These two came into the presence of Zeus the cloud-gatherer
155 and stood, nor was his heart angry when he looked upon them,
seeing they had promptly obeyed the message of his dear lady.
He spoke to Iris first of the two, and addressed her in winged words:
“Go on your way now, swift Iris, to the lord Poseidon,
and give him all this message nor be a false messenger. Tell him
160 that he must now quit the war and the fighting, and go back
among the generations of gods, or into the bright sea.
And if he will not obey my words, or thinks nothing of them,
then let him consider in his heart and his spirit
that he might not, strong though he is, be able to stand up
165 to my attack; since I say I am far greater than he is
in strength, and elder born; yet his inward heart shrinks not from calling
himself the equal of me, though others shudder before me.”
He spoke, and swift wind-footed Iris did not disobey him
but went down along the hills of Ida to sacred Ilion.
170 As those times when out of the clouds the snow or the hail whirls
cold beneath the blast of the north wind born in the bright air,
so rapidly in her eagerness winged Iris, the swift one,
and stood beside the famed shaker of the earth, and spoke to him:
“I have a certain message for you, dark-haired, earth-encircler,
175 and came here to bring it to you from Zeus of the aegis.
His order is that you quit the war and the fighting, and go back
among the generations of gods, or into the bright sea.
And if you will not obey his words, or think nothing of them,
his threat is that he himself will come to fight with you
180 here, strength against strength, but warns you to keep from under
his hands, since he says he is far greater than you are
in strength, and elder born. Yet your inward heart shrinks not from calling
yourself the equal of him, though others shudder before him.”
Then deeply vexed the famed shaker of the earth spoke to her:
185 “No, no. Great though he is, this that he has said is too much,
if he will force me against my will, me, who am his equal
in rank. Since we are three brothers born by Rheia to Kronos,
Zeus, and I, and the third is Hades, lord of the dead men.
All was divided among us three ways, each given his domain.
190 I when the lots were shaken drew the gray sea to live in
forever; Hades drew the lot of the mists and the darkness,
and Zeus was allotted the wide sky, in the cloud and the bright air.
But earth and high Olympos are common to all three. Therefore
I am no part of the mind of Zeus. Let him in tranquility
195 and powerful as he is stay satisfied with his third share.
And let him absolutely stop frightening me, as if I were
mean, with his hands. It were better to keep for the sons and the daughters
he got himself these blusterings and these threats of terror.
They will listen, because they must, to whatever he tells them.”
200 Then in turn swift wind-footed Iris answered him:
“Am I then to carry, O dark-haired, earth-encircler,
this word, which is strong and steep, back to Zeus from you?
Or will you change a little? The hearts of the great can be changed.
You know the Furies, how they forever side with the elder.”
205 Then in turn the shaker of the earth Poseidon spoke to her:
“Now this, divine Iris, was a word quite properly spoken.
It is a fine thing when a messenger is conscious of justice.
But this thing comes as a bitter sorrow to my heart and my spirit,
when Zeus tries in words of anger to reprimand one who
210 is his equal in station, and endowed with destiny like his.
Still, this time I will give way, for all my vexation.
But I will say this also, and make it a threat in my anger.
If ever, acting apart from me and Athene the spoiler,
apart from Hera and Hermes and the lord Hephaistos,
215 he shall spare headlong Ilion, and shall not be willing
to take it by storm, and bestow great victory on the Argives,
let him be sure, there will be no more healing of our anger.”
The shaker of the earth spoke, and left the Achaian people,
and went, merging in the sea, and the fighting Achaians longed for him.
220 After this Zeus who gathers the clouds spoke to Apollo:
“Go now, beloved Phoibos, to the side of brazen-helmed Hektor,
since by this he who encircles the earth and shakes it
is gone into the bright sea and has avoided the anger
that would be ours. In truth, this would have been a fight those other
225 gods would have heard about, who gather to Kronos beneath us.
Now this way it was far better for me, and for himself
also, that, for all his vexation before, he gave way
to my hands. We would have sweated before this business was finished.
Now yourself take up in your hands the aegis with fluttering
230 tassels, and shake it hard to scare the Achaian fighters.
Then, striker from afar, let your own concern be glorious Hektor.
So long waken the huge strength in him, until the Achaians
run in flight, and come to the ships and the crossing of Helle.
From there on I myself shall think of the word and the action
235 to make the Achaians get wind once more, after their hard fighting.”
He spoke so, and Apollo, not disregarding his father,
came down along the mountains of Ida in the likeness of a rapid
hawk, the dove’s murderer and swiftest of all things flying.
He found brilliant Hektor, the son of wise Priam, sitting
240 now, no longer sprawled, as he gathered new strength back into him
and recognized his companions about him. The sweat and hard breathing
had begun to stop, once the will in Zeus of the aegis wakened him.
