The Iliad (Penguin Classics)

by Homer

  With these words Athene treacherously led him forward. When Hector and Achilles came within range of each other, great Hector of the flashing helmet spoke first:

  (250) ‘Achilles, I’m not going to run from you any more. I have already been chased by you three times round Priam’s great town without daring to stop and let you come near. But now I have made up my mind to fight you man to man and kill you or be killed.

  ‘But let us call on the gods to witness an agreement: no compact could have better guarantors. If Zeus grants me staying-power and I kill you, I will not violently maltreat you. All I shall do, Achilles, is to strip you of your famous armour. Then I will give up your body to the Greeks. You do the same.’

  (260) Swift-footed Achilles gave him a black look and replied:

  Achilles rejects agreements (7.76)

  ‘Hector, I’m never going to forgive you. So don’t talk to me about agreements. Lions don’t come to terms with men, the wolf doesn’t see eye to eye with the lamb – they are enemies to the end. It’s the same with you and me. Friendship between us is impossible, and there will be no truce of any kind till one of us has fallen and glutted the shield-bearing god of battles with his blood.

  ‘So summon up all the courage you possess. This is the time (270) to show your bravery and ability as a fighter. Not that anything is going to save you now, when Pallas Athene is waiting to bring you down with my spear. This moment you are going to pay the full price for all the sufferings of my companions you killed on your rampage with your spear.’

  He spoke, balanced his long-shadowed spear and hurled it. But glorious Hector was on the lookout and avoided the bronze spear. He crouched, his eye on the weapon, and it flew over him and stuck in the ground. But Pallas Athene snatched it up and brought it back to Achilles without Hector shepherd of the people noticing. Hector spoke to the matchless son of Peleus:

  ‘You missed! So, godlike Achilles, Zeus gave you the wrong (280) date for my death after all! You thought you knew everything. But then you’re so glib, so clever with your tongue -trying to frighten me and undermine my determination and courage. But you won’t make me run and then hit me in the back with your spear. Drive it through my chest as I charge – if the god lets you. But first you will have to avoid this one of mine. May the whole length of it find a home in your body! This war would be an easier business for the Trojans if you, their greatest scourge, were dead.’

  He spoke, balanced his long-shadowed spear and hurled it. (290) He hit the centre of Achilles’ shield and did not miss, but the spear rebounded from it. Hector was frustrated that the swift spear had left his hand to no purpose and stood there dismayed, since he had no other one. He shouted aloud to Deiphobus of the white shield, asking him for a long spear. But Deiphobus was nowhere near him. Hector realized what had happened and said:

  Hector understands ATHENE’s trick

  ‘It’s over. So the gods did, after all, summon me to my death. I thought the warrior Deiphobus was at my side. But he is behind (300) the wall, and Athene has deceived me. Evil death is no longer far away; it is staring me in the face and there is no escape. Zeus and his Archer son must long have been resolved on this, for all their earlier goodwill and help.

  ‘So now my destiny confronts me. Let me at least sell my life dearly and not without glory, after some great deed for future generations to hear of.’

  With these words Hector drew the sharp, long, heavy sword hanging down at his side. He gathered himself and swooped like a high-flying eagle that drops to earth through black clouds (310) to pounce on a tender lamb or cowering hare. So Hector swooped, brandishing his sharp sword.

  Achilles sprang to meet him, his heart filled with savage determination. He kept his chest covered with his fine, ornate shield; his glittering helmet with its four plates nodded, and above it danced the lovely plumes that Hephaestus had lavished on the crest. Like a star moving with others through the night, Hesperus, the loveliest star set in the skies – such was the gleam (320) from his spear’s sharp point as he weighed it in his right hand with murder in his heart for godlike Hector, searching that handsome body for its most vulnerable spot.

