Book VI

Hector in Troy: Glaucus and Diomedes trade armor on the field; Hector and Andromache at the Scaean Gates.

Translator’s note on Book 6

Book 6 is the poem's great turn inward: the battle continues offstage while Hector walks through his city — mother, brother, sister-in-law, wife, son — and every meeting is a farewell taken in advance. The book's engineering is visible and unbearable at once: Athena refuses Troy's prayer in a single line ("But Pallas Athena turned her head away," 311 — athetized by Aristarchus, kept here as the bleakest line in the poem), Hector answers Andromache's plea with the same verbatim prophecy Agamemnon spoke as a threat in Book 4 ("the day will come when holy Ilion shall perish," 448-449 — an echo the translation reproduces word for word), and the household mourns Hector alive before he has died (500-502). Against all this the poem sets its one scene of family comedy — the baby screaming at his father's helmet crest, and both parents laughing (466-474).

The Glaucus-Diomedes encounter (119-236) — which some ancient critics wanted to transpose elsewhere in the poem (note 6) — carries the book's other cargo: the generation-of-leaves simile, the Bellerophon story with the poem's only reference to writing (the "baneful signs... in a folded tablet," note 10), and the guest-friendship that stops a duel and ends in the proverbial exchange of gold armor for bronze.

Two register events. First, the δμώς policy adopted from the Odyssey project goes live: δμῳαί is rendered "slave-women" at its first occurrences (6.323, 375-376, note 21), with ἀμφίπολος "handmaid" and ταμίη "housekeeper" kept distinct — the vocabulary of the household the book itself is about, in the book where Hector imagines Andromache's "day of slavery" (463). Second, Agamemnon's atrocity-counsel at 55-60 (kill even the unborn) is followed by the narrator's much-disputed half-line "for his urging was of things due" (αἴσιμα παρειπών) — translated at face value and flagged in note 3, where the interpretive dispute belongs.

1So the dread din of Trojans and Achaeans was left to itself;

and this way and that the battle swayed across the plain

as they aimed their bronze-pointed spears at one another,

midway between the streams of Simois and Xanthus.

5Ajax first, Telamon's son, wall of the Achaeans,

broke a Trojan company and made light for his companions,

striking the man who was best among the Thracians,

Acamas, Eussorus' son, tall and brave.

He struck him first on the ridge of his horsehair helmet,

10and the bronze point fixed in his forehead and drove

inside the bone; and darkness covered his eyes.

And Diomedes, good at the war-cry, killed Axylus,

Teuthras' son, who lived in well-built Arisbe,

a man rich in substance, and a friend to all mankind:¹

15living in his house by the road, he welcomed all comers.

But not one of them stood before him then to beat off wretched destruction,

meeting the enemy for him; Diomedes took the life of both,

the man himself and his aide Calesius, who was then

his charioteer; and the two of them went under the earth.

20And Euryalus killed Dresus and Opheltius,

and went after Aesepus and Pedasus, whom once the water-nymph

Abarbarea bore to blameless Bucolion.

Bucolion was proud Laomedon's son,²

eldest born, though his mother bore him in darkness:

25shepherding his flocks he lay with the nymph in love,

and she conceived, and bore him twin sons —

and Mecisteus' son unstrung the strength and the shining limbs

of both, and stripped the armor from their shoulders.

And Polypoetes steadfast in battle killed Astyalus;

30and Odysseus cut down Pidytes of Percote

with his bronze spear, and Teucer brilliant Aretaon.

Antilochus, Nestor's son, took Ablerus with his shining spear,

and the lord of men Agamemnon took Elatus,

who lived by the banks of fair-flowing Satnioeis

35in steep Pedasus. And the hero Leïtus caught Phylacus

as he ran; and Eurypylus cut down Melanthius.

Then Menelaus, good at the war-cry, took Adrestus

alive: for his two horses, bolting across the plain,

fouled in a tamarisk branch, snapped the curved chariot

40at the pole's tip, and themselves ran on

toward the city, where the rest were bolting in panic,

while he rolled from the car beside the wheel,

face-down in the dust on his mouth. And beside him stood

Atreus' son Menelaus, holding his long-shadowed spear.

45Then Adrestus clasped his knees and begged him:

"Take me alive, son of Atreus — and take a worthy ransom.

Many treasures lie stored in my rich father's house,

bronze, and gold, and iron worked with much labor:

out of these my father would gladden you with ransom past counting

50if he learned I was alive by the ships of the Achaeans."

So he spoke, and was moving the heart in his chest;

and soon he would have given him to his aide to lead down

to the Achaeans' swift ships. But Agamemnon

came running to meet him, and cried out his word:

55"Soft-hearted Menelaus! Why do you care so tenderly

for men? Were such fine things done in your house

by Trojans? Let not one of them escape sheer destruction

and our hands — not even the boy his mother carries

in her womb, not even he: let all of them together

60perish out of Ilion, unmourned, and leave no trace."

