Book V

The aristeia of Diomedes: gods bleed — Aphrodite, then Ares himself, wounded by a mortal's spear.

Translator’s note on Book 5

Book 5 is the poem's first aristeia — the sustained blaze of a single hero — and its most theologically audacious book: a mortal wounds two gods, and the poem takes the wounds seriously enough to invent divine physiology for them (ichor, "for they eat no bread," note 16) and divine medicine (Paiëon and the rennet simile, notes [18], [43]). The structure is a standing order and its two-stage release: Athena's instruction at 127-132 — fight no god except Aphrodite — governs the first half; her revocation at 825-834 licenses the second. Diomedes is exactly as obedient as the order requires, which is what separates his god-fighting from hybris: when Apollo warns him off with the poem's theology compressed into one couplet ("never of one kind / are the race of immortal gods and of men who walk the earth," 441-442, note 21), he yields at the fourth rush. That three-times-then-the-fourth pattern is planted here for its terrible recurrences later in the poem.

The book's gods are physical to the point of comedy, and the translation does not tone it down: the chariot axle groans under Athena's weight (athetized by Aristarchus, note 39), Ares bellows like ten thousand men and then whimpers to his father, and Zeus's rebuke of him (889-891) repeats verbatim the words Agamemnon flung at Achilles in Book 1 — "most hateful to me are you... strife is always dear to you, and wars, and battles" — the poem's own judgment on the war-god delivered in a mortal quarrel's language (note 42). Dione's consolation of the wounded Aphrodite (382-404) reaches back to older, stranger myth — Ares thirteen months in a bronze jar, Hera and Hades shot by Heracles — and Dione herself, Aphrodite's mother here, contradicts the Hesiodic foam-birth (note 17).

Two continuity matters are recorded rather than smoothed: Pylaemenes, killed at 576, will reappear alive in Book 13 — the most famous authorial nod in the poem (note 26) — and the Ortilochus/Orsilochus spellings at 542-549 follow the printed text's own variation. New fixed epithets are registered for Ares ("bane of mortals," "blood-stained," "rushing," "brazen") and for the book's one-off divine names (Cypris, Enyo, Paiëon, the Seasons). The formula checker has been extended to cover the Ares set.

1Then it was that Pallas Athena gave Tydeus' son¹

Diomedes fury and daring, so that he might stand out

among all the Argives and win himself high fame.

She kindled unwearying fire from his helmet and shield,

5like the star of late summer that beyond all others

blazes bright when it rises bathed in Ocean:

such was the fire she kindled from his head and shoulders,

and she drove him into the middle, where the press was thickest.

There was among the Trojans one Dares, wealthy, blameless,²

10a priest of Hephaestus; and he had two sons,

Phegeus and Idaeus, skilled in all fighting.

These two broke from the line and charged him head on,

the two of them from their car, he on foot from the ground.

And when they were close, advancing on one another,

15Phegeus first hurled his long-shadowed spear:

over Tydeus' son's left shoulder the spear-point

passed, and did not hit him. Second, Tydeus' son

rose with his bronze; and not in vain did the shaft escape his hand:

he struck his chest between the nipples, and thrust him from the car.

20Idaeus sprang away, leaving the beautiful chariot;

he did not dare stand over his slain brother —

nor would he himself have escaped black doom either,

but Hephaestus snatched him out and saved him, wrapped in night,

so that his old priest should not be wholly broken with grief.

25And the son of great-hearted Tydeus drove off the horses

and gave them to his companions to lead down to the hollow ships.

Now when the great-hearted Trojans saw the two sons of Dares,

one fleeing, one killed beside his chariot,

the hearts of all were shaken. And grey-eyed Athena

30took rushing Ares by the hand and spoke to him:

"Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained stormer of walls —³

shall we not leave the Trojans and Achaeans

to fight it out, and let father Zeus give glory where he will,

while we two withdraw, and keep clear of the wrath of Zeus?"

35So speaking she led rushing Ares out of the battle,

and sat him down on the high bank of Scamander.

Then the Danaans bent the Trojans back; and each of the captains

took his man. First the lord of men Agamemnon

threw great Odius, captain of the Halizones, from his chariot:

40as he turned, first of all, the spear fixed in his back

between the shoulders and drove through his chest;

he fell with a thud, and his armor clattered upon him.

And Idomeneus cut down Phaestus, son of Maeonian Borus,

who had come from deep-soiled Tarne:

45him Idomeneus famed with the spear, just as he mounted

behind his horses, stabbed with the long spear through the right shoulder;

he crashed from the car, and hateful darkness seized him.

And Idomeneus' aides stripped him of his armor.

And Scamandrius, son of Strophius, the keen hunter,

50fell to Atreus' son Menelaus and his sharp spear —

a fine huntsman: Artemis herself had taught him

to bring down all the wild things the mountain forest breeds.

But Artemis who showers arrows was no help to him then,⁴

nor the long shots in which he once excelled;

55Atreus' son Menelaus, famed with the spear,

stabbed him with the spear in the back as he fled before him,

between the shoulders, and drove it through his chest;

he crashed face-down, and his armor clattered upon him.

And Meriones cut down Phereclus, son of Tecton,

60Harmon's son, whose hands knew how to fashion

all cunning work, for Pallas Athena loved him beyond all men;

he was the one who had built for Alexandros the balanced ships

that began the evil — a curse to all the Trojans⁵

and to himself, since he knew nothing of the gods' decrees.

65Him Meriones, when he caught him in the chase,

struck in the right buttock, and the point passed under the bone

straight through into the bladder;

he dropped to his knees with a scream, and death enfolded him.

And Meges killed Pedaeus, Antenor's son —

70bastard-born, but brilliant Theano had reared him⁶

with care, like her own dear children, to please her husband.

Phyleus' son, famed with the spear, came in close

and struck him with the sharp spear in the tendon of the head;

straight on through the teeth the bronze cut under his tongue,

75and he crashed in the dust, his teeth clenched on cold bronze.

And Eurypylus, Euaemon's son, killed brilliant Hypsenor,

son of high-hearted Dolopion, who was made

Scamander's priest, and was honored by his people like a god:

him Eurypylus, Euaemon's shining son,

80running him down as he fled before him, struck on the shoulder

with a sweep of his sword, and sheared away his heavy arm;

the bloody arm fell in the field; and over his eyes

came purple death, and fate the overpowering.⁷

So they labored in the strong encounter.

85But Tydeus' son — you could not have told which side he fought on,

whether he ran with the Trojans or the Achaeans:

for he stormed across the plain like a river in flood,

a winter torrent that scatters the dikes in its rushing;

the close-built dikes cannot contain it,

90nor the walls of the fruitful orchards hold it,

when it comes suddenly, swollen with the rain of Zeus,

and everywhere the fine works of strong men crash before it:

so before Tydeus' son the packed companies of the Trojans

were driven, and for all their numbers they could not stand him.

95But when Lycaon's shining son caught sight of him

storming across the plain, driving the companies before him,

quickly he bent his curved bow at Tydeus' son

and shot him as he charged, striking the right shoulder

at the plate of the corslet; the bitter arrow flew through

100and held straight on, and the corslet was spattered with blood.

Over him Lycaon's shining son shouted aloud:

"Rouse yourselves, great-hearted Trojans, goaders of horses!

The best of the Achaeans is hit; and I say he will not

long stand up under the strong shaft — if truly it was

105the lord Apollo, Zeus's son, who sped me here from Lycia."

So he spoke in his boasting. But the swift shaft did not break him:

he drew back and stood before his horses and chariot

and spoke to Sthenelus, Capaneus' son:

"Up, good son of Capaneus — get down from the chariot,

110and pull this bitter arrow out of my shoulder."

