by Stephen Fry
Achilles: his aristeia. A pitiless orgy of blood. An unstoppable cyclone. A raging wildfire. His blood-spattered chariot wheels rolled over the dead. The soaked earth was saturated with dark blood as he pushed the Trojans towards the River Scamander. In quick succession he killed Thersilochus, Mydon, Astypylus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius and Ophelestes, before despatching Lycaon, another of Priam’s sons, and tossing the body into the river. Scamander, his waters now choked with the corpses of men and horses, begged him to stop. Achilles only laughed and slaughtered yet more Trojans, pitching their bodies into the water. Boiling and frothing with indignation, Scamander called on Apollo to slay Achilles and grant the Trojans victory. Achilles heard the river god’s anguished plea; enraged, he dived in and attacked the water.
For a moment Scamander was stunned into stillness by the madness of a mortal man daring to take on a river. But he shook himself, rose up and forced his current into furious foaming whitewater rapids. Achilles was swept away. He reached up for an overhanging elm and pulled himself out of the water, but Scamander wasn’t finished. He sent a giant new swell after him, a great tidal bore of rushing water that even the swift Achilles couldn’t outpace. The wave crashed down on him. Struggling and close to drowning, Achilles called out in despair.
‘Don’t let me die here, like this. Let me at least face Hector, win or lose. If nothing else grant me a hero’s death at his hands.’fn43
The gods heard him. Hera instructed her son Hephaestus to release a fire, which spread along the riverbank. She herself fanned it with winds until the river so hissed and seethed and boiled and steamed that Scamander screamed in agony, letting go of Achilles, who scrambled out and back onto the plain to resume his killing.
Priam looked down from the walls of Troy and saw his army routed not only by Achilles and the Myrmidons but by a newly invigorated and energized Achaean army behind them. He ordered the gates open to receive his fleeing soldiers. Achilles, howling like a mad dog, raced towards the gates. Antenor’s son AGENOR, though terribly afraid, launched a spear at him – a good aim, but the tip bounced off the newly minted tin greaves on Achilles’ legs and, without so much as checking his stride, Achilles stormed after him. Apollo spirited the real Agenor away and took his form, taunting Achilles and leading him all over the plain of Ilium, giving the stampeding Trojans time to pour into the city.
Apollo-Agenor then disappeared with a laugh, and a furious Achilles turned to vent his wrath on Troy.
ACHILLES AND HECTOR
King Priam looked down at the inspired, enraged and implacable Achilles running like the wind towards the city. Hector was standing outside the Scaean Gate, ready for the final encounter. Priam and Hecuba called down, begging him to take shelter inside. The old king tore at his hair as the vision arose in his mind’s eye of the fate of his city and the Trojan people if Hector were to be killed.
But Hector would not be persuaded. He knew that the time for listening and for withdrawing into the city had been the night before, when Polydamas had urged that they all take shelter within the walls. In his pride Hector had refused, and so many great Trojans, so many brothers and dear friends, had been cut down. The only way he could redeem himself for his recklessness was by killing the man responsible. Achilles.
And there he was now, Hector’s nemesis, his affliction and his curse, racing towards him like an avenging angel and shrieking that horrible war cry. Hector turned cold at the sight of a man who had become a raging wildfire. Golden, aflame with unquenchable violence, Achilles charged him.
Hector turned and ran. Great, noble and courageous as Hector was, the sight of this terrible angel of death was too much even for him. He turned and ran.
Achilles chased him. Three times they circled the walls of Troy.
Zeus felt for Hector. He liked him and was disposed to intervene on his behalf. Athena rounded on him.
‘Father, Hector’s fate is decided. You know it is. First you forbid us to get involved with the mortals and alter their doom, now you want to intervene yourself and avert Hector’s?’
Zeus threw up his hands. ‘You’re right. You’re right.’
‘May I at least go down and ensure that all unfolds as it must?’
Zeus consented with a mournful bow of the head and Athena flew down to Troy. Taking the form of Hector’s brother Deiphobus, she materialized at his side, pledging to fight alongside him.
As Achilles closed in, Hector turned and called out to him.
