Book XII

The battle at the wall: the Trojans storm it on foot, Sarpedon states the heroic contract, Hector overrules the omen, and the gate goes down.

Translator’s note on Book 12

The shortest book of the Iliad so far translated is also its most tightly built: a single military action — the storming of the Achaean wall — organized as a sequence of thresholds: ditch, gates, breastwork, bar; and at each threshold, a debate. Polydamas counsels leaving the chariots, and Hector accepts; Asius refuses, and the narrator files his death-notice in advance (note 7); Polydamas reads the eagle-and-snake omen and counsels retreat, and Hector answers with the most quoted line of the poem — "One bird-sign is best: to fight for your fatherland" (243) — an answer that is magnificent, politically immortal, and wrong (note 12). The book's crown is Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus (310-328), the classic statement of why kings fight — honor received obliges honor paid, and since death comes anyway, the only choice left is the manner — the exact contract whose repudiation by Achilles in Book 9 the poem has already staged (note 19).

The opening is unlike anything else in Homer: the narrator steps out of the story's time to tell how, after the war, Poseidon and Apollo turned eight rivers against the wall and erased it from the beach (3-35) — epic covering its own tracks, since no trace of the wall survived to be seen; the passage contains the poem's only "race of half-god men," the heroes seen for once from the far side of the gulf that separates them from the audience (note 2). Equally unusual is the narrator's cry of overload at 176 — "hard for me to tell it all through, as though I were a god" — which ancient critics athetized, perhaps for its very humanity (note 10).

Throughout, the poet measures the widest war by the smallest peace: stones fall like snow muffling the works of men (note 16); the deadlock is two farmers with measuring-rods disputing a boundary (note 27); the balance of battle is an honest wool-worker's scale, held level "to win a pitiful wage for her children" (note 28). Then Hector lifts the stone two men of today could not shift, breaks the double gate, and leaps through "in his face the very likeness of swift night" — and the book ends inside the breach, the Danaans in rout among their ships, nothing resolved except the door.

Register notes: 12.96-97 reuse the Asius entry of the Catalogue (2.838-839) verbatim; the Lapiths keep their Book 2 epithets; "such as mortals are now" recurs twice (383, 449) in its fixed form; and Menestheus's message is relayed by the herald almost word for word (343-350 = 354-363) — the verbatim discipline of messengers, kept.

1So in the huts Menoetius's stout son

was healing wounded Eurypylus. But the others fought on,¹

Argives and Trojans in their masses; nor was the ditch

to hold much longer, nor the wide wall above it

5the Danaans built to shield the ships — they drove the ditch

around it, but gave the gods no glorious hecatombs —

so that it might guard for them the swift ships and the great

plunder within. It was built against the will of the gods,

the immortals; and so it stood firm for no long time.

10So long as Hector was alive, and Achilles in his wrath,

and the city of lord Priam unsacked,

so long the great wall of the Achaeans too stood firm.

But when all the best of the Trojans had died,

and of the Argives many were broken, though some were left,

15and Priam's city was sacked in the tenth year,

and the Argives had gone in their ships to their dear fatherland,

then at last Poseidon and Apollo took counsel

to wash the wall away, turning against it the fury of rivers,

all that flow from the mountains of Ida down to the sea:

20Rhesus and Heptaporus, Caresus and Rhodius,

Granicus and Aesepus, and brilliant Scamander,

and Simois, where so many oxhide shields and helmets

had fallen in the dust, and the race of half-god men:

the mouths of all these Phoebus Apollo turned together,

25and nine days hurled their flood against the wall; and Zeus rained

without ceasing, to drown the wall in sea the sooner.

And the earth-shaker himself, trident in hand,

led them, and sent out on the waves all the foundations

of beams and stones the Achaeans had laid with labor,

30and made all smooth along the strong-flowing Hellespont,

and covered the great beach over again with sand,

the wall washed away; and he turned the rivers back to run

in their channels, where before they had poured their fair streams.²

So Poseidon and Apollo were to dispose of it

35hereafter. But now battle and clamor blazed

around the well-built wall, and the beams of the towers rang

under the blows. The Argives, broken under the whip of Zeus,

were penned by the hollow ships and held there,

dreading Hector, the strong machine of rout;

40while he, as before, fought on like a whirlwind.

As when among hounds and hunting men

a boar or lion wheels, glorying in his strength,

and they form themselves into a tower-line

and stand to face him, hurling from their hands

45spearheads thick and fast; but his glorious heart

knows no fear and no flight — and his courage kills him —³

and again and again he wheels, testing the ranks of men,

and wherever he charges, there the ranks of men give way:

so Hector went through the crowd and begged his companions,

50urging them to cross the ditch. But his swift-footed horses

did not dare it; loudly they neighed, standing

at the very lip, for the wide ditch frightened them off —

not easy to leap from close up, nor to drive across,

for overhanging banks stood all around it

55on both sides, and above it was fitted with pointed

stakes, planted by the sons of the Achaeans,

close-set and great, a defense against enemy men.