So he spoke, and Sthenelus leapt from the car to the ground

and stood beside him and drew the swift shaft clean through the shoulder,

and the blood came spurting up through the supple tunic.

Then Diomedes, good at the war-cry, prayed aloud:

115"Hear me, child of aegis-bearing Zeus, Unwearied one!

If ever with kind intent you stood by my father

in the heat of war, now befriend me in turn, Athena:

grant me to kill this man — let him come in range of my spear —

who shot me before I saw him and now boasts of it, and says

120I shall not long look on the bright light of the sun."

So he spoke in prayer, and Pallas Athena heard him.

She made his limbs light, the feet and the hands above them,

and standing close she spoke winged words:

"Take heart now, Diomedes, and fight the Trojans:

125for into your chest I have put your father's fury,

the fearless fury the shield-shaking horseman Tydeus had;

and I have taken from your eyes the mist that was on them before,⁸

so that you may know clearly god and man alike.

Therefore, if some god comes here to test you,

130do not fight face to face with any immortal —

any of the others; but if Aphrodite, Zeus's daughter,

comes into the fighting, wound her with the sharp bronze."

So speaking, grey-eyed Athena went her way,

and Tydeus' son went back and mixed with the front-fighters;

135and eager as his heart had been before to fight the Trojans,

now fury three times as great took hold of him — like a lion

that a shepherd in the field, guarding his woolly sheep,

has grazed as it leapt the fold-wall, and not brought down:

he has only roused its strength; and after that, no help —

140he slips in among the folds, and the flock panics, abandoned;

the sheep are heaped in piles on one another,

while the lion in its fury leaps the deep fold's wall again:

so in his fury strong Diomedes mixed with the Trojans.

There he took Astynous, and Hypeiron, shepherd of the people:

145one he struck above the nipple with the bronze-pointed spear;

the other he hit with the great sword on the collarbone

by the shoulder, and sheared the shoulder from the neck and back.

These he left, and went after Abas and Polyidus,

sons of Eurydamas, the old reader of dreams;

150but the old man read no dreams for them at their going —⁹

strong Diomedes killed them both.

Then he went after Xanthus and Thoon, sons of Phaenops,

both late-born and beloved; and their father was worn with hard age,

and had fathered no other son to leave over his possessions.

155There Diomedes killed them, and took the dear life

of both, and left the father lamentation and bitter cares:

he never welcomed them home alive from the fighting,

and kinsmen of the widowed house divided the estate.

Then he took two sons of Priam, Dardanus' descendant,

160Echemmon and Chromius, both in one chariot.

As a lion leaps in among cattle and snaps the neck

of a heifer or a cow as they graze the woodland,

so the son of Tydeus forced them both from their horses,

hard against their will, and stripped their armor;

165and the horses he gave his companions to drive to the ships.

Now Aeneas saw him tearing the ranks of men apart,

and went off through the fighting and the clatter of spears

searching for godlike Pandarus, if he might find him.

He found Lycaon's son, blameless and strong,

170and stood before him and spoke a word to his face:

"Pandarus, where are your bow, and your winged arrows,

and your fame? No man here rivals you in it,

and no man in Lycia claims to be better than you.

Come — lift your hands to Zeus, and loose a shaft at this man,

175whoever he is, who is master here, who has done the Trojans

so much evil already, and unstrung the knees of many good men —

unless he is some god enraged at the Trojans,

angry over sacrifices; and a god's wrath is a heavy thing."

Then answered him Lycaon's shining son:

180"Aeneas, counselor of the bronze-shirted Trojans,

in everything I liken him to the war-minded son of Tydeus:

I know him by his shield and his crested helmet's eye-slits,

and by the look of his horses. Yet I cannot say for sure he is not a god.

But if he is the man I think, the war-minded son of Tydeus,

185then not without a god does he rage like this: one of the immortals

stands close by him, shoulders wrapped in cloud,

who turned aside my swift shaft even as it reached him.

For I have already loosed a shaft at him, and I hit him

in the right shoulder, straight through the plate of the corslet;

190I said to myself I had hurled him down to Aïdoneus —

and yet I did not break him. Some god is angry.

And horses I have none, no chariot I might mount —

though somewhere in Lycaon's halls stand eleven chariots,¹⁰

beautiful, new-built, fresh from the maker, with cloths

195spread over them; and beside each a yoked pair of horses

stands, champing white barley and spelt.

Endlessly, as I was leaving, the old spearman Lycaon

charged me in our well-built house:

he told me to mount horse and chariot

200and lead the Trojans in the strong encounters.

But I would not listen — it would have been far better —

sparing the horses, for fear that in the crush of men

they would go short of fodder, they who were used to eating their fill.

So I left them, and came on foot to Ilion,

205trusting my bow — and it was to do me no good.

Already I have shot at two of their best,

Tydeus' son and Atreus' son, and out of both

I drew real blood with my hits — and only roused them the more.

It was a bad fate that made me take my curved bow from its peg

210that day when I led my Trojans to lovely Ilion,

doing a favor for brilliant Hector.

If ever I come home, and set eyes on

my fatherland and my wife and my great high-roofed house,

let some stranger strike my head off then and there

215if I do not break this bow with my hands and throw it

into the blazing fire. It follows me around like wind."

Then Aeneas, captain of the Trojans, answered him:

"No more of that kind of talk. Nothing will change

until we two go against this man with horses

220and chariot and try him in his armor, face to face.

Come, get up into my car, and see

what the horses of Tros are like, how they know their plain —

how to wheel fast this way and that, in pursuit or flight.

They will carry the two of us safe to the city, if once again

225Zeus hands the glory to Diomedes, Tydeus' son.

Come then, take the whip and the glossy reins,

and I will dismount to do the fighting; or you

face the man yourself, and I will look after the horses."

Then answered him Lycaon's shining son:

230"Aeneas, keep the reins yourself, and your own two horses.

Better they pull the curved car under the driver they know,

if we should have to run from the son of Tydeus.

I would not have them take fright and stand useless, balking,

unwilling to carry us out of the fighting, missing your voice,

235while the son of great-hearted Tydeus springs on us

and kills the two of us and drives off the single-hoofed horses.

You drive your own chariot and your own horses,

and I will take him, when he comes on, with the sharp spear."

So the two spoke, and mounting the patterned chariot

240they drove the swift horses hard at Tydeus' son.

And Sthenelus saw them, Capaneus' shining son,

and quickly he spoke winged words to Tydeus' son:

"Diomedes, Tydeus' son, delight of my heart,

I see two strong men bent on fighting you,

245men of measureless power: one the master bowman

Pandarus — and he claims to be Lycaon's son;

the other Aeneas, who claims blameless Anchises

for father — and his mother is Aphrodite.

Come, let us give ground on the chariot. Stop raging¹¹

250through the front-fighters like this, or you may lose your dear life."

Glaring at him darkly, strong Diomedes answered:

"No talk of flight: I do not think you will persuade me.

It is not in my blood to dodge a fight

or cower down. My fury is still steady in me.

255I balk at mounting the chariot: no — just as I am

I will go to meet them. Pallas Athena forbids me to tremble.

As for those two, their swift horses will not carry both

back out of range of us — even if one gets away.

And I will tell you another thing — put it away in your heart:

260if Athena of the many counsels grants me the glory

to kill them both, then you check our own swift horses

here, and stretch the reins tight to the chariot rail,

and remember to make a dash for Aeneas' horses,

and drive them out of the Trojan lines to the strong-greaved Achaeans.

