by Homer
He spoke and, giving godlike Hector a black look, said:
‘Come on, and the sooner your fate will be sealed.’
Unperturbed, Hector of the flashing helmet said: (430)
‘Son of Peleus, don’t imagine you can frighten me with words, as though I were a little child. I too know perfectly well how to exchange insults and abuse. I know you are a great warrior, and I am far inferior. But it surely lies in the lap of the gods whether, inferior as I am, I kill you with a spear-throw. Before now my spear has proved as sharp as any.’
He spoke, balanced his spear and launched it. But Athene (440) with a gentle puff of her breath turned the spear away from illustrious Achilles, so that it flew back to godlike Hector and fell at his feet. Achilles in his eagerness to kill charged with an intimidating yell. But Apollo covered Hector in a dense mist and snatched him away – as easily as a god can. Three times swift-footed godlike Achilles charged in with his bronze spear, three times he lunged at deep mist. But when he came on like something superhuman for the fourth time, he gave a terrible shout and spoke winged words:
‘You dog, once more you’ve saved your skin – but only just. (450) Phoebus Apollo took care of you again: you must pray to him as the spears thud around you. But we shall meet once more and then I’ll finish you off, if I too can find some god somewhere to help me. For the moment I’ll attack anyone else I can find.’
Achilles’ massacre; Tros’ plea
With these words he stabbed Dryops with his spear in the middle of the neck. Dryops crashed at his feet. Achilles left him there and threw a spear at tall and handsome Demuchus. He hit him on the knee and stopped him in his tracks; then stabbed him with his long sword (460) and took his life. Next he attacked Laogonus and Dardanus, sons of Bias, and knocked them both out of their chariot onto the ground, one with a spear-throw and the other at close quarters with his sword.
Tros son of Alastor was next. The man came up to clasp Achilles’ knees in the hope that out of pity he would not kill one of his own age but merely take him prisoner and let him off with his life. The innocent – he had no idea his prayers were doomed to fail. Achilles was not sweet-tempered or tenderhearted, but a man of fierce passions; and when Tros, desperate to supplicate him, tried to touch his knees with his hands, (470) Achilles struck him in the liver with his sword. The liver slith- ered out and drenched his lap with dark blood. Darkness enveloped his eyes as he lost his life.
Achilles then went up to Mulius and stabbed him in the ear with his spear, so hard that the bronze point came out through the other. Next he caught Echeclus full on the head with a stroke of his hilted sword, warming the whole blade with his blood. Inexorable destiny and purple death closed Echeclus’ eyes. Deucalion next. Achilles pierced his forearm with the bronze point of his spear just where the sinews of the elbow are attached. (480) Deucalion, waiting for him with his arm weighed down by the spear, looked death in the face. Achilles struck the man’s neck with his sword and sent head and helmet flying off together. The marrow spurted out of his vertebrae and he lay there, stretched on the ground.
Achilles then went after matchless Rhigmus who had come from fertile Thrace. He threw at him and hit him in the middle. The bronze javelin stuck in his lung, and he crashed from his chariot. Areïthous, Rhigmus’ attendant, immediately turned the horses round, but Achilles stabbed him in the back with his sharp spear and knocked him out of the chariot. The horses panicked.
As fire from the skies rages through deep gullies on a scorched (490) mountain-side, a great forest is consumed and everywhere a driving wind sends the flames billowing, so Achilles ran amok with his spear like something superhuman, killing as he went, and the black earth ran with blood. As a farmer yokes a pair of broad-browed oxen to trample the white barley on a well-built threshing-floor, and the grain is shelled out under the hooves of the lowing animals, so the horses under great-hearted Achilles’ command trampled dead men and shields alike. The whole axle (500) of the chariot and the rails that ran round it were sprayed with the blood thrown up by the horses’ hooves and the wheel-rims. And the son of Peleus pressed on in search of glory, spattering his unconquerable hands with gore.
21
ACHILLES FIGHTS THE RIVER
When the River Scamander speaks and acts, it does so as the River-god.
1–204: Achilles slaughters Trojans hiding in the River Scamander, including Lycaon and Asteropaeus.