‘Very well, son of Peleus, no more running. It is time to kill or be killed. But one word. If I win, I swear before Zeus that I will respect your body. All I will do is strip it of your glorious armour before returning it undefiled to your people. And you pledge to do the same if you prevail?’
Achilles snarled with contempt. ‘I have no interest in deals. Hunters make no deals with lions. Wolves make no deals with lambs.’
With that he hurled his spear. Hector dropped into a crouch and it shot overhead, burying itself in the earth behind him. Unseen by Hector, Athena retrieved the spear and returned it to Achilles.
Now it was Hector’s turn. He took aim and launched his spear. It was the best and strongest throw he had ever made. The point homed in on the very centre of Achilles’ shield. But the shield held and the spear glanced off.
‘Another spear,’ said Hector, putting out his hand for Deiphobus to rearm him, but Deiphobus was nowhere to be seen.
Hector knew at once that his moment had come. Drawing his sword, he launched himself at Achilles. Achilles lowered his head and charged.
Hector was wearing the armour he had stripped from Patroclus. Achilles’ old armour. Achilles knew it intimately, every fold of it.
As the two warriors closed the gap between themselves, Achilles’ mind raced faster than his body. Hector’s approach, shield forward and sword raised, seemed to come in slow motion. Achilles aimed his spear at the spot where he knew the leather did not quite overlap the bronze, exposing bare skin and leaving the throat open, just where the collarbone met the neck.
Achilles thrust and Hector, Prince of Troy, the hope and glory of his people, came crashing down, mortally wounded.
With his dying breath Hector begged Achilles once more. ‘My body … return it to my people for burning. Don’t take it down to your ships to be eaten by dogs … My parents will pay a ransom for me such as has never been paid … only, please …’
Achilles laughed savagely. He had no shred of respect, mercy, tenderness or human feeling left in him.
‘The dogs and birds can have you!’
‘Mocking me, you mock the gods,’ Hector gasped. ‘Your end will come soon enough. I see you at the Scaean Gates, brought down by Apollo and Paris …’
Hector died.
Achilles bent to strip the corpse of its armour. His old armour. The armour in which Patroclus had fought and died.
Emboldened by the sight of Troy’s greatest warrior lying dead in the dust, Achaean soldiers now pressed forward in ever greater numbers, each anxious to have their own stab at the body of the great Hector. In thirty years they would show their grandchildren the flakes of blood on the tips of their spears and swords and boast of their part in the downfall of the great Trojan prince.
Achilles took the belt from around the corpse’s waist – the war belt Ajax had given Hector when they had exchanged tokens after their duel. How polite and gentlemanly that confrontation had been. And how very long ago.
Achilles tied one end of the belt around Hector’s ankles and the other to his own chariot. Taking up the reins he drove his team back towards the ships, dragging Hector behind him.
The grief of Priam and Hecuba watching their son’s body bouncing so cruelly on the rocks and stones of the plain of Ilium on its way to the Argive ships was more terrible to look at than any sight of the war thus far. Their glorious son dead, and his body treated with such dishonour. No chance for them to cleanse it and prepare it for a noble burning and burial.
Hecuba’s anguished
sobs reached the ears of Hector’s wife Andromache. With a terrible apprehension of what that sound must mean, she ran to the ramparts in time to see her husband’s bloody corpse being hauled through the dust.
‘Oh, Astyanax,’ she cried to her baby son. ‘I am no longer Hector’s wife and you are no longer Hector’s son. For the rest of time we are widow and orphan.’
And the women of Troy wept with her.
THE FUNERALS OF PATROCLUS AND HECTOR
While he had avenged the death of Patroclus as he had sworn he would, Achilles had not yet finished mourning the loss of his beloved friend. Nor, as we shall see, was his hatred of Hector in any way assuaged.
First, he ordered the construction of a monumentally huge funeral pyre. This was expected. What he did next was not. He had twelve Trojan prisoners of war brought up to the pyre where he cut their throats with no more compunction, and far less ceremony, than a priest slitting the throats of lambs and goats for sacrifice. This was a crime against the principles of proper martial conduct, the codes of honour and the canons of religion which shocked even the gods.