265For they are of that stock which wide-seeing Zeus gave Tros¹²

in payment for his son Ganymede — the best

of all horses under the dawn and the sun;

and from that stock the lord of men Anchises stole a breed,

putting his mares to them without Laomedon's knowledge.

270From these a line of six was born him in his halls:

four he kept himself and reared at the manger,

and these two he gave to Aeneas, machines of rout.

If we could take those two, we would win high fame."

So the two of them spoke such things to one another,

275and the other two came quickly on, driving the swift horses.

First Lycaon's shining son called out to him:

"Hard-hearted, war-minded son of proud Tydeus —

so my swift shaft did not break you, my bitter arrow.

Now I will try with the spear, and see if I hit."

280He spoke, and balancing his long-shadowed spear he hurled it

and struck the shield of Tydeus' son: straight through it

the bronze point flew and pressed on to the corslet.

Over him Lycaon's shining son shouted aloud:

"You are hit clean through the flank! I do not think

285you will hold up long now. You have given me great glory!"

Unshaken, strong Diomedes answered him:

"A miss, not a hit! But you two, I think, will not

be done before one or the other of you falls

and gluts with his blood Ares, the fighter under the ox-hide shield."

290So speaking he hurled; and Athena steered the shaft

to the nose beside the eye, and it passed the white teeth.

The unwearying bronze cut off his tongue at the root¹³

and the point came out under the base of the chin;

he crashed from the car, and his armor clattered upon him,

295glancing-bright, shimmering; and the swift-footed horses

shied aside; and there his life and strength were unstrung.

Then Aeneas sprang down with shield and long spear,

fearing the Achaeans might somehow drag the corpse away.

He strode around it like a lion sure of its strength,

300holding before him his spear and the shield balanced every way,

set on killing whoever came against him,

crying terribly. But Tydeus' son caught up a boulder

in his hand — a great feat: two men could not carry it,¹⁴

such as mortals are now; but he swung it easily, even alone,

305and struck Aeneas with it on the hip, where the thigh

turns in the hip-socket — the cup, as men call it:

he crushed the cup, and tore both tendons through,

and the jagged stone stripped the skin away. The hero

dropped to his knees and stayed there, propping himself

310with one thick hand on the earth; and black night covered his eyes.

And now the lord of men Aeneas would have perished,

if Zeus's daughter Aphrodite had not been quick to see —

his mother, who conceived him to Anchises herding cattle.

She poured her white arms around her dear son,

315and spread before him a fold of her shining robe

to be a screen against missiles, for fear some Danaan of the swift colts

might drive bronze into his chest and take his life.

So she began to carry her dear son out of the fighting.

But the son of Capaneus did not forget the orders

320that Diomedes, good at the war-cry, had laid on him:

he checked their own single-hoofed horses

clear of the tumult, stretching the reins tight to the rail,

made his dash for the lovely-maned horses of Aeneas,

and drove them out of the Trojan lines to the strong-greaved Achaeans,

325and gave them to Deipylus, his dear companion, whom he honored

beyond all his agemates because their minds ran together,

to drive to the hollow ships. Then the hero

mounted his own car and took the glossy reins

and drove his strong-hoofed horses hard after Tydeus' son,

330eagerly. But Diomedes had gone after Cypris with the pitiless bronze,¹⁵

knowing her for a god without war-strength — none

of those goddesses who lord it in the wars of men,

no Athena, no Enyo, sacker of cities.

And when he caught her, chasing through the thick of the crowd,

335the son of great-hearted Tydeus lunged

and leaping in stabbed with the sharp spear the tip

of her soft hand; and the spear pierced the skin straight through

the ambrosial robe the Graces themselves had made her,

above the base of the palm. And the immortal blood of the goddess ran —

340ichor, such as runs in the veins of the blessed gods:¹⁶

for they eat no bread, they drink no gleaming wine,

and so they are bloodless, and are called deathless ones.

She gave a great shriek, and flung her son from her —

and Phoebus Apollo caught him up in his arms

345and hid him in a blue-dark cloud, for fear some Danaan of the swift colts

might drive bronze into his chest and take his life.

And over her Diomedes, good at the war-cry, shouted aloud:

"Give way, daughter of Zeus, from war and fighting!

Is it not enough that you cozen strengthless women?

350If you must haunt the war, then I think

war will make you shudder after this, even at the rumor of it."

So he spoke; and she went off dazed, in terrible pain;

and wind-footed Iris took her and led her out of the crowd

crushed with agony, her lovely skin darkening.

355She found rushing Ares seated on the battle's left,

his spear leaning on a cloud-bank, and his swift horses.

Dropping to her knees before her dear brother

she begged and begged him for the golden-fronted horses:

"Dear brother, take me in — give me your horses,

360so I may reach Olympus, where the immortals have their seat.

The wound is too much for me — a mortal man struck me:

Tydeus' son, who would fight father Zeus himself now."

So she spoke, and Ares gave her the golden-fronted horses,

and she climbed into the chariot, her dear heart aching,

365and Iris climbed in beside her and took the reins in her hands

and whipped the horses on; and the two flew, nothing loath.

Quickly they came to the gods' seat, steep Olympus,

and there swift wind-footed Iris halted the horses,

loosed them from the car, and threw them ambrosial fodder;

370and brilliant Aphrodite fell on the knees of Dione,¹⁷

her mother; and Dione gathered her daughter in her arms

and stroked her with her hand, and spoke a word, and named her:

"Who has done this to you, dear child — which of the sons of Heaven —

so wantonly, as though you had been caught doing wrong in the open?"

375Then answered her laughter-loving Aphrodite:

"Tydeus' son wounded me, high-hearted Diomedes,

because I was carrying my dear son out of the fighting —

Aeneas, who is far the dearest of all things to me.

This is no longer the dread din of Trojans and Achaeans:

380now the Danaans are fighting even with the immortals."

Then answered her Dione, brilliant among goddesses:

"Bear up, my child, and endure it, grieved though you are.¹⁸

Many of us who keep our homes on Olympus have endured

things from men, in the hard griefs we lay on one another.

385Ares endured it, when Otus and strong Ephialtes,

the sons of Aloeus, bound him in strong bonds:

thirteen months he lay bound in a bronze jar,

and Ares the insatiate of war might have perished there,

if their stepmother, beautiful Eëriboea,

390had not brought word to Hermes; and Hermes stole Ares out,

worn down already, for the hard bonds were breaking him.

Hera endured it, when the strong son of Amphitryon

struck her in the right breast with a three-barbed arrow;

then pain took hold of her too, past all comfort.

395Hades the gigantic endured a swift arrow with the rest,

when the same man, the son of aegis-bearing Zeus,

shot him at Pylos among the dead, and gave him over to pain:

he went to the house of Zeus and high Olympus

aching at heart, skewered with agony; the arrow

400was driven deep in his massive shoulder, and it wore his spirit.

Paiëon sprinkled pain-killing drugs upon the wound

and healed him: for he was not of mortal make.

The hard man, the violent-worker! — he cared nothing what outrage he did,

who vexed with his arrows the gods who hold Olympus.

405And this one — grey-eyed Athena set him on you.

The fool: the son of Tydeus does not know in his heart

that the man who fights the immortals does not live long;

his children do not climb to his knees and call him papa¹⁹

when he comes home from war and the dread fighting.

410So now let Tydeus' son, for all his strength,

look to it, or a better fighter than you may face him,

and Aegialeia, Adrastus' watchful-minded daughter,

wake her whole house from sleep with her wailing,

mourning the wedded husband of her youth, the best of the Achaeans —

415the strong wife of Diomedes, breaker of horses."

