Book XI

The long day begins: Agamemnon's morning of glory, the captains carried off wounded one by one, and Nestor plants the plan that will kill Patroclus.

Translator’s note on Book 11

Book 11 opens the longest day in poetry: the sun that rises from Tithonus's bed in line 1 will not set until 18.239-242, seven and a half books from now, and Zeus dictates the day's whole shape in advance in his message to Hector (185-194): let Agamemnon rage; when he is wounded and mounts his chariot, Hector's hour begins, and runs until he reaches the ships and the sun goes down. What follows is a day of subtraction. Agamemnon's aristeia — the poem's first sight of the commander actually pre-eminent in battle — burns hot and short, and then the captains are removed one by one: Agamemnon by Coon's spear, Diomedes and Eurypylus and Machaon by Paris's arrows, Odysseus by Socus's thrust; by the book's end Ajax alone is left in the field, backing away like a beast, like a donkey — and the despised bow (note 29) has done most of the day's work.

The book's second half changes register entirely, and is the hinge of the whole epic. Achilles, watching the rout from his stern for pleasure, sees Nestor carry a wounded man past and sends Patroclus to ask the name — and the poet stamps the errand at once: "he came out, the equal of Ares — and that was the beginning of his evil" (604). In Nestor's hut the plan is invented that Patroclus will repeat at the opening of Book 16: let Achilles send you out in his own armor (794-803, largely athetized in antiquity — see notes [42]-[43]). Nestor's enormous Pylian reminiscence (656-762) earns its length as paradigm — the young Nestor fought although his father forbade him and hid his horses; Achilles, able, withholds — and closes on the saddest line the old man speaks: "Such was I among men — if ever I was." Patroclus, running back, is detained by the wounded Eurypylus and stays to cut out the arrow: the book ends with the gentlest man in the poem healing one wound while his own death is being prepared, and its last clause repeats, word for word, the drying of Agamemnon's wound at 267 — the day's first casualty and its last, rhymed.

Our printed Greek genuinely lacks line 543 — the line Aristotle read, "for Zeus would be indignant with him, whenever he fought a better man" — and the translation reproduces the gap (numbering jumps 542 to 544), with the line translated in note 35. Register notes: the Muse-invocation reuses 2.484; 13-14 reuse 2.453-454 (athetized here as a wrongful repeat); 5-9 reuse the camp geometry of 8.222-226; Peleus's "always to be the best" repeats 6.208, our wording kept; and the cup of Nestor (632-637) meets the oldest joke in Greek epigraphy (note 38).

1Dawn rose from her bed beside illustrious Tithonus¹

to bring light to the immortals and to mortal men;

and Zeus sent Strife down to the swift ships of the Achaeans,

the grim goddess, holding a portent of war in her hands.

5She stood on Odysseus's black ship, huge of hull,

which lay midmost, so a shout could carry to both ends,

both to the huts of Ajax, Telamon's son,

and to Achilles' — for they had drawn their balanced ships up

at the ends, trusting their courage and the strength of their hands.

10Standing there the goddess screamed, great and terrible,

a high shriek; and into each Achaean's heart she threw

great strength, to war and fight without ceasing.

And at once war became sweeter to them than going home²

in the hollow ships to their dear fatherland.

15And Atreus' son shouted aloud, commanding the Argives

to gird themselves; and he himself put on the flashing bronze.

First he set the greaves along his shins,

fine greaves, fitted with silver ankle-pieces;

second, he put the corslet about his chest,

20the one that Cinyras once gave him as a guest-gift:³

for the great report had reached him in Cyprus — the Achaeans

were about to sail up in their ships for Troy —

and so he gave it to him, a favor for the king.

On it there were ten bands of dark blue enamel,⁴

25and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin;

and serpents of blue enamel reached up toward the neck,

three on either side, like the rainbows the son of Cronos

sets in a cloud, a portent for mortal men.

Around his shoulders he threw his sword: on it the studs

30glittered gold, and the scabbard about it

was silver, fitted with golden straps.

And he took up his man-covering, rich-worked, rushing shield,

a fine shield: around it ran ten circles of bronze,

and on it were twenty bosses of tin,

35white, and in the center one of dark blue enamel;

and crowning it was the Gorgon, grim of face,

glaring terribly, and around her Terror and Panic.⁵

The shield-strap was of silver, and along it

writhed a serpent of blue enamel, with three heads

40twisting every way, grown from a single neck.

On his head he set his helmet, double-ridged, four-bossed,

horsehair-crested; the plume nodded terribly above him.

And he took two stout spears, headed with bronze,

sharp ones; and far off into heaven the bronze

45flashed from them; and Athena and Hera thundered over him,

doing honor to the king of Mycenae rich in gold.⁶

Then each man gave his charioteer the order

to hold the horses in good order there at the ditch,

while they themselves, on foot, armed in their gear,

50swept forward; and quenchless rose the shouting before dawn.

They formed at the ditch well ahead of the charioteers,

who followed a little behind. And an evil tumult

the son of Cronos stirred among them, and down from on high he sent

dews dripping with blood out of the upper air, because he was about⁷

55to hurl down to Hades many strong heads.

The Trojans on the other side, on the swell of the plain,

gathered around great Hector and blameless Polydamas

and Aeneas, honored like a god among Trojans by the people,

and Antenor's three sons — Polybus, and brilliant Agenor,

60and young Acamas, the image of the immortals.

Hector among the foremost carried his shield, balanced every way.

As out of clouds a baleful star shows clear,⁸

all shining, and then sinks again into the shadowed clouds,

so Hector would appear now among the foremost,

65now in the rearmost ranks, giving commands; and all in bronze

he flashed like the lightning of father Zeus who bears the aegis.

And as reapers, facing one another down the rows,⁹

drive their swathes through a rich man's field

of wheat or barley, and the handfuls fall thick and fast,

70so Trojans and Achaeans, springing at one another,

cut men down, and neither side thought of ruinous flight.

The battle held their heads level; and they raged

like wolves. And Strife of the many groans rejoiced to see it,

for she alone of the gods was with them as they fought;

75the other gods were not there, but at their ease

they sat in their own halls, where for each of them

a fair house was built along the folds of Olympus.

And all were blaming the son of Cronos, lord of the dark cloud,¹⁰

because his will was to hand the glory to the Trojans.

80The father took no thought of them. Withdrawn apart,

he sat away from the others, exulting in his glory,

looking out at the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans,

at the flash of bronze, at the killers and the killed.

So long as it was morning, and the sacred day still growing,¹¹

85so long the missiles of both sides struck home, and the people fell.

But at the hour a woodcutter makes his meal ready

in the mountain glens, when his arms have had their fill

of felling the tall trees, and weariness comes on his heart,

and desire for sweet food takes hold of his mind,

90at that hour the Danaans by their courage broke the battle-lines,

calling to their companions down the ranks. And Agamemnon

charged first, and killed a man: Bienor, shepherd of the people —

the man himself, then his companion Oïleus, lasher of horses,

who had leapt down from the chariot and stood to face him;

95and as he came straight on, he stabbed him with the sharp spear

in the forehead; the helmet's heavy bronze rim did not stop it —

through rim and bone it went, and the brain

was all spattered inside it. He broke him in mid-charge.

And the lord of men Agamemnon left them there,

100their chests gleaming bare, when he had stripped their tunics,

and went on to kill Isus and Antiphus,

two sons of Priam, bastard and true-born both,

riding one chariot: the bastard held the reins,

and famed Antiphus stood beside him to fight. Achilles

105once bound these two with willow shoots, in the spurs of Ida,

taking them as they watched their sheep, and freed them for ransom.¹²

But now the son of Atreus, wide-ruling Agamemnon,

struck one with the spear in the chest above the nipple,

and struck Antiphus by the ear with the sword, and threw him from the chariot.

110Hurrying, he stripped their fine armor from them —

knowing them: for he had seen them once before by the swift ships,

when swift-footed Achilles brought them down from Ida.

