But even now,
late as it is, you could tell your Achilles all this
and your fiery friend might listen. Who knows?
With a god’s help you just might rouse him now,
bring his fighting spirit round at last.
The persuasion of a comrade has its powers.
But if down deep some prophecy makes him balk,
some doom his noble mother revealed to him from Zeus,
at least let Achilles send Patroclus into battle.
Let the whole Myrmidon army follow your command—
you might bring some light of victory to our Argives!
And let him give you his own fine armor to wear in war
so the Trojans might take you for him, Patroclus, yes,
hold off from attack, and Achaea’s fighting sons
get second wind, exhausted as they are ...
Breathing room in war is all too brief.
You’re fresh, unbroken. They’re bone-weary from battte—
you could roll those broken Trojans back to Troy,
clear of our ships and shelters!”
So old Nestor urged
and the fighting spirit leapt inside Patrocius—
he dashed back by the ships toward Achilles.
But sprinting close to King Odysseus’ fleet
where the Argives met and handed down their laws,
the grounds where they built their altars to the gods,
there he met Eurypylus, Euaemon’s gallant son,
wounded, the arrow planted deep in his thigh,
and limping out of battle ...
The sweat was streaming down his face and back
and the dark blood still flowed from his ugly wound
but the man’s will was firm, he never broke his stride.
And moved at the sight, the good soldier Patroclus
burst out in grief with a flight of winging words,
“Poor men! Lords of the Argives, O my captains!
How doomed you are, look—far from your loved ones
and native land—to glut with your shining fat
the wild dogs of battle here in Troy ...
But come, tell me, Eurypylus, royal fighter,
can the Achaeans, somehow, still hold monstrous Hector?—
or must they all die now, beaten down by his spear?”
Struggling with his wound, Eurypylus answered,
“No hope, Patroclus, Prince. No bulwark left.
They’ll all be hurled back to the black ships.
All of them, all our best in the old campaigns
are laid up in the hulls, they’re hit by arrows,
pierced by spears, brought down by Trojan hands
while the Trojans’ power keeps on rising, rising!
Save me at least. Take me back to my black ship.
Cut this shaft from my thigh. And the dark blood—
wash it out of the wound with clear warm water.
And spread the soothing, healing salves across it,
the powerful drugs they say you learned from Achilles
and Chiron the most humane of Centaurs taught your friend.
And as for our own healers, Podalirius and Machaon,
one is back in the shelters, wounded, I think—
Machaon needs a good strong healer himself,
he’s racked with pain. The other’s still afield,
standing up to the Trojans’ slashing onslaught.”
The brave son of Menoetius answered quickly,
“Impossible. Eurypylus, hero, what shall we do?
I am on my way with a message for Achilles,
our great man of war—the plan that Nestor,
Achaea’s watch and ward, urged me to report.
But I won’t neglect you, even so, with such a wound.”
And bracing the captain, arm around his waist,
he helped him toward his shelter. An aide saw them
and put some oxhides down. Patroclus stretched him out,
knelt with a knife and cut the sharp, stabbing arrow
out of Eurypylus’ thigh and washed the wound clean
of the dark running blood with clear warm water.
Pounding it in his palms, he crushed a bitter root
and covered over the gash to kill his comrade’s pain,
a cure that fought off every kind of pain ...
and the wound dried and the flowing blood stopped
BOOK TWELVE
The Trojans Storm the Rampart
And so under shelter now Menoetius’ fighting son
was healing Eurypylus’ wounds. But hordes of men fought on,
the Achaean and Trojan infantry going hand-to-hand.
The Argive trench could not hold out much longer,
nor could the rampart rearing overhead, the wide wall
they raised to defend the ships and the broad trench
they drove around it all—they never gave the gods
the splendid sacrifice the immortals craved,
that the fortress might protect the fast ships
and the bulking plunder heaped behind its shield.
Defying the deathless gods they built that wall
and so it stood there steadfast no long time.
While Hector still lived and Achilles raged on
and the warlord Priam’s citadel went unstormed,
so long the Achaeans’ rampart stood erect.
But once the best of the Trojan captains fell,
and many Achaeans died as well while some survived,
and Priam’s high walls were stormed in the tenth year
and the Argives set sail for the native land they loved—
then, at last, Poseidon and Lord Apollo launched their plan
to smash the rampart, flinging into it all the rivers’ fury.
All that flow from the crests of Ida down to breaking surf,
the Rhesus and the Heptaporus, Caresus and the Rhodius,
Grenicus and Aesepus, and the shining god Scamander
and Simois’ tides where tons of oxhide shields
and homed helmets tumbled deep in the river silt
and a race of men who seemed half god, half mortal.
The channels of all those rivers-Apollo swung them round
into one mouth and nine days hurled their flood against the wall
and Zeus came raining down, cloudburst powering cloudburst,
the faster to wash that rampart out to open sea.
The Earth-shaker himself, trident locked in his grip,
led the way, rocking loose, sweeping up in his breakers
all the bastion’s strong supports of logs and stones
the Achaeans prized in place with grueling labor ...
He made all smooth along the rip of the Hellespont
and piled the endless beaches deep in sand again
and once he had leveled the Argives’ mighty wall
he turned the rivers flowing back in their beds again
where their fresh clear tides had run since time began.
So in the years to come Poseidon and god Apollo
would set all things to rights once more.
But now
the war, the deafening crash of battle blazed
around the strong-built work, and rampart timbers
thundered under the heavy blows as Argive fighters
beaten down by the lash of Zeus were rolled back,
pinned to their beaked ships in dread of Hector,
that invincible headlong terror.