A horse straining at a well-wheeled chariot could not easily

get in; but the foot-soldiers were mad to try it.

60Then Polydamas came and stood by daring Hector:

"Hector, and you other leaders of Trojans and allies,

it is folly to drive our swift horses across the ditch.

It is very hard to cross: sharp stakes

stand in it, and right up against them is the Achaeans' wall.

65There is no way down there, no way to fight

for men in chariots: the space is narrow, and I think we would be hurt.

For if Zeus who thunders on high, with evil in mind,

is wiping out the Achaeans utterly, eager to help the Trojans,

then I too would wish it done this very instant —

70the Achaeans perishing here, nameless, far from Argos.

But if they turn on us, and we are driven back

from the ships, and get ourselves tangled in the dug ditch,

then not even a messenger, I think, will make it back

to the city, once the Achaeans have wheeled on us.

75Come then — as I say it, let us all obey:

let the aides hold the horses at the ditch,

while we ourselves, on foot, armed in our gear,

follow Hector in one mass; and the Achaeans

will not hold, if the cables of destruction are fastened on them."

80So spoke Polydamas, and the prudent word pleased Hector,⁴

and at once he leapt with his weapons from the chariot to the ground.

Nor did the other Trojans stay massed on their chariots:

they all sprang down, when they saw brilliant Hector do it.

Then each man gave his charioteer the order

85to hold the horses in good order there at the ditch;

and they divided, formed themselves in companies,

and marshaled in five bodies they followed their leaders.

Those who went with Hector and blameless Polydamas

were the most and the best, and were most determined

90to break the wall and fight beside the hollow ships;

and Cebriones followed as third man — by the chariot

Hector had left another man, a lesser one than Cebriones.

The second body Paris led, with Alcathous and Agenor;

the third, Helenus and godlike Deiphobus,

95two sons of Priam; the third with them was the hero Asius —

Asius, Hyrtacus' son, whom horses carried from Arisbe,⁵

tall and fire-colored, from the river Selleïs.

The fourth was led by Anchises' brave son

Aeneas, and with him Antenor's two sons,

100Archelochus and Acamas, well skilled in all fighting.

And Sarpedon led the far-famed allies,

choosing to himself Glaucus and warlike Asteropaeus,

for they seemed to him beyond dispute the best

of the rest after himself — he stood out even among all.⁶

105And when they had locked shields of worked oxhide together,

they went straight for the Danaans, hot with eagerness, certain

the Achaeans would hold no longer, but fall upon the black ships.

Then the other Trojans and their far-famed allies

obeyed the counsel of blameless Polydamas;

110but Asius, Hyrtacus' son, marshal of men, refused

to leave his horses there with his charioteer-aide:

with horses and all he drove at the swift ships —

the fool: he was not to dodge the evil death-spirits

and come home again, exulting in horses and chariot,

115back from the ships to windy Ilion.

Before that, fate of the hateful name closed round him

through the spear of Idomeneus, Deucalion's illustrious son.⁷

For he steered left of the ships, where the Achaeans

came back out of the plain with horses and chariots;

120there he drove his horses and car, and at the gates

he found the doors not shut, the long bar not in place:

men were holding them thrown open, hoping to save

any companion in flight from the battle, and bring him to the ships.

Straight for that point, deliberate, he held his horses, and his men

125followed, screaming sharply, certain the Achaeans

would hold no longer, but fall upon the black ships —

the fools: at the gates they found two men of the bravest,

high-hearted sons of Lapith spearmen,

one the son of Peirithous, strong Polypoetes,

130the other Leonteus, the equal of Ares bane of mortals.

These two, in front of the high gates,

stood like high-crowned oaks in the mountains

that abide the wind and rain through all their days,

fast-fixed by their great roots running deep —

135so the two of them, trusting their hands and their strength,

abode the coming of great Asius, and did not run.

But the Trojans, holding their dried-oxhide shields high,

came straight for the well-built wall with a great war-shout

around lord Asius, and Iamenus, and Orestes,

140and Asius's son Adamas, and Thoon, and Oenomaus.

And for a while the two, staying inside, were urging

the strong-greaved Achaeans to defend the ships;

but when they saw the Trojans storming at the wall,

and shouting and panic broke out among the Danaans,

145the two burst out and fought in front of the gates

like a pair of wild boars in the mountains

that stand the oncoming rabble of men and dogs,

and charging slantwise shatter the timber around them,

shearing it off at the root, and from under comes the noise

150of gnashing tusks, until a man's cast takes their life:

so the shining bronze on their chests rang under the blows

struck face to face; for they fought hard indeed,

trusting the troops above them and their own strength.⁸

For the men above hurled stones from the well-built towers,

155defending themselves, their huts,

and the swift-faring ships. Like snowflakes the stones fell earthward,

flakes a blustering wind, driving the shadowed clouds,

pours thick and fast on the earth that feeds so many:

so the missiles streamed from their hands, from Achaeans

160and Trojans alike; and helmets and bossed shields

rang harsh and dry, pounded with millstone rocks.