She spoke, and with both hands wiped the ichor from the arm;

the arm was made whole, and the heavy pains were eased.

But Athena and Hera, looking on,

began to provoke Zeus, son of Cronos, with needling words;

420and the goddess grey-eyed Athena led the talk:

"Father Zeus, will you be angry at all with me for what I say?

It must be that Cypris was coaxing some Achaean woman

to run off with the Trojans she now so wonderfully loves,

and stroking that soft-robed Achaean woman's gown,

425she scratched her slender hand on a golden brooch-pin."

So she spoke, and the father of men and gods smiled,

and he called golden Aphrodite to him and said:

"Not to you, my child, are given the works of war.²⁰

No — you attend to the lovely works of marriage;

430all this shall be the business of quick Ares and Athena."

So they spoke such things to one another.

But Diomedes, good at the war-cry, sprang at Aeneas,

though he well knew Apollo himself held his arms above him;

he did not stand in awe even of the great god, but pressed on,

435always straining to kill Aeneas and strip his famed armor.

Three times he sprang at him, raging to kill,

and three times Apollo beat back his shining shield;

but when for the fourth time he came on like more than man,²¹

Apollo the worker-from-afar called out with a terrible cry:

440"Think, son of Tydeus — and fall back. Do not try to think

thoughts equal to the gods: never of one kind

are the race of immortal gods and of men who walk the earth."

So he spoke, and Tydeus' son gave back a little way,

shunning the wrath of Apollo who strikes from afar.

445And Apollo set Aeneas down apart from the crowd

in holy Pergamos, where his own temple stood;

and Leto and Artemis who showers arrows

healed him in the great inner shrine, and made him glorious.

But Apollo of the silver bow made a phantom,²²

450the very likeness of Aeneas, armor and all,

and around the phantom the Trojans and brilliant Achaeans

hacked at one another's chests, at the round

ox-hide shields and the light fringed bucklers.

Then Phoebus Apollo spoke to rushing Ares:

455"Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained stormer of walls —

will you not go in and drag this man out of the fighting,

this son of Tydeus, who would fight father Zeus himself now?

First he wounded Cypris, close in, on the hand at the wrist;

then he charged at me myself, like more than man."

460So speaking, he sat down on the height of Pergamos,

and baneful Ares went in among the Trojan ranks and roused them,

in the likeness of Acamas, swift captain of the Thracians,

and called to the Zeus-nurtured sons of Priam:

"You sons of Priam, the king whom Zeus sustains,

465how long will you let your people be killed by the Achaeans?

Until they are fighting around the well-built gates?

A man is down whom we honored like brilliant Hector —

Aeneas, son of great-hearted Anchises.

Come, let us save our brave companion from the tumult!"

470So speaking he stirred the fury and heart of every man.

And then Sarpedon raked brilliant Hector hard:²³

"Hector, where has that fury gone that you had before?

You used to say, I think, that you would hold the city without armies,

without allies — alone, with your sisters' husbands and your brothers.

475I cannot see one of them now, cannot pick one out:

they cower like dogs around a lion.

It is we who do the fighting — we, your mere allies.

I am an ally myself, and I came from very far:

far away is Lycia, on the eddying Xanthus,

480where I left my dear wife and my little son,

and great wealth besides, which every have-not covets.

Even so I drive my Lycians on, and I am eager myself

to fight my man — though there is nothing of mine here

for the Achaeans to carry off or drive away.

485And you just stand there — you do not even order

the rest of your people to hold and defend their wives.

Take care, or like men caught in the meshes of an all-catching net

you become the prey and spoil of your enemies —

and they will sack your well-peopled city soon.

490All this should be your care, night and day:

to beg the captains of your far-famed allies

to hold on without flinching — and to put away hard reproach."

So spoke Sarpedon, and the word bit Hector to the heart.

At once he leapt in his armor from the chariot to the ground,

495and shaking his two sharp spears went everywhere through the army,

driving men to fight, and woke the dread din of battle.

And the Trojans wheeled about and stood to face the Achaeans;

and the Argives, massed close, awaited them and did not run.

As the wind carries chaff across the sacred threshing-floors

500when men are winnowing, and tawny-haired Demeter

in the driving wind divides the grain from the husks,

and the chaff-heaps whiten: so the Achaeans then

turned white from above with dust, which through their ranks

the horses' hooves beat up to the all-bronze sky

505as the fighting rejoined; and the drivers wheeled them round.

Straight on they carried the fury of their hands; and rushing Ares

drew night over the battle to help the Trojans,

ranging everywhere — carrying out the charge

of Phoebus Apollo of the golden sword, who had bidden him

510wake the Trojans' spirit when he saw Pallas Athena

leaving the field: for she was the Danaans' helper.

And Apollo himself sent Aeneas out from the rich inner shrine

and put fury into the chest of the shepherd of the people.

Aeneas took his place among his companions; and they rejoiced

515to see him come to them alive and unhurt

and full of brave fury. But they asked him nothing:

the other toil would not let them — the toil the god of the silver bow

was waking, and Ares bane of mortals, and Strife insatiably raging.

And on the other side the two Ajaxes and Odysseus and Diomedes

520drove the Danaans on to fight; and they of themselves

feared neither the Trojans' force nor their charges,

but stood fast, like the clouds the son of Cronos

halts in windless weather on the mountain-tops,

motionless, while the fury of the North Wind sleeps, and the other

525hard-blowing winds, whose shrill blasts

scatter the shadowing clouds whenever they rise:

so the Danaans stood the Trojans, steady, unfleeing.

And Atreus' son ranged through the crowd, commanding everywhere:

"Friends — be men! Take hold of a fighting heart;

530feel shame before each other in the strong encounters.

Where men feel shame, more are saved than slain;²⁴

where they run, no fame rises, and no strength."

He spoke, and hurled his spear quick, and struck a front-rank man,

Deicoon, Pergasus' son, companion of great-hearted

535Aeneas — a man the Trojans honored like Priam's own children,

for he was quick to fight among the foremost.

The lord Agamemnon struck his shield with the spear,

and the shield did not stop it: the bronze passed clean through

and drove through the war-belt into the lower belly;

540he fell with a thud, and his armor clattered upon him.

Then Aeneas took two of the Danaans' best men,

the sons of Diocles, Crethon and Orsilochus,

whose father lived in well-built Pherae,

rich in substance; his line was from the river

545Alpheius, which flows wide through the Pylians' land,

and the river begot Ortilochus, lord over many men,²⁵

and Ortilochus fathered great-hearted Diocles,

and of Diocles were born twin sons,

Crethon and Orsilochus, skilled in all fighting.

550These two in their first manhood, on the black ships,

followed with the Argives to Ilion of the fine colts,

winning recompense for the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon

and Menelaus; and there the end of death enfolded them both.

Like two lions reared by their mother

555on the mountain peaks, in the thickets of deep forest,

that harry the cattle and the fat sheep

and lay waste the steadings of men, until they too

are killed at men's hands by the sharp bronze:

such were these two, broken under the hands of Aeneas,

560and they fell like tall fir trees.

And as they fell, Menelaus dear to Ares pitied them,

and strode through the front-fighters helmed in flashing bronze,

shaking his spear; and Ares whetted his fury,

with this thought: that he should go down under Aeneas' hands.

565But Antilochus saw him, great-hearted Nestor's son,

and strode through the front-fighters; for he feared for the shepherd of the people,

lest he suffer harm and cheat them of all their labor.

The two were holding out their hands and sharp spears

face to face, raging to fight,

570when Antilochus came and stood close by the shepherd of the people;

and Aeneas did not stand his ground, quick fighter though he was,

when he saw two men holding the line side by side.