As a lion easily crushes the helpless young

of a swift deer, seizing them in his strong teeth,

115having come to their bed, and takes their soft life away,

and the mother, even if she chances to be very near, can do

nothing to help them, for terrible trembling comes on her too,

and swiftly she darts away through the thick brush and the timber,

sweating, at speed, before the assault of the mighty beast —

120so no one of the Trojans could ward destruction

from those two; they themselves were fleeing before the Argives.

Next Peisander and Hippolochus, staunch in the fight,

sons of war-minded Antimachus — the man who, above all,

taking Alexandros's gold, his glittering gifts,

125opposed giving Helen back to tawny-haired Menelaus —

his two sons the lord Agamemnon caught,

both in one chariot, trying to hold their swift horses,

for the shining reins had slipped out of their hands

and the pair had panicked. Like a lion the son of Atreus

130rose to meet them; and from the chariot the two begged him:

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

Many treasures lie stored in the house of Antimachus,

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

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

135if he learned we were alive by the ships of the Achaeans."

So the two of them, weeping, addressed the king

with honeyed words; but the voice they heard was unhoneyed:¹³

"If you two are truly sons of war-minded Antimachus,

who once in the Trojan assembly urged that Menelaus,

140come as an envoy with godlike Odysseus,

be killed on the spot and not released back to the Achaeans —

now you will pay for your father's foul outrage."

He spoke, and thrust Peisander from the chariot to the ground,

striking him with the spear in the chest; he crashed on his back in the dust.

145Hippolochus leapt away; and him he killed on the ground,

shearing his hands off with the sword, and striking off his neck,

and sent him rolling like a stone through the crowd.

He left them; and where the thickest battle-lines were driven,

there he charged in, and with him other strong-greaved Achaeans.

150Foot-soldiers killed foot-soldiers, forced into flight,

and horsemen horsemen — from under them rose the dust

out of the plain, stirred by the thundering feet of horses —

dealing death with the bronze. And the lord Agamemnon,

killing always, followed, calling on the Argives.

155As when annihilating fire falls on unthinned timber,

and the whirling wind carries it everywhere, and the thickets

fall root and all under the fire's assault,

so under Atreus' son Agamemnon fell the heads

of Trojans in flight; and many strong-necked horses

160rattled empty chariots down the causeways of the battlefield,

missing their blameless charioteers — who lay on the earth,

far dearer now to the vultures than to their wives.¹⁴

But Hector — Zeus drew him out of the missiles and the dust,

out of the man-slaughter, out of the blood and the tumult,

165while Atreus' son followed on, hot, calling to the Danaans.

Past the tomb of ancient Ilus, Dardanus' descendant,¹⁵

across the middle of the plain, past the fig tree they streamed,

straining for the city; and always Atreus' son followed

screaming, his invincible hands spattered with gore.

170But when they came to the Scaean Gates and the oak tree,

there at last they halted, and stood waiting for one another.

Others were still in full flight across the plain, like cattle

a lion has set running, coming on them in the milking-dark of night —¹⁶

all of them; but to one of them sheer destruction appears:

175her neck he breaks first, seizing it in his strong teeth,

and then he gulps down the blood and all the inward parts;

so Atreus' son, the lord Agamemnon, pressed them,

killing always the hindmost man; and they fled before him.

Many fell from their chariots on their faces, or on their backs,

180under Atreus' son's hands, for he raged with the spear before all.¹⁷

But when he was on the point of coming up under the city

and the steep wall, then the father of men and gods

came down from heaven and took his seat on the peaks

of Ida of the many springs; and he held the lightning in his hands.

185And he sent Iris of the golden wings to carry his word:

"Up, go, swift Iris; tell this word to Hector.

So long as he sees Agamemnon, shepherd of the people,

raging among the front-fighters, cutting down the ranks of men,

so long let him give ground, and command the rest of the army

190to fight the enemy through the strong encounter.

But when, struck by a spear or hit by an arrow,

Agamemnon leaps to his horses, then I will hand him the power

to kill, until he reaches the well-benched ships

and the sun goes down and the sacred darkness comes on."¹⁸

195So he spoke, and wind-footed swift Iris did not disobey,

and went down from the hills of Ida to holy Ilion.

She found the son of war-minded Priam, brilliant Hector,

standing among his horses and his bolted chariot;

and standing close, swift-footed Iris spoke to him:

200"Hector, son of Priam, the equal of Zeus in counsel,

Zeus the father has sent me out to tell you this.

So long as you see Agamemnon, shepherd of the people,

raging among the front-fighters, cutting down the ranks of men,

so long yield from the fighting, and command the rest of the army

205to fight the enemy through the strong encounter.

But when, struck by a spear or hit by an arrow,

Agamemnon leaps to his horses, then Zeus will hand you the power

to kill, until you reach the well-benched ships

and the sun goes down and the sacred darkness comes on."

210So speaking, swift-footed Iris went her way,

and Hector with his weapons leapt from the chariot to the ground,

and shaking his sharp spears went everywhere through the army,

stirring them to fight; and he woke the dread din of battle.

They wheeled about and stood to face the Achaeans,

215and the Argives on their side strengthened their battle-lines.

The battle was set, and they stood face to face; and Agamemnon

charged first, determined to fight far ahead of all.

Tell me now, Muses, who keep your homes on Olympus —¹⁹

who was the first to come against Agamemnon,

220either of the Trojans themselves or of their famed allies?

Iphidamas, Antenor's son, a good man and a big one,

who was reared in Thrace of the deep soil, mother of flocks.

Cisses raised him in his house when he was little,

his mother's father, who begot fair-cheeked Theano;

225and when he reached the measure of glorious youth,

Cisses tried to keep him there, and offered him his daughter.

But newly wed, out of the bridal chamber he went chasing the report

of the Achaeans, with twelve beaked ships that followed him.

The balanced ships he left behind at Percote,

230and came on foot the rest of the way to Ilion;

and now he came against Atreus' son Agamemnon.

And when they were close, advancing on one another,

Atreus' son missed his cast; the spear was turned aside;

but Iphidamas stabbed at the belt, below the corslet,

235and leaned into the thrust, trusting his heavy hand.

He did not pierce the glittering war-belt: long before that,

meeting the silver, the point bent back like lead.

And wide-ruling Agamemnon caught the shaft in his hand

and dragged it toward him, furious as a lion, and out of his grip

240wrenched it; and he struck his neck with the sword, and unstrung his limbs.

So he fell there, and slept a sleep of bronze,²⁰

pitiable man — far from his wedded bride, helping his townsmen,

far from the wife he had seen no joy of, though he gave much for her:

first he gave a hundred cattle, then promised a thousand

245goats and sheep together, out of his numberless flocks.

But now Agamemnon, Atreus' son, stripped him bare

and carried his fine armor away through the crowd of the Achaeans.

But when Coon saw him — a man conspicuous among men,

Antenor's eldest-born — strong grief came down

250over his eyes for his fallen brother.

He took his stand aside with his spear, unseen by brilliant Agamemnon,

and stabbed him mid-forearm, below the elbow;

and the point of the shining spear drove clean through.

Then the lord of men Agamemnon shuddered —

255but even so he did not leave off from battle and war:

he sprang at Coon, gripping his wind-toughened spear.

Coon was dragging Iphidamas, his brother by one father,

hurrying, holding his foot, calling to all the best men;

but as he dragged him through the crowd, under his bossed shield

260Agamemnon thrust with the bronze-shod shaft, and unstrung his limbs,

and stepped up close and cut his head off, over Iphidamas.²¹

There the sons of Antenor, at the hands of the king, Atreus' son,

filled up their measure of doom and went down into the house of Hades.

But he kept ranging down the ranks of the other men

265with spear and sword and with great stones,

so long as the blood still welled warm from his wound.

But when the wound began to dry, and the blood stopped,

sharp pains came sinking into the strength of Atreus' son.

As when the sharp shaft of labor seizes a woman in her pangs,²²

270the piercing shaft the Eileithyiai of hard labor send,

Hera's daughters, keepers of the bitter pangs,

so sharp pains sank into the strength of Atreus' son.