So speaking the hero turned his brother's mind,

for his urging was of things due; and Menelaus pushed³

the hero Adrestus back with his hand, and the lord Agamemnon

stabbed him in the flank; he doubled over, and Atreus' son

65set a heel on his chest and pulled out the ash spear.

Then Nestor called to the Argives with a far-carrying shout:

"Friends, Danaan heroes, squires of Ares —

let no man now hang back for spoils,

to reach the ships carrying the biggest load:

70let us kill men. Afterward, at your ease,

you will strip the corpses dead across the plain."

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

Then once more the Trojans, under the Achaeans dear to Ares,

would have climbed back into Ilion, broken by their own cowardice,

75had not Helenus, Priam's son, far the best of bird-readers,⁴

come and stood by Aeneas and Hector:

"Aeneas and Hector — since on you two above all rests

the labor of the Trojans and Lycians, because for every venture

you are the best men, for fighting and for counsel:

80make your stand here; go everywhere and hold the army

before the gates, before they run and fall

into their women's arms, and become a joy to our enemies.

Then, when you have set all the companies moving,

we will hold here and fight the Danaans,

85hard-pressed though we are: necessity drives.

But you, Hector — go to the city, and speak there

to your mother and mine: let her gather the older women

at grey-eyed Athena's temple on the city's height,

and open with her key the doors of the holy house,

90and the robe that seems to her the loveliest and amplest

in the hall, and far the dearest to herself,

let her lay it on the knees of lovely-haired Athena,⁵

and vow to sacrifice to her in the temple twelve heifers,

yearlings, never goaded, if she will pity

95the town, and the Trojans' wives, and their little children —

if she will hold back Tydeus' son from holy Ilion,

that wild spearman, that strong machine of rout,

who I say has proved the strongest of the Achaeans.

Not even Achilles, that leader of men, ever made us fear so,

100who they say was born of a goddess; but this man

rages beyond measure, and no one can match his fury."

So he spoke, and Hector did not disobey his brother.

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

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

105driving men to fight, and woke the dread din of battle.

And they wheeled about and stood to face the Achaeans;

and the Argives gave ground and left off their killing:

they thought some immortal had come down from the starry sky

to stand by the Trojans, so suddenly they wheeled.

110And Hector called to the Trojans with a far-carrying shout:

"High-hearted Trojans, and you far-famed allies —

be men, my friends; remember your rushing courage,

while I go up to Ilion and tell

the elders of the council and our wives

115to pray to the divine ones, and vow them hecatombs."

So speaking Hector of the flashing helmet went;

and against his ankles and his neck the black oxhide beat,

the rim that ran outermost on his bossed shield.

Now Glaucus, Hippolochus' son, and Tydeus' son⁶

120came together in the space between, raging to fight.

And when they were close, advancing on one another,

Diomedes, good at the war-cry, spoke to him first:

"Who are you, brave friend, of mortal men?

I have never seen you in the battle where men win glory

125before this; yet now you have come out far in front of all

in your daring, to stand my long-shadowed spear.

Unhappy are the fathers whose sons face my fury!

But if you are some immortal come down from the sky —

I will not fight with heavenly gods.

130No — even Dryas' son, strong Lycurgus,⁷

did not live long, who strove with heavenly gods:

he once chased the nurses of raving Dionysus

down the holy mountain of Nysa; and all together

they flung their sacred wands to the ground, as man-slaughtering

135Lycurgus beat them with an ox-goad; and Dionysus in terror

dived under the salt sea's wave, and Thetis took him,

frightened, to her bosom: for a strong trembling held him

at the man's shouting. But the gods who live at ease were angered

at Lycurgus, and Cronos' son struck him blind; nor did he

140live long after, hated by all the immortal gods.

I would not choose to fight the blessed gods.

But if you are a mortal, one of those who eat the fruit of the field,

come closer — and come the sooner to the borders of destruction."

Then Hippolochus' shining son addressed him:

145"Great-hearted son of Tydeus — why ask my lineage?

As the generation of leaves, so is the generation of men.⁸

The wind pours some leaves to the ground, and others the forest

grows in their fullness when the season of spring comes on:

so with the generations of men — one grows, one dies away.

150But if you wish to hear even this, and to know

my lineage — many men know it already:

there is a city, Ephyra, in a fold of horse-pasturing Argos,

and there lived Sisyphus, craftiest of men —⁹

Sisyphus, Aeolus' son; and he fathered a son, Glaucus,

155and Glaucus fathered blameless Bellerophon.

To him the gods gave beauty and lovely manhood;

but Proetus plotted evil against him in his heart,

and drove him out of the land of the Argives — being far

the stronger: for Zeus had bowed them under his scepter.