On he fought like a whirlwind, staunch as always—
think of the hounds and huntsmen circling round
some lion or boar when the quarry wheels at bay,
rippling in strength as the men mass like a bastion
standing up to his charge and hurl their pelting spears
and the boar’s brave spirit never flinches, never bolts
and his own raw courage kills him—
time and again
he wheels around, testing the huntsmen’s ranks
and where he lunges out the ranks of men give way.
So Hector lunged into battle, rallying cohorts now,
spurring them on to cross the gaping trench—
but his own rearing stallions lacked the nerve.
They balked, whinnying shrill at the edge, the brink—
a dead stop—frightened off by the trench so broad
the team could never leap it, not at a single bound,
nor could they plunge on through with any ease.
Steep banks overhung its whole length, jutting up
on either side and topped by stabbing rows of stakes,
planted there by the Argives, thickset and huge
to block the enemy’s onslaught.
No light work for the teams that trundled chariots
churning massive wheels to make it through in stride
but the Trojans strained to bring it off on foot.
So Polydamas stood by headstrong Hector, warning,
“Hector—and all our Trojan captains, allies-in-arms!
It’s madness to drive our teams across that trench,
impossible to traverse it. Look, the sharp stakes
jutting right at the edge, and just beyond that
the Achaeans’ sturdy rampart. No room there
for charioteers to dismount and fight it out,
the strait’s too narrow, cramped—
we’ll take a mauling there, I see it all! so
If mighty Zeus, thundering up on high, is bent
on wiping out the Argives, down to the last man,
if he longs to back our Trojan forces to the hilt,
by heaven I hope the Father works his will at once
and the Argives die here, their memory blotted out,
a world away from Argos!
But what if they round on us?
If the Argives roll us back away from the ships,
trapped and tangled there in the yawning trench,
no runner, I tell you, pressed by an Argive rally,
could struggle free and bear the news to Troy.
So come, do as I say, and let us all unite.
Drivers, rein your horses hard by the trench—
the men themselves, armed for assault on foot,
we all follow Hector, all in a mass attack.
And the Argives? They cannot hold their line,
not if the ropes of death are knotted round their necks!“
So Polydamas urged. His plan won Hector over—
less danger, more success—and down he leapt
from his chariot fully armed and hit the ground.
Nor did the other chariot-drivers hold formation—
all dismounted, seeing shining Hector leap to earth.
Each man shouted out commands to his driver, quickly,
“Rein the team by the trench, good battle-order now!”
And the fighters split apart and then closed ranks,
marshaled in five battalions, captains leading each.
The men who trooped with Hector and Prince Polydamas—
they were the greatest force, the best and bravest,
grim set above all the rest to breach the wall
and go for the beaked ships and fight it out.
Cebriones followed close, third in command
since Hector left another to rein his team,
a driver less than Cebriones, less a fighter.
The second Trojan battalion Paris led in arms
with Alcathous and Agenor. Helenus led the third
with Deiphobus striding on like a god beside him,
two sons of Priam; captain Asius third in command,
Asius son of Hyrtacus—hulking, fiery stallions
bore him in from Arisbe, from the Selleis River.
The fourth battalion marched with gallant Aeneas,
Anchises’ offspring flanked by Antenor’s two sons,
Acamas and Archelochus drilled for every foray.
Sarpedon marshaled the famous allies, placing Glaucus
next in command with the combat veteran Asteropaeus,
head and shoulders the best men, Sarpedon thought,
after himself of course: he outshone the rest.
Now shield against oxhide shield, wedging tight,
with a wild rush they charged the Argives head-on,
never thinking the Argive line could still hold out—
they’d all be hurled back on their blackened hulls.
So all the Trojans and famous friends-in-arms
embraced Polydamas’ plan, the faultless chieftain.
But Asius captain of armies, Hyrtacus’ son refused
to leave his horses there with a driver reining back-
and on he drove at the fast trim ships, chariot and all,
the fool. Vaunting along the hulls with team and car
but never destined to slip past the deadly spirits,
never to ride in glory home to windswept Troy.
Long before, his accursed doom blacked him out
with Idomeneus’ spear, Deucalion’s noble son.
Now left of the ships he sped where Argive ranks
would head home from the plain with teams and cars.
Here Asius flogged his team and chariot hard,
nor did he find the gates shut, the bolt shot home,
not yet, the men still held them wide, hoping to save
some comrade fleeing the onset, racing for the ships.
Straight at the gates he lashed his team, hell-bent,
his troops crowding behind him shouting war cries,
never thinking the Argive line could still hold out—
they’d all be hurled back on their blackened hulls.
Idiots. There in the gates they found two men,
a brace of two great fighters,
lionhearted sons of the Lapith spearmen,
one Pirithous’ offspring, rugged Polypoetes,
the other Leonteus, a match for murderous Ares.
Both warriors planted there before the towering gates
rose like oaks that rear their crests on a mountain ridge,
standing up to the gales and driving rains, day in, day out,
their giant roots branching, gripping deep in the earth:
so these two, trusting all to their arms, their power,
stood up to Asius’ headlong charge and never shrank.
On the Trojans came, straight for the rock-tight wall,
raising rawhide shields and yelling their lungs out,
grouped under captain Asius, Iamenus and Orestes
and Asius’ own son Adamas, Thoon and Oenomaus.
The Lapiths had just been rousing Argives packed
behind the rampart: “Close in a ring—defend the ships!”
But soon as the Lapiths saw the Trojans storm the wall,
and cries broke from the Argives lost in sudden panic,
then the two burst forth to fight before the gates
like wild boars, a pair of them up on the hilltops
bracing to take some breakneck rout of men and dogs
The Iliad Page 45