So mix both hosts, and so their cries rebound.
The bold Antilochus the slaughter led,
The first who struck a valiant Trojan dead:
At great Echepolus the lance arrives,
Razed his high crest and thro’ his helmet drives; 525
Warm’d in the brain the brazen weapon lies,
And shades eternal settle o’er his eyes.
So sinks a tower that long assaults had stood
Of force and fire, its walls besmear’d with blood.
Him, the bold leader of th’ Abantian throng 530
Seized to despoil, and dragg’d the corpse along:
But, while he strove to tug th’ inserted dart,
Agenor’s jav’lin reach’d the hero’s heart.
His flank, unguarded by his ample shield,
Admits the lance: he falls, and spurns the field; 535
The nerves unbraced support his limbs no more:
The soul comes floating in a tide of gore.
Trojans and Greeks now gather round the slain;
The war renews, the warriors bleed again;
As o’er their prey rapacious wolves engage, 540
Man dies on man, and all is blood and rage.
In blooming youth fair Simoïsius fell,
Sent by great Ajax to the shades of Hell:
Fair Simoïsius, whom his mother bore
Amid the flocks, on silver Simoïs’ shore: 545
The nymph, descending from the hills of Ide,
To seek her parents on his flowery side,
Brought forth the babe, their common care and joy,
And thence from Simoïs named the lovely boy.
Short was his date! by dreadful Ajax slain 550
He falls, and renders all their cares in vain!
So falls a poplar, that in wat’ry ground
Rais’d high the head, with stately branches crown’d
(Fell’d by some artist with his shining steel,
To shape the circle of the bending wheel); 555
Cut down it lies, tall, smooth, and largely spread,
With all its beauteous honours on its head;
There, left a subject to the wind and rain,
And scorch’d by suns, it withers on the plain.
Thus, pierc’d by Ajax, Simoïsius lies 560
Stretch’d on the shore, and thus neglected dies.
At Ajax, Antiphus his jav’lin threw:
The pointed lance with erring fury flew,
And Leucus, loved by wise Ulysses, slew.
He drops the corpse of Simoïsius slain, 565
And sinks a breathless carcass on the plain.
This saw Ulysses, and, with grief enraged,
Strode where the foremost of the foes engaged;
Arm’d with his spear, he meditates the wound,
In act to throw; but, cautious, look’d around. 570
Struck at his sight the Trojans backward drew,
And trembling heard the jav’lin as it flew.
A Chief stood nigh, who from Abydos came,
Old Priam’s son, Democoön was his name;
The weapon enter’d close above his ear, 575
Cold thro’ his temples glides the whizzing spear;
With piercing shrieks the youth resigns his breath,
His eye-balls darken with the shades of death;
Pond’rous he falls; his clanging arms resound;
And his broad buckler rings against the ground. 580
Seiz’d with affright the boldest foes appear;
Ev’n godlike Hector seems himself to fear;
Slow he gave way, the rest tumultuous fled;
The Greeks with shouts press on, and spoil the dead.
But Phœbus now from Ilion’s tow’ring height 585
Shines forth reveal’d, and animates the fight.
‘Trojans, be bold, and force with force oppose;
Your foaming steeds urge headlong on the foes!
Nor are their bodies rocks, nor ribb’d with steel;
Your weapons enter, and your strokes they feel. 590
Have you forgot what seem’d your dread before?
The great, the fierce Achilles fights no more.’
Apollo thus from Ilion’s lofty towers,
Array’d in terrors, rous’d the Trojan powers:
While war’s fierce Goddess fires the Grecian foe, 595
And shouts and thunders in the fields below.
Then great Diores fell, by doom divine;
In vain his valour and illustrious line.
A broken rock the force of Pirus threw
(Who from cold Ænus led the Thracian crew); 600
Full on his ankle dropp’d the pond’rous stone,
Burst the strong nerves, and crash’d the solid bone:
Supine he tumbles on the crimson sands,
Before his helpless friends, and native bands,
And spreads for aid his unavailing hands. 605
The foe rush’d furious as he pants for breath,
And thro’ his navel drove the pointed death:
His gushing entrails smoked upon the ground,
And the warm life came issuing from the wound.
His lance bold Thoas at the conqu’ror sent, 610
Deep in his breast above the pap it went,
Amid the lungs was fix’d the winged wood,
And quiv’ring in his heaving bosom stood:
Till from the dying Chief, approaching near,
Th’ Ætolian warrior tugg’d his weighty spear: 615
Then sudden waved his flaming falchion round,
And gash’d his belly with a ghastly wound.
The corpse now breathless on the bloody plain,
To spoil his arms the victor strove in vain;
The Thracian bands against the victor press’d; 620
A grove of lances glitter’d at his breast.
Stern Thoas, glaring with revengeful eyes,
In sullen fury slowly quits the prize.
Thus fell two heroes, one the pride of Thrace,
And one the leader of th’ Epeian race; 625
Death’s sable shade at once o’ercast their eyes,
In dust the vanquish’d and the victor lies.