Then Asius, Hyrtacus' son, groaned aloud and struck

both his thighs, and spoke in outrage:

"Father Zeus, so even you, it turns out, are an utter

165lover of lies! I did not think the Achaean heroes

would stand our fury and our invincible hands —

and they, like wasps of the nimble waist, or bees

that make their homes beside a rocky road

and will not abandon their hollow house, but stay

170and fight off the raiding men for their children's sake,

so these men will not give back from the gates, two though they are,

until they kill or are taken."⁹

So he spoke, but speaking did not persuade the mind of Zeus:

his heart willed the glory for Hector.

175And others fought the fight at other gates —

hard for me to tell it all through, as though I were a god:¹⁰

for everywhere around the wall a prodigious fire had risen,

a fire of stone; and the Argives, grieved to the heart,

fought on for the ships by necessity; and the gods were downcast,

180all of them who were the Danaans' helpers in the fighting.

And the Lapiths clashed into war and combat.

There the son of Peirithous, strong Polypoetes,

hit Damasus with the spear through the bronze-cheeked helmet:

the bronze helmet did not hold; straight on through

185the bronze point broke the bone, and the brain

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

And after him he stripped the life from Pylon and Ormenus.

And Leonteus, scion of Ares, hit Antimachus's son

Hippomachus with the spear, catching him at the war-belt;

190then drawing his sharp sword out of its sheath

he sprang through the crowd and struck Antiphates first,

close-in, hand to hand; he crashed on his back on the ground;

and after him Menon, and Iamenus, and Orestes —

all these, one on another, he brought down to the earth that feeds so many.

195While they were stripping the glittering armor from these,

the young men who followed Polydamas and Hector,

who were the most and the best, and were most determined

to break the wall and set fire to the ships,

still stood at the ditch's edge and were divided in mind:

200for a bird had come upon them as they strained to cross:

an eagle, flying high, herding the army to the left,

carrying in its talons a monstrous blood-red snake,

alive, still writhing — and it had not forgotten its war-craft,

for it struck the bird that held it, on the chest beside the neck,

205coiling itself backward; and the eagle flung it from him earthward,

stung with the pain, and let it fall in the middle of the crowd,

and with a scream flew off down the gusts of the wind.

And the Trojans shuddered when they saw the writhing snake

lying in their midst: a portent of aegis-bearing Zeus.¹¹

210Then Polydamas came and stood by daring Hector:

"Hector, always somehow you rebuke me in the assemblies

though I counsel well — since it is never fitting, it seems,

for a man of the people to speak against you, in council

or ever in war, but always to swell your power.

215Yet now once more I will say what seems to me best.

Let us not go forward to fight the Danaans for the ships.

For this, I think, is how it will end — if truly

this bird came for the Trojans as they strained to cross:

an eagle, flying high, herding the army to the left,

220carrying in its talons a monstrous blood-red snake,

alive — and it dropped it before it reached its own nest,

and never finished carrying it home to give its young.

So we: even if we break the gates and the wall

of the Achaeans by main strength, and the Achaeans give way,

225we will come back from the ships in no good order by the same road;

for we will leave many Trojans behind, whom the Achaeans

will cut down with the bronze, defending their ships.

So a reader of gods' signs would interpret, one whose heart

truly knew the portents, and the people would believe him."

230Glaring at him darkly, Hector of the flashing helmet answered:

"Polydamas, this talk of yours pleases me no longer;

you know how to think another word, better than this one.

But if you truly say this thing in earnest,

then the gods themselves have destroyed your wits —

235you who tell me to forget the counsels of loud-thundering

Zeus, which he himself promised me, and bowed his head;

you who tell me to put my faith in birds

with wings outstretched. I take no thought of them, no care

whether they go to the right, toward the dawn and the sun,

240or to the left, toward the misty dark.

Let us put our faith in the counsel of great Zeus,

who is king over all mortals and immortals.

One bird-sign is best: to fight for your fatherland.¹²

Why are you so afraid of war and combat?

245For even if the rest of us are killed to a man

beside the Argive ships, you need not fear to perish:

your heart is not battle-staunch, not a fighter's heart.

But if you hang back from the fighting, or talk any other man

around with your words and turn him away from war,

250struck down at once under my spear you will lose your life."