160For Proetus' wife, brilliant Anteia, was mad

to lie with him in secret love; but she could not

move right-minded, war-minded Bellerophon.

So she lied to King Proetus:

'Die yourself, Proetus — or kill Bellerophon,

165who wanted to lie with me in love, and I unwilling.'

So she spoke, and anger took hold of the king at what he heard.

He shrank from killing him — his heart stood in awe of that —

but he sent him to Lycia, and gave him baneful signs,

scratching in a folded tablet many life-destroying marks,¹⁰

170and told him to show it to his wife's father: that he might perish.

So he went to Lycia, under the gods' blameless escort.

And when he came to Lycia and the flowing Xanthus,

the lord of wide Lycia honored him with a ready heart:

nine days he feasted him, and slaughtered nine oxen.

175But when the tenth rosy-fingered Dawn appeared,

then he questioned him, and asked to see the token,

whatever it was he brought from his son-in-law Proetus.

And when he had received his son-in-law's evil token,

first he ordered him to kill the raging Chimaera —

180a thing of divine stock, not of men:

in front a lion, behind a serpent, in the middle a she-goat,

breathing out the terrible fury of blazing fire.¹¹

And he killed her, trusting the portents of the gods.

Second, he fought the far-famed Solymi:

185the hardest battle of men, he said, he ever entered.

Third, he cut down the Amazons, the match of men.

And as he came back the king wove him another close-set trap:

choosing the best men out of wide Lycia

he set an ambush; and they never came home again —

190blameless Bellerophon killed them all.

But when the king came to know he was the brave son of a god,

he kept him there, and gave him his daughter,

and gave him half of all his kingly honor;

and the Lycians cut him a precinct beyond all others,

195fine land for orchard and plowland, to enjoy.

And she bore three children to war-minded Bellerophon:

Isander, and Hippolochus, and Laodameia.

By Laodameia Zeus the counselor lay,

and she bore godlike Sarpedon of the bronze helmet.

200But when even Bellerophon came to be hated by all the gods,

he wandered alone across the Aleian plain,

eating out his heart, shunning the trodden paths of men;¹²

and his son Isander was killed by Ares insatiate of war

as he fought the far-famed Solymi;

205and his daughter — Artemis of the golden reins killed her in anger.

But Hippolochus fathered me: from him I claim my birth.

He sent me to Troy, and he charged me strictly

always to be the best, and to hold my head above all others,

and not to shame the stock of my fathers, who were far the best

210in Ephyra, and in wide Lycia.

Of this lineage and this blood I claim to be."

So he spoke; and Diomedes, good at the war-cry, rejoiced.

He planted his spear in the earth that feeds so many

and spoke with honeyed words to the shepherd of the people:

215"Why — then you are my guest-friend from our fathers' time!¹³

For brilliant Oeneus once entertained blameless

Bellerophon in his halls, and kept him twenty days;

and they gave one another fine gifts of friendship:

Oeneus gave a war-belt bright with crimson,

220and Bellerophon a golden two-handled cup —

I left it in my house when I came away.

Tydeus I do not remember: I was still small

when he left me, that time the Achaean host perished at Thebes.

So now I am your dear guest-friend in the heart of Argos,

225and you are mine in Lycia, whenever I come to that country.

Let us keep clear of each other's spears, even in the crush:

there are Trojans enough for me, and famed allies,

to kill whomever a god delivers and my feet overtake,

and Achaeans enough for you, to cut down whom you can.

230And let us exchange armor with each other, so that these men too

may know we claim to be guest-friends from our fathers' time."

So the two spoke, and leapt down from their chariots

and took each other's hands and pledged their faith.

And then Zeus, Cronos' son, took Glaucus's wits away:

235he exchanged with Tydeus' son Diomedes armor

of gold for bronze — a hundred oxen's worth for nine.¹⁴

Now when Hector came to the Scaean Gates and the oak,¹⁵

the Trojans' wives and daughters came running around him,

asking after sons and brothers and kinsmen

240and husbands. And he told them to pray to the gods,

all of them, one after another: griefs hung over many.

But when he came to Priam's beautiful palace,

built with polished colonnades — and in it

were fifty chambers of polished stone,¹⁶

245built close by one another, where the sons

of Priam slept beside their wedded wives,

and for the daughters, opposite, within the court,

were twelve roofed chambers of polished stone,

built close by one another, where the sons-in-law

250of Priam slept beside their honored wives —

there his gentle-giving mother came to meet him,

leading in Laodice, loveliest of her daughters;

and she clung to his hand, and spoke a word, and named him:

"Child, why have you left the bold fighting and come here?

255Surely they are wearing you down — those cursed sons

of the Achaeans, fighting around the town — and your heart sent you

here, to lift your hands to Zeus from the city's height.