He sprang into the chariot and told his charioteer

to drive to the hollow ships; for his heart was heavy.

275And he cried a piercing cry, to carry to the Danaans:

"Friends, leaders and lords of the Argives,

yours be the task now: keep from the seafaring ships

the grim din of battle, since Zeus the counselor has not

allowed me to war with the Trojans all day long."

280So he spoke; and the charioteer whipped the fair-maned horses

toward the hollow ships, and the two flew, nothing loath;

their chests were white with foam, dusted beneath with dust,

as they carried the worn king out of the fighting.

And when Hector saw Agamemnon going off,

285he called to Trojans and Lycians with a great shout:

"Trojans and Lycians and Dardanians who fight at close quarters —

be men, my friends; remember your rushing courage.

Their best man is gone, and Zeus the son of Cronos has given

great glory to me. Drive your whole-hoofed horses straight

290at the powerful Danaans, and win the higher glory."

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

As when some hunter sets his white-toothed hounds

on a wild boar or a lion,

so on the Achaeans Hector, Priam's son, the equal

295of Ares bane of mortals, set the great-hearted Trojans.

He himself strode among the foremost, thinking great things,

and fell upon the battle like a howling squall

that leaps down and lashes the violet-colored sea.

Whom first, whom last did he strip of his arms,²³

300Hector, Priam's son, when Zeus gave him the glory?

Asaeus first, and Autonous, and Opites,

and Dolops, Clytius' son, and Opheltius, and Agelaus,

and Aesymnus, and Orus, and Hipponous staunch in the fight.

These leaders of the Danaans he took, and after them

305the multitude — as when the West Wind batters the clouds

of the white South Wind, striking with deep squall,

and the swollen wave rolls huge, and the spray

is scattered high under the wandering wind's blast,

so thick and fast were the heads of the army beaten down by Hector.

310And now there would have been ruin, deeds beyond remedy,²⁴

and the Achaeans in flight would have flung themselves on their ships,

had not Odysseus called to Tydeus' son Diomedes:

"Tydeus' son, what has come over us? We have forgotten our rushing courage.

Come here, old friend; stand beside me. It will be disgrace

315if Hector of the flashing helmet takes the ships."

Answering him spoke strong Diomedes:

"I will stand, certainly, and I will endure it; but small

will be our profit, since Zeus the cloud-gatherer

would rather hand the power to the Trojans than to us."

320He spoke, and thrust Thymbraeus from his chariot to the ground,

striking him with the spear by the left nipple; and Odysseus

killed Molion, the godlike aide of that same lord.

They left them there, done with fighting for good,

and the two went through the crowd wreaking havoc, as when two boars

325fall on the hunting hounds, thinking great things;

so, turning back, they cut down Trojans; and the Achaeans

gladly caught their breath in their flight from brilliant Hector.

Then they took a chariot and two men, the best of their district,

two sons of Merops of Percote, who beyond all men²⁵

330knew the seer's art, and would not let his sons

go to man-destroying war; but the two would not

obey him: the fates of black death were leading them on.

Tydeus' son Diomedes, famed with the spear,

robbed them of life and breath and took their glorious armor;

335and Odysseus killed Hippodamus and Hypeirochus.

Then the son of Cronos stretched the battle level between them,

looking down from Ida; and they went on killing one another.

Tydeus' son wounded the hero Agastrophus with his spear,

Paeon's son, at the hip-joint; his horses were not

340near for escape — great was the blindness of his heart:

his aide was holding them apart, while he on foot

raged through the front-fighters, until he lost his own life.

But Hector marked them sharply down the ranks, and rushed at them

shouting; and with him followed the Trojan battle-lines.

345Diomedes, good at the war-cry, shuddered to see him,

and quickly spoke to Odysseus, who was near:

"Here it comes rolling at the two of us, this plague — massive Hector.

Come, let us stand and beat him off, holding our ground."

He spoke, and balanced his long-shadowed spear and hurled it,

350and hit — he did not miss — aiming at the head,

at the helmet's crown; but bronze was turned by bronze

and never reached the fair skin: the helmet stopped it,

three-layered, socket-eyed, which Phoebus Apollo gave him.²⁶

And Hector ran back an immense way, and merged with the crowd,

355dropped to his knees and stayed there, propping himself

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

But while Tydeus' son went after his spear's cast,

far through the front-fighters, where he saw it strike the earth,

Hector caught his breath again, and springing back into his chariot

360drove out into the mass of men, and dodged black doom.

Rushing after with his spear, strong Diomedes called:

"Dog! Again you have run out from under death — and yet the evil²⁷

came close. Now once more Phoebus Apollo has pulled you out —

to him you must pray whenever you go into the thud of javelins.

365I will finish you yet, meeting you later,

if any god anywhere stands helper to me too.

For now I will go after the others, whoever I can catch."

He spoke, and set to stripping Paeon's spear-famed son.

But Alexandros, the husband of lovely-haired Helen,

370drew his bow against Tydeus' son, shepherd of the people,

leaning against the pillar on the man-made mound,

the tomb of Ilus, Dardanus' son, elder of the people of old.

Diomedes was lifting the corslet of powerful Agastrophus

from his chest, all glittering, and the shield from his shoulders,

375and the heavy helmet — and Paris drew back the grip of his bow

and shot; and the shaft did not leave his hand in vain:

he hit the flat of the right foot, and the arrow, clean through,

fixed in the earth. And laughing very sweetly

Paris leapt up out of his hiding-place, and spoke in triumph:²⁸

380"You are hit! The arrow did not fly in vain. If only

I had struck deep in the groin and taken your life!

Then the Trojans could have breathed again after their misery —

they who shudder at you as bleating goats at a lion."

Unshaken, strong Diomedes answered him:

385"Bowman, foul-mouth, glorious with your curls, ogler of girls —²⁹

if you made trial of me face to face, in armor,

your bow would not help you, and your showers of arrows;

as it is you have scratched the flat of my foot, and boast of it.

I care no more than if a woman had hit me, or a witless child;

390blunt is the dart of a worthless man, a nobody.

From me it is otherwise: even if it only grazes,

the point is sharp, and makes its man a corpse on the instant.

His wife's cheeks are torn on both sides in mourning,

his children are fatherless; and he, reddening the earth with his blood,

395rots, and there are more birds than women about him."

So he spoke; and Odysseus, famed with the spear, came near

and stood in front of him; and sitting behind, Diomedes drew

the swift arrow out of his foot; and hard pain went through his flesh.

He sprang into the chariot and told his charioteer

400to drive to the hollow ships; for his heart was heavy.

Now Odysseus, famed with the spear, was left alone: not one

of the Argives stayed by him, for fear had seized them all.

Troubled, he spoke to his own great-hearted spirit:

"Ah me, what happens to me now? Great evil if I run,

405fearing their numbers; but grimmer still if I am taken

alone — and the son of Cronos has set the rest of the Danaans running.

But why does my own heart argue these things with me?

For I know that cowards walk away from the war,

but whoever would be best in battle, his duty is

410to stand his ground with strength, whether he is hit or hits another."³⁰

While he was turning this over in mind and heart,

the ranks of the Trojan shield-men came on

and penned him in their midst — setting their own plague among them.

As when hounds and young men in their vigor rush

415a boar on every side, and he comes out of the deep thicket

whetting the white tusk in his curved jaws,

and they charge in around him, and from under comes the noise

of gnashing tusks; but they stand up to him, terrible as he is —

so then around Odysseus, dear to Zeus, the Trojans

420rushed. And he first wounded blameless Deïopites

above the shoulder, leaping in with his sharp spear;

and after that he stripped the life from Thoon and Ennomus,

and next Chersidamas, as he sprang down from his chariot,

he stabbed with the spear below the bossed shield

425in the navel; and he fell in the dust and clutched the earth with his palm.