So speaking he led the way, and they followed him

with a prodigious roar; and Zeus who delights in thunder

roused out of the mountains of Ida a squall of wind

that carried the dust straight at the ships; and it bewitched

255the mind of the Achaeans, and handed glory to the Trojans and Hector.¹³

Trusting his portents, then, and their own strength,

they set to trying to break the great wall of the Achaeans.

They dragged at the towers' galleries, pulled down the breastworks,

and levered up the jutting buttress-piles the Achaeans

260had set first in the earth to shore the towers:¹⁴

these they tried to pull out, hoping to break the wall

of the Achaeans. But the Danaans did not yet yield the path:

they fenced the breastworks with oxhide shields

and from behind them hurled at the enemy coming under the wall.

265And the two Ajaxes, marshaling on the towers,

ranged everywhere, urging on the fury of the Achaeans;

one man with honeyed words, another with hard ones

they would lash, whomever they saw hanging wholly back from the fight:

"Friends — you who are excellent among the Argives, you who are middling,

270you who are lesser — since men are in no way all equal

in war — now there is work for every man of you,¹⁵

and you know it yourselves. Let no one turn back

toward the ships now he has heard the man who drives you;

press forward instead, and call each other on,

275in hope that Olympian Zeus, lord of lightning, may grant us

to beat back the assault and drive our enemies to their city."

So the two, shouting ahead, stirred up the Achaeans' battle.

And as flakes of snow fall thick and fast on a winter's day,

when Zeus the counselor has bestirred himself to snow

280on mankind, and shows them what his missiles are,

and lulling the winds he pours it down steadily, until he has covered

the peaks of the high mountains, and the jutting headlands,

and the clover meadows, and men's rich worked fields;

and it is poured out over the harbors and shores of the grey sea,

285and only the wave, breaking on it, keeps it off; but all things else

are wrapped from above, when the storm of Zeus drives down upon it:¹⁶

so from both sides their stones flew thick and fast,

some onto the Trojans, some from Trojans onto Achaeans,

as they pelted each other; and over the whole wall the din rose.

290Yet not even then would the Trojans and glorious Hector

have broken the gates of the wall and the long bar,

had not Zeus the counselor roused his own son Sarpedon

against the Argives, like a lion on twist-horned cattle.¹⁷

At once he held before him his shield, balanced every way,

295fair, of hammered bronze, which the smith had hammered out,

stitching inside it oxhides thick and close

with golden rods running unbroken round the rim.¹⁸

Holding this before him, shaking his two spears,

he went his way like a mountain-bred lion who has long

300gone hungry for meat, and his proud spirit drives him

to make trial of the flocks, to go even into the close-built fold;

and even if he finds the herdsmen there beside them,

watching over the sheep with dogs and spears,

he will not be driven from the steading without his try:

305either he leaps in and seizes one, or himself

is hit among the foremost by a javelin from a quick hand:

so then his spirit drove godlike Sarpedon

to rush the wall and break through the breastworks.

And at once he spoke to Glaucus, Hippolochus's son:

310"Glaucus, why is it that we two are honored beyond all

with the seat of honor, and the cuts of meat, and full cups,

in Lycia, and all men look on us like gods,

and we are granted a great estate on the banks of Xanthus,

fine land, orchard and wheat-bearing plowland?

315For that, it is our duty now to stand among the first

of the Lycians, and to meet the blaze of battle,

so that many a Lycian in his close armor may say:

'No, they are not inglorious, these kings of ours

who rule in Lycia, who eat the fat sheep

320and drink the choice honey-sweet wine: their strength too

is noble, since they fight among the first of the Lycians.'

Old friend, if the two of us could escape this war

and live forever, ageless and immortal,

I would not fight among the foremost myself,

325nor would I send you into the battle where men win glory.

But now — since the death-spirits stand over us

in their thousands, and no mortal can flee them or slip past —

let us go: we will give the triumph to some man, or he to us."¹⁹

So he spoke; and Glaucus did not turn away or disobey,

330and the two went straight on, leading the great Lycian nation.

And Menestheus, Peteos' son, shuddered to see them,

for it was toward his tower they came, carrying ruin.

He peered along the Achaean wall, hoping to see

some captain who would ward off harm from his companions,

335and made out the two Ajaxes, never sated with war,

standing there, and Teucer, just come from his hut,

close by; but there was no way to shout and be heard,

so great was the din — the clamor went up to heaven —

of battered shields and horsehair-crested helmets

340and of the gates: for all had been shut, and the Trojans

stood against them, trying to break them by force and get in.

At once he sent the herald Thootes to Ajax:

"Go, brilliant Thootes — run, and call Ajax;

or rather both of them; that would be best of all,

345since sheer destruction will soon be upon us here.

The leaders of the Lycians bear down so — men who have always

come storming into the strong encounters.