But wait while I bring you honey-sweet wine,

to pour first to father Zeus and the other immortals,

260and then to do yourself good, if you will drink.

Wine greatly swells the strength of a wearied man —

and you are wearied with defending your kinsmen."

Then great Hector of the flashing helmet answered her:

"Bring me no wine, honey-hearted lady mother,

265or you may unstring my limbs and I forget my courage.

And I shrink from pouring gleaming wine to Zeus¹⁷

with unwashed hands: a man spattered with blood and filth

cannot pray to the son of Cronos, lord of the dark cloud.

No — you go to the temple of Athena, driver of the spoil,

270with burnt offerings, when you have gathered the older women,

and the robe that is loveliest and amplest

in the hall, and far the dearest to yourself,

lay it on the knees of lovely-haired Athena,

and vow to sacrifice to her in the temple twelve heifers,

275yearlings, never goaded, if she will pity

the town, and the Trojans' wives, and their little children —

if she will hold back Tydeus' son from holy Ilion,

that wild spearman, that strong machine of rout.

So go to the temple of Athena, driver of the spoil;

280and I will go after Paris, to summon him,

if he is willing to hear me speak. May the earth gape for him

where he stands! The Olympian reared him as a great affliction

to the Trojans, and to great-hearted Priam, and Priam's sons.

If I could see that man gone down into Hades' house,

285I could say my heart had forgotten its joyless misery."

So he spoke; and she went to the hall and called

her handmaids, and they gathered the older women through the city.

She herself went down to the fragrant storeroom

where her robes were kept, the richly patterned work of women

290of Sidon, whom godlike Alexandros himself¹⁸

brought from Sidon, sailing the wide sea,

on that voyage on which he carried home high-born Helen.

Of these Hecuba took one to carry as gift to Athena,

the one that was loveliest in its patterning, and amplest,

295and it shone like a star; it lay beneath all the others.

Then she set out, and the many older women hurried after.

And when they came to Athena's temple on the city's height,

fair-cheeked Theano opened the doors for them,

Cisseus' daughter, wife of Antenor, breaker of horses,

300whom the Trojans had made priestess of Athena.¹⁹

With a wailing cry they all lifted their hands to Athena;

and fair-cheeked Theano took the robe

and laid it on the knees of lovely-haired Athena,

and vowing she prayed to the daughter of great Zeus:

305"Lady Athena, guardian of the city, brilliant among goddesses:

break now the spear of Diomedes, and grant

that the man himself fall on his face before the Scaean Gates,

and we will sacrifice to you at once, here in the temple,

twelve heifers, yearlings, never goaded, if you will pity

310the town, and the Trojans' wives, and their little children."

So she spoke, vowing. But Pallas Athena turned her head away.²⁰

So they were praying to the daughter of great Zeus;

and Hector had gone to the house of Alexandros,

the beautiful house he had built himself with the men

315who were then the best builders in deep-soiled Troy:

they had made him a chamber and a hall and a courtyard

close by Priam and Hector, on the city's height.

There Hector entered, dear to Zeus, and in his hand

he held a spear eleven cubits long; and before him the bronze

320point of the shaft shone, and a ring of gold ran round it.

He found Paris in the chamber busy with his beautiful armor,

the shield and the corslet, and handling his curved bow;

and Argive Helen sat among her slave-women,²¹

directing her handmaids in their famous work.

325And seeing him Hector raked him with shaming words:

"Strange man — it is not decent to nurse this anger in your heart.

The people are dying around the city and the steep wall

as they fight; and it is for your sake that the war-cry and the war

burn around this town. You would quarrel yourself

330with any man you saw hanging back from hateful war.

Up — before the town is warmed by the enemy's fire!"

And godlike Alexandros answered him:

"Hector, you rake me justly, not more than justly;

so I will tell you — and you mark me, and hear me out.

335It was not so much anger at the Trojans, or resentment,

that kept me sitting in my chamber: I wanted to give in to grief.

But just now my wife, coaxing me with soft words,

urged me back to the war; and it seems even to me

that it will be better so. Victory shifts from man to man.

340Come then, wait while I put on the gear of Ares —

or go, and I will follow: I think I shall overtake you."

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

But Helen spoke to Hector with honeyed words:

"Brother — brother of me, the dog, the evil-scheming horror:²²

345how I wish that on the day my mother first bore me

some foul storm of wind had carried me off

to a mountain, or into the wave of the loud-roaring sea,

where the wave would have swept me away before all this was done.

But since the gods ordained these evils so,

350then I wish I had been wife to a better man,

one who felt the world's anger and the long reproaches of men.

But this one — his wits are not steady now, and never

will be; and I think he will reap the harvest of it.

But come in now, brother, and sit on this chair,

355since the labor rings your heart above all others' —

for the sake of me, the dog, and for Alexandros's blindness:

on whom Zeus has set an evil doom, so that hereafter

we may be subjects of song for men still to come."²³

Then great Hector of the flashing helmet answered her:

360"Do not seat me, Helen, though you love me. You will not persuade me.