And when they had dragged the corpses back to the Achaean host,

they laid the poor pair in their companions' arms,

575and turned themselves, and fought on among the foremost.

There the two of them took Pylaemenes, the equal of Ares,²⁶

captain of the great-hearted Paphlagonian shieldmen:

him Atreus' son Menelaus, famed with the spear,

stabbed with the spear as he stood, striking through the collarbone;

580and Antilochus struck Mydon, his driver and aide,

Atymnius' brave son, just as he wheeled the single-hoofed horses —

caught his elbow square with a boulder; and out of his hands

the reins, white with ivory, dropped in the dust.

Antilochus sprang in and drove his sword through his temple,

585and gasping he pitched from the well-made chariot

headfirst in the dust, on his crown and shoulders.

A long moment he stood there planted — he had struck deep sand —

till his own horses knocked him flat in the dust

as Antilochus whipped them, and drove them to the Achaean camp.

590But Hector marked them across the ranks, and charged them

shouting; and with him followed the strong companies

of the Trojans; and Ares led them, and the lady Enyo —²⁷

she bringing Tumult with her, the shameless spirit of carnage,

while Ares handled a gigantic spear in his fists

595and ranged now in front of Hector, now behind him.

And seeing him Diomedes, good at the war-cry, shuddered.

As a man crossing a great plain stops helpless

at a quick-running river flowing down to the sea,

sees it seething with foam, and starts back and away:

600so Tydeus' son now gave ground, and said to his people:

"Friends — no wonder we marvel at brilliant Hector

as spearman and daring fighter:

beside him always stands some god who beats ruin away.

There — Ares stands by him now, in the likeness of a mortal man.

605Keep your faces to the Trojans, and give ground

backward; do not rage to fight force against force with gods."

So he spoke; and the Trojans came on very close.

There Hector killed two men skilled in fighting,

Menesthes and Anchialus, both in one chariot.

610And as they fell, great Telamonian Ajax pitied them,

and came up close and made his stand, and cast his shining spear

and struck Amphius, Selagus' son, who in Paesus

lived rich in substance, rich in grainland; but fate

led him to fight as ally for Priam and his sons.

615Telamonian Ajax struck him in the war-belt:

the long-shadowed spear fixed in the lower belly,

and he fell with a thud. And glorious Ajax ran in

to strip his armor; but the Trojans rained down spears on him,

sharp, glittering; and his shield took many.

620He set his heel on the corpse and pulled out

his bronze spear; but the rest of the fine armor he could not

lift from the shoulders: the missiles pressed him too hard.

And he feared the strong ring of the proud Trojans,

who stood over him many and brave with spears set,

625who, big and strong and proud as he was,

thrust him back from them; and he gave ground, staggering.

So they labored in the strong encounter.

And Tlepolemus, Heracles' son, tall and brave,

was driven against godlike Sarpedon by fate the overpowering.

630And when they were close, advancing on one another —

the son and the grandson of Zeus the cloud-gatherer —

Tlepolemus spoke to him first:

"Sarpedon, counselor of the Lycians — what forces you

to cower here, a man who knows nothing of battle?

635They lie when they call you the son of aegis-bearing

Zeus: you fall far short of those men

who were born of Zeus in the generations before us —

what they say the might of Heracles was,

my own father, bold-hearted, lion-spirited!

640He came here once for the horses of Laomedon,²⁸

with only six ships and fewer men,

and sacked the city of Ilion, and widowed her streets.

But your heart is a coward's, and your people are dying away.

I do not think you will be any bulwark to the Trojans

645for having come from Lycia — no, not if you are very strong —

but broken by me you will pass the gates of Hades."

Then Sarpedon, captain of the Lycians, answered him:

"Tlepolemus — yes, that man destroyed holy Ilion

through the folly of one proud man, Laomedon,

650who paid his good service with a hard word

and refused the horses he had come so far for.

But for you, I say your portion here from me is slaughter

and black doom: broken under my spear you will give

the glory to me, and your life to Hades of the famed colts."

655So spoke Sarpedon; and Tlepolemus lifted his ash spear,

and the two long spears sprang from their hands

in the same instant. Sarpedon struck him full in the neck,

and the point passed through, bringing anguish;

and murky night covered his eyes.

660And Tlepolemus's long spear had struck the left thigh:

the point tore through, raging,

and grazed the bone — but his father still warded off ruin.

Then his brilliant companions bore godlike Sarpedon

out of the fighting; and the long spear dragging from his thigh

665weighed on him; no one noticed it, no one thought

in their haste to draw the ash spear from his thigh

so he might stand: such toil they had in tending him.

And on the other side the strong-greaved Achaeans bore

Tlepolemus out of the fighting. Brilliant Odysseus marked it,

670his enduring heart holding, and his spirit blazed up;

and he weighed it then in his mind and heart,

whether to press on after the son of loud-thundering Zeus

or take the lives of more of the Lycian rank and file.

But it was not fated for great-hearted Odysseus

675to kill the strong son of Zeus with the sharp bronze;

so Athena turned his fury against the mass of the Lycians.

There he took Coeranus, and Alastor, and Chromius,

Alcandrus and Halius and Noëmon and Prytanis;

and brilliant Odysseus would have killed still more Lycians,

680if great Hector of the flashing helmet had not been quick to see.

He strode through the front-fighters helmed in flashing bronze,

bringing terror to the Danaans; and Sarpedon, Zeus's son,

rejoiced at his coming, and spoke a piteous word:

"Son of Priam — do not leave me lying here

685a prize for the Danaans. Stand over me! Afterward, if it must be,

let life leave me in your city — since it was not to be

that I should come home to my own dear fatherland

and gladden my dear wife and my little son."

So he spoke; and Hector of the flashing helmet answered him nothing,

690but swept past, straining to thrust the Argives back

with all speed, and take the lives of many.

Then his brilliant companions laid godlike Sarpedon

under a beautiful oak of aegis-bearing Zeus,

and strong Pelagon, who was his dear companion,

695pushed the ash spear out through his thigh;

and his spirit left him, and a mist poured down over his eyes.

Then he breathed again: the breath of the North Wind²⁹

blowing round him brought back to life the spirit he had gasped away.

Meanwhile the Argives, under Ares and bronze-helmed Hector,

700neither turned and ran for the black ships

nor stood up to them in fight, but always backward

they gave ground, once they learned Ares was with the Trojans.

Whom first, whom last did they strip of his arms,³⁰

Hector, Priam's son, and brazen Ares?

705Godlike Teuthras first, and Orestes, driver of horses,

and Trechus the Aetolian spearman, and Oenomaus,

and Helenus, Oenops' son, and Oresbius of the glancing waist-guard,

who lived in Hyle, hoarding his wealth with care,

on the shore of the Cephisian lake; and near him other

710Boeotians lived, and held a rich district of land.

Now when the goddess white-armed Hera marked the two of them

killing Argives in the strong encounter,

at once she spoke winged words to Athena:

"Shame! Unwearied one, child of aegis-bearing Zeus —

715empty, then, was the word we pledged to Menelaus,

that he should sack well-walled Ilion before returning,

if we let baneful Ares rage on like this.

Come — let the two of us also remember our rushing courage."

So she spoke, and the goddess grey-eyed Athena did not disobey.

720Hera went to and fro harnessing the golden-fronted horses —

Hera, eldest goddess, daughter of great Cronos;

and Hebe quickly set on the chariot the curved wheels,³¹

bronze, eight-spoked, at the two ends of the iron axle.