With copious slaughter all the fields are red,
And heap’d with growing mountains of the dead.
Had some brave Chief this martial scene beheld, 630
By Pallas guarded thro’ the dreadful field,
Might darts be bid to turn their points away,
And swords around him innocently play,
The war’s whole art with wonder had he seen,
And counted heroes where he counted men. 635
So fought each host, with thirst of glory fired,
And crowds on crowds triumphantly expired.
Observations on Homer’s Battles
It may be necessary, at the opening of Homer’s battles, to give some explanatory observations upon them. When we reflect that no less than the compass of twelve books is taken up in these, we shall have reason to wonder by what method the author could prevent descriptions of such a length from being tedious. It is not enough to say, that though the subject itself be the same, the actions are always different; that we have now distinct combats, now promiscuous fights, now single duels, now general engagements; we that the scenes are perpetually varied; we are now in the fields, now at the fortification of the Greeks, now at the ships, now at the gates of Troy, now at the river Scamander: but we must look farther into the art of the poet to find the reasons of this astonishing variety.
We first observe that diversity in the deaths of his warriors, which he has supplied by the vastest fertility of invention. These he distinguishes several ways: sometimes by the Characters of the men, their age, office, profession, nation, family, etc. One is a blooming Youth, whose father dissuaded him from the war; one is a Priest, whose piety could not save him: one is a Sportsman, whom Diana taught in vain; one is th
e native of a far distant country, who is never to return; one is descended from a Noble Line, which ends in his death; one is made remarkable by his Boasting; another by his Beseeching; and another, who is distinguished no way else, is marked by his Habit, and the singularity of his armour.
Sometimes he varies these by the several Postures in which his heroes are represented either fighting or falling. Some of these are so exceedingly exact, that one may guess, from the very position of the combatant, where-abouts the would will light: others so very peculiar and uncommon, that they could only be the effect of an imagination which had searched through all the ideas of nature. Such is that picture of Mydon in the fifth book, whose arm being numbed by a blow on the elbow, drops the reins, that trail on the ground; and then being suddenly struck on the temples, falls headlong from the charriot, in a soft and deep place, where he sinks up to the shoulders in the sands, and continues a while fixed by the weight of his armour, with his legs quivering in the air, till he is trampled down by his horses.
Another cause of this variety is the difference of the Wounds that are given in the Iliad: they are by no means like the wounds described by most other poets, which are commonly made in the self-same obvious places; the heart and head serve for all those in general who understand no anatomy, and sometimes, for variety, they kill men by wounds that are nowhere mortal but in their poems. As the whole human body is the subject of these, so nothing is more necessary to him who would describe them well, than a thorough knowledge of its structure, even though the poet is not professedly to write of them as an anatomist; in the same manner as an exact skill in anatomy is necessary to those painters that would excel in drawing the naked body, though they are not to make every muscle as visible as in a book of chirurgery. It appears from so many passages in Homer, that he was perfectly master of this science, that it would be needless to cite any in particular.
It may be necessary to take notice of some customs of antiquity relating to the Arms and Art Military of those times, which are proper to be known, in order to form a right notion of our author’s descriptions of war.
That Homer copied the manners and customs of the age he wrote of, rather than of that he lived in, has been observed in some instances. As that he nowhere represents Cavalry or Trumpets to have been used in the Trojan wars, though they apparently were in his own time. It is not therefore impossible but there may be found in his works some deficiencies in the art of war, which are not to be imputed to his ignorance, but to his judgment.
Horses had not been brought into Greece long before the siege of Troy. They were originally eastern animals, and if we find at that very period so great a number of them reckoned up in the wars of the Israelites, it is the less a wonder, considering they came from Asia. The practice of riding them was so little known in Greece a few years before, that they looked upon the Centaurs who first used it, as monsters compounded of men and horses. Nestor, in the first Iliad, says he had seen these Centaurs in his youth, and Polypœtes in the second is said to have been born on the day that his father expelled them from Pelion to the deserts of Æthica. They had no other use of horses than to draw their chariots in battle, so that whenever Homer speaks of fighting from a horse, taming a horse, or the like, it is constantly to be understood of fighting from a chariot, or taming horses to that service. This was a piece of decorum in the poet; for in his own time they were arrived to such a perfection in horsemanship, that in the fifteenth Iliad, ver. 822, we have a simile taken from an extraordinary feat of activity, where one man manages four horses at once, and leaps from the back of one to another at full speed.
If we consider in what high esteem among warriors these noble animals must have been at their first coming into Greece, we shall the less wonder at the frequent occasions Homer has taken to describe and celebrate them. It is not so strange to find them set almost upon a level with men, at the time when a horse in the prizes was of equal value with a captive.