Now, with Hector’s corpse still lashed to his chariot, he dragged it round Patroclus’s tomb three times, leaving it face down in the dust.
Patroclus’s body was laid on top of the pyre. The Myrmidons cut their hair and laid strands of it all over the corpse, like a shining shroud. Weeping, Achilles sheared off his own golden locks and placed them tenderly in Patroclus’s dead hands. He put jars of honey and oil beside the body; lit torches were set to the pyre, and his beloved companion’s soul was able at last to fly to the fields of Elysium.
Funeral games were held, a chance for the excited Achaeans to release tension, to remember Patroclus’s heroic achievements and to celebrate the sudden and blessed turn the war seemed to have taken. Just a day earlier it had looked as though their ships would be burned and their cause entirely lost. Now their enemy’s greatest champion was dead and their own was rampant, triumphant and invincible. They could not lose.
Achilles was not yet done with Hector. Every day, standing in his chariot like an avenging demon, whip hand raised, he circled the walls of Troy, dragging the corpse behind. Such implacable fury, such insane cruelty, such open contempt, caused the gods to avert their eyes. After twelve days of this horror, Zeus at last decreed that the sacrilege must end.
That night Priam left the city on a wagon piled high with ransom treasure. His old servant IDAEUS whipped the mules on towards the Achaean lines. A young man stepped out in front of them.
‘Are you old fools out of your minds? Driving a wagon loaded with gold right into the heart of your enemy’s encampment? You’d better let me take the reins. You’ – this to Idaeus – ‘shift over.’
There was something about this young man, who told them he was a Myrmidon, that Priam liked and trusted. He was fine-looking, in only the first flush of a beard, but there was a strength and sense of amused self-possession about him that invited confidence.
‘You’ve come for your son Hector, I suppose?’ the young man said.
‘I have come to collect as much of him as the dogs have left,’ said Priam. ‘But how could you possibly know that?’
‘Cheer up, old man. You won’t believe it, but the dogs haven’t touched him. Nor the birds, or the worms or the flies and their maggots. You can’t even see any wounds. His flesh is uncorrupted. He is as fresh as morning dew. I’d say he looks finer than he did when you last looked down on him from your city’s walls.’
‘The gods be praised,’ said Priam in wonder.
‘Apollo, specifically,’ the young man said with a grin. Suddenly Priam understood that this was no mortal sitting beside him on the bench, calmly clucking encouragement to the mules as they pressed on into the heart of the Greek camp – this was a god.
When they reached the Myrmidon enclosure, Hermes – for who else could it be but Zeus’s divine messenger son? – pulled on the reins and pointed his winged staff towards the central tent.
‘You go in there and melt his savage heart.’
The Myrmidon captains Automedon and Alcimus were wholly unable to hide their blank astonishment when Priam, King of Troy, entered their tent, fell before the seated Achilles and clutched at his knees like a wretched beggar. He kissed the hands that had killed so many of his sons.
‘Achilles, oh Achilles,’ he said, not caring to wipe away his tears. ‘Only picture your father Peleus. An old man like me, he has one pleasure left in life, just one. The thought and image of you, his glorious boy. Our children mean more to us than all our thrones and lands and gold. Imagine Peleus, now, in his palace in Phthia. Someone is arriving on a ship to tell him of your death. “Achilles, the glorious fruit of your loins is dead, my lord,” the messenger cries out. “His body has been left out for the dogs to chew on. He is befouled and defiled, and those who killed him will not allow him to be burned and buried with the respect and honour that his valour and his nobility deserve.” Can you imagine such a thing, Achilles? How would your father Peleus feel, do you think?’
Achilles caught his breath. Automedon saw tears starting up in his eyes.
‘I understand that you felt you had cause for vengeance,’ Priam went on, never letting go of Achilles’ knees. ‘I bring treasure for you. It is no recompense for the loss of one so dear to you as Patroclus was, but it is a respectful ransom. Offered in hope and love. Perhaps you will take pity on an old man. I had fifty sons, you know that? By Queen Hecuba, of course, and by other wives too. Fifty. So few left to me. The flower of Troy, mowed down. Hector, last of all, defending the land and people he loved. The victory was yours and …’
Achilles gently pushed Priam’s hands away.