  Achilles kills Hector (16.852)

  Hector’s body was completely covered by the fine bronze armour he had taken from great Patroclus when he killed him, except for the flesh that could be seen at the windpipe, where the collar bones hold the neck from the shoulders, the easiest place to kill a man. As Hector charged him, godlike Achilles drove at this spot with his spear, and the point went right through Hector’s soft neck, though the heavy bronze head did not cut his windpipe and left (330) him still able to speak. Hector crashed in the dust, and godlike Achilles triumphed over him:

  ‘Hector, no doubt you imagined, as you stripped Patroclus, that you would be safe. You never thought of me: I was too far away. You innocent. Down by the hollow ships a man much better than Patroclus had been left behind. It was I, and I have brought you down. So now the dogs and birds of prey are going to mangle you foully, while we Greeks will give Patroclus full burial honours.’

  Fading fast, Hector of the flashing helmet replied:

  ‘I entreat you, by your knees, by your own life, and by your parents, do not throw my body to the dogs by the Greek ships (340) but take a ransom for me. My father and my lady mother will give you bronze and gold in plenty. Give up my body to be brought home, so that the Trojans and their wives can cremate it properly.’

  Swift-footed Achilles gave him a black look and replied:

  ‘You dog, don’t entreat me by my knees or my parents. I only wish I could summon up the will to carve and eat you raw myself, for what you have done to me. But this at least is certain: nobody is going to keep the dogs off your head, not even if the Trojans bring here and weigh out a ransom ten or twenty times (350) your worth, and promise more besides; not even if Dardanian Priam tells them to offer your weight in gold – not even so shall your lady mother lay you on a bier to mourn the son she bore, but the dogs and birds of prey will divide you up, leaving nothing.’

  Dying, Hector of the flashing helmet said:

  ‘How well I know you and see you for what you are! Your heart is hard as iron. I have been wasting my breath. But reflect now before you act, in case angry gods remember how you treated me, on the day Paris and Phoebus Apollo bring you (360) down in all your greatness at the Scaean gate.’

  As he spoke, the end that is death enveloped him. Life left his limbs and took wing for the house of Hades, bewailing its lot and the youth and the manhood it had left behind. But godlike Achilles spoke to him again, though he was gone:

  ‘Die! As for my death, I will welcome it when Zeus and the other immortal gods wish it to be.’

  He spoke, withdrew his bronze spear from the body and put it on one side. As he removed the bloodstained arms from Hector’s shoulders, other Greeks came running up and gathered (370) round. They gazed in wonder at the stature and marvellous good looks of Hector. As each went in and stabbed the body, they looked at each other and said as one man:

  ‘Well, well! Hector’s certainly softer to handle now than when he set the ships on fire!’

  Achilles drags Hector back to the city

  So they spoke, as they stood by, stabbing him. After stripping Hector, swift-footed godlike Achilles stood up among the Greeks and spoke winged words:

  ‘My friends, rulers and leaders of the Greeks, now that the gods have let us get the better of this man, (380) who did more damage than all the rest together, let’s make a circuit of the town under arms and find out what the Trojans mean to do next, whether they will abandon their town now that Hector is fallen, or make up their minds to hold it without his help…

  ‘But why talk to myself like this? Lying by my ships is a dead man, unburied, unwept – Patroclus, whom I shall never forget as long as I am among the living and can walk the earth, my (390) own dear comrade, whom I shall still remember even though the dead forget their dead, even in Hades’ halls. So come now, young Greeks,
let us go back to the hollow ships carrying this body and singing a song of triumph. We have won great glory. We have killed godlike Hector, who was treated like a god in Ilium.’

  He spoke and foully maltreated godlike Hector. He sliced into the tendons at the back of both his feet between the heel and ankle, inserted leather straps and tied them to his chariot, leaving the head to drag. Then he lifted his famous armour into (400) the chariot, got in himself, and lashed the horses with the whip to get them moving. The willing pair flew off. Dust rose from the body they dragged behind them; Hector’s sable hair streamed out on either side and his whole head, so graceful once, lay in the dirt. Zeus now let his enemies disfigure him in the very own land of his fathers.