These he left, and wounded with the spear Charops, Hippasus' son,

own brother of wealthy Socus;

and Socus came to his rescue, a man like a god,

and came up very close and spoke his word to him:

430"Odysseus of the many tales, insatiate of tricks and of labor,³¹

today you will either boast over both of Hippasus' sons —

such a pair of men! — for killing them and stripping their armor,

or struck under my spear you will lose your life."

So speaking, he struck the shield balanced every way:

435through the shining shield the heavy spear went,

and through the richly worked corslet it drove,

and tore all the flesh clean from his ribs; but Pallas Athena

did not let it reach the man's inward parts.

Odysseus knew the point had not come home to a mortal spot,

440and drawing back he spoke his word to Socus:

"Poor wretch — sheer destruction has surely caught you now.

True: you have stopped my fighting against the Trojans;

but I say that death and black doom will be yours

here, on this day; broken under my spear you will give

445the triumph to me, and your soul to Hades of the famed colts."

He spoke; and Socus had turned and was moving into flight,

and square in his back as he turned he fixed the spear

between the shoulders, and drove it through the chest.

He fell with a thud; and brilliant Odysseus exulted over him:

450"Socus, son of war-minded Hippasus, breaker of horses:

death's end was too quick for you — you did not slip it.

Poor wretch! Your father and your lady mother will not³²

close your eyes in death; the flesh-eating birds

will pull at you long before, their wings beating thick about you.

455But me, when I die, the brilliant Achaeans will bury with honors."

So speaking, he dragged the massive spear of war-minded Socus

out of his flesh and out of his bossed shield;

and when it was wrenched free the blood sprang up, and his heart sank.

And the great-hearted Trojans, when they saw Odysseus's blood,

460called to one another through the crowd, and all made for him.

He gave ground backward, and shouted to his companions.

Three times he shouted, as loud as a man's head can hold,

and three times Menelaus, dear to Ares, heard him crying,

and quickly spoke to Ajax, who was near:

465"Ajax, Zeus-sprung son of Telamon, marshal of the people,

the cry of patient-hearted Odysseus rings around me,

and it sounds as though the Trojans had cut him off alone

in the strong encounter and were forcing him under.

Come, let us go through the crowd; better to defend him.

470I fear he may suffer something, alone among the Trojans,

brave as he is, and a great longing come to the Danaans."

So speaking he led the way, and the other followed, a man like a god.

They found Odysseus, dear to Zeus; and around him

the Trojans pressed, like tawny jackals in the mountains

475around an antlered stag that is wounded — a man has hit it

with an arrow from the bowstring, and it escaped him, running

on its feet, while the blood ran warm and its knees still lifted;

but when at last the swift arrow has beaten it down,

the flesh-eating jackals tear it apart in the mountains,

480in a shadowy grove; but then some god leads in a ravening

lion, and the jackals scatter in terror, and he does the tearing —³³

so then around war-minded Odysseus of the subtle wiles

the Trojans pressed, many and stout, while the hero

lunging with his spear held off the pitiless day.

485And Ajax came up close, carrying his shield like a tower,

and stood beside him; and the Trojans broke, every man a different way.

Then warlike Menelaus led Odysseus out of the crowd,

holding him by the hand, till his aide drove the horses close.

And Ajax, springing on the Trojans, killed Doryclus,

490Priam's bastard son, and then wounded Pandocus,

and wounded Lysander, and Pyrasus, and Pylartes.

As when a river in flood comes down onto the plain,

a winter torrent off the mountains, driven by the rain of Zeus,

and carries with it many dry oaks and many pines,

495and flings much wrack and driftwood into the sea,

so glorious Ajax swept the plain then, harrying it,

slaughtering horses and men. And Hector knew nothing of it,

for he was fighting at the far left of the whole battle

by the banks of the river Scamander, where beyond all places

500the heads of men were falling, and the quenchless roar had risen,

around great Nestor and warlike Idomeneus.

Among these Hector moved, wreaking deeds of havoc

with spear and horsemanship, wrecking the young men's battle-lines.

Yet even so the brilliant Achaeans would not have given way

505from his path, had not Alexandros, the husband of lovely-haired Helen,

stopped Machaon, shepherd of the people, in mid-valor,

hitting his right shoulder with a three-barbed arrow.

Then the Achaeans, breathing fury, feared for him,

that the enemy might take him as the fighting tilted;

510and at once Idomeneus spoke to brilliant Nestor:

"Nestor, Neleus' son, great glory of the Achaeans,

up, mount your chariot; let Machaon mount beside you;

and drive your whole-hoofed horses to the ships with all speed.

For a healer is a man worth many other men together,

515at cutting out arrows and sprinkling gentle drugs."³⁴

So he spoke, and the Gerenian horseman Nestor did not disobey.

At once he mounted his chariot, and beside him Machaon

mounted, the son of Asclepius the blameless healer;

and he whipped the horses on, and the two flew, nothing loath,

520toward the hollow ships; for that way was dear to their hearts.

But Cebriones, standing beside Hector, saw

the Trojans being driven, and spoke his word to him:

"Hector, the two of us are engaged with the Danaans here

at the outermost edge of the harsh-sounding war, while the other

525Trojans are driven in confusion, horses and men together.

Telamonian Ajax is driving them — I know him well,

for the broad shield is around his shoulders. Come,

let us steer our horses and chariot there, where beyond all

horsemen and foot-soldiers, hurling their evil strife at one another,

530are killing each other, and the quenchless roar has risen."

So speaking, he lashed the fair-maned horses on

with the whistling whip; and feeling the stroke

they carried the swift chariot lightly among Trojans and Achaeans,

trampling corpses and shields; with blood the axle

535beneath was all spattered, and the rails that ran round the car,

struck by the drops thrown up from the horses' hooves

and from the wheel-rims. And Hector strained to plunge into the crowd

of men and break it, leaping in; and an evil tumult

he hurled among the Danaans, and gave the spear little rest.

540But he kept ranging down the ranks of the other men

with spear and sword and with great stones —

yet he shunned the fight with Ajax, Telamon's son.

[Line 543 is absent from the printed text; see note 35.]

But father Zeus, high-throned, stirred fear in Ajax:³⁵

545he stood dazed, and slung the sevenfold-oxhide shield behind him,

and trembled, glancing round at the crowd like a wild beast,

turning this way and that, slowly changing knee for knee.

As a fiery lion from a yard of cattle

is driven off by dogs and countrymen,

550who will not let him take the fat of the herd,

watching all night long; and he, craving the meat,

charges in but gets nowhere, for javelins thick and fast

fly out to meet him from daring hands,

and burning brands besides, and he flinches at those for all his fury,

555and at dawn he goes off apart, sullen at heart;

so Ajax then, sullen at heart, fell back from the Trojans,

much against his will; for he feared for the Achaeans' ships.

As when a donkey going past a cornfield masters the boys who drive him,

a slow one, on whose ribs many sticks have been broken,

560and he gets in and crops the deep grain, while the boys

beat him with sticks — but their strength is a child's strength —

and only just drive him out when he has eaten his fill,

so then great Ajax, Telamon's son, was harried

by the high-hearted Trojans and their allies called from many lands,

565stabbing the middle of his shield with pikes, following him always.³⁶

And Ajax would now remember his rushing courage,

wheeling round again to hold back the battle-lines

of the horse-taming Trojans; and now again turn to flee.

But he barred them all from the path to the swift ships,

570standing alone between Trojans and Achaeans,

raging. And the spears from daring hands

stuck fast, some in his great shield, driving forward,

and many midway, before they could reach the white flesh,

stood planted in the earth, still hungry to glut themselves on it.

575But when Euaemon's shining son Eurypylus

saw him under the pressure of the thick missiles,

he came and stood beside him and cast with his shining spear,

and hit Apisaon, Phausius' son, shepherd of the people,

in the liver below the midriff, and unstrung his knees on the instant.

580And Eurypylus sprang on him to strip the armor from his shoulders.

But when godlike Alexandros saw him

stripping the armor of Apisaon, at once he drew

his bow at Eurypylus, and hit him with an arrow

in the right thigh; the reed shaft snapped, and the thigh grew heavy.