The Chariots were in all probability very low. For we frequently find in the Iliad, that a person who stands erect on a chariot is killed (and sometimes by a stroke on the head), by a foot soldier with a sword. This may farther appear from the ease and readiness with which they alight or mount on every occasion, to facilitate which, the chariots were made open behind. That the wheels were but small, may be guessed from a custom they had of taking them off and setting them on, as they were laid by, or made use of. Hebe in the fifth book puts on the wheels of Juno’s chariot when she calls for it in haste: and it seems to be with allusion to the same practice that it is said in Exodus, ch. xiv., The Lord took off their chariot-wheels, so that they drove them heavily. The sides were also low; for whoever is killed in his chariot throughout the poem, constantly falls to the ground, as having nothing to support him. That the whole machine was very small and light, is evident from a passage in the tenth Iliad, where Diomed debates whether he shall draw the chariot of Rhesus out of the way, or carry it on his shoulders to a place of safety. All the particulars agree with the representations of the chariots on the most ancient Greek coins; where the tops of them reached not so high as the backs of the horses; the wheels are yet lower, and the heroes who stand in them are seen from the knee upwards.
There were generally two persons in each chariot, one of whom was wholly employed in guiding the horses. They used, indifferently, two, three, or four horses: from whence it happens, that sometimes when a horse is killed, the hero continues the fight with the two or more that remain; and at other times a warrior retreats upon the loss of one; not that he had less courage than the other, but that he has fewer horses.
Their Swords were all broad cutting swords, for we find they never stab but with their spears. The Spears were used two ways, either to push with, or to cast from them, like the missive javelins. It seems surprising, that a man should throw a dart or spear with such force, as to pierce through both sides of the armour and the body (as is often described in Homer): for if the strength of the men was gigantic, the armour must have been strong in proportion. Some solution might be given for this, if we imagined the armour was generally brass, and the weapons pointed with iron; and if we could fancy that Homer called the spears and swords brazen, in the same manner that he calls the reins of a bridle ivory, only from the ornaments about them. But there are passages where the point of the spear is expressly said to be of brass, as in the description of that of Hector in Iliad vi. Pausanias (Laconicis) takes it for granted, that the arms, as well offensive as defensive, were brass. He says the spear of Achilles was kept in his time in the temple of Minerva, the top and point of which were of brass; and the sword of Meriones, in that of Æsculapius among the Nicomedians, was entirely of the same metal. But be it as it will, there are examples even at this day of such a prodigious force in casting darts, as almost exceeds credibility. The Turks and Arabs will pierce through thick planks with darts of hardened wood; which can only be attributed to their being bred (as the ancients were) to that exercise, and to the strength and agility acquired by a constant practice of it.
We may ascribe to the same cause their power of casting stones of a vast weight, which appears a common practice in these battles. It is an error to imagine this to be only a fictitious embellishment of the poet, which was one of the exercises of war among the ancient Greeks and Orientals. St. Jerome tells us, it was an old custom in Palestine, and in use in his own time, to have round stones of a great weight kept in the castles and villages, for the youth to try their strength with.
Iliad Book V. The Acts of Diomed
THE ARGUMENT
Diomed, assisted by Pallas, performs wonders in this day’s battle. Pandarus wounds him with an arrow, but the Goddess cures him, enables him to discern Gods from mortals, and prohibits him from contending with any of the former, excepting Venus. Æneas joins Pandarus to oppose him. Pandarus is killed, and Æneas in great danger but for the assistance of Venus; who, as she is removing her son from the fight, is wounded on the hand by Diomed. Apollo seconds he
r in his rescue, and, at length, carries off Æneas to Troy, where he is healed in the temple of Pergamus. Mars rallies the Trojans, and assists Hector to make a stand. In the mean time Æneas is restored to the field, and they overthrow several of the Greeks; among the rest Tlepolemus is slain by Sarpedon. Juno and Minerva descend to resist Mars; the latter incites Diomed to go against that God; he wounds him, and sends him groaning to Heaven.
The first battle continues through this book. The scene is the same as in the former.
BUT Pallas now Tydides’ soul inspires,
Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires,
Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise,
And crown her hero with distinguish’d praise.
High on his helm celestial lightnings play, 5
His beamy shield emits a living ray;
Th’ unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies,
Like the red star that fires th’ autumnal skies,
When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight,
And bathed in Ocean shoots a keener light. 10
Such glories Pallas on the Chief bestow’d,
Such, from his arms, the fierce effulgence flow’d:
Onward she drives him, furious to engage,
Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage.
The sons of Dares first the combat sought, 15
A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault;
In Vulcan’s fane the father’s days were led;
The sons to toils of glorious battle bred;
These, singled from their troops, the fight maintain;
These from their steeds, Tydides on the plain. 20
Fierce for renown the brother Chiefs draw near,
And first bold Phegeus casts his sounding spear,
Which o’er the warrior’s shoulder took its course,
And spent in empty air its erring force.
Not so, Tydides, flew thy lance in vain, 25
But pierced his breast, and stretch’d him on the plain.
Seiz’d with unusual fear, Idæus fled,
Left the rich chariot, and his brother dead;
And had not Vulcan lent celestial aid,
He too had sunk to death’s eternal shade; 30
But in a smoky cloud the God of Fire
Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series Page 72