Thus, despite being outnumbered by the Trojans, they formed a hedge of spears around the body, and would not let the Trojans pass.
But Hector sent in more men, and the weight of their numbers must finally have broken the Greek resistance had it not been for Achilles’ horses, those magically bred stallions, tall as stags and fierce as Harpies. They charged toward the knot of fighting men, burst into their midst, and hurled people in all directions. Rearing on their haunches, they struck with their front hooves, kicking and biting until they had cleared the Trojans away from the corpse. This allowed Menelaus time to lift the body and put it in the chariot. Then the horses galloped back toward Achilles’ tent, bearing their dead charioteer.
Patroclus had come very close to the Trojan wall before being killed and so the fighting had been beyond Achilles’ sight, although he had been watching from the rampart trying to follow the course of battle. All he could hear was faroff shouting; all he could see was a cloud of dust.
“Under their walls,” he said softly to himself. “I told him not to advance so far. Still, perhaps it means that he has broken their lines, and put them to flight.”
Then he saw a bright speck detach itself from the dust and fly toward him. He watched until it took shape. A chariot! Coming with such speed it could be drawn only by Xanthus and Balius, his own stallions! His heart leaped with joy.
“It’s Patroclus!” he cried. “It must be he! They will obey only his hand beside mine! He’s safe! Safe! Coming to report a great victory!”
With incredible speed the West Wind stallions galloped to the rampart, rearing and neighing when they saw Achilles there. He looked at them in amazement. Great tears were welling from their golden eyes. No one had ever seen horses cry before, and it was a terrible sight. He tried not to believe what those tears meant as he stood staring at his beautiful stallions. Then they broke the long primordial silence:
“Forgive us, dear master,” said Xanthus. “We bring back to you Patroclus.”
“Dead …” said Balius. “We bring him dead.”
Achilles did not weep. His face was like a rock. Very gently he lifted the battered body from the chariot and bore it into his tent, binding the latchets so that no one could enter. The stallions stood before the tent like watchdogs and let no one approach. Achilles remained alone with his grief all through the long twilight and the hours of night, and the next morning.
No one dared approach his tent and intrude upon his grief. The Greeks were afraid he might have fallen on his own sword, choosing to lie in death beside his comrade, but they did not dare approach.
“He will not kill himself,” said Ulysses. “He has work to do first; he must avenge himself upon Hector. After that, perhaps … but not yet.”
In the darkest hour of night Thetis arose from the sea and walked through the walls of Achilles’ tent. He had not wept, but mothers can hear silent grief; she had heard his even in the depths of the sea, and had come to him. All night long he crouched in her embrace, not weeping, but making low hoarse whimpering sounds. She held his head to her breast as if he were a babe again, and stroked his face, and kissed him. Even in his terrible grief he was comforted by her sea-magic touch. He spoke only at dawn, just before she left him.
“Will you do something for me, mother?”
“Anything, son.”
“Patroclus went to battle clad in my armor. The Trojans stripped him of it. It is worn by Hector now, that armor made by Hephaestus and given to my father as a wedding present. I mean to seek Hector out and combat him today, but I wish to appear in armor no less fine than that I lost, and to bear weapons no less fine than those taken from Patroclus when he fell. These can issue only from the smithy of the gods. Can you persuade Hephaestus to labor this morning and forge me new gear?”
“I have some influence over the lame god,” said Thetis. “I was the one who nurtured him, you know, after Zeus had flung him from Olympus and he had fallen into the sea with shattered legs, helpless as a tadpole. I took him to my cave, mended his wounds, and raised him as my own child, giving him pebbles and seashells to make jewelry of, so that he grew clever in that craft. He will drop what he is doing and labor this morning. Weapons and armor more beautiful than those you lost will issue from his forge. By the time you are ready to combat Hector you will find what you need here in your tent. Now farewell, dear son.”
On certain evenings the sun diving through clouds forges out the shape of armed men, taller than mountains, who burn in the western sky as if guarding the horizon. Their flaming delicate armor is what Hephaestus took as his model when he yielded to Thetis’ plea and worked the morning through casting new weapons for Achilles. Like the red-hot sun-disk itself written over with a tracery of cloud was his shield. His spear was a polished volt-bright shaft that Zeus himself might have used as a lightning bolt. For helmet crest he sheared a plume of cloud-fleece and dipped it into the colors of the sunset.