585Back into the band of his companions he shrank, dodging doom,

and cried a piercing cry, to carry to the Danaans:

"Friends, leaders and lords of the Argives,

turn and stand, and beat off the pitiless day

from Ajax, who is under pressure of missiles: I do not think

590he will escape out of the harsh-sounding war. Come, stand

face to face around great Ajax, Telamon's son."

So spoke the wounded Eurypylus; and they stood

close beside him, shields leaned against their shoulders,

spears held high; and Ajax came to meet them,

595and turned and stood, when he reached the band of his companions.

So they fought on, like blazing fire;

and the mares of Neleus, sweating, carried Nestor

out of the battle, bringing Machaon too, shepherd of the people.

And swift-footed brilliant Achilles saw him, and marked him;

600for he stood on the stern of his ship, huge of hull,

gazing at the sheer toil and the tearful rout.

At once he spoke to his companion Patroclus,

calling from beside the ship; and he heard it in the hut

and came out, the equal of Ares — and that was the beginning of his evil.³⁷

605Menoetius's stout son spoke to him first:

"Why do you call me, Achilles? What need have you of me?"

Answering him spoke swift-footed Achilles:

"Brilliant son of Menoetius, delight of my heart,

now I think the Achaeans will soon stand about my knees

610begging; for the need that has come will not be borne.

But go now, Patroclus dear to Zeus, and ask Nestor

who this wounded man is he brings out of the fighting.

From behind, he looks in every way like Machaon,

Asclepius' son — but I did not see the man's eyes,

615for the horses shot past me, straining forward."

So he spoke, and Patroclus obeyed his dear companion,

and set off running along the huts and ships of the Achaeans.

Now when the others reached the hut of Neleus' son,

they stepped down onto the earth that feeds so many,

620and Eurymedon, the old man's aide, loosed the horses

from the chariot; and the two men cooled the sweat from their tunics,

standing in the breeze by the shore of the sea; and then

they went into the hut and sat down on the couches.

And lovely-braided Hecamede made them a posset —

625the woman the old man took out of Tenedos, when Achilles sacked it,

daughter of great-hearted Arsinous; the Achaeans

had picked her out for him, because in counsel he was best of all.

First she drew up before the two of them a table,

fair, blue-enameled at the feet, well polished, and on it

630a bronze basket, and an onion beside it, relish for the drink,

and pale honey, and beside it the meal of sacred barley,

and a magnificent cup, which the old man had brought from home,

studded with golden nails. Four handles

it had, and about each one a pair of golden doves

635was feeding, and beneath it were two supports.

Another man could barely have shifted it from the table

when it was full; but Nestor, the old man, raised it without strain.³⁸

In it the woman like the goddesses mixed them the posset

with Pramnian wine, and over it grated goat's-milk cheese

640with a bronze grater, and sprinkled white barley on top,

and invited them to drink, when she had made the posset ready.³⁹

And when the two had drunk, and put away their parching thirst,

they took their pleasure in talk, telling tales to one another;

and Patroclus stood at the door, a man like a god.

645Seeing him, the old man rose from his shining chair,

took him by the hand, led him in, and pressed him to be seated.

But Patroclus, from where he stood, declined, and spoke a word:

"No seat for me, aged sir, Zeus-nurtured; you will not persuade me.

To be respected — and feared — is the man who sent me, to learn

650who this man is you bring in wounded. But I myself

can see; I recognize Machaon, shepherd of the people.

Now I will go back with the word, a messenger to Achilles.

And you know well, aged sir, Zeus-nurtured, what kind of man

he is — a terrible man. He would quickly blame even the blameless."⁴⁰

655Then answered him the Gerenian horseman Nestor:

"Why is Achilles so full of pity now for the sons of the Achaeans,

for all who have been hit by missiles? He knows nothing

of the grief that has risen through the army: the best men

lie by the ships, hit from afar or stabbed close.

660Hit is Tydeus' son, strong Diomedes;

stabbed is Odysseus, famed with the spear; and Agamemnon;

and hit too is Eurypylus, by an arrow in the thigh;

and this man here is another, whom I have just brought

out of the fighting, hit by an arrow from the bowstring. But Achilles,

665brave as he is, has no care for the Danaans and no pity.

Is he waiting until the swift ships by the sea,

against the will of the Argives, are warm with consuming fire,

and we ourselves are killed one after another? For my strength

is not what once it was in my supple limbs.

670Would that I were young like that, my strength still steady,

as when the quarrel arose between us and the Eleians

over a cattle-raid, when I killed Itymoneus,

Hypeirochus' brave son, who lived in Elis,

as I drove off our reprisal. Defending his cattle

675he was hit among the foremost by a javelin from my hand,

and fell; and his country people scattered in terror.

And we drove together plunder out of that plain past counting:

fifty herds of cattle, as many flocks of sheep,

as many droves of pigs, as many wide-ranging herds of goats,

680and a hundred and fifty tawny horses,

all mares, and many with foals beneath them.

All these we drove at night into Neleian Pylos,

into the town; and Neleus was glad at heart

that so much had fallen to me, going young to war.

685And with the showing of dawn the heralds cried aloud

for all to come who were owed a debt in brilliant Elis;

and the leading men of the Pylians gathered together

and divided it up — for the Epeians owed a debt to many,

few and battered as we were in Pylos:

690for the might of Heracles had come and battered us

in the years before, and all our best men had been killed.

Twelve sons of blameless Neleus we had been,

and of these I alone was left; the others had all perished.

Puffed up over all this, the bronze-shirted Epeians

695treated us with outrage, and devised their reckless works.

And the old man chose out for himself a herd of cattle

and a great flock of sheep — three hundred, with their herdsmen —

for a great debt was owed to him in brilliant Elis:

four prize-winning horses, chariot and all,

700come to the games to compete — for a tripod they were

to race — and Augeias, lord of men, kept them

there, and sent their driver home grieving for his horses.

Angered by all this, words and deeds alike, the old man

chose out a mass past telling; and the rest he gave to the people

705to divide, so no man might go cheated of his fair share.

So we were settling each matter, and around the town

were offering sacrifice to the gods; and on the third day they came,

all of them at once, men in numbers and whole-hoofed horses,

in full force; and with them the two Moliones armed,

710boys still, not yet well skilled in rushing courage.

There is a city, Thryoessa, a steep hill

far off on the Alpheius, at the edge of sandy Pylos:

this they besieged, furious to raze it to the ground.

But when they had crossed the whole plain, Athena

715came running to us by night, a messenger from Olympus,

crying "To arms!" — and no unwilling army did she gather

in Pylos: men hot to fight. But Neleus would not

let me arm myself, and hid my horses,

for he said I did not yet know the works of war.

720Even so I stood out among our own horsemen,

on foot as I was, since Athena led the quarrel so.

There is a river, Minyeïus, that falls into the sea

near Arene, where we waited for the brilliant Dawn,

we horsemen of the Pylians, while the streams of foot-soldiers flowed in.

725From there in full force, armed in our gear,

we came by midday to the sacred stream of Alpheius.

There we sacrificed fine victims to Zeus the almighty,

a bull to Alpheius, a bull to Poseidon,

and to grey-eyed Athena a cow of the herd,

730and then took supper through the camp by companies,

and lay down to sleep, each man in his armor,

along the streams of the river. And the great-hearted Epeians

stood round the city, furious to raze it to the ground;

but before that could be, a great work of Ares showed before them:

735for when the blazing sun stood clear above the earth,

we joined battle, praying to Zeus and Athena.

And when the fight between Pylians and Epeians began,

I was first to kill a man — and I took his whole-hoofed horses —

Mulius the spearman. He was Augeias' son-in-law,

740husband of his eldest daughter, tawny-haired Agamede,

who knew as many drugs as the wide earth grows.

As he came on I hit him with the bronze-headed spear,

and he crashed in the dust; and I, springing into his chariot,

took my stand among the front-fighters. And the great-hearted Epeians

745fled in terror every man a different way, when they saw the man fallen

who led their horsemen, who was their best in battle.