205–382: The River-god of SCAMANDER tells Achilles to desist and pursues him with a massive flood. HERA, terrified for Achilles, tells HEPHAESTUS to turn his fire on the plain and burn up the River. SCAMANDER gives up.
383–513: The gods now take sides and fight each other. ARES takes on ATHENE and is flattened, as is APHRODITE. APOLLO refuses to fight POSEIDON over mere mortals. HERA boxes ARTEMIS’ ears. HERMES refuses to fight LETO. ARTEMIS goes sobbing to ZEUS.
514–611: The gods return to Olympus, but APOLLO enters Ilium to protect it. Priam orders the gates to be opened. APOLLO in disguise leads Achilles away from the town while the relieved Trojan army floods back in.
When the Greeks reached the ford of the sweetly flowing river, eddying Scamander whose father is immortal Zeus, Achilles cut the Trojan force in two. One half he drove towards the town across the plain, where the Greeks had stampeded off in panic on the previous day when glorious Hector was creating havoc. Here the Trojans poured across the plain in flight; and to hamper their escape, Hera confronted them with a dense fog.
Trojans slaughtered in the river (18.336)
The rest were herded into deep-flowing Scamander with its silvery eddies. They fell into the water with resounding splashes, (10) the rushing river roared and, as they swam about whirled round in the eddies, the banks on either side threw back their cries. As a cloud of locusts lifts off to make for a river because of a raging fire which has suddenly sprung up and burns furiously, while the locusts huddle in the water; so the echoing current of deep-eddying Scamander was filled by Achilles with a medley of men and horses.
But Olympian-born Achilles, leaving his spear propped against a tamarisk bush on the bank and taking nothing but his sword, leapt in like something superhuman, with murder in (20) his heart, and laid about him right and left. Hideous groans went up from men being hacked to death by his sword, and the water was reddened with their blood. As fish dart away in terror before a huge dolphin and crowd into the corners of a sheltered cove – where it consumes whatever it catches – so the Trojans cowered under the overhanging banks of that terrible river. When the work of slaughtering them had tired his arms, Achilles selected twelve young men and took them alive from the river to be a blood-price for Patroclus’ death. He drove them, bewildered like fawns, on to the bank and tied their (30) hands behind them with the well-cut leather belts with which their strongly-woven tunics were equipped. Then he left them for his followers to take down to the hollow ships and in his eagerness for slaughter threw himself at the enemy again.
There he encountered Lycaon, one of Priam’s sons, who was making his escape from the river. He had met this man once before in a night raid and taken him unwilling captive from his father’s orchard, where Lycaon was trimming the young shoots of a fig-tree with a sharp knife to make chariot rails, when godlike Achilles descended on him like a bolt from (40) the blue. On that occasion, Achilles had put him on board ship and transported him for sale to well-built Lemnos – it was Jason’s son who bought him. From Lemnos he was ransomed at a high price by a man whose hospitality he had once enjoyed, Eëtion from Imbros, who sent him to bright Arisbe; but Lycaon slipped away from his protectors there to return home to Troy.
However, he enjoyed the company of his friends for no more than eleven days after his return from Lemnos, since on the twelfth the god landed him once more in the hands of Achilles, who this time was going to send him on a journey he did not wish to make – to the halls of Hades. Swift-footed godlike Achilles recognized him easily, since he was quite unarmed, with (50) neither helmet, shield
nor spear, having discarded his equipment on the ground, limp and exhausted as he was after the sweat and struggle of escaping from the river. Achilles angrily reflected on the situation:
Lycaon supplicates Achilles (20.413)
‘Well, well, what an astonishing sight! I suppose I shall have every Trojan I killed looming up at me from under the western gloom, if this fellow is anything to go by: I sold him into slavery on sacred Lemnos and now he has escaped that harsh fate and turned up here again. The deep of the grey sea restrains many against their (60) will but it could not hold him. Well then, he can taste the point of my spear. I want to satisfy myself and see whether he will return as easily from that journey as well or whether the life-giving earth, that holds down even the powerful, will hold him too.’
