The Iliad (Penguin Classics)

by Homer

  Agenor takes on Achilles

  ‘What shall I do? If I fly before godlike Achilles and join the others in their wild stampede, he will catch me all the same and slit my defenceless throat. On the other hand, if I leave the rest to be chased by him and use my speed to get away from the walls in the other direction, towards the Ilian Plain, till I reach the foothills of Mount Ida (560) and can hide in the woods… then in the evening I could bathe in the river, wash the sweat off my body and make my way back to Ilium…

  ‘But why talk to myself like this? Achilles is bound to see me sneaking away from the town into the open country; he will come after me and with his speed he will catch me too. There’ll be no escape from death and destiny: he’s far too strong for anyone. But if I go to meet him here in front of the town… his flesh too is vulnerable to a sharp bronze spear… he has only (570) one life, and people say he’s mortal, even if Zeus son of Cronus is granting him the glory…’

  With these words Agenor braced himself and waited for Achilles. His courageous heart was determined to do battle and fight. As a leopardess steps out from her jungle lair to face the huntsman, fearless and immovable when she hears the baying of the hounds: if the hunter gets in first and hits her with a throw or stabs her, even with the spear stuck in her, her courage does not fail her, but she takes him on or dies in the attempt – so (580) noble Agenor refused to run before he had put Achilles to the test. He held his circular shield in front of his body, brandished his spear at Achilles and shouted aloud:

  ‘Glorious Achilles, no doubt you thought you were going to sack the proud Trojans’ town this very day. You fool! It will survive to witness much suffering yet. There are plenty of us brave men to fight her battles under the eyes of our dear parents and wives and children. It is you that are rushing to your doom here, impetuous and self-confident a warrior that you are.’

  He spoke and launched the sharp spear from his heavy hand.(590) He hit Achilles on the shin below the knee and did not miss, making the tin of the new shin-guard ring frighteningly on his leg. But the god’s gift stood up to the blow, and the bronze point rebounded. It had hit but not wounded him.

  APOLLO diverts Achilles

  Achilles in his turn attacked godlike Agenor. But Apollo did not let him win this encounter. Hiding Agenor in a thick mist, he swept him off and sent him quietly from the battlefield to return home. The Archer-god then used a trick to steer Achilles away from the (600) rest of the Trojan army. Making himself look exactly like Agenor, he presented himself in Achilles’ path. Achilles started eagerly in pursuit and chased the god across the wheat-bearing plain, heading him off towards deep-eddying Scamander. Apollo kept a little way ahead, all the time cleverly encouraging Achilles into thinking he could overtake him.

  Meanwhile the rest of the Trojans, fleeing in a jostling crowd, reached the town with grateful hearts and filled it as they crowded in. They did not even have the spirit to wait for each other outside the town walls in order to find out who had got (610) away or who had fallen in battle. Instead, those whose speed of foot had saved them poured eagerly inside.

  22

  THE DEATH OF HECTOR

  1–24: The Trojans recover within the walls, but Hector remains outside. APOLLO mocks the furious Achilles, who races back to Ilium.

  25–130: Priam and Hecabe appeal to their son Hector not to take on Achilles. Hector decides he must fight.

  131–213: Achilles charges, and Hector runs. They complete three circuits of the walls. The scales of destiny weigh against Hector, and APOLLO leaves him.

  214–366: ATHENE tricks Hector into fighting. Achilles rejects Hector’s suggestion that the loser’s body should be returned, charges and kills him. Hector prophesies Achilles’ death.

  367–404: Achilles strips the dead Hector, the Greeks stab his body. Achilles tells the Greeks to return to camp, and drags Hector’s body back by the ankles behind his chariot.

  405 -515: Priam and Hecabe lament Hector. When Andromache hears of his death she faints, recovers and offers a third lament, emphasizing her fatherless child Astyanax’s fate.

  So the Trojans, running for it like fawns, took refuge in the town. There they dried the sweat off their bodies, drank and slaked their thirst as they leant against the fine battlements, while the Greeks advanced on the wall, their shields at the slope on their shoulders. But deadly destiny shackled Hector where he was, outside Ilium in front of the Scaean gate.