When he gave Thetis this gorgeous gear, the tall nereid scooped up the little lame god, held him in her arms as if he were a child, and kissed him on the lips.
“Thank you, dear Hephaestus,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness, for your quickness, and for your masterful craftsmanship. You are a great god now, Artificer-in-Chief for the whole flat world; your smithy is a volcano where you wreak implements for the high use of father Zeus and the Pantheon. God though you be, you shall always remain my own dear little tadpole, my sweet maimed foster-child, and from me you shall always have a mother’s tenderness although I am cast in eternal flowing nymphhood and you in eternal middle age.”
She kissed his seamed, charcoal-grimed face, set him down, and flew off with the glittering new armor made for Achilles.
THE SCROLL OF THE FATES
EVERY FEW YEARS THE gods were entitled to read in the great book of the Fates wherein was written all that had been and all that was to be. We use the word “book,” but there were no books then as we know them. This tome of the Fates was a huge scroll hung from a place in the heavens beyond man’s sight and written over with starry characters. Night-blue was this scroll, made from the dark blue hide of a heavenly beast, unknown to man, hunted by the gods once every thousand years in a great chase across the inlaid floor of heaven.
Night-blue was the scroll, and those winged crones who were the Fates, those twisted sisters whom even the gods fear, would dip their claws into starlight and scrawl their irrevocable decrees upon these dark pages. Once every several years the gods were summoned to read what was written on the scroll, to consider what they had read, and then to return to Olympus to conduct the affairs of men accordingly.
Usually the gods chose to keep man in ignorance of what was fated for him. Occasionally, though, when it amused them, or when they wished to seduce a mortal by special knowledge, or when coaxed by artful oracles, the gods would let slip some information in the form of a riddle. And it was this matter that the oracles uttered as prophecy.
These oracles tended to cluster in groups called “colleges,” each of them dedicated to a special god. Apollo’s priestesses were especially well-known. They dwelt in a huge cave dug into a mountain at a place called Delphi. It was volcano country. Through a fissure in the rock an aromatic steam arose from the very entrails of the earth. The priestesses set their stone tripods across this fissure, and squatted above it, breathing these fumes—which gave them visions. These visions, they claimed, were of the future. They also chewed laurel—which we know as bay leaf—which sharpened vision, or blurred it; whatever it is that makes a vision most real to those who have it. Their utterances were always couched in riddles, knotty ones; no one could understand what they were saying except other priestesses, who, for a fee, would interpret these riddles.
Now, prophecy about the Trojan war had made a rich tale from the very beginning. On this subject soothsayers blabbed the secrets of the gods without restraint. We have already met certain of these prophecies: The one which said the Greeks could win the war only with the help
of Achilles; and the second part of it which said Achilles must die before Troy, but if he stayed at home and did not go to war he could live a long, peaceful life. We already know the choice he made, with the help of Ulysses. And Ulysses himself was the subject of a prophecy which said that if he went to Troy he could not return to Ithaca until twenty years had passed … and would return alone, beggared, unrecognized.
Now, on this day following the death of Patroclus, the gods were summoned again to the far reaches of heaven to read the great scroll. It was the first time since the war had begun that they had been so summoned, and there was much new matter to read in the flaming scrawl of the Fates. The gods returned to Olympus brimming with news, some chattering, others sunk in meditation. All were trying to think how they could best use this knowledge of the future to tease man into providing some special entertainment in the years that lay ahead.
They had three principal spokesmen to work through. Calchas and Chryseis were professional oracles. Chryseis, the Trojan, was a priest of Apollo. He was also father to Cressida. Calchas was the most influential among the Greek soothsayers. Sometimes he posed as a priest of Hera, at other times claimed the special confidence of Athena. Actually he freelanced, picking up clues from any god he could, and making pronouncements about what the Greeks should or should not do. When things were going well he was listened to with half an ear; when disaster struck his counsel was more valued. So, professionally, he was not quite averse to catastrophe.