  So his whole head was enveloped in the dust. When his mother saw her son, she tore her hair, hurled her bright headdress far away and screamed aloud. His father groaned pit-eously, the people round them took up the cry of grief and the (410) whole town gave itself up to despair. It was as if the whole of frowning Ilium were smouldering from top to bottom. The stricken old man made for the Dardanian gate, determined on going out, and when the people only just managed to stop him, he grovelled in the dung and implored them all, calling on each man by name:

  Priam and Hecabe lament

  ‘Friends, hold off. I know your concern for me, but let me go out of the town alone to the Greek ships. I want to supplicate this inhuman monster, who may perhaps feel respect for my years and pity (420) my old age. After all, he too has a father of the same age as myself, Peleus, who gave him life and brought him up to be the scourge of all Trojans, though none of them has suffered at his hands so much as I, the father of so many sons butchered by him in their prime.

  ‘And yet, though I weep for them all, there is one I mourn still more with a bitter sorrow that will bring me to the grave – Hector. If only he could have died in my arms! Then we could have wept and lamented for him to our hearts’ content, I and the mother who brought him, to her sorrow, into the world.’

  So he spoke in tears, and the people took up the cry. Now (430) Hecabe led the Trojan women in a shrill lament:

  ‘My child! Ah, misery me! Why should I live and suffer now you are dead? Night and day in Ilium you were the answer to my prayers, and to every man and woman in the town a dream come true, a man they greeted like a god. You were their greatest glory while you lived. Now death and destiny have claimed you.’

  Andromache senses Hector’s death

  So Hecabe spoke in tears. But Hector’s wife Andromache had not yet heard the news. No reliable messenger had in fact gone (440) to tell her that her husband had remained outside the gates. She was at work in a corner of her lofty house on a web of purple cloth to be folded double, and weaving flowers into it. She had just called to the lovely-haired waiting-women in her house to put a large cauldron on the fire so that Hector could have a hot bath when he came home from the battle – the innocent. She never dreamed that, far away from any baths, grey-eyed Athene had killed him at Achilles’ hands.

  But now the grief and lamentation at the battlements reached her ears. A tremor went through her and she dropped the shuttle on the floor. She called again to her waiting-women:

  (450) ‘Come with me, two of you: I must see what has happened. That was my husband’s mother I heard, and she is a reticent woman. My heart is in my mouth: I am paralysed with fear. Some disaster is threatening the house of Priam. May I never hear such news, but I am terrified that godlike Achilles has caught my daring Hector by himself outside the town and chased him out over the plain; indeed, that he has already put an end to that fatal overconfidence of his. Because Hector would never hang back with the crowd – he always advanced far ahead of the rest, second to none in his courage.’

  (460) With these words Andromache, with palpitating heart, rushed out of the house like a mad woman, and her waiting-women went with her. When she came to the tower where the men had gathered in a crowd, she stood on the wall, searched the plain and saw her husband being dragged off in front of the town and the swift horses hauling him unceremoniously away towards the Greek ships.

  Andromache’s lament (6.407 ff.)

  Black night came down and engulfed Andromache’s eyes. She crashed backwards, fainting. The bright head-dress flew far from her head, with the headband, the cap, the woven braids and headscarf (470) that golden Aphrodite had given her on the day when Hector of the flashing helmet, after giving an untold bride-price, came to fetch her from her father Eëtion’s house. Her husband’s sisters and his brothers’ wives crowded round and supported her between them; she was distraught to the point of death. When at length she recovered and came to herself, she burst out sobbing and said to the Trojan women:

  ‘Hector, what unhappiness is mine! So you and I were born under the same star, you here in Priam’s house and I in Thebe (480) under the woods of Mount Placus in the house of Eëtion, who brought me up from childhood, the ill-fated father of a more ill-fated child. He should never have fathered me! For you are on your way to Hades under the depths of the earth, leaving me behind in hateful misery, a widow in your house. And your son is no more than a baby, the son we got between us, we unhappy parents. You will be no joy to him, Hector, now you are dead, nor he to you.