  Meanwhile Phoebus Apollo spoke to Achilles:

  ‘Son of Peleus, why are you chasing me on those swift feet of yours? You are a man, and I an immortal god, as you might (10) have noticed, had you not been so preoccupied with your pur- suit. But surely you must be neglecting your business with the Trojans you put to flight. Look, they’ve shut themselves up in the town, while you have been side-tracked all the way out here. But you’ll never kill me: I, naturally, am not marked out for death.’

  Furious, swift-footed Achilles replied:

  Achilles rages at APOLLO’s trick

  ‘You’ve made a fool of me, Apollo, most malevolent of all the gods, by luring me out here away from the walls. To think of all the Trojans who would otherwise have bitten the dust and not reached Ilium! You have robbed me of a great victory by saving their lives, an easy task for you, who have no retribution to fear. I would (20) certainly pay you back, if only I had the power.’

  With these words Achilles made fearlessly for the town, racing along like a prize-winning horse galloping effortlessly at speed over the plain with its chariot. So lightly and easily Achilles sprinted off.

  Old Priam was the first to see him, shining like a star as he sped across the plain – like the star that comes in autumn, outshining all its fellows in the evening sky. They call it Orion’s (30) Dog, and though it is the brightest of all stars, it heralds no good, bringing much fever, as it does, to wretched mortals. That was how the bronze gleamed on Achilles’ chest as he ran.

  Hector asked not to fight (20.417, 21.117)

  The old man gave a groan. He lifted up his hands and beat his head. With a great cry he shouted in supplication to his beloved son Hector, who had taken his stand in front of the gates, implacable in his determination to fight it out with Achilles. Stretching out his arms, the old man piteously addressed him:

  ‘Hector, I beg you, my dear son, don’t stand up to that man alone and without help. You are inviting defeat and (40) death at his hands. He is far stronger than you and quite ruthless. The dogs and vultures would soon be feeding on his body (and what a load that would lift from my heart!) if only the gods loved him as little as I do – the man who has robbed me of so many splendid sons, killed them or sold them off as slaves to distant islands.

  ‘There are still two of them I cannot find among the troops huddling in the town, Lycaon and Polydorus, children of mine by my mistress, lady Laothoe. If the enemy have taken them (50) alive, we will ransom them presently with bronze and gold, of which there is plenty inside, since old Altes, Laothoe’s famous father, gave his daughter a massive dowry. But if they are dead by now and in the halls of Hades, there will be one more sorrow for me and their mother who brought them into the world, even though the rest of Ilium will not mourn for them so long – unless you join them and also fall to Achilles. So come inside the walls, my son, to be the saviour of Trojan men and women; and do not throw away your own precious life to give a triumph to the son of Peleus.

  ‘Have pity too on me, your poor father, while I still live my (60) ill-fated existence, since Father Zeus has kept in store for my old age a hideous fate, innumerable horrors I shall have to see before I die – sons massacred, daughters raped, bedrooms pillaged, little babies hurled ruthlessly to the ground and killed, my sons’ wives hauled away by murderous Greek hands.

  ‘Last of all my turn will come after someone’s spear or sword has removed the life from these limbs; and my dogs, turned savage, tear me to pieces at the entrance to my palace. The very dogs I have fed at table and trained to watch my gate wi
ll lie in (70) front of my doors, restlessly lapping their master’s blood. It looks well enough for a young man killed in battle to lie there mutilated by a sharp spear: death can find nothing to expose in him that is not beautiful. But when an old man’s dogs defile his grey head, his grey beard and his genitals, wretched mortals plumb the depths of human misery.’

  The old man spoke and tore at his grey locks and pulled the hair from his head; but he did not shake Hector’s resolve. And now his mother Hecabe in her turn began to lament and weep. (80) Drawing open the folds of her dress, she held up her breast in her hand and, with the tears running down her cheeks, spoke winged words:

  (90) ‘Hector, my son, have some respect for this and pity me, if ever I gave you this breast to soothe away your troubles! Remember those days, dear child. Deal with your enemy from here inside the walls and do not go out to meet that man in single combat. He is ruthless; and if he kills you, I shall never lay you out on a bier and weep for you, dear child of my flesh, nor will your wife, however rich her dowry; but far away from both of us beside the Greek ships the swift dogs will consume you.’