Already my heart is driving me to stand by

the Trojans, who feel their great longing for me gone.

No — you rouse this man, and let him hurry himself,

so he may catch me still inside the city.

365For I am going home first, to see

my household, and my dear wife, and my little son:

I do not know if I shall come back to them again,

or whether the gods will break me now under Achaean hands."

So speaking Hector of the flashing helmet went.

370And quickly he came to his well-settled house —

but he did not find white-armed Andromache in the hall:

she had gone with the child and one fair-robed handmaid

and stood on the tower, weeping and mourning.

When Hector did not find his blameless wife within,

375he stopped on the threshold and spoke among the slave-women:

"Come, slave-women, tell me the truth of it:

where has white-armed Andromache gone from the hall?

To one of my sisters, or my brothers' fair-robed wives?

Or out to Athena's temple, where the other

380lovely-braided women of Troy are appeasing the dread goddess?"

And the busy housekeeper answered him:

"Hector — since you order me strictly to tell the truth:

not to one of your sisters, nor your brothers' fair-robed wives,

nor out to Athena's temple, where the other

385lovely-braided women of Troy are appeasing the dread goddess —

she went up on the great tower of Ilion, because she heard

the Trojans were worn down, and the Achaeans' power was great.

She has gone hurrying to the wall

like a woman gone mad; and the nurse carries the child beside her."

390So the housekeeper spoke; and Hector sped from the house

back the same way, down the well-built streets.

When, crossing the great city, he reached the gates —

the Scaean Gates, by which he meant to go out on the plain —

there his richly dowered wife came running to meet him,

395Andromache, daughter of great-hearted Eëtion —

Eëtion, who lived under wooded Placus,

in Thebe-under-Placus, lord over the Cilician men:

his daughter was wife to Hector of the bronze helmet.

She met him there, and with her came the handmaid

400holding the child at her breast, all baby-thoughts still, a little one,

the beloved son of Hector, like a beautiful star:

Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others

Astyanax — for Hector alone was the saving of Ilion.²⁴

He looked at his boy and smiled in silence;

405but Andromache came and stood close beside him, weeping,

and she clung to his hand, and spoke a word, and named him:

"Strange man — your own fury will destroy you. And you have no pity

for your son, a little child, or for doomed me, who soon

shall be your widow: for soon the Achaeans will kill you,

410falling on you all together. And for me it would be better,

losing you, to go under the earth: there will be no other

comfort ever again, once you have met your doom —

only griefs. And I have no father, no lady mother.

My father — brilliant Achilles killed him,

415the day he sacked the well-settled city of the Cilicians,

Thebe of the high gates. He killed Eëtion —

but he did not strip him: his heart stood in awe of that.²⁵

He burned his body in the wrought armor

and heaped a grave-mound over him; and around it the mountain nymphs,

420daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, planted elm trees.

And my seven brothers in our halls —

all of them went to Hades' house in a single day:

swift-footed brilliant Achilles killed them all

among their rolling-gaited cattle and their white sheep.

425And my mother, who was queen under wooded Placus —

he brought her here with the rest of the plunder,

but set her free again, taking ransom past counting,

and in her father's halls Artemis who showers arrows struck her down.

Hector — so you are my father, and my lady mother,

430and my brother; and you are my strong young husband.²⁶

Come, take pity now, and stay here on the tower:

do not make your child an orphan and your wife a widow.

And station the army by the wild fig tree, where the city

is easiest to scale, and the wall lies open to assault.²⁷

435Three times their best men have come there and tried it,

the two Ajaxes and famous Idomeneus together,

and the sons of Atreus, and Tydeus' powerful son —

whether someone skilled in god-signs told them of it,

or their own hearts drive and command them to it."

440Then great Hector of the flashing helmet answered her:

"All this is my care too, wife. But I would stand

in terrible shame before the Trojans, and the Trojan women

with their trailing gowns, if like a coward I skulked apart from the war;

and my own heart will not let me. I have learned to be brave

445always, and to fight among the foremost Trojans,

winning great fame for my father, and for myself.

For this I know well in my mind and heart:

the day will come when holy Ilion shall perish,²⁸

and Priam, and the people of Priam of the good ash spear.

450But it is not the Trojans' coming grief that so much moves me —

not Hecuba's own, not lord Priam's,

not my brothers', who many and brave

may fall in the dust under enemy hands —

as yours: when some bronze-shirted Achaean

455leads you away in tears, and takes your day of freedom;

and in Argos you would weave at another woman's loom,

and carry water from the spring Messeïs or Hypereia,

hating it, every step — and hard necessity on you;

and someone will say, seeing you letting fall your tears:

460'This is the wife of Hector, who was best in battle

of all the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought around Ilion.'