Their felloe is imperishable gold, and over it

725bronze tires are fitted, a wonder to see;

the naves that circle at either side are silver,

and the car is slung on plaited straps of gold

and silver, with a double rail running round it.

From it the pole ran out, of silver; and on its end

730she bound the beautiful golden yoke, and cast on it

the beautiful golden breast-straps; and under the yoke Hera

led the swift-footed horses, hungry for strife and the war-cry.

And Athena, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus,

let fall her soft robe on her father's floor,³²

735the many-colored robe she herself had made and worked with her hands,

and put on the tunic of Zeus the cloud-gatherer,

and armed herself in his gear for tearful war.

Around her shoulders she cast the tasseled aegis,³³

terrible, crowned on every side with Rout;

740on it is Strife, on it Valor, on it blood-chilling Pursuit,

and on it the Gorgon's head, the dread monster's,

dreadful and grim, the portent of aegis-bearing Zeus.

On her head she set the golden helmet, double-ridged,

four-bossed, fitted with the fighting men of a hundred cities.

745Into the flaming chariot she stepped, and gripped the spear —

heavy, huge, compact — with which she breaks the ranks of men,

of heroes, when she of the mighty father is angered with them.

And Hera swiftly touched the horses with the whip;

and self-moved the gates of heaven groaned open, kept by the Seasons,³⁴

750to whom great heaven and Olympus are entrusted,

to roll the thick cloud aside, or set it back.

There, straight through, they held the goaded horses;

and they found the son of Cronos sitting apart from the other gods

on the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus.

755There the goddess white-armed Hera halted the horses

and questioned Zeus most high, the son of Cronos:

"Father Zeus, have you no anger at Ares for these brute works —

how great a host of the Achaeans he has destroyed, and what men,

recklessly, in no kind of order? It is grief to me; and meanwhile

760at their ease Cypris and Apollo of the silver bow

enjoy it, having let loose this madman who knows no law.

Father Zeus — will you be angry at all with me if I

strike Ares a bitter blow and chase him out of the fighting?"

Answering her spoke Zeus the cloud-gatherer:

765"Go to it: set the driver of the spoil on him — Athena,

who beyond all others is used to bringing him hard pain."

So he spoke, and the goddess white-armed Hera did not disobey.

She whipped the horses on; and the two flew, nothing loath,

between the earth and the starry sky.

770As far as a man can see into the haze with his eyes,³⁵

sitting on a lookout, gazing over the wine-dark sea,

so far at a single bound spring the gods' high-neighing horses.

And when they came to Troy and the two flowing rivers,

where Simois and Scamander join their streams,

775there the goddess white-armed Hera halted the horses,

loosed them from the car, and poured thick mist around them;

and Simois made ambrosia spring up for them to graze.

And the two went with steps like shy doves' in their gait,

hot to bring help to the Argive men.

780And when they came to where the most and the best of them

stood packed around the might of Diomedes, breaker of horses,

like lions that eat flesh raw

or wild boars, whose strength does not give out,

there the goddess white-armed Hera stood and shouted,

785in the likeness of great-hearted Stentor of the bronze voice,³⁶

whose shout was as loud as fifty other men's:

"Shame, Argives! Vile disgraces — admired only for your looks!

While brilliant Achilles still came out to war,³⁷

the Trojans never ventured past the Dardanian gates:

790they feared his massive spear too much.

Now they fight far from the city, at the hollow ships."

So speaking she stirred the fury and heart of every man.

And the goddess grey-eyed Athena sprang to Tydeus' son.

She found that lord beside his horses and chariot,

795cooling the wound Pandarus's arrow had made.

For the sweat was wearing him under the broad strap

of his round shield — it wore him, and his arm was tired;

he was lifting the strap and wiping off the dark-clouded blood.

The goddess laid her hand on his horses' yoke and spoke:

800"Little like himself, the son Tydeus got!³⁸

Tydeus was a small man in build — but a fighter.

Even that time I would not let him fight

or flash to the front — when he came apart from the Achaeans

as a messenger to Thebes, among the Cadmeans in their numbers,

805and I told him to feast in their halls at his ease —

even then, keeping that strong heart of his, as always,

he challenged the young Cadmean men, and won everything

with ease: such a helper was I to him.

And you — here I stand beside you, and guard you,

810and bid you with good will: fight the Trojans!

But either the weariness of many charges has soaked your limbs,

or some spiritless fear is holding you. Then you are no

son of Tydeus, the war-minded son of Oeneus' line."

Answering her spoke strong Diomedes:

815"I know you, goddess, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus;

so I will tell you my word freely, and hide nothing.

No spiritless fear is holding me, no hanging back:

I am still keeping the commands you laid on me yourself.

You would not let me fight face to face with the blessed gods —

820the others; but if Aphrodite, Zeus's daughter,

came into the fighting, her I might wound with the sharp bronze.

That is why I now give ground myself, and why I ordered

all the other Argives to fall in here around me:

for I know it is Ares who is lording it over the battle."

825Then answered him the goddess grey-eyed Athena:

"Diomedes, Tydeus' son, delight of my heart —

no: fear neither Ares for that, nor any other

of the immortals: such a helper am I to you.

Come — at Ares first! Drive the single-hoofed horses at him

830and strike him at close quarters. No awe of rushing Ares —

that raving thing, that made evil, that turncoat,

who just now stood promising me and Hera to his face

that he would fight the Trojans and help the Argives —

and now he runs with the Trojans, and has forgotten all of it."

835So speaking she pushed Sthenelus back off the chariot,

hauling him with her hand — and he leapt down smartly —

and the goddess mounted the car beside brilliant Diomedes,

blazing for the fight; and the beechwood axle groaned aloud³⁹

under the weight: it carried a dread goddess, and the best of men.

840Pallas Athena took up the whip and the reins,

and at Ares first she drove the single-hoofed horses.

He was in the act of stripping gigantic Periphas,

far the best of the Aetolians, Ochesius' shining son —

blood-stained Ares was stripping him. And Athena

845put on the helmet of Hades, so that massive Ares should not see her.⁴⁰

But when Ares, bane of mortals, saw brilliant Diomedes,

he let gigantic Periphas lie where he was,

there where he had first killed him and taken his life,

and made straight for Diomedes, breaker of horses.

850And when they were close, advancing on one another,

Ares lunged first, over the yoke and the horses' reins,

with his bronze spear, raging to take his life;

but the goddess grey-eyed Athena caught it in her hand

and thrust it up over the car to spend itself on air.

855Second, Diomedes, good at the war-cry, drove in

with his bronze spear; and Pallas Athena rammed it home

into the lowest belly, where the waist-guard girded him:

there he stabbed and struck, and tore the fair flesh open,

and wrenched the spear out again. And brazen Ares bellowed

860as loud as nine thousand men, or ten thousand,⁴¹

cry out in war when they join the strife of the war-god.

And trembling took hold of Achaeans and Trojans alike

in their fear: so loud was the bellow of Ares insatiate of war.

As dark air shows out of clouds

865when after heat a foul stormwind rises,

so brazen Ares showed to Diomedes, Tydeus' son,

as he went up with the clouds into the wide sky.

Swiftly he came to the gods' seat, steep Olympus,

and sat down beside Zeus, son of Cronos, aching at heart,

870and showed the immortal blood running down from the wound,

and whimpering he spoke winged words:

"Father Zeus, have you no anger, seeing these brute works?

Always we gods endure the most shuddering pains

by one another's devices, when we bring favor to men.

875And with you we are all at war: for you fathered the mad,

accursed girl whose mind is forever on lawless deeds.

All the other gods on Olympus

obey you; each one of us is subject to you;

but her you never check by word or deed —

880you let her run, because you bore this destroying child yourself.