But if toil and struggle have risen for them there as well,

then at least let stout Telamonian Ajax come alone,

350and let Teucer follow with him, who knows the bow well."²⁰

So he spoke; and the herald heard, and did not disobey,

and set off running along the wall of the bronze-shirted Achaeans,

and came and stood by the Ajaxes, and spoke at once:

"You two Ajaxes, leaders of the bronze-shirted Argives:

355the dear son of Zeus-nurtured Peteos bids you

come there, to share the toil at least a little while —

or rather both of you; that would be best of all,

since sheer destruction will soon be upon them there.

The leaders of the Lycians bear down so — men who have always

360come storming into the strong encounters.

But if here too war and struggle have risen,

then at least let stout Telamonian Ajax come alone,

and let Teucer follow with him, who knows the bow well."

So he spoke, and great Telamonian Ajax did not disobey.

365At once he spoke winged words to Oïleus' son:²¹

"Ajax — you and strong Lycomedes stay here,

stand fast, and urge the Danaans to fight their hardest.

I will go over there and take my share of the fighting,

and come back quickly, when I have given them good defense."

370So speaking, Telamonian Ajax went off,

and with him went Teucer, his brother by one father,

and with them Pandion carried Teucer's curved bow.

And when they reached the tower of great-hearted Menestheus,

passing inside the wall — they came to men hard pressed,

375for up onto the breastworks like a dark squall

came the powerful leaders and lords of the Lycians;

and they clashed together in combat, and the war-cry rose.

Telamonian Ajax was first to kill his man:

great-hearted Epicles, Sarpedon's companion,

380striking him with a jagged block of marble that lay

inside the wall, huge, topmost by the breastwork. Not easily

could a man hold it in both hands, not in his youth's best,

such as mortals are now; but he heaved it high and threw it,²²

and crushed the four-bossed helmet, and smashed the bones

385of the head all in together; and like a diver

he dropped from the high tower, and the life left his bones.

And Teucer hit Glaucus, Hippolochus's strong son,

with an arrow as he came storming up the high wall,

just where he saw the arm bared, and stopped his fighting.

390He sprang back down from the wall, keeping hidden, so that no Achaean

might see that he was hit and glory over him with words.²³

And grief came over Sarpedon at Glaucus's going,

the moment he knew it; but he did not forget his war-craft:

he caught Alcmaon, Thestor's son, with a lunge of the spear

395and stabbed, then wrenched the spear out; and the man, following the spear,

fell on his face, and his armor, intricate with bronze, clashed about him.

And Sarpedon, gripping the breastwork with his massive hands,

pulled — and the whole length of it followed; and above,

the wall was laid naked; and he had made a road for many.²⁴

400Ajax and Teucer answered him together: Teucer's arrow

struck the shining strap that held the man-covering shield

about his chest; but Zeus beat the death-spirits away

from his son — he was not to be broken by the ships' sterns —²⁵

and Ajax, leaping in, stabbed at the shield; the spear

405did not drive through, but staggered him in mid-fury.

He gave back a little space from the breastwork, but wholly

he did not yield, for his heart still hoped to seize glory.

Wheeling round, he called to the godlike Lycians:

"Lycians, why do you slacken your rushing courage so?

410It is hard for me, powerful as I am,

to break through alone and make a path to the ships.

Follow me in! More hands make better work."²⁶

So he spoke; and they, in dread of their king's rebuke,

pressed on harder around their counselor-king.

415And the Argives on the other side strengthened their battle-lines

inside the wall; and the work before them showed very great:

for neither could the powerful Lycians break the wall

of the Danaans and make a path to the ships,

nor could the Danaan spearmen ever push back

420the Lycians from the wall, once they had come close against it.

But as two men quarrel over boundary-stones,

measuring-rods in hand, in a common field,

who in a little strip of ground contend over the fair share:²⁷

so the breastworks held them apart; and over them

425they hacked at one another, at the chests, at the oxhide

shields, round and well-made, and the fluttering bucklers.

Many were wounded in the flesh by the pitiless bronze,

whenever a man turned and his back was left bare

in the fighting, and many straight through the shield itself.

430Everywhere the towers and breastworks were spattered

with the blood of men, from both sides, Trojan and Achaean.

But even so they could not turn the Achaeans to flight:

the lines held — as an honest working woman holds the scales,

who with the weight in one pan and the wool in the other

435draws them level, to win a pitiful wage for her children:²⁸

so their battle and their war were drawn level and taut,

until the moment Zeus handed the higher glory to Hector,

Priam's son, who was first to leap inside the wall of the Achaeans.

He cried a piercing cry, to carry to the Trojans:

440"Rise up, horse-taming Trojans! Break the wall

of the Argives, and hurl prodigious fire among the ships!"