So someone will say; and for you it will be fresh grief,

for want of such a man to beat off the day of slavery.²⁹

But may the heaped earth cover me, dead,

465before I hear your cry and see you dragged away."

So speaking, glorious Hector reached out for his boy —

and the child shrank back, crying, against the breast

of his fair-belted nurse, terrified at the sight of his own father,

frightened by the bronze and the horsehair crest,

470seeing it nod terribly from the helmet's top.

And his dear father laughed aloud, and his lady mother;³⁰

at once glorious Hector took the helmet from his head

and laid it, all shining, on the ground.

Then he kissed his dear son, and swung him in his arms,

475and spoke in prayer to Zeus and the other gods:

"Zeus, and you other gods: grant that this boy,

my son, may become, as I am, preeminent among the Trojans,

as strong and brave as I; and rule Ilion in strength;

and may men someday say he is far better than his father

480as he comes home from war. May he carry back the bloody spoils

of the enemy he has killed, and his mother's heart be glad."³¹

So speaking he laid his son in the arms

of his dear wife; and she took him to her fragrant breast,

laughing through her tears. And her husband saw, and pitied her,

485and stroked her with his hand, and spoke a word, and named her:

"Strange woman — do not grieve too much for me in your heart.

No man will hurl me to Hades beyond my portion;

but his fate, I say, no man has ever escaped,

coward or brave man, once he has been born.³²

490Go home now, and set your own work in order —

the loom and the distaff — and tell your handmaids

to go about their work. War shall be men's concern —

all men's, and mine above all, of all who were born in Ilion."³³

So speaking, glorious Hector took up the helmet

495with its horsehair crest; and his dear wife went home,

turning back again and again, letting the full tears fall.

And quickly she came to the well-settled house

of man-slaughtering Hector, and found inside her many

handmaids; and in all of them she stirred lament.

500So they mourned Hector, still alive, in his own house:

for they said he would never again come back

out of the war, escaping the fury and the hands of the Achaeans.³⁴

Nor did Paris linger long in his high house:

when he had put on his famed armor, patterned with bronze,

505he ran through the city, sure of his quick feet.

As when a stalled horse, corn-fed at the manger,

breaks his tether and gallops drumming across the plain,

used to bathing in the fair-flowing river,

glorying: he holds his head high, and the mane

510streams along his shoulders; sure of his own splendor,

his knees carry him lightly to the haunts and pastures of horses:³⁵

so Paris, Priam's son, came striding down from the height

of Pergamos, blazing in his armor like the beaming sun,

laughing aloud, and his quick feet carried him. And at once

515he came on brilliant Hector, his brother, just turning away

from the place where he had talked with his wife.

Godlike Alexandros spoke to him first:

"Elder brother — surely I have held you back in your hurry,

lingering so long; I did not come promptly, as you asked.³⁶"

520Answering him spoke Hector of the flashing helmet:

"Strange man — no fair-minded man could disparage

your work in battle: you have your courage.

But you hang back by choice; you will not try. And my heart

aches in me when I hear your shame on Trojan lips —

525the men who bear this long labor for your sake.

But let us go. We will make all this good later, if ever Zeus

grants us to set out for the heavenly gods who are forever

the mixing-bowl of freedom in our halls,

when we have driven the strong-greaved Achaeans out of Troy."

Notes

1 lines 12–19 — Axylus of Arisbe, "a friend to all mankind," who kept open house by the road — and not one guest stood by him at his death. The hospitality-vignette inverted: xenia builds a network of obligation, and the poem records the one moment it cannot pay out. ↩

2 lines 21–28 — Bucolion, Laomedon's eldest son "borne in darkness" (σκότιον — illegitimate), and the water-nymph Abarbarea: a shepherd's love-story compressed into five lines so that its twin sons can die in two. Nymph-brides on Mount Ida are a recurring Trojan genealogy (cf. Aeneas's own conception, 2.820-821). ↩

3 lines 45–65 — The Adrestus scene: a ransom-supplication (the standard battlefield transaction, cf. 1.12-13) refused in the war's most chilling terms — "not even the boy his mother carries in her womb." The narrator's comment, αἴσιμα παρειπών, is rendered at face value ("for his urging was of things due") and has been disputed since antiquity: does the poet endorse the atrocity as just payment for Paris's crime, or does αἴσιμα mean only "words of destiny"? The translation does not soften it; the dispute lives here. ↩

4 line 76 — Helenus, Priam's son, "far the best of bird-readers" — the Trojan counterpart of Calchas (1.69, same formula); distinct from the Helenus killed at 5.707. ↩