‘Sit,’ he said, indicating a chair. His voice was hoarse and he had to clear his throat. ‘Your courage in coming here. Your honesty …’
Alcimus and Automedon watched in awe as the two men fell on each other’s shoulders, weeping like children. When they had no more tears to shed, they ate and drank together, quietly finalizing the terms of Hector’s ransom and return. They agreed on a twelve-day truce to allow for Hector’s funeral rites.
It was just as Hermes had said. Despite the passage of time, despite lying out in the hot sun, despite being pulled roughly through the dirt and sharp stones of the plain so many times, Hector’s body was pristine and beautiful.
The Trojan women, Helen, Andromache and Hecuba chief amongst them, mourned Hector with praise songs. Helen was hit almost as hard as Andromache. She had loved Hector for his courage, his chivalry, and above all for his boundless courtesy and all the personal kindnesses he had shown her, a Greek woman come amongst them bringing nothing but death and desolation. Hector was everything that the vain and hollow Paris was not.
They cremated the body, doused the flames with wine and interred the ashes in a mound overlooking the city he had given his life to defend. And so the Trojans bade their final farewell to Hector, their greatest of men.fn44
AMAZONS AND ETHIOPIANS TO THE RESCUE
The momentum given to the Achaean forces by the presence of Achilles and the absence of Hector might have propelled the war to an immediate end. But at just the moment that the Trojans found themselves being pushed relentlessly back and the city looked likely to be taken, new allies from the east rode in to their rescue in the form of the Amazons, led by their fearsome queen Penthesilea.fn45 ‘Rode to the rescue’ is the right phrase here, for the Amazons were the first warriors to fight on horseback. In the rest of the Mediterranean world, chariots were pulled by horses, and horses were mated with donkeys to produce the mules necessary for the movement of supplies; but it was the Amazons, a race of female warriors from the shores of the Black Sea, who climbed on their backs and pioneered mounted warfare.fn46 Penthesilea was a daughter of Ares and, by the same divine father, the younger sister of Hippolyta, the great Amazon queen who either married Theseus or was killed by Heracles during the course of his Ninth Labour.fn47
Penthesilea brought with he
r to Troy twelve fierce Amazon warrior princesses,fn48 and she alone accounted for eight hapless Achaean men on her first foray into battle. The very presence of the Amazons spread consternation and alarm through the shocked Greek ranks. None of them had ever engaged with a mortal female in battle, let alone one shooting down arrows at them from horseback.fn49 They rallied and summoned the nerve to attack the women with spears and swords, as if they had been men. Aias, Diomedes and Idomeneus waded in and accounted for six of the twelve princesses.
The women of Troy, watching from the high walls, were so inspired to see members of their own sex driving the hated Argives back that they determined on joining the fray themselves, until Theano, a priestess of Athena, warned them that – unlike Penthesilea and her companions, who had been born and bred for battle – they were untrained in fighting and would be certain to be cut down, doing nothing for the Trojan cause beyond adding yet more loss and further cause for lamentation.
Exhorted by the unrelenting Penthesilea, the Trojans beat the Achaeans back towards their ships, where Achilles and Ajax, the two greatest amongst all the Greek warriors, had remained out of the fighting, still mourning beside the grave of Patroclus. But the sight of their own men being so harried and hard pressed stung them into action. Achilles killed five Amazons alone. Penthesilea hurled spears at Ajax, who was saved only by the strength of his shield and the silver greaves that protected his shins. Seeing this, Achilles turned on her with an angry cry and impaled her with a spear of his own. Her death panicked the Trojans, who turned and fled back to the safety of the city walls.
Achilles roughly stripped Penthesilea of her armour, but when he removed her helmet and saw her face he was struck dumb with wonder. This is how he imagined the goddess Artemis must look. He mourned the death of one so beautiful, brave and honourable. He wept at her loss. He should have spared her – wooed her, taken her home to Phthia to reign with him as his queen.