Apollo who works from afar stood beside him, and spoke to him:
“Hektor, son of Priam, why do you sit in such weakness
245 here apart from the others? Did some disaster befall you?”
In his weakness Hektor of the shining helm spoke to him:
“Who are you, who speak to me face to face, O noblest
of gods? Did you not know how by the Achaians’ grounded
ships, Aias of the great war cry struck me in the chest with a boulder
250 as I slaughtered his companions, and stayed my furious valor?
Truly, I thought that on this day I would come to the corpses
and the house of the death god, once I had breathed the inward life from me.”
In turn the lord, the worker from afar, Apollo, spoke to him:
“Take heart; such an avenger am I whom the son of Kronos
255 sent down from Ida, to stand by your side and defend you,
Phoibos Apollo of the golden sword, who in time before this
also have stood to defend yourself and your sheer citadel.
So come now, and urge on your cavalry in their numbers
to drive on their horses against the hollow ships. Meanwhile
260 I shall move on before you and make all the way for the horses
smooth before them, and bend back the Achaian fighters.”
He spoke, and breathed huge strength into the shepherd of the people.
As when some stalled horse who has been corn-fed at the manger
breaking free of his rope gallops over the plain in t
hunder
265 to his accustomed bathing place in a sweet-running river
and in the pride of his strength holds high his head and the mane floats
over his shoulders; sure of his glorious strength, the quick knees
carry him to the loved places and the pasture of horses;
so Hektor moving rapidly his feet and his knees went
270 onward, stirring the horsemen when he heard the god’s voice speak.
And as when men who live in the wilds and their dogs have driven
into flight a horned stag or a wild goat. Inaccessible
the rocky cliff or the shadowed forest has covered the quarry
so that the men know it was not their fortune to take him;
275 and now by their clamoring shows in the way a great bearded
lion, and bends them to sudden flight for all their eagerness;
so the Danaäns until that time kept always in close chase
assembled, stabbing at them with swords and leaf-headed spears,
but when they saw Hektor once more ranging the men’s ranks
280 they were frightened, and by their feet collapsed all their bravery.
Now Thoas spoke forth among them, the son of Andraimon,
far the best of the Aitolians, one skilled in the spear’s throw
and brave in close fight. In assembly few of the Achaians
when the young men contended in debate could outdo him.
285 He in kind intention now spoke forth and addressed them:
“Can this be? Here is a strange thing I see with my own eyes,
how this Hektor has got to his feet once more, and eluded
the death spirits. I think in each of us the heart had high hope
he was killed under the hands of Telamonian Aias.
290 Now some one of the gods has come to his help and rescued
Hektor, who has unstrung the knees of so many Danaäns.
I think he will do it once more now. It is not without Zeus
the deep-thundering that he stands their champion in all this fury.
Come then, let us do as I say, let us all be persuaded.
295 Let us tell the multitude to make its way back toward the vessels
while we ourselves, who claim we are greatest in all the army,
stand, and see if we can face him first, and hold him off from them
with spears lifted against him, and I think for all of his fury
his heart will be afraid to plunge into our Danaän company.
300 So he spoke, and they listened to him with care, and obeyed him.
They who rallied about Aias, the lord Idomeneus,
Teukros, Meriones, and Meges, a man like the war god,
closed their order for hard impact, calling on the bravest
to face Hektor and the Trojans. Meanwhile behind them
305 the multitude made their way back toward the ships of the Achaians.
The Trojans came down on them in a pack, and Hektor led them
in long strides, and in front of him went Phoibos Apollo
wearing a mist about his shoulders, and held the tempestuous
terrible aegis, shaggy, conspicuous, that the bronze-smith
310 Hephaistos had given Zeus to wear to the terror of mortals.
Gripping this in both hands he led on the Trojan people.
But the Argives stood in close order against them, and the battle cry rose up
in a thin scream from either side, the arrows from the bowstrings
jumping, while from violent hands the numerous thrown spears
315 were driven, some deep in the bodies of quick-stirring young men,
while many in the space between before they had got to the white skin
stood fast in the ground, though they had been straining to reach the bodies.
So long as Phoibos Apollo held stilled in his hands the aegis,
so long the thrown weapons of both took hold, and men dropped under them.
320 But when he stared straight into the eyes of the fast-mounted Danaäns
and shook the aegis, and himself gave a great baying cry, the spirit
inside them was mazed to hear it, they forgot their furious valor.
And they, as when in the dim of the black night two wild beasts
stampede a herd of cattle or big flock of sheep, falling
325 suddenly upon them, when no herdsman is by, the Achaians
fled so in their weakness and terror, since Apollo drove
terror upon them, and gave the glory to the Trojans and Hektor.
