  panicking there before his whirling shaft—

  a direct hit! Odysseus struck Democoon,

  Priam’s bastard son come down from Abydos,

  Priam’s racing-stables. Incensed for the dead

  Odysseus speared him straight through one temple

  and out the other punched the sharp bronze point

  and the dark came swirling thick across his eyes—

  down he crashed, armor clanging against his chest.

  And the Trojan front shrank back, glorious Hector too

  as the Argives yelled and dragged away the corpses,

  pushing on, breakneck on. But lord god Apollo,

  gazing down now from the heights of Pergamus,

  rose in outrage, crying down at the Trojans,

  “Up and at them, you stallion-breaking Trojans!

  Never give up your lust for war against these Argives!

  What are their bodies made of, rock or iron to block

  your tearing bronze? Stab them, slash their flesh!

  Achilles the son of lovely sleek-haired Thetis—

  the man’s not even fighting, no, he wallows

  in all his heartsick fury by the ships!”

  So he cried

  from far on the city’s heights, the awesome god Apollo.

  But Zeus’s daughter Athena spurred the Argives on—

  Athena first in glory, third-born of the gods—

  whenever she saw some slacker hanging back

  as she hurtled through the onset.

  Now Amarinceus’ son

  Diores—fate shackled Diores fast and a jagged rock

  struck him against his right shin, beside the ankle.

  Pirous son of Imbrasus winged it hard and true,

  the Thracian chief who had sailed across from Aenus ...

  the ruthless rock striking the bones and tendons

  crushed them to pulp—he landed flat on his back,

  slamming the dust, both arms flung out to his comrades,

  gasping out his life. Pirous who heaved the rock

  came rushing in and speared him up the navel—

  his bowels uncoiled, spilling loose on the ground

  and the dark came swirling down across his eyes.

  But Pirous—

  Aetolian Thoas speared him as he swerved and sprang away,

  the lancehead piercing his chest above the nipple

  plunged deep in his lung, and Thoas, running up,

  wrenched the heavy spear from the man’s chest,

  drew his blade, ripped him across the belly,

  took his life but he could not strip his armor.

  Look, there were Pirous’ cohorts bunched in a ring,

  Thracians, topknots waving, clutching their long pikes

  and rugged, strong and proud as the Trojan Thoas was,

  they shoved him back—he gave ground, staggering, reeling.

  And so the two lay stretched in the dust, side-by-side,

  a lord of Thrace, a lord of Epeans armed in bronze

  and a ruck of other soldiers died around them.

  And now

  no man who waded into that work could scorn it any longer,

  anyone still not speared or stabbed by tearing bronze