5 lines 90–97 — The peplos-offering: a woven robe laid on the knees of the seated cult-statue, with a vow of twelve unworked heifers — the fullest description of civic ritual supplication in the poem. The instruction is relayed verbatim three times (Helenus 90-97, Hector 269-278, performed 293-310), per messenger convention; the English repeats identically. ↩

6 lines 119–236 — The Glaucus-Diomedes encounter. Aristonicus reports that some ancient critics transposed the whole episode elsewhere in the poem (apparatus, Line 119-236) — it sits oddly in mid-battle, two enemies talking genealogy at leisure. Kept, of course, where the tradition kept it: its meditation on lineage, mortality, and obligation is the hinge between the battlefield and Troy's interiors. ↩

7 lines 130–140 — Lycurgus who chased Dionysus's nurses with an ox-goad — the Iliad's only Dionysus narrative (the god is strikingly marginal in Homer), told as a cautionary paradigm against god-fighting. Thetis's sea-rescue of the terrified child is her third such rescue in the poem's memory (Zeus at 1.396-406, Hephaestus at 18.398). ↩

8 lines 146–149 — "As the generation of leaves, so is the generation of men" — the most famous simile in the poem, and the classic statement of its view of mortality; quoted, imitated, and answered from Mimnermus to the present. Glaucus's point is scornful — why ask lineage? — and he then gives sixty lines of it: the tension is the speech. ↩

9 lines 152–155 — Sisyphus "craftiest of men" — here simply a clever Corinthian ancestor; the Iliad knows nothing (or says nothing) of the underworld stone, which appears first in Odyssey 11. ↩

10 lines 160–170 — Proetus's wife Anteia and the lethal letter: the oldest Greek instance of the "Potiphar's wife" motif — and the "baneful signs... scratched in a folded tablet" are the only reference to writing in all of Homer. Whether the poet imagined true script or ominous symbols was already debated in antiquity; the translation keeps the vagueness ("marks"). ↩

11 lines 179–186 — Bellerophon's labors: the Chimaera (lion-serpent-goat, fire-breathing — the poem's canonical description), the Solymi, the Amazons "the match of men" (cf. 3.189). Pegasus is conspicuously absent: Homer's Bellerophon does his killing without the winged horse of later art. ↩

12 lines 200–205 — Bellerophon's end: "hated by all the gods," wandering the Aleian plain ("the Plain of Wandering" — the name puns on his roaming), "eating out his heart" — the poem's image of a man dropped by fortune, cause unstated. His son falls to Ares, his daughter to Artemis: in Homeric idiom, sudden death of a man is Ares' or Apollo's arrow, of a woman Artemis's (cf. 6.428). ↩

13 lines 215–231 — The discovery: Diomedes' grandfather hosted Glaucus's grandfather for twenty days, therefore the grandsons may not fight — guest-friendship binds across generations and across the war itself. They will kill other men's guest-friends all afternoon; the institution is particular, not humanitarian. The gift-list (war-belt for cup) is a miniature of the economy. ↩

14 lines 234–236 — "Zeus took Glaucus's wits away": gold armor for bronze, "a hundred oxen's worth for nine" — proverbial by Plato's time for a bad bargain. The narrator's only intrusion into the scene, and a famously debated one: divine folly, or the reckless magnificence that is exactly what Glaucus's speech about glory demanded? ↩

15 line 237 — "the Scaean Gates and the oak" — the oak of Zeus (cf. 5.693), a fixed landmark of the battlefield's edge; some manuscripts read "tower" for "oak" (apparatus, Line 237). ↩

16 lines 242–250 — Priam's palace: fifty chambers for sons, twelve for daughters and sons-in-law — dynastic architecture, the physical form of Priam's abundance that the war is grinding away (cf. his own count of lost sons at 24.493-498). ↩

17 lines 264–268 — Hector's double scruple — wine would slacken him; blood-spattered hands cannot pour to Zeus: battlefield piety in its exact ritual grammar (cf. the hand-washing at 1.449, 3.270). ↩

18 lines 289–295 — The Sidonian robes: Phoenician luxury goods brought home by Paris "on that voyage on which he carried home high-born Helen" — the abduction had a shopping itinerary. The offering to Athena is thus chosen from the very cargo of the crime. ↩

19 lines 298–300 — Theano (cf. 5.70) as priestess of Athena "whom the Trojans had made" so — a civic appointment, the only such notice in Homer, and evidence that Athena has an established cult inside the city she is destroying. ↩

20 line 311 — "But Pallas Athena turned her head away." Aristarchus athetized the line (apparatus); it is the bleakest single verse in the poem — the exact ritual performed exactly, and refused in four words. Kept, emphatically: without it the whole peplos sequence loses its point. ↩

21 lines 323–324, 375–376 — First occurrences of δμῳαί, rendered "slave-women" per the project's adopted policy (never "servants" or "maids"); ἀμφίπολος remains "handmaid," ταμίη "housekeeper," τιθήνη "nurse." The household vocabulary matters in this book above all: its climax turns on Andromache's foreseen "day of slavery" (463). ↩