  Hector refuses to retreat (18.266)

  So they spoke in tears to their dear son. But all their entreaties did not shake Hector’s resolve: he stayed where he was, awaiting the approach of awe-inspiring Achilles. As a mountain snake waits for a man beside its hole: it has swallowed poisonous herbs, its anger is dreadful and it stares intimidatingly at him, wreathing its coils round its lair – so Hector, his determination unquenchable, refused to retreat. He leaned his glittering shield against the projecting tower and, deeply troubled, reflected on the situation:

  ‘What am I to do? If I retire behind the gate and the wall, (100) Polydamas will be the first to point the finger of blame at me that, on this last accursed night when godlike Achilles rose up again, I did not take his advice and order a withdrawal into the town. It would have been much better if I had. As it is, having sacrificed the army to my own reckless stupidity, I would feel nothing but shame before the Trojan men and the Trojan women in their trailing gowns. I could not bear to hear some second- rater say: ‘‘Hector trusted in his own right arm and lost an army.’’ But it will be said, and then it would be far better for me to stand up to Achilles and either kill him and come home alive, (110) or be killed by him gloriously in front of Ilium.

  ‘If I put down my bossed shield and heavy helmet, prop my spear against the wall and approach matchless Achilles myself… if I promise to return Helen and all her property with her… everything in fact that Paris brought away with him to Troy in his hollow ships, which was how this war started… to give it all to Agamemnon and Menelaus to take away, and to divide up everything else with the Greeks as well, everything the town possesses… and then if I take an oath with the elders in council (120) on behalf of the Trojans not to hide anything but to divide it all up equally, all the property our lovely town contains…

  ‘But why talk to myself like this? If I approach Achilles as a suppliant, he’ll show me no pity, no respect. He’ll kill me out of hand, exposed as I will be when I take off my armour, like a woman. I can’t somehow see Achilles and myself engaging in intimacies ‘‘from an oak or a rock’’, as a girl and boy do, a girl and boy, just the two, with their intimacies. No: better to waste (130) no time and come to grips. Let’s find out to which of us the Olympian intends to hand the victory.’

  Achilles charges; Hector runs

  As Hector paused and considered the matter, Achilles came on at him, looking like the god of war, the warrior with the nodding helmet. Over his right shoulder he was brandishing the formidable ash spear from Mount Pelion, and his bronze armour glowed like a blazing fire or the rising sun. Hector saw him and shook. He could not stand his ground; he left the gate and ran in panic. But the son of Peleus, counting on his speed, was after him. Like (140) a mountain hawk, the fastest thing on wings, when it effortlessly swoops after a timid dove; under and away the dove dives off, and the hawk, shrieking close behind, strikes at it again and again in its determination to make a kill – so Achilles started off in hot pursuit, and Hector fled in terror before him under the walls of Ilium, fast as his feet would go.

  Passing the lookout-post and the windswept fig-tree and always keeping some way from the wall, they sped along the waggon-track and came to the two sweet-flowing springs that are the sources of Scamander’s eddying stream. In one of these (150) the water comes up hot; steam rises from it like smoke from a blazing fire. But the other, even in summer, gushes up like hail or freezing snow or water that has turned to ice. Close beside them, wide and beautiful, stand the stone washing-places where the wives and lovely daughters of the Trojans used to wash their shining clothes in earlier days, when there was peace, before the coming of the Greeks.

  Here the two raced past, Hector in flight and Achilles after him – a fine man in front but a far stronger one at his heels. And (160) the pace was furious. They were not running for the usual prize at a foot-race, a sacrificial beast or leather shield: they were competing for the life of horse-taming Hector. As powerful prize-winning race-horses corner at speed round a turning-post: a great prize has been set up, a tripod or a woman, in honour of a warrior who has died – so the pair of them circled three times round Priam’s town, feet flying.