  ‘Even if he survives this war with all its tears, nothing remains for him but hardship and distress. Others will take over his (490) lands. An orphaned child is cut off from his friends. He goes about with downcast eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Need drives him to his father’s acquaintances, and he tugs a cloak here and a tunic there till someone out of pity holds up a wine-cup briefly to his mouth, just enough to wet his lips but not to drink. Then comes another boy, with both his parents living, who drives him from the feast, punching him and jeering at him: ‘‘Go on, get out! You’ve got no father dining here!’’ So the child runs off in (500) tears to his widowed mother – the little Astyanax, who used to sit on his father’s knees and eat nothing but marrow and mutton fat and, when he was drowsy and tired of play, slept in his bed, softly cradled in his nurse’s arms, heart full of contentment. But now with his father gone, suffering will be the lot of Astyanax, ‘‘Town-lord’’, as the Trojans called him, seeing in you, Hector, the one defence of their long walls and gates.

  ‘And you, by the beaked ships, far from your parents, naked, will be eaten by the wriggling worms when the dogs have had (510) their fill. Yet delicate and lovely clothing made by women’s hands is still stored at home. I am going to burn it all in the consuming fire. It is of no use to you: you will never even be buried in it. But the men and women of Troy will do that for you as their last mark of honour.’

  So she spoke in tears, and the women took up the cry.

  23

  THE FUNERAL AND THE GAMES

  1–108: The Greeks withdraw to their ships. Patroclus is mourned, and his ghost visits Achilles in his sleep [night before 28th day].

  109–257: [28th day] Firewood is collected, and Patroclus’ body taken in funeral procession. Achilles dedicates a lock of his own hair, and the pyre is lit. APHRODITE and APOLLO preserve Hector’s body. Winds are summoned to prevent the pyre going out, and [29th day] Patroclus’ bones are gathered and placed temporarily in a golden vessel, awaiting Achilles’ death.

  257–652: Achilles seats the army in readiness for Patroclus’ funeral games. The chariot race is first up: Nestor exhorts his son Antilochus 262–361, the race includes Eumelus’ crash and Antilochus’ sharp manoeuvre against Menelaus 362–447, Diomedes’ victory and the dispute between Antilochus and Menelaus 499–652.

  653–99: The boxing: Epeius knocks out Euryalus.

  700–39: The wrestling: Ajax son of Telamon and Odysseus fight a draw.

  740–97: The foot-race: ATHENE helps Odysseus beat Ajax son of Oïleus.

  798–825: Armed combat: Ajax son of Telamon and Diomedes fight a draw.

  826–97: Throwing the lump of metal; archery; and spear, in which Achilles gives the prize uncontested to Agamemnon.

&nbs
p; While the Trojans took up the cry across the town, the Greeks withdrew to their ships by the Hellespont and then dispersed, each man to his own ship. The Myrmidons alone were not dismissed. Achilles kept his war-loving companions with him and addressed them:

  ‘Myrmidons with your swift horses, faithful companions, we will not unyoke our horses from their chariots yet but, mounted as we are, will drive them past Patroclus and mourn for him. That is the honour due to the dead. Then, when we have drawn (10) some comfort from our bitter tears, we will unyoke the horses and eat together here.’

  [Night 27] Funeral feast for Patroclus

  So he spoke, and the Myrmidons all broke into lamentation together. Achilles led them, and three times, in tears, they drove their lovely-maned horses round the dead, while Thetis stirred in them all the desire to weep. The sands were wet with tears, their armour was wet with tears: so great a master of the rout had they lost. Now the son of Peleus, laying his man-slaying hands on his companion’s chest, led them in the loud dirge:

  ‘Farewell and rejoice, Patroclus, even in the halls of Hades. I am (20) now keeping all the promises I made you: I have dragged Hector’s body here for the dogs to eat raw; and at your pyre I am going to cut the throats of a dozen splendid sons of Troy to vent my anger at your death.’

  He spoke and foully maltreated godlike Hector, flinging him down on his face in the dust by Patroclus’ bier. His warriors then took off their gleaming bronze armour, unyoked their proud, snorting horses and sat down in their multitudes by the ship of swift-footed Achilles, who had provided for them a (30) magnificent funeral feast. Many a white ox fell bellowing to the iron knife, many a sheep and bleating goat was slaughtered and many a fine fat hog with gleaming tusks was stretched across the flames to have its bristles singed. Blood in cupfuls was poured all around the body.