And I charged in on them like a black squall,

and took fifty chariots, and around each one two men

caught the earth in their teeth, broken under my spear.

750And now I would have cut down the two Moliones, Actor's line,

had not their father, the wide-ruling earth-shaker,

saved them out of the war, wrapping them in thick mist.

Then Zeus handed great power to the Pylians:

for we followed them across the wide plain,

755killing the men and gathering up their fine armor,

until we drove our horses to Buprasion rich in wheat

and the Olenian rock, and where the hill is called

the hill of Alesion; from there Athena turned our army back.

There I killed the last man and left him. And the Achaeans

760steered their swift horses back from Buprasion to Pylos,

and all gave glory among gods to Zeus, and among men to Nestor.

Such was I among men — if ever I was. But Achilles⁴¹

will have the profit of his valor alone. And yet I think

he will weep for it bitterly, when the army has perished.

765Dear boy, this was surely what Menoetius charged you

on that day when he sent you out of Phthia to Agamemnon.

The two of us were inside — I and brilliant Odysseus —

and heard it all in the halls, everything he charged you.

We had come to the well-built house of Peleus,

770gathering the army through Achaea that feeds so many,

and there inside we found the hero Menoetius,

and you, and Achilles beside you. The old horseman Peleus

was burning the fat thigh-pieces of an ox to Zeus who delights in thunder,

in the enclosure of the court; and he held a golden cup,

775pouring the fire-bright wine over the burning offerings.

The two of you were busy with the ox's flesh; and we two

stood in the doorway. Achilles sprang up amazed,

took us by the hand, led us in, and pressed us to be seated,

and set out a guest-meal well, all that is due to guests.

780And when we had taken our pleasure of eating and drinking,

I began the talk, and urged the two of you to follow us;

and you were both entirely willing, and both fathers charged you well.

Old Peleus charged his son Achilles

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

785and to you Menoetius, Actor's son, gave this charge:

'My child, in birth Achilles is above you,

but you are the elder — though in strength he is far the better.

Speak to him a close-packed word; advise him well;

give him direction: he will listen — for his own good.'⁴²

790So the old man charged you — and you have forgotten. Yet even now

you might say all this to war-minded Achilles, and he might listen.

Who knows whether, with a god's help, you might stir his heart

by your persuading? The persuasion of a companion is a good thing.

But if in his heart he is dodging some prophecy,

795something his lady mother has told him from Zeus,

then let him send you out at least, and let the rest of the army

of Myrmidons follow, and you may be a light to the Danaans;

and let him give you his fine armor to carry into the war,

so that the Trojans may take you for him, and hold back

800from the fighting, and the warlike sons of the Achaeans catch their breath,

worn as they are; for the breathing-spaces of war are few.

Fresh men, with one shout, could easily push men weary

of battle back on the city, away from the ships and the huts."⁴³

So he spoke, and stirred the heart in Patroclus's chest,

805and he set off running along the ships to Achilles, son of Aeacus.

But when in his running Patroclus came to the ships

of godlike Odysseus, where the assembly and the judgment-ground

lay, and where the altars of the gods were built,

there wounded Eurypylus met him,

810Euaemon's Zeus-sprung son, hit in the thigh by the arrow,

limping out of the battle; the sweat ran streaming down

his shoulders and his head, and from the grievous wound

the black blood trickled; but his mind held firm.

Seeing him, Menoetius's stout son pitied him,

815and in sorrow he spoke winged words:

"Poor wretches, leaders and lords of the Danaans!

So it was your fate, far from your friends and your fatherland,

to glut the quick dogs of Troy with your white fat.

But come, tell me this, Zeus-nurtured Eurypylus, hero:

820will the Achaeans somehow still hold gigantic Hector,

or will they perish now, broken under his spear?"

And wounded Eurypylus answered him face to face:

"No longer, Zeus-sprung Patroclus, will there be any bulwark

of the Achaeans; they will fall upon the black ships.

825For all the men who before were our best

lie by the ships, hit from afar or stabbed close

at Trojan hands; and the enemy's strength rises and rises.

But save me now — take me to my black ship,

and cut the arrow out of my thigh, and wash the black blood

830from it with warm water, and sprinkle on the wound the gentle drugs,

the good ones they say you have learned of from Achilles,

whom Chiron taught, the most righteous of the Centaurs.

For the healers, Podaleirius and Machaon —

one, I think, lies wounded in the huts,

835himself in need of a blameless healer,

and the other waits on the plain for the sharp war-god of the Trojans."

Then Menoetius's stout son answered him:

"How can these things be? What are we to do, Eurypylus, hero?

I am on my way to tell war-minded Achilles the word

840that Nestor, the Gerenian, warden of the Achaeans, charged me with;

but even so I will not abandon you in your suffering."

He spoke, and gripping him under the chest led the shepherd of the people

to his hut; and his aide, seeing them, spread down oxhides.

There Patroclus laid him at full length, and with a knife cut

845the sharp, biting arrow out of his thigh, and washed the black blood

from it with warm water, and cast on a bitter root,

rubbing it between his hands, a pain-killer, which stayed

all his pains; and the wound began to dry, and the blood stopped.⁴⁴

Notes

1 lines 1–2 — Dawn rises "from her bed beside illustrious Tithonus" — the same couplet opens Odyssey 5, a famous cross-epic doublet. Tithonus is the Trojan prince (brother of Priam, 20.237) whom Dawn carried off as her consort; the story of his withering immortality is later. A new dawn-formula for the register, distinct from "early-born rosy-fingered Dawn": this is the dawn of the poem's longest day, which will not set until 18.239-242. ↩

2 lines 3–14 — Strife (Eris) opens the day as Dream opened Book 2 — Zeus's emissary to a sleeping army. Lines 5-9 repeat the camp geometry of 8.222-226 in our same words: Odysseus's ship lies at the midpoint of the beached fleet, Ajax and Achilles hold the exposed ends. And 13-14 repeat 2.453-454 ("war became sweeter to them than going home...") — there the effect of Odysseus and Athena rallying a mob that had run for the ships; here the work of a shrieking goddess. Ancient critics (Zenodotus omitted, Aristophanes and Aristarchus athetized) judged the couplet wrongly repeated here; the poet's point may be exactly the repetition: what rhetoric did in Book 2, mere din does now. ↩

3 lines 20–23 — Cinyras, legendary king of Cyprus — the island's only appearance in the Iliad. He hears the "great report" (κλέος) of the coming war and buys his distance from it with a corslet: a guest-gift as diplomatic exemption. Later tradition made him promise fifty ships and send one real ship and forty-nine clay models; the poem knows only the elegant bribe. ↩

4 lines 24–28 — κύανος, rendered "blue enamel," is dark-blue glass paste or niello inlay — a genuine Bronze Age luxury technique (the inlaid daggers of Mycenae). Serpents "like rainbows" that Zeus "sets in a cloud, a portent for mortal men": the rainbow as omen of war or storm (17.547-549), armor that carries the day's weather on the king's chest. ↩

5 lines 36–37 — The Gorgon between Terror and Panic (Deimos and Phobos, capitalized personifications since 4.440): the shield's face is the face of battle itself — cf. the aegis at 5.739-742, which carries the same company. ↩

6 lines 45–46 — Athena and Hera thunder in honor of "the king of Mycenae rich in gold" — a unique gesture: thunder is Zeus's instrument, but the arming of the paramount king draws a salute from the two pro-Achaean goddesses. The aristeia of Agamemnon is thus formally announced; it will last some two hundred lines. ↩

7 lines 52–55 — Zeus rains dew dripping with blood — the sky itself hemorrhaging before the killing (again at 16.459, for Sarpedon, where the drops are explicitly tears). Line 55 reads "many strong heads" where the proem (1.3) has "many strong souls"; ancient copies show the variant ψυχάς here too — the echo of the poem's opening is audible either way. ↩

8 lines 62–66 — Hector as the "baleful star" (οὔλιος ἀστήρ) that shows and hides among clouds: the star similes track him and Achilles across the poem until Achilles becomes the Dog Star itself at 22.26-31 — "brightest of all, but an evil sign." ↩