As he paused and considered the matter, Lycaon approached him and tried to seize his knees, bewildered and possessed by one desire, to avoid dark destiny and escape a dreadful death. Godlike Achilles raised his long spear to stab him, but Lycaon ducked under the thrust, ran in and grasped his knees, and the (70) spear passed over his back to stick in the ground, still hungering for human flesh. Laying one hand on Achilles’ knees to supplicate him and with the other gripping the sharp spear and refusing to let go, Lycaon spoke winged words:
‘Achilles, I am at your knees: respect me and have pity. I already have the claims of a suppliant on you – and suppliants command respect – because you were the first Greek whose bread I tasted when you captured me in our well-built orchard, carried me off from my father and friends and sold me on sacred Lemnos. I fetched you a good price – a hundred cattle – but I (80) was ransomed for three times as much, and after many hardships I returned to Ilium twelve days ago. Now deadly destiny has brought me into your hands again.
‘How Father Zeus must hate me, to have made me your prisoner twice over! I am the short-lived son of Laothoe and she is a daughter of old Altes, lord of the warlike Leleges, who lives in the high fortress of Pedasus on the banks of the River Satnioïs. Priam made this daughter of Altes one of his many wives and she had two sons, both of whom you will (90) have butchered, since godlike Polydorus fell to you and your sharp spear in the front line, and now an evil end awaits me here. For I have little hope of escaping, now that a divinity has delivered me into your hands. But I will tell you something else, and you bear it in mind. I was not borne by the same mother as Hector, who killed your brave and gentle companion. Don’t kill me.’
So the glorious son of Priam spoke in supplication. But there was no mercy in the voice that answered him:
‘You innocent, don’t talk to me of ransom. Don’t give me (100) your speeches. Before Patroclus met his destined end, I was not disinclined to spare the Trojans; I took many alive and sold them abroad. But now not a single man the god delivers into my hands in front of Ilium is going to live; and that holds good for all the Trojans, the sons of Priam above all.
‘Yes, my friend, you die too. Why make such a song about it? Even Patroclus died, who was a better man than you by far. And look at me. Don’t you see how big and handsome I am? I am the son of a great man. A goddess was my mother. Yet (110) death and inexorable destiny are waiting for me as well. A morning is coming, or maybe an evening or noon, when someone is going to kill me too in battle, with a throw of his spear or an arrow from his bow.’
Death of Lycaon
So he spoke, and then and there Lycaon’s spirit failed him, and he collapsed. Letting go of the spear, he sank back, stretching out both his hands. But Achilles drew his sharp sword and struck him on the collar bone beside the neck. The two-edged blade was buried in his flesh; he pitched forward headlong and lay there, stretched out on the ground, and the dark blood ran out of him and drenched the (120) earth. Achilles took him by the foot, hurled him into the river to be carried away and in triumph spoke winged words:
‘Now lie there among the fish, where they can lick clean the blood from your wound without a second thought. Your mother will not lay you on a bier and mourn you, but eddying Scamander will roll you out into the broad bosom of the sea, where many a fish will dart through the waves to the dark ripples on the top to eat Lycaon’s white fat.
‘Die, all of you, till we reach the citadel of sacred Ilium, you (130) in rout, I killing from behind. Nothing shall save you, not even sweetly flowing Scamander with its silver eddies, to whom for years you have been sacrificing bulls and into whose swirling pools you throw living horses. No: one by one you shall die an evil death, till you have all paid for the killing of Patroclus and the death of the Greeks you slaughtered down by their swift ships when I was away.’
Achilles kills Asteropaeus
So he spoke, and the River-god became extremely angry and began to consider ways of bringing Achilles’ exploits to an end and saving the Trojans from disaster. Meanwhile the son of Peleus, bent on slaughter, (140) hurled himself with his long-shadowed spear at Asteropaeus. This man was the son of Pelegon, who was a love-child of Periboea and the broad River Axius with its swirling stream. When Achilles attacked him, Asteropaeus had just emerged from the river and stood facing him with two spears in his hands, emboldened by the River-god Scamander who resented the slaughter of the youths Achilles was mercilessly butchering up and down his stream. When they had come within range of each other, swift-footed godlike Achilles spoke first:
(150) ‘Who on earth are you that dare to face me? And where do you come from? Pity those fathers whose sons face me in my fury!’