But the one with the real heavy, fatal burning talent for the future was Cassandra. Bestowed upon her by Apollo was that most terrible of gifts—a memory of the future. And she kept her pronouncements rare because she knew how awful they were. However, she did not disturb the Trojan peace of mind at all. It will be remembered that Apollo punished her for refusing his amorous advances by capping his gift with a curse. His sentence was that although she would be able to prophesy with the utmost accuracy, and know that she was doing so, she would always be disbelieved by her own people.
Apollo came to her that night, sliding down one of the shafts of his sister’s moonlight. He entered her chamber where she lay asleep. But she had trained herself never to sleep more than a few minutes at a time because her dreams were so terrible. She awoke now and gazed upon him where he stood igniting the shadows, and closing her eyes again, said: “You are so unwelcome a sight you must be a dream. It doesn’t really matter. You have always ignored my need for privacy, and walked through the walls of sleep as though they were open doors. Speak, my lord. Why do you honor me with this visit?”
“To impart to you certain matter that I have read in the starry scroll of the Fates. There is much, much about Troy.”
Apollo spoke at length. The last thing he told her excited her unbearably. She knelt before him and clasped his knees.
“Oh, great Phoebus—please, please, in this let me be believed. If he believes me, perchance he will take the opportunity to save his life, brave though he be. Please let him believe what I tell him. If you do so then I will put aside the loathing I feel for you, I swear I will. Somehow—I don’t know how—I will school myself to respond to your love; but you must do this thing for me.”
“Your idea of diplomacy, my child, will never cease to astound me. But make no rash vows. In the first place, you will be unable to keep them, lest they go against your inmost nature. Secondly, even if you could, I cannot break my vow, once given. This is a disability we gods suffer from. And that is why we so seldom make promises. Farewell, I shall visit you again. Try to restrain your impatience until that golden hour.”
Chryseis found his daughter, Cressida, cutting flowers in the garden. He bustled up to her.
“A very important day, my dear,” he cried. “Much business brews.”
“How is that, father?”
She was picking roses. Her slender fingers plucked and snipped, moving like white moths among the petals. Her face was flushed, making the roses look pale. Their fragrance was all about her.
“I consulted the entrails of a pigeon this morning,” he said. “A very informative set of guts. They told me that the high gods had been summoned by the Fates to read the great scroll. But there was no hint, no hint at all, of what they learned.”
“Perhaps another pigeon is on the way with this information.”
“No, no, the matter has not been published yet. That much I know. They’re being very closemouthed, the gods. I resorted to other devices. Cast dice, juggled numbers, even tried a few eastern tricks with the conjunction of the stars. But no luck at all. The gods are silent, and I don’t know what to think.”
“Well, keep eavesdropping. Perhaps you’ll hear something.”
Girls in those days were very courteous to their fathers, even while being bored.
“It’s absolutely essential that I learn something,” Chryseis went on. “For the war has come to a most important pass. Prince Achilles will undoubtedly rejoin the fray. He will seek out Hector. And upon the Dardanian plain beneath our walls the two greatest heroes on all the flat world will fight until one of them is killed. Now it is upon such days that oracles grow rich. If I could pick up even the tiniest scrap of information, I would be able to prophesy to Prince Hector concerning the duel, and he would give me splendid gifts. Yes, so noble-hearted is he, this eldest and strongest son of Priam, that he would reward even a gloomy prognostication, and if, by chance, the forecast should be happy, who knows what treasures he might heap upon me?”
Just then Cressida saw him look past her shoulder and pin a greasy, fawning smile to his face. He made a deep bow. Cressida turned. She saw Princess Cassandra, who had entered the garden so silently it was if she had been made to appear by magic.
Cassandra saw the priest’s daughter coming toward her with an armful of roses. They seemed to be little red flames. The girl was carrying a bouquet of fire. And Cassandra saw her in the midst of smoke and shrieks and falling timber offering a lover her corsage of flame. She spoke icily to quench the pain of the roses.
“Greetings, Cressida,” she said. “I do not wish to interrupt your gardening. I have come to speak with your father.”