So he spoke, spurring them on; and every ear heard him,

and they charged the wall in one mass; and then they

began mounting the galleries, sharpened spears in hand,

445while Hector snatched up a stone and carried it — it stood

before the gates, thick at the base and sharp

on top; the two best men of a district could not easily

lever it off the ground and onto a wagon,

such as mortals are now; but he swung it easily, even alone,²⁹

450for the son of crooked-counseled Cronos made it light for him.

As when a shepherd carries the fleece of a ram

easily in one hand, and its weight is little burden,

so Hector lifted the stone and carried it straight

at the doors that guarded the close and strong-fitted gates,

455double doors, high, with two crossed bars

inside to hold them, fastened with a single bolt.

He came and stood very close, and planted himself, and struck them

full in the middle, legs braced wide, to give the blow its force,

and broke both hinges away; and the stone fell inside

460by its own weight; and the gates groaned loud on either side; the bars

did not hold, and the doors were burst apart this way and that

under the rush of the stone. And glorious Hector leapt in,

in his face the very likeness of swift night; and he blazed in the bronze

that terribly clothed his body, and in his hands he held

465two spears. No one who met him could have held him back —

none but the gods — when he leapt the gates; and his eyes flared with fire.

Wheeling in the crowd, he called out to the Trojans

to climb over the wall; and they obeyed his urging:

at once some were climbing over the wall, while others poured

470through the built gates themselves; and the Danaans fled

among the hollow ships; and the din rose unabating.³⁰

Notes

1 lines 1–2 — The book opens by holding the camera on Patroclus, still in the hut healing Eurypylus — where 11.848 left him, and where he stays until 15.390-404. The whole battle at the wall is thus bracketed inside Patroclus's delayed errand: the poem keeps its catastrophe waiting in a doorway. ↩

2 lines 3–35 — Unique in Homer: the narrator leaves the story's time entirely to relate the wall's future annihilation — after the sack, Poseidon and Apollo turn the eight rivers of Ida against it for nine days, Zeus rains, the trident-bearer levers out the foundations and re-beds the beach in sand. The passage explains to the poet's own audience why no trace of so great a work survived to be visited: epic erasing its own footprint (already at 7.443-464 Poseidon complained the wall would out-fame the one he built for Laomedon; Zeus there licensed this very deletion). Line 23 contains the poem's only "race of half-god men" (ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν): elsewhere the heroes are simply men; only here, looking back from the audience's diminished present, does the narrator name the gulf. Aristotle admired the maneuver (Strabo 13.1.36 preserves the remark): "the poet who made the wall also made it disappear." ↩

3 lines 41–48 — The boar-or-lion at bay, wheeling on the closing ring: "his glorious heart knows no fear and no flight — and his courage kills him" (ἀγηνορίη δέ μιν ἔκτα, 46). The aside is proverb-grade and is the book's thesis about Hector — spoken inside a simile about him, six books before 22.99-130 proves it. ↩

4 lines 60–80 — Polydamas's first counsel, accepted. He appears here for the first time speaking (named 11.57): born the same night as Hector (18.251), the poem's designated counter-voice — his four speeches (here; 211; 13.726; 18.254) run accepted, rejected, accepted, rejected, and the last rejection kills Hector's army. The pattern begins with success: chariots left at the ditch, the wall attacked on foot. ↩

5 lines 96–97 — Asius's entry repeats his Catalogue lines (2.838-839) verbatim — our wording kept: the muster-roll recalled at the moment the muster begins to die (cf. the Merops sons, 11.329). ↩

6 lines 87–104 — The five battalions — the Trojan order of battle, with two debuts that matter: Alcathous (dead at 13.427-444) and Asteropaeus the Paeonian, "warlike," chosen by Sarpedon as third — the man whose duel with Achilles in the river (21.139-204) will be the last full combat before Hector's. Sarpedon "stood out even among all": the poem promotes him steadily toward Book 16. ↩

7 lines 108–117 — Asius refuses the plan — "the fool" (νήπιος), and the narrator files the death-notice in advance, naming the killer: Idomeneus, at 13.384-393. The prolepsis-with-obituary is the poem's standard seal on disobedience (2.38, 16.46, 20.466); "fate of the hateful name" (μοῖρα δυσώνυμος) belongs to the small class of fate-phrases where the word itself winces. ↩

8 lines 127–153 — The Lapith aristeia: Polypoetes and Leonteus keep their Catalogue credentials (2.740-746). The similes stack — oaks with roots running deep (131-134), then wild boars shattering the brush (146-150). The apparatus preserves Hephaestion's observation that 131-140 and 141-153 read like alternative versions of the same scene, only one of which was meant to stand — a rare window onto the poem's own workshop; the printed text, and this translation, keep both. ↩