The glorious son of Pelegon said:
‘Great-hearted Achilles, why do you ask after my family? I come from distant, fertile Paeonia, which I left for Ilium eleven days ago at the head of my long-speared Paeonian troops. I am descended from broad-flowing River Axius, Axius, source of the loveliest water in the land. Axius was the father of the famous spearman Pelegon and I, they say, am Pelegon’s son. (160) But enough now, glorious Achilles! Let us fight.’
So, defiantly, he spoke, and godlike Achilles raised his ash spear from Mount Pelion. But the warrior Asteropaeus, who was ambidextrous, threw both his spears at once. With one he hit Achilles’ shield but failed to pierce it; the point was stopped by the gold that Hephaestus had put in as a gift. With the other he grazed Achilles’ right elbow, causing the dark blood to flow; but the spear passed over him and stuck in the ground, still hungering for flesh.
Now Achilles hurled his straight-flying ash shaft at (170) Asteropaeus, determined to kill him. He missed his man and hit the high riverbank instead with such force that he buried half the length of the ash spear in it. Drawing his sharp sword from his side, the son of Peleus launched himself furiously at Asteropaeus, who was now trying in vain to wrestle the spear out of the bank with his great hand. Three times, in his desperation to retrieve the spear, he shifted it a little, three times he gave up the struggle. The fourth time he tried again to bend and break Peleus’ ash shaft, but before he could do so Achilles was (180) on him and killed him with his sword. He hit him in the belly by the navel and all his innards gushed out on the ground. He lay there gasping, and darkness engulfed his eyes. Achilles, trampling on his chest, removed his armour and spoke in triumph:
‘Lie there, and learn how difficult it is, even for children of a River-god, to fight the offspring of almighty Zeus. You said you were descended from a broad-flowing River, but I can trace my ancestry to Zeus himself. Peleus son of Aeacus, leader of many Myrmidons, is my father; Aeacus was a son of Zeus; and (190) a descendant of Zeus is greater than the son of a River by as much as Zeus himself is greater than all rivers that run murmuring down to the sea.
‘Look at the River that is flowing past you now, Scamander. He is a mighty one, if that is any use to you. But there is no fighting against Zeus son of Cronus. Even Achelous lord of Rivers is no match for Zeus. Nor is the deep and potent Stream of Ocean, the source of all rivers, every sea and all the springs and deep wells that there are. Even Ocean is afraid of almighty Zeus’ lightning-bolt and his terrible thunder when it peals from the skies.’
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He spoke, pulled his bronze spear out of the bank and left (200) the man he had killed lying where he was on the sand, lapped by the dark water and busily attended by the swarming eels and fish, who tore at his kidneys and devoured his fat.
The River god’s anger at the killings
Then Achilles went after the Paeonians in their plumed helmets, who had been left in a state of panic beside the swirling river when they saw their leader fall in the thick of the action to the sword and strength of the son of Peleus. He killed Thersilochus, Mydon (210) and Astypylus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius and Ophelestes. Indeed swift Achilles would have slaughtered even more Paeonians, had it not been for the eddying River-god Scamander, who in his anger took human form and addressed him, speaking from one of his deep pools:
‘Achilles, you are supreme among men both in your strength and your outrageous deeds. And the gods themselves are always at your side. If Zeus really means you to kill all the Trojans, at least drive them away from me here and do your dirty work on the plain. My lovely channels are full of dead men’s bodies. I (220) am so choked with bodies that I cannot pour my waters into the bright sea, and you blindly kill on. Enough! Call a halt! I am appalled, commander.’
Swift-footed Achilles replied and said:
‘Scamander, child of Zeus, your will shall be done. But I’m not going to stop killing these arrogant Trojans till I’ve penned them in their town and tested Hector face to face, whether he kills me or I him.’
With these words he fell on the Trojans like something superhuman. Then deep-eddying Scamander addressed Phoebus Apollo:
‘For shame, god of the silver bow, son of Zeus! You have (230) ignored the orders of Zeus, who has told you many times to stand by the Trojans and protect them till the evening sun falls and throw its shadows over the fruitful fields.’