Cressida watched her father with distaste. The man was practically jigging with pleasure and importance as he led Cassandra toward a garden seat.
“Priest,” said Cassandra. “The gods last night consulted the scroll of Fate.”
“I know, I know, good princess. So I have divined.”
“Have you divined what they were told?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Your patron, Apollo, has told you nothing?”
“Not a word, not a word. I am hopeful of persuading him by my arts. But it takes time, time. …”
“Well, I have been told. I know now the heavy oracles concerning Troy.”
“Can you perhaps, dear Princess, find your way clear to confiding them in me?”
“No, I cannot.”
“A pity …”
“But I have not come to your garden empty-handed. I will give you a single piece of information. It concerns my brother, Hector. I tell you so that you may tell him. If I tell him, I shall of course be disbelieved.”
“In all modesty, he will believe me,” said Chryseis. “He knows that I—”
“Yes, yes … Listen closely now. For this is a conditional prophecy. If he fights Achilles, he will be killed. But Achilles cannot outlive Hector more than three days.”
“You say ‘if.’ Is it not ordained that they must fight?”
“Try to understand the way the gods entertain themselves, O oracle. There is always a margin of uncertainty injected into each edict concerning the future. That is the way the gods keep themselves in suspense about those affairs they themselves concoct, and make the spectacles more dramatic. This margin of uncertainty, this divine suspense, is called man’s will—those decisions he makes about his own affairs. ‘If,’ my friend, is a tiny word of sublime proportions. If man properly taps the explosive strength of its pent possibilit
ies he can alter circumstances, and thrust the gods themselves into entirely new situations. The word ‘if’ heads the prophecy. If Hector fights, he dies. If Achilles kills Hector, he too dies. Make this clear to Hector. He can avoid the fight. In all honor he can do so. No one else fights Achilles. Why should he? If he avoids this duel, he will live. Go. Tell. He will reward you. Here is a gold armlet set with rubies and sapphires to pay for the time you have given me. If Hector exercises his ‘if,’ and refuses to fight Achilles, then I shall add to this armlet a fat bag of gold.”
Cassandra pulled the heavy gold circlet off her arm and gave it to Chryseis, who fell to his knees when he took it. The princess nodded to Cressida, and walked out of the garden.
As Cressida crouched again among the roses, Aphrodite now began tampering with affairs. She had come back from her session with the Fates teeming with mischief. Plan after plan for confounding the Greeks danced through her head.
“In my quiet way,” she said to herself, “it seems to me I have been much more influential than those brawling hags, Hera and Athena. After all it was my gift of Helen to Paris that started this war. And who was it that embroiled Agamemnon and Achilles, instilling in them a desire for the same slave girl? And look what that has led to. Now, however, with Patroclus dead, Achilles is sure to take the field. When he does, that mighty sword will shear through the delicate web of my contrivances. What then? All is not lost. Achilles must slay Hector if they fight, says the scroll of the Fates, but if he does, he himself must die soon afterward. If he does not combat Hector, all is as before. If he does, and they both die, then a new situation prevails. Diomedes will be the most formidable hero in the Greek camp. And I have a sharp grudge against that bully, Diomedes. Did he not dare to raise his lance against me, me, the Goddess of Love and Desire, and wound me on the wrist? Wait … here’s an idea! I can settle my grudge with him, and in doing so throw the Greek camp into turmoil again. All this, by heaven, without even making a new plan; I’ll use the old one. As I once set Agamemnon against Achilles, now, should Achilles die, I will set that Mycenean bull in murderous rivalry against Diomedes … and do it in the very same way—through Cressida, whom Agamemnon held as a slave, and whose ways intoxicated him. Now, I will infect Cressida with the sweet venom of love for Diomedes. She is already inclined that way, having watched him fight during his day of glory, and my job will be easy. Yes … I will raise admiration to a passion that will burn in her veins and melt her bones. And when she returns to Agamemnon’s tent, nothing will keep her there. It is Diomedes she will want, Diomedes she will find her way to, hurling those two chieftains at each other’s throats, dividing the Greeks into factions again, and weakening them altogether, so that they will be incapable of an assault against my Trojans.”
The Trojan War Page 12