9 lines 162–172 — Asius's outrage: "Father Zeus, so even you, it turns out, are an utter lover of lies!" (φιλοψευδής — nowhere else does a mortal call Zeus a liar to his face). The wasps- and-bees simile he builds — nest defenders who "will not abandon their hollow house... for their children's sake" — is finer than he knows: he has conceded that the two Lapiths are the ones fighting for something. The narrator's dry audit follows: Zeus was not persuaded; the glory was Hector's. ↩

10 lines 175–181 — "hard for me to tell it all through, as though I were a god" — the narrator's only confession of overload in the Iliad, athetized by Aristophanes and Aristarchus and omitted by Zenodotus, perhaps precisely because it lets the human singer show through the Muse's voice. The "prodigious fire... of stone" (θεσπιδαὲς πῦρ λάϊνον) is a famous compression: the stone barrage burns like fire along the whole wall — the enjambed adjective detonates the metaphor. ↩

11 lines 200–209 — The omen: an eagle on the left with a great snake in its talons; the snake, "not forgetting its war-craft," strikes the eagle's chest, is dropped in the crowd, and the eagle screams away empty. Polydamas will read it exactly (218-227): you may take the prey, but you will not carry it home. The scene is the poem's fullest bird-sign, and the interpretation is never refuted — only overruled. ↩

12 lines 230–250 — Hector's answer, culminating in the most quoted hexameter of the Iliad: "One bird-sign is best: to fight for your fatherland" (243). Cited from classical Athens onward as the motto of patriotic defense — and in context it is a king dismissing accurate intelligence on the strength of a private promise from Zeus (236) that expires at sundown (11.192-194, which Hector was not told). The rhetoric is immortal; the generalship is the disaster Polydamas predicted, and both men will say so later — Polydamas at 18.254-283, Hector to himself at 22.99-107. The closing threat (248-250) to kill any Trojan who hangs back completes the inversion: the omen-scene ends with the patriot promising to spear his own men. ↩

13 lines 251–255 — Zeus's dust-squall off Ida "bewitched the mind of the Achaeans": the day's tilt made weather. θέλγε — the verb of enchantment (Circe's verb in the Odyssey) — for what a dust storm does to a defending army's judgment. ↩

14 lines 258–264 — Siege engineering, precisely itemized: the galleries (κρόσσαι), the breastworks, the jutting buttress- piles set as footings for the towers — pulled, pried, and levered by hand. The Iliad's only sustained description of fortification assault, and the vocabulary is a hapax-cluster to match the singular event. ↩

15 lines 265–276 — The Ajaxes' exhortation sorts the army into "excellent... middling... lesser — since men are in no way all equal in war — now there is work for every man": the clearest statement in Homer of the mass army's ethic, where even the worse man's labor counts — a note closer to the hoplite line than to the duel of champions, and fittingly spoken by the defensive hero par excellence. ↩

16 lines 278–289 — The great snow simile: Zeus "shows them what his missiles are," lulls the winds, and covers peaks, headlands, clover meadows, "men's rich worked fields," harbors and shores — only the breaking wave keeps it off. The barrage of stones is rendered as the silencing of the whole worked world under steady snow: din translated into hush, war into weather, and for four lines the poem simply looks at peace. Among the most admired similes in ancient and modern criticism alike. ↩

17 lines 290–293 — "Yet not even then would the Trojans... have broken the gates, had not Zeus roused his own son Sarpedon": the breach requires a demigod, and the poet says so in the counterfactual frame he reserves for real turning-points. The lion simile that follows (299-306) is the poem's fullest: the hungry lion who will either seize his prey or "himself be hit among the foremost" — the exact two outcomes Sarpedon offers Glaucus at 328. ↩

18 lines 294–297 — Sarpedon's shield, described from the smith's bench: hammered bronze face, oxhides stitched inside with golden rods running full circle. The poem's craftsmanship- passages dignify what is about to be risked; compare the cup of Nestor (11.632-637) and Hector's stone below. ↩

19 lines 310–328 — The Sarpedon speech — the classic statement of the heroic contract, in two movements. First, honor as obligation: the seat, the cuts, the full cups, the riverside estate — all are wages, and the Lycian in the ranks must be able to say his kings earn them ("not inglorious... their strength too is noble"). Second, the deeper clause (322-328): if escaping this battle meant being "ageless and immortal forever," fighting would be senseless — I would neither fight nor send you; it is because death comes anyway, in ten thousand forms no mortal dodges, that courage is rational: "let us go: we will give the triumph to some man, or he to us." Mortality is not the objection to heroism but its premise. This is the contract Achilles has just repudiated in Book 9 (life outweighs all Troy's wealth, 9.401-409), and the poem has placed its finest defense in the mouth of the man Zeus's own son — whom Zeus will watch die in Book 16, weeping blood-rain. Quoted and imitated from antiquity forward; the whole aristocratic ethics of the West descends through these nineteen lines. ↩