22 lines 344–356 — Helen to Hector: "me, the dog, the evil-scheming horror" — her third self-directed dog-insult (3.180, 3.404's "hateful me"); no one in the poem abuses Helen except Helen. At 356 the printed text has "Alexandros's blindness" (ἄτης) — Zenodotus read ἀρχῆς, "Alexandros who began it" (apparatus; cf. 3.100). The ἄτη-reading ties Paris to the poem's key word for ruinous delusion. ↩

23 lines 357–358 — "so that hereafter we may be subjects of song for men still to come" — the poem explaining its own existence through Helen's mouth: their suffering is Zeus's device for making poetry. Cf. Alcinous's version of the same thought at Odyssey 8.579. ↩

24 lines 402–403 — The child's two names: Hector calls him Scamandrius (after the river), the city calls him Astyanax — "lord of the city" — "for Hector alone was the saving of Ilion." The people's name for the son is their thanks to the father; its bitter payoff comes at 22.506-507. Third instance of the double-naming motif (cf. 1.403-404, 2.813-814), here mortal/civic rather than divine/human. ↩

25 lines 414–428 — Andromache's family history is Achilles' work in its entirety: father killed (but honored — burned in his armor, mound heaped, elms planted by nymphs: even his enemies' awe, σεβάσσατο), seven brothers in one day, mother ransomed then dead. The raid on Thebe is the poem's economic backstory (Chryseis was taken there, 1.366-369; Briseis's city Lyrnessus fell in the same campaign, 2.690-691). When Achilles and Andromache's griefs finally meet, in Book 24, they will already share every dead person in them. ↩

26 lines 429–430 — "you are my father, and my lady mother, and my brother; and you are my strong young husband" — arithmetic of the preceding catalogue: everything the war has taken, refigured in the one person it is about to take. ↩

27 lines 433–439 — Andromache's tactical advice — mass the army at the wild fig tree where the wall is scalable and thrice-probed. Aristarchus athetized the lines (apparatus, Line 433-439), on the ancient view that military counsel was unfitting in her mouth. Kept: the poem's women know exactly how Troy falls; the fig tree recurs as a tactical landmark at 11.167 and 22.145. ↩

28 lines 447–449 — "the day will come when holy Ilion shall perish, and Priam, and the people of Priam of the good ash spear" — verbatim the lines Agamemnon spoke at 4.163-165. There they were a threat sworn in anger; here Hector speaks them as settled knowledge, and fights on anyway. The reuse is the measure of the man. (Echo note; English repeated word for word.) ↩

29 lines 454–465 — The enslaved future, imagined by the husband: the loom of another woman, the water of Messeïs or Hypereia, the stranger's comment on her tears. "Day of freedom" / "day of slavery" (ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ / δούλιον ἦμαρ) — the Homeric idiom that makes a condition a date. Hector's wish to be dead first will be granted exactly. ↩

30 lines 466–474 — The helmet scene: the baby screaming at the nodding crest, and both parents laughing — the poem's only moment of family comedy, set precisely between prophecy and farewell. The flashing-helmet epithet the poem has attached to Hector some forty times becomes, for four lines, a thing his son cannot recognize him through. ↩

31 lines 476–481 — Hector's prayer: "may men someday say he is far better than his father... and his mother's heart be glad." The tradition beyond the poem answers with the child thrown from the walls; the Iliad says nothing of it, and the silence is part of the effect. Even within the prayer, joy is measured in "bloody spoils." ↩

32 lines 486–489 — "his fate, I say, no man has ever escaped, coward or brave man, once he has been born" — the consolation of shared mortality, Hector's plainest theology; the same thought Achilles will offer Priam in Book 24 at far greater length. ↩

33 lines 490–493 — "the loom and the distaff... War shall be men's concern" — the fixed formula dividing the spheres (Hector will be echoed nearly verbatim by Telemachus, with "speech" for "war," at Odyssey 1.356-359). Coming directly after note [27]'s athetized tactics, the line enacts the boundary the critics wanted enforced. ↩

34 lines 500–502 — "So they mourned Hector, still alive, in his own house" — the lament raised before the death; the poem lets the funeral of Book 24 begin here, eighteen books early. ↩

35 lines 506–511 — The stalled horse: Paris released, glorying, mane streaming — repeated verbatim at 15.263-268, where it describes Hector returning to battle; the same simile serving vanity there and heroism here is a masterclass in how formulas mean by placement. English fixed for the recurrence. ↩

36 line 519 — The OCT punctuates Paris's close as a question — "and did I not come in due time, as you bade?" — a touch of fishing for reassurance. Printed here as a flat admission (a reading with editorial standing), which suits Hector's mollified reply; the crux is recorded. ↩