Now she has set the son of Tydeus, overweening Diomedes,

raging against the immortal gods.

First he wounded Cypris, close in, on the hand at the wrist;

then he charged at me — at me! — like more than man.

885My quick feet carried me out of it; otherwise I should long

be suffering agonies there among the ghastly heaps of dead,

or living strengthless from the strokes of the bronze."

Glaring at him darkly, Zeus the cloud-gatherer answered:

"Do not sit beside me and whimper, turncoat.⁴²

890Most hateful to me are you of all the gods who hold Olympus:

strife is always dear to you, and wars, and battles.

You have your mother Hera's temper — unbearable,

past yielding; I can scarcely break her with words;

and so I think it is by her promptings you suffer this.

895Still, I will not bear to see you long in pain:

you are of my stock; your mother bore you to me.

But had you been born so destroying from any other god,

long since you would have lain lower than the sons of Uranus."

So he spoke, and told Paiëon to heal him;

900and Paiëon sprinkled pain-killing drugs upon the wound

and healed him: for he was not of mortal make.

As when fig-juice thickens the white milk at a stir,⁴³

liquid before, and it curdles fast as a man turns it,

so quickly he healed rushing Ares.

905And Hebe bathed him and dressed him in graceful clothing,

and he sat down beside Zeus, son of Cronos, exulting in his glory.

And the two came back to the house of great Zeus —

Hera of Argos and Athena of Alalcomenae —

having stopped the bane of mortals from his slaughter of men.

Notes

1 lines 1–8 — The poem's first aristeia — a single hero's sustained blaze of supremacy — opens with literal blaze: Athena kindles fire from Diomedes' armor, like "the star of late summer" (Sirius, whose rising brings fever-heat; the same star will light Achilles in Book 22). The scene-type recurs for Agamemnon (11), Patroclus (16), and Achilles (19-22); it will not be re-footnoted. ↩

2 lines 9–24 — The book's first vignette is a priest's sons — and Hephaestus saves the survivor "so that his old priest should not be wholly broken with grief." A god honoring his priest's grief is the Chryses situation of Book 1 in miniature, here granted mercy. ↩

3 line 31 — "Ares, Ares, bane of mortals, blood-stained stormer of walls" (Ἆρες Ἄρες βροτολοιγὲ μιαιφόνε τειχεσιπλῆτα) — the famous triple invocation; repeated verbatim by Apollo at 455. The epithets are now fixed: βροτολοιγός "bane of mortals," μιαιφόνος "blood-stained," θοῦρος "rushing," χάλκεος "brazen." ↩

4 lines 51–54 — "Artemis herself had taught him... But Artemis was no help to him then" — the recurring pathos-pattern of the divine gift that fails its owner at the killing moment (cf. the seer's sons at 148-151, whose father "read no dreams for them at their going"). ↩

5 lines 59–64 — Phereclus, the shipwright who built Paris's ships "that began the evil" (ἀρχεκάκους) — the craftsman of the war's first cause, loved by Athena, killed in her war. His genealogy is a craft-pedigree: son of Tecton ("Carpenter"), Harmon's son ("Joiner"). Aristarchus athetized 64 (apparatus). ↩

6 lines 69–71 — Theano — Antenor's wife and (in Book 6) priestess of Athena in Troy — reared her husband's bastard "like her own dear children, to please her husband": a one-line window into the social workings of concubinage and legitimacy in the poem's households. ↩

7 lines 82–83 — "over his eyes closed purple death, and fate the overpowering" — the grandest of the death-formulas, reserved for moments of special weight; πορφύρεος is the dark surge-color of a swelling sea. Fixed rendering hereafter. ↩

8 lines 127–132 — Athena lifts the mist so Diomedes can tell god from man, and issues the standing order that structures the whole book: fight no immortal — except Aphrodite. His exact obedience (he yields to Apollo at 443, cites the order verbatim at 815-824) is what marks his god-fighting as sanctioned service rather than hybris — until she herself revokes the order at 825-834. ↩

9 lines 148–151 — Eurydamas "read no dreams for them at their going" — the dream-interpreter who could not (or did not) read his own sons' deaths; the same irony as note [4], sharpened to a profession. ↩

10 lines 192–216 — Pandarus's self-revelation: eleven new chariots at home under dust-cloths, the father's advice refused, the horses spared their fodder — thrift and half-measures, ending in the bowman's curse on his own bow. The poem gives the truce-breaker of Book 4 a small-souled domestic interior just before killing him. ↩

11 lines 249–250 — Zenodotus athetized Sthenelus's counsel of retreat (apparatus, Line 249-250: ath. Zen.) — perhaps as unworthy of a hero. Kept: the exchange sets up Diomedes' refusal ("It is not in my blood," 253) and the horse-raid plan. ↩

12 lines 265–272 — The horses of Tros: Zeus's compensation to the mortal father for carrying off Ganymede — the poem's matter-of-fact note that gods pay for what they take. Anchises' stealth breeding from Laomedon's stock supplies Aeneas's team; their theft at 323-327 re-enacts the pedigree. ↩

13 lines 290–296 — Athena steers the spear through Pandarus's mouth, severing "his tongue at the root": the oath-breaker and boaster of Book 4 is killed through the organ of his boasting. The poem does not say "poetic justice"; it merely aims the spear. ↩

14 lines 302–304 — "two men could not carry it, such as mortals are now" (οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι) — first occurrence of the diminished-present formula: the narrator measures his heroes against his own lesser age. It recurs at 12.383, 12.449, 20.287. ↩

15 line 330 — "Cypris" (Κύπρις) — Aphrodite's cult-name from Cyprus, used in the Iliad only in this book (330, 422, 458, 760, 883). Kept as the name wherever the Greek uses it. ↩

16 lines 339–342 — Ichor: the poem invents divine hematology on the spot — gods bleed a different fluid because "they eat no bread, they drink no gleaming wine." Wounded, a god is proved bloodless and deathless at once; the theology is delivered as physiology. ↩

17 lines 370–371 — Dione — Aphrodite's mother here, otherwise almost absent from Greek epic; in Hesiod Aphrodite is born of the sea-foam from Uranus's severed flesh, motherless. The Iliad's genealogy makes her a daughter of Zeus with a mother whose name is the feminine of Zeus (Diōnē ~ Dios). At Dodona, Dione was worshipped as Zeus's consort. ↩

18 lines 382–404 — Dione's consolation-catalogue — mortals have wounded gods before: Ares chained thirteen months in a bronze jar by the giant twins Otus and Ephialtes; Hera shot in the breast and Hades shot "at Pylos among the dead" by Heracles. These are shards of older, wilder myth preserved nowhere else; "at Pylos" was already disputed in antiquity (the town? or "at the gate" — πύλῳ — of the dead?). Paiëon, the gods' own healer (distinct from Apollo in this poem), closes the paradigm — and will be needed again at 899. Consolation-by-precedent ("others have endured; endure") is the poem's standard comfort, used on gods exactly as on men. ↩

19 lines 406–415 — Dione's veiled prophecy: the god-fighter "does not live long; his children do not climb to his knees and call him papa" — with Diomedes' wife Aegialeia imagined waking the house with her mourning. The Iliad lets the warning hang unfulfilled (Diomedes survives the poem); later tradition made Aegialeia faithless on his return — a grim afterlife for Aphrodite's grudge that the poem does not know or does not say. ↩

20 lines 428–430 — "Not to you, my child, are given the works of war" — Zeus's gentle, smiling demarcation of spheres; among the most quoted lines of the poem in antiquity (Cicero renders it in Latin, apparatus at Line 428). The smile, and the fact that it is Aphrodite's only wound in the poem, keep the scene comedy. ↩