20 lines 331–363 — The Menestheus episode: the Athenian captain — praised in the Catalogue as a marshal, silent ever since — peers for help and sends Thootes. The herald delivers the message nearly word for word (354-363 = 343-350 with only the deixis shifted: "here" to "there"), our wording kept: messenger- fidelity as verbal discipline. Ancient critics athetized the Teucer line in both copies (350 = 363) as needless; it is the request's whole point — the bowman is wanted against Sarpedon. ↩

21 line 365 — "Oïleus' son" — the lesser Ajax. Zenodotus read a different form of the patronymic here (Ἰλιάδην), and — a marvel of textual history — his reading appears on a vase of the sixth century BC (published J.H.S. 1898): a pre- Alexandrian variant caught in paint before any surviving manuscript. The printed text follows Aristarchus. ↩

22 lines 378–386 — Epicles goes down under the jagged marble block — "not easily could a man hold it in both hands... such as mortals are now" (the fixed diminished-present formula, 5.304) — and falls "like a diver... from the high tower." The diver- image for a death-plunge recurs at 16.742 (Cebriones, with Patroclus's terrible joke about oysters): grace at the instant of obliteration. ↩

23 lines 387–391 — Teucer's arrow finds Glaucus's bared arm, and Glaucus drops back off the wall hiding the wound, "so that no Achaean might see that he was hit and glory over him." The concealment is heroic bookkeeping — deny the enemy the boast — and the wound is a plot-load: at 16.508-531 it is this arm Glaucus begs Apollo to heal so he can defend Sarpedon's corpse. ↩

24 lines 397–399 — Sarpedon pulls down the breastwork with his bare hands: "the wall was laid naked; and he had made a road for many." He does not enter — that honor is reserved (note [30]); he opens. Made a road for many: the plain half-line has the whole tragedy of Book 16 folded in it — the road is for Hector, and for Patroclus coming the other way. ↩

25 lines 400–403 — Teucer's arrow finds only the shield-strap: "Zeus beat the death-spirits away from his son — he was not to be broken by the ships' sterns." Not saved: rescheduled. The clause quietly fixes the terms of 16.433-461, where Zeus will weigh saving him and be talked out of it by Hera. Every rescue in this poem is a date moved. ↩

26 lines 409–412 — After the grandest speech in the book, Sarpedon's working voice: I cannot break through alone — "Follow me in! More hands make better work." The proverb (πλεόνων δέ τι ἔργον ἄμεινον) is the plain-prose twin of Diomedes' "when two go together" (10.224-226): heroism, at the wall as in the night, is cooperative labor. ↩

27 lines 421–426 — The deadlock as a boundary dispute: two men with measuring-rods in a common field, quarreling "in a little strip of ground over the fair share." The war for Troy reduced to village litigation over inches — and with the surveyor's precision comes the bitter joke: this, too, is a war about property. The breastwork is the boundary-stone; the poem's great space annihilates to a farmer's furrow. ↩

28 lines 432–436 — The second scales of the poem: not Zeus's golden balance (8.69) but a wage-worker's — "an honest working woman" (γυνὴ χερνῆτις ἀληθής) holding weight against wool, drawing them level "to win a pitiful wage for her children." The adjective ἀληθής — "true, honest" — is given to the poorest person in the Iliad, and the whole stalemated battle hangs from her steady hand. The pathos is in the economics: she balances so carefully because the wage is pitiful and the children are hers. No simile in the poem reaches further down the social order, or carries more weight per line. ↩

29 lines 445–450 — Hector's stone: thick-butted, sharp-topped — a natural battering ram — "the two best men of a district could not easily lever it off the ground and onto a wagon, such as mortals are now; but he swung it easily even alone." The diminished-present formula again (its second use in the book, the fifth in the poem), and then the theological asterisk: "the son of crooked-counseled Cronos made it light for him." Line 450 was omitted by Zenodotus and athetized by Aristophanes and Aristarchus — deleting the asterisk credits Hector; keeping it credits Zeus; the printed text keeps it, and the shepherd- and-fleece simile (451-452) plays the weight both ways. ↩

30 lines 457–471 — The breach, in carpenter's detail: double doors, two crossed bars, one bolt; the stance ("legs braced wide, to give the blow its force"), both hinges sheared, the stone falling inside "by its own weight," the gates bellowing. Then the poem's great darkness-image: Hector leaps in "in his face the very likeness of swift night" — νυκτὶ θοῇ ἀτάλαντος — man as nightfall, the bronze blazing about the dark (Zenodotus read "wrapped in night," and the vulgate's phrase has passed into proverb as "sudden night"). "No one who met him could have held him back — none but the gods... and his eyes flared with fire." The book ends at the exact instant of penetration — Trojans over the wall and through the gates, Danaans in rout among the ships — the only book of the poem that closes inside an unresolved catastrophe: the door broken, and everything still to lose. ↩