9 lines 67–73 — The reapers: two lines of harvesters facing each other, driving swathes toward the middle of a rich man's field — armies as farmhands, the plain as harvest. "The battle held their heads level" (72): the fighting itself is the subject, holding the two lines like a beam of scales (cf. Zeus's actual scales, 8.69). Then the wolves; and Strife alone of the gods present, rejoicing — the day's one spectator-deity on the field, while Zeus watches from Ida "exulting in his glory." ↩

10 lines 78–83 — The gods sit at home blaming Zeus; he ignores them. Zenodotus omitted the passage and Aristophanes and Aristarchus athetized it, apparently as inconsistent with the gods' oath- bound quiescence of Book 8. But the tableau — all heaven sulking in its fine houses while one god watches the killing with pleasure — is the day's theology in miniature. ↩

11 lines 84–91 — The register morning-line (fixed at 8.66-67) is followed by the poem's homeliest time-stamp: the hour when the woodcutter, arms weary, makes his midday meal. Homer's clock runs on labor, not hours — dawn, the woodcutter's dinner, the unyoking of oxen (16.779). At that hour the line breaks, and the aristeia proper begins. ↩

12 lines 101–112 — Isus and Antiphus: Achilles once caught these same two on Ida, bound them with willow shoots, and released them for ransom — pastoral war, an economy of capture and return. Agamemnon recognizes them and kills them: the third ransom-refusal of the poem (6.45-65 Adrestus; 10.378-457 Dolon) and the mark of what the war has become since Achilles left it. ↩

13 lines 122–147 — Peisander and Hippolochus: their father Antimachus took Paris's gold to block the return of Helen, and proposed murdering the ambassador Menelaus (the embassy of 3.205-224). Agamemnon's sentence — "now you will pay for your father's foul outrage" — is justice as inherited debt, and the execution (hands sheared off, head struck off, the trunk sent "rolling like a stone") is the poem's most clinical mutilation. The frame is a bitter pun kept from the Greek: they beg "with honeyed words" (μειλιχίοις) and hear a voice "unhoneyed" (ἀμείλικτον). Compare 21.98-135, where Achilles will answer a suppliant's plea with the same adjective and worse. ↩

14 lines 159–162 — The empty chariots rattling down the causeways, their drivers "far dearer now to the vultures than to their wives" — the aristeia's cost stated in one hexameter of domestic arithmetic. It prepares the Iphidamas vignette (note [20]). ↩

15 lines 166–168 — The rout streams past the tomb of Ilus and the wild fig tree: the plain's fixed survey-marks (the tomb: 10.415, and again 11.371; the fig tree: 6.433, 22.145). Landmarks let the audience feel the front move — from mid-plain to the Scaean Gates and the oak, and back again within the book. ↩

16 lines 172–178 — "in the milking-dark of night" (νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ) — an already-obscure formula (recurring 15.324, 22.28, 22.317) connected by the ancients with milking-time; the lion who scatters the whole herd but eviscerates one cow is Agamemnon exactly: the multitude flees, the hindmost dies. ↩

17 lines 179–180 — Omitted by Zenodotus, athetized by Aristarchus (179-180) and Aristophanes (180): the couplet generalizing the slaughter ("many fell from their chariots...") judged a weak doublet of what precedes. ↩

18 lines 185–194 — Zeus's message is the day's script, delivered in advance: Agamemnon's wounding as the trigger-clause, Hector's power to run "until he reaches the ships and the sun goes down and the sacred darkness comes on." Everything from here to 18.242 executes this sentence. Iris relays it with the change the grammar demands and nothing more (202-209 = 187-194) — divine messages are verbatim or they are nothing (cf. 2.23-33). ↩

19 lines 218–220 — The Muse-invocation repeats 2.484 in our fixed line — full formality for a single duel: Iphidamas is granted a catalogue-style entrance, which is his funeral honor too (the other invocations: 2.484, 14.508, 16.112). ↩

20 lines 221–247 — Iphidamas of Thrace: raised by his grandfather Cisses, married to his young aunt (Theano's sister — the poet does not pause over it), he left the bridal chamber for the war and "slept a sleep of bronze" — χάλκεον ὕπνον, the poem's hardest metal laid over its softest noun. The bride-price arithmetic — a hundred cattle down, a thousand head promised — turns the obituary into a ledger: everything paid, nothing enjoyed. This is the Iliad's marriage-economics of death at its most explicit, and the template for Protesilaus (2.700-702) and for Othryoneus later (13.363-382). ↩

21 lines 248–263 — Coon wounds Agamemnon and dies trying to drag his brother's body clear; Agamemnon beheads him over the corpse — the two sons of Antenor "filled up their measure of doom" in one another's arms. Antenor, the Trojan advocate of returning Helen (7.347-353), loses two sons in this book to the king Helen was taken from; the poet says nothing, and the silence does the work. ↩

22 lines 269–272 — The wounded king's pain is a woman's labor: the sharp shaft the Eileithyiai send, "Hera's daughters, keepers of the bitter pangs." The inversion is deliberate and unique — the most masculine act in the heroic economy, the aristeia, ends in the most feminine of agonies; war-wound and birth-pang are the poem's two involuntary cries. The Eileithyiai (birth-goddesses) enter the register here; one returns at 16.187, 19.103. ↩

23 lines 299–300 — The narrator's roll-call question, fixed at 5.703: here it marks the transfer of the aristeia — the same frame that measured Hector-and-Ares now measures Hector alone, with "when Zeus gave him the glory" as the ominous answer-clause. ↩

24 lines 310–319 — The register despair-line (8.130) sounds again, and Diomedes' answer to Odysseus is the day's arithmetic at its most honest: I will stand, "but small will be our profit," since Zeus wills it otherwise. Piety and futility in one breath — the last speech of Diomedes' fighting day. ↩

25 lines 328–334 — The two sons of Merops of Percote fall to Diomedes: lines 329-332 repeat their Catalogue entry (2.831-834) almost verbatim, our wording kept. The Catalogue planted the seer-father who foresaw and forbade and was not obeyed; Book 11 harvests it. Compare 5.148-151 (the sons of the dream-reader). ↩

26 lines 349–356 — Diomedes' cast rings off the helmet "which Phoebus Apollo gave him" — divine equipment as plot-armor — yet Hector goes down; 355-356 repeat 5.309-310 (Aeneas's swoon), our words kept, and the ancients athetized the repeat here. Hector's day of guaranteed glory (192-194) nearly ends at its opening: the promise covered the outcome, not the pain. ↩

27 lines 362–367 — "Dog! Again you have run out from under death..." — this six-line taunt returns, word for word, in Achilles' mouth at 20.449-454. Diomedes has been the poem's stand-in Achilles all through the middle books; here he even pre-speaks him. Reuse the English verbatim there. ↩

28 lines 369–379 — Paris shoots from the tomb of Ilus, leaning on the ancestor's grave-pillar — the city's founder as cover for the city's most criticized fighter — and comes up "laughing very sweetly." Three captains leave the field by his arrows in this book (Diomedes, Machaon, Eurypylus): the day of the bow. ↩

29 lines 385–395 — "Bowman, foul-mouth, glorious with your curls, ogler of girls" — the concentrated contempt-vocabulary of the spear-ethos. "Glorious with your curls" renders κέρᾳ ἀγλαέ, an old crux: "horn" was read by some ancients as the horn bow, by others as a horn-shaped lovelock (the reading our translation follows; the apparatus records the living dispute). Diomedes' disdain — "I care no more than if a woman had hit me, or a witless child" — is the poem's fullest statement of the bow's dishonor; yet the arrow-graze sends him from the field for the rest of the epic's fighting, and an arrow of Paris will one day kill Achilles (19.416-417, 22.359-360). The taunt loses the war. ↩