  All the gods were looking on. The Father of men and gods then began and spoke his mind:

  ZEUS decides not to save Hector

  ‘This is an unhappy business! I have a warm place in my heart for this man who is being chased before my eyes round the walls (170) of Ilium. I grieve for Hector. He has burnt the thighs of many oxen in my honour, on the heights of Mount Ida with its many ridges and on the lofty citadel of Ilium. But now godlike Achilles is pursuing him at full speed round Priam’s town. Consider, gods, and help me to decide whether we shall save his life, or let a good man fall this day to Achilles son of Peleus.’

  The goddess grey-eyed Athene replied:

  ‘Father, lord of the vivid lightning, god of the dark cloud, what are you talking about? Are you proposing to reprieve from (180) the pains of death a mortal man whose destiny has long been settled? Do what you like, then; but not all the rest of us gods will approve.’

  Zeus who marshals the clouds replied and said:

  ‘Have no fear, Triton-born Athene, dear child. I was not in earnest and do not mean to be unkind to you. Act as you see fit, and act at once.’

  So he spoke, and encouraged Athene, who had already set her heart on action, and she came swooping down from the heights of Olympus.

  Meanwhile swift Achilles continued his relentless pursuit of Hector. As a hound starts a fawn from its mountain covert and (190) pursues it through the glens and valleys: even when it takes cover in a thicket, the dog continues to track it until it finds it -so Hector could not shake off swift-footed Achilles. More than once, Hector made a move towards the Dardanian gate, hoping to get close enough under the well-built towers for those above to protect him with their missiles; but Achilles, hugging the inside path, intercepted him every time and headed him off towards the plain.

  Like a chase in a nightmare when no one, pursuer or pursued, (200) can move a limb, so Achilles could not catch up Hector, nor Hector shake off Achilles. How could Hector have escaped the demons of death, had not Apollo come to him for the last time and given him new drive and fresh speed? Achilles too had been signalling to his men with his head not to shoot at Hector, in case someone else hit him and won the glory, and he came second.

  APOLLO deserts Hector

  But when they reached the springs for the fourth time, the (210) Father held out his golden scales and, putting death that lays men low in either pan, on one side for Achilles, on the other for horse-taming Hector, raised the balance by the middle of the beam. The beam came down on Hector’s side, spelling his doom. He was on his way to Hades. Phoebus Apollo deserted him; and the goddess grey-eyed Athene came up to Achilles and, standing beside him, spoke winged words:

  ‘Now, glo
rious Achilles dear to Zeus, our chance has come to go back to the ships with a great victory for the Greeks. Hector is hungry for battle, but you and I are going to kill him. There is no escape for him from us now, however much (220) humiliation the Archer-god Apollo endures, grovelling abjectly at the feet of his Father Zeus who drives the storm-cloud. You stay here now and recover your breath, while I go to Hector and persuade him to fight you.’

  So spoke Athene, and Achilles was delighted and did as she told him. He stood there, leaning on his bronze-barbed spear, while Athene went across from him to godlike Hector, borrowing the appearance and tireless voice of his brother Deiphobus. She came up to Hector and spoke winged words:

  ‘My dear brother, swift Achilles has certainly been pressing (230) you hard, chasing you at that speed round the town. Let’s make a stand and keep him off together.’

  Great Hector of the flashing helmet replied to her:

  ‘Deiphobus, you were always by far the closest of all the brothers Hecabe and Priam gave me. But now I shall think even better of you, since you had the courage, when you saw the situation, to come outside the walls and help me, while all the rest stayed inside.’

  (240) The goddess grey-eyed Athene replied:

  ATHENE tricks Hector into fighting

  ‘Dear brother, our father and lady mother took my knees and, one after the other, entreated me to stay where I was. My men were there and did the same – they are all in such terror of Achilles. But I was tormented by anxiety on your behalf. Now let’s make a determined attack, straight at him, and no restraint with the spears! We’ll soon find out whether Achilles is to kill the pair of us and go off with our bloodstained armour to the hollow ships, or himself be conquered by your spear.’