21 lines 436–442 — Three times he charged — the fourth time "like more than man" (δαίμονι ἶσος) — and the god's warning: "never of one kind / are the race of immortal gods and of men who walk the earth." The poem's theology in a couplet, and the planting of its most fateful rhythm: the same three-then-fourth pattern, with the same phrase, will kill Patroclus at the hands of this same god (16.702-711, 784-793). ↩

22 lines 449–453 — The eidōlon: Apollo fashions a phantom Aeneas, and both armies fight over an image while the man heals in the temple. The poem's first phantom — a device more at home in the Odyssey and in later Helen-legend — dropped here without comment. ↩

23 lines 471–492 — Sarpedon's rebuke of Hector: the great statement of the ally's claim — "It is we who do the fighting — we, your mere allies," from a man with nothing at stake here, whose wife and little son wait in Lycia. It is the seed of his famous speech on why kings must fight (12.310-328), and the wife and son return in his death-scene (16.431-461). First full appearance of the poem's noblest Trojan-side figure. ↩

24 lines 529–532 — "Where men feel shame, more are saved than slain" — Agamemnon's couplet on αἰδώς, the battlefield ethic of mutual shame that holds lines together; quoted and reused throughout antiquity as the classic statement of shame-culture soldiering (it recurs at 15.561-564). ↩

25 lines 541–549 — The twins Crethon and Orsilochus, with the river Alpheius three generations back — note the grandfather Ortilochus and grandson Orsilochus: the printed text itself varies the name's spelling across one genealogy (Zenodotus regularized both to Ortilochus; apparatus, Lines 542-549). Translated as printed, variation and all. ↩

26 lines 576–579 — Pylaemenes, the Paphlagonian captain, is killed here by Menelaus — and at 13.658-659 he will walk, alive and weeping, behind his own son's corpse: the most famous continuity slip in the Iliad, noticed since antiquity ("even Homer nods" is Horace's phrase for it). The translation of course leaves both passages as they stand. ↩

27 lines 592–593 — Enyo, war-goddess ("sacker of cities," 333), leading with Ares and carrying Tumult (Κυδοιμός), "the shameless spirit of carnage" — the war-demons of 4.440-443 gaining a new member. Personifications capitalized, per convention. ↩

28 lines 638–651 — Heracles' sack of Troy, one generation before this war: Laomedon (Priam's father) promised divine horses for the rescue of his daughter Hesione and cheated the hero of his wage; six ships sufficed. The story — Troy already once destroyed for a Laomedon's bad faith — shadows the present war with precedent; the poem glances at it again at 7.452-453 and 21.441-457. ↩

29 lines 696–698 — Sarpedon's swoon: "his spirit left him... then he breathed again" — ψυχή here is literally breath, gasped out and blown back by the North Wind. The physiology of the Homeric soul, caught in the act of almost leaving. ↩

30 lines 703–704 — "Whom first, whom last did they strip of his arms...?" — the narrator's roll-call question, first occurrence; a formula for the turning tide, reused at 8.273, 11.299, 16.692 (there addressed, devastatingly, to Patroclus himself). ↩

31 lines 722–732 — Hebe assembles the chariot of the gods — eight-spoked bronze wheels on an iron axle, gold felloes, bronze tires, silver naves and pole — the poem's most loving machine-description, in present tenses, as of divine property that simply is. Hebe ("Youth"), cupbearer of Book 4, here shows a mechanic's hands; at 905 she bathes Ares. The Seasons (749) mind the gates. ↩

32 lines 734–735 — Athena "let fall her soft robe on her father's floor, the many-colored robe she herself had made" — the goddess of weaving strips her own handiwork to put on her father's tunic for war. Zenodotus athetized the couplet (apparatus, Line 734-735); kept — the gesture is the whole meaning. ↩

33 lines 738–744 — The aegis unfurled — its fullest description: crowned with Rout, set with Strife, Valor, blood-chilling Pursuit, and the Gorgon's head, "the portent of aegis-bearing Zeus" (cf. 2.447-449 for its golden tassels). The golden helmet "fitted with the fighting men of a hundred cities" (744) was obscure already in antiquity — big enough for the armies of a hundred cities, or adorned with them in relief; the translation keeps the strangeness. ↩

34 lines 749–751 — The gates of heaven, "self-moved," groan open — kept by the Seasons (Ὧραι), doorkeepers whose "gate" is the thick cloud they roll aside or set back. Sky-weather as divine architecture. ↩

35 lines 770–772 — The horizon-leap: as far as a watchman on a headland can see into the haze over the wine-dark sea, so far the divine horses clear at a single bound. Longinus quotes the lines (On the Sublime 9.5) as the measure of Homeric grandeur — "the universe is not big enough for their second stride"; the apparatus records the citation at Line 772. ↩

36 lines 785–786 — Stentor of the bronze voice, "as loud as fifty other men" — the origin of "stentorian." Only here in the poem; ancient scholars knew further verses about him (apparatus at 2.609 mentions them): a famous figure of whom the Iliad keeps only the shout. ↩

37 lines 788–791 — Hera's taunt measures the plot: while Achilles fought, the Trojans never left their gates; now they fight at the ships. The absent hero is the book's invisible unit of measure — the same arithmetic Achilles himself will state at 9.352-355. (Echo note.) ↩

38 lines 800–813 — Athena retells the Tydeus embassy — the same story Agamemnon told at 4.370-400 as a goad, now told by the goddess who was there ("such a helper was I to him"), with the detail that she had forbidden Tydeus to fight and been disobeyed with impunity. The father's licensed recklessness frames the son's licensed obedience: Diomedes' defense (818-824) is that he was following her orders exactly. (Echo note.) ↩

39 lines 838–839 — "the beechwood axle groaned aloud under the weight: it carried a dread goddess, and the best of men." Aristarchus athetized the couplet (apparatus, Line 838-839) — divine weight straining mortal carpentry was evidently too physical for him. Kept: it is the book's theology of embodied gods in one image. ↩

40 lines 844–845 — The helmet of Hades — the cap of invisibility (Hades' name was heard as "the Unseen One"): Athena puts it on so that Ares cannot see her, god blinding god. Only here in Homer; later myth gives it to Perseus. ↩

41 lines 859–863 — The wounded Ares bellows "as loud as nine thousand men, or ten thousand... in war" — the war-god's pain measured in the units of his own element. Both armies tremble at a sound they cannot place. ↩

42 lines 888–898 — Zeus to Ares: "Most hateful to me are you of all the gods who hold Olympus: strife is always dear to you, and wars, and battles" — repeating verbatim Agamemnon's words to Achilles at 1.176-177. The poem's supreme father passes on a mortal king's rebuke, god-scale: the quarrel of Book 1 was a theomachy in miniature, and this theomachy is a family quarrel. "Turncoat" (ἀλλοπρόσαλλος, 831, 889) — Ares' new epithet, "the one who leaps to either side." And the threat: born of any other god, Ares would lie "lower than the sons of Uranus" — beneath the imprisoned Titans, in the pit below Tartarus. (Echo note.) ↩

43 lines 899–906 — Paiëon heals the war-god, and the simile is from the dairy: as fig-juice curdles milk, the wound knits — the homeliest image in the poem laid against divine flesh. Hebe bathes him, and he sits by Zeus "exulting in his glory" — a line repeated from 1.405 (of Briareus), and athetized here by Aristarchus for that reason (apparatus, Line 906). The unrepentant swagger of the freshly healed is, either way, perfect Ares. ↩