There man killed man all along the scattered encounter.
Hektor first killed Stichios and Arkesilaos,
330 one the leader of the bronze-armored Boiotians, the other
trusted companion in arms of great-hearted Menestheus.
But Aineias slaughtered Medon and Iasos. Of these
Medon was a bastard son of godlike Oïleus
and therefore brother of Aias, but had made his home in Phylakē
335 away from the land of his fathers, having killed a man, a relation
of Eriopis, his stepmother, the wife of Oïleus.
Iasos was a leader appointed of the Athenians,
and was called the son of Sphelos, the son of Boukolos.
Poulydamas killed Mekisteus, and Polites Echios
340 in the first onfall, and brilliant Agenor cut down Klonios.
Paris struck Deïochos from behind at the shoulder’s
base, as he ran away through the front ranks, and drove the bronze clean through.
While these stripped the armor from their men, meanwhile the Achaians
blundering about the deep-dug ditch and the sharp stakes
345 ran this way and that in terror, forced into their rampart.
But Hektor called aloud in a piercing cry to the Trojans:
“Make hard for the ships, let the bloody spoils be. That man
I see in the other direction apart from the vessels,
I will take care that he gets his death, and that man’s relations
350 neither men nor women shall give his dead body the rite of burning.
In the space before our city the dogs shall tear him to pieces.”
So speaking with a whipstroke from the shoulder he lashed on his horses
calling across the ranks to the Trojans, who along with him
all cried aloud as they steered the horses who pulled their chariots,
355 with inhuman clamor, and in front of them Phoibos Apollo
easily, kicking them with his feet, tumbled the banked edges
of the deep ditch into the pit between, and bridged over a pathway
both wide and long, about as long as the force of a spearcast
goes when a man has thrown it to try his strength. They streamed over
360 in massed formation, with Apollo in front of them holding
the tremendous aegis, and wrecked the bastions of the Achaians
easily, as when a little boy piles sand by the seashore
when in his innocent play he makes sand towers to amuse him
and then, still playing, with hands and feet ruins them and wrecks them.
365 So you, lord Apollo, piled in confusion much hard work
and painful done by the Argives and drove terror among them.
So they reined in and stood fast again beside their ships, calling
aloud upon each other, and to all of the gods, uplifting
their hands each man of them cried out his prayers in a great voice,
370 and beyond others Gerenian Nestor, the Achaians’ watcher,
prayed, reaching out both arms to the starry heavens:
“Father Zeus, if ever in wheat-deep Argos one of us
burning before you the rich thigh pieces of sheep or ox prayed
he would come home again, and you nodded your head and assented,
375 remember this, Olympian, save us from the day wit
hout pity;
let not the Achaians be beaten down like this by the Trojans.”
So he spoke in prayer, and Zeus of the counsels thundered
a great stroke, hearing the prayer of the old man, the son of Neleus.
But the Trojans, hearing the thunderstroke of Zeus of the aegis,
380 remembered even more their warcraft, and sprang on the Argives.
They, as when the big waves on the sea wide-wandering
wash across the walls of a ship underneath the leaning
force of the wind, which particularly piles up the big waves,
so the Trojans with huge clamor went over the rampart
385 and drove their horses to fight alongside the grounded vessels,
with leaf-headed spears, some at close quarters, others from their horses.
But the Achaians climbing high on their black ships fought from them
with long pikes that lay among the hulls for sea fighting,
shrouded about the heads in bronze that was soldered upon them.
390 Meanwhile Patroklos, all the time the Achaians and Trojans
were fighting on both sides of the wall, far away from the fast ships,
had sat all this time in the shelter of courtly Eurypylos
and had been entertaining him with words and applying
medicines that would mitigate the black pains to the sore wound.
395 But when he saw the Trojans were sweeping over the rampart
and the outcry and the noise of terror rose from the Danaäns
Patroklos groaned aloud then and struck himself on both thighs
with the flats of his hands and spoke a word of lamentation:
“Eurypylos, much though you need me I cannot stay here
400 longer with you. This is a big fight that has arisen.
Now it is for your henchman to look after you, while I
go in haste to Achilleus, to stir him into the fighting.
Who knows if, with God helping, I might trouble his spirit
by entreaty, since the persuasion of a friend is a strong thing.”
405 As he was speaking his feet carried him away. Meanwhile
the Achaians stood steady against the Trojan attack, but they could not
beat the enemy, fewer as they were, away from their vessels,
nor again had the Trojans strength to break the battalions
of the Danaäns, and force their way into the ships and the shelters.
410 But as a chalkline straightens the cutting of a ship’s timber
in the hands of an expert carpenter, who by Athene’s
inspiration is well versed in all his craft’s subtlety,
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