30 lines 401–410 — Odysseus alone: the poem's first full deliberative soliloquy ("Troubled, he spoke to his own great-hearted spirit" — a frame that will recur for Menelaus, Agenor, Hector). The deliberation runs the heroic code to its bare axiom: "cowards walk away; whoever would be best must stand, hit or hitting." Hector's fatal monologue at 22.99-130 is this scene's dark twin — there the same logic will forbid the retreat that would have saved him. ↩

31 lines 428–433 — Socus — the only man in the poem to wound Odysseus — addresses him with a new-minted title: "Odysseus of the many tales, insatiate of tricks and of labor." Even his enemies speak his epithets; the compliment is the challenge. ↩

32 lines 450–455 — Odysseus over Socus: your parents will not close your eyes; the birds will have you; "but me, when I die, the brilliant Achaeans will bury with honors." The grimmest speech Odysseus makes in the Iliad — burial as the last competitive good, boasted over a corpse (Plutarch quotes the lines in his Consolation). It is the exact inverse of the poem's ending, where the enemy dead is given back for burial. ↩

33 lines 473–484 — The triple simile: jackals round the arrowed stag — until "some god leads in" a lion who scatters them and eats. Ajax arrives as the lion; the rescued Odysseus, uncomfortably, occupies the stag's place, and the "rescue" is another predation. In 480 Zenodotus read "hollow" for "shadowy" grove, and some copies inserted a line naming the shield of Tychius (= 7.220) after 485 — the apparatus notes both; the printed text keeps neither. ↩

34 lines 514–515 — "A healer is a man worth many other men together" — proverbial ever after; the specifying line 515 ("at cutting out arrows and sprinkling gentle drugs") was omitted by Zenodotus and athetized by Aristophanes and Aristarchus as a prosaic gloss. Homeric medicine is exactly these two skills — extraction and pharmacy — practiced by warriors: Machaon and Podaleirius are fighting doctors, and when both are down the craft passes to laymen taught by laymen (830-832: Patroclus, taught by Achilles, taught by Chiron). ↩

35 line 543 — Our printed Greek text genuinely lacks line 543 (the numbering jumps 542 to 544): the line was absent from the medieval manuscripts and is known because Aristotle quotes it, discussing righteous indignation (Rhetoric 1387a; cf. Plutarch's citations of the passage): "for Zeus would be indignant with him, whenever he fought a better man" — Ajax retreating not from Hector but from theology. Editors since Wolf print it in brackets; our source omits it as the OCT records, and the translation reproduces the gap. With 9.458-461, this is the second transmission-wound this project keeps visible. ↩

36 lines 544–565 — The double simile of Ajax's retreat: first the lion driven all night from the cattle-yard by dogs, javelins, and firebrands, going off "sullen at heart" at dawn; then, without pause, the donkey — slow, stick-broken, cropping the deep grain while boys beat him, leaving only when he is full. The lion was athetized by Zenodotus (548-557), and ancient taste flinched at the donkey; but the pair is the whole portrait: nobility from inside Ajax's chest, comedy from outside — the strongest man in the army backing away at his own pace, the only donkey in Homer, and one of the great tonal risks in epic. ↩

37 lines 596–604 — The hinge of the Iliad. Achilles, "gazing at the sheer toil and the tearful rout" from his stern — spectator by choice — sees Nestor pass with a wounded man and calls out Patroclus, who comes out "the equal of Ares — and that was the beginning of his evil" (ἔκμολεν ἶσος Ἄρηϊ, κακοῦ δ' ἄρα οἱ πέλεν ἀρχή). The narrator breaks his own reticence to mark the moment: a door opens, and the poem names it fate. Achilles' stated hope — "now I think the Achaeans will soon stand about my knees begging" — shows the wrath still fed by the sight; his curiosity about one wounded man is what kills his friend. ↩

38 lines 632–637 — The cup of Nestor: golden studs, four handles, doves feeding at each — and the poet's tape-measure detail that another man could barely lift it full, "but Nestor, the old man, raised it without strain." On a clay cup from Pithekoussai (Ischia), c. 730-720 BC, someone scratched three lines: "I am the cup of Nestor, good to drink from; whoever drinks from me, straightway desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite will seize." It is among the oldest surviving Greek writing — and it is a joke that only works on an audience that already knew this passage: the earliest external witness to the Iliad in circulation. Scholars have matched the described cup to Mycenaean finds (the gold "dove cup" from Shaft Grave IV); the poem's furniture is centuries older than the poem. ↩

39 lines 624–641 — Hecamede — Nestor's prize-woman from Tenedos, sacked by Achilles (every comfort in this hut traces back to the man refusing to fight) — mixes the κυκεών, "posset": Pramnian wine, grated goat's-milk cheese, white barley, with honey and onion as relish alongside. Plato quotes the recipe (Ion 538c) — and elsewhere (Republic 405e-406a) makes it a scandal of Homeric medicine that a wine posset is served to wounded men; Machaon, shot through the shoulder, drinks it. The same drink, drugged, is Circe's instrument in Odyssey 10 — the ordinary hospitality this scene shows straight. ↩

40 line 654 — "a terrible man. He would quickly blame even the blameless" — Patroclus on Achilles, the poem's most intimate character-note: fear inside love. Plutarch quotes the line (How to Tell a Flatterer). Patroclus will say the harder version to Achilles' face at 16.29-35 ("your parent was the grey sea and the cliffs"). ↩

41 lines 656–762 — Nestor's Pylian epic, his longest memory: the cattle-raid against Elis, the debt-division at dawn, Heracles' devastation of Pylos (eleven brothers dead), the Moliones saved by their father Poseidon, and Nestor's first aristeia — fifty chariots taken, "two men around each." Its function is paradigm: the young Nestor fought although Neleus forbade him and hid his horses; Achilles, with every power to fight, withholds. (One line of the tale, 699, is flagged in the scholia as suspected spurious.) The close is the old man's whole tragedy in seven words: "Such was I among men — if ever I was" (εἴ ποτ' ἔον γε) — glory so far off that its owner half-doubts it happened. ↩

42 lines 765–790 — The send-off at Peleus's house: the embassy of recruitment, the sacrifice in the courtyard, young Achilles leaping up to seat the guests — the poem's one glimpse of its hero at home, in a scene of pure xenia. Peleus's charge repeats 6.208 word for word in Greek and in our English — "always to be the best, and to hold one's head above all others" — the aristocratic imperative issued identically to Glaucus and to Achilles; and against it Menoetius sets the other ethic: you are lesser-born and weaker, but older — advise him. Patroclus's whole life is in that division of labor. Aristophanes and Aristarchus athetized 767-785 (the reminiscence's core!) as inconsistent in its geography; the vulgate kept it, and so does the printed text. ↩

43 lines 794–803 — The fatal plan, invented by Nestor: if a prophecy holds Achilles back, "let him send you out at least... and let him give you his fine armor to carry into the war, so that the Trojans may take you for him." Patroclus will repeat these lines to Achilles nearly verbatim at 16.36-45 — reuse this English there. Ancient critics chipped at the passage from both ends (794-795 athetized by Zenodotus; 802-803 by Aristarchus, as lifted from 16.44-45 — where they stand in Patroclus's mouth). "You may be a light to the Danaans": the image is of the beacon-fire — and what the disguise actually buys is Patroclus's death, Hector's brief triumph, and Achilles' return. The oldest man in the army, meaning pure good, sets the poem's catastrophe in motion in ten lines. ↩

44 lines 804–848 — The delay that structures the middle of the poem: Patroclus, running back with Nestor's words in him, is stopped at the assembly-ground by wounded Eurypylus, pities him, and stays — "even so I will not abandon you in your suffering." He cuts out the arrow, washes the wound, crushes the bitter root: the healer's craft learned from Achilles, learned from Chiron "the most righteous of the Centaurs" — the gentlest genealogy in the poem, running through its two great killers. Patroclus will still be in this hut at 15.390-404, and what finally moves him is watching the wall fail. The book's last clause — "and the wound began to dry, and the blood stopped" — repeats 267 exactly: Agamemnon's wound opened the day's subtraction, Eurypylus's closes the book; between the two dryings, the poem has chosen its victim. ↩