Book XV

Zeus wakes: the plan of the whole poem is spoken aloud, Apollo kicks down the wall like a child's sand, and Hector's hand closes on the stern of Protesilaus's ship.

Translator’s note on Book 15

Book 15 is the great correction. Zeus wakes on Gargaron, sees the rout and Hector vomiting blood, and in three moves restores the poem's direction: Hera is terrorized with the memory of her punishment — hung from heaven with anvils at her ankles (note 2) — and swears the greatest oath in the poem, by Styx, his sacred head, and their bridal bed, a lawyer's truth that acquits her of Poseidon while saying nothing of the seduction (note 3); Iris carries an ultimatum to Poseidon, who answers with the three-way division of the cosmos — sea, murk, and sky by lot, "earth and Olympus common to all" — and yields only to the argument of the Erinyes who attend elder-born brothers (notes [8], [9]); and Apollo, given the aegis, revives Hector and levels the ditch and wall "as when a boy by the sea heaps sand in his childish play and then, still playing, scatters it with his feet and hands" — the most devastating image of divine ease in epic, delivered, uniquely, as an apostrophe to the god himself (note 18).

At the center, before any of this, Zeus speaks the rest of the poem aloud (56-77, athetized in antiquity for that very completeness): Patroclus sent out, Sarpedon killed, Patroclus killed by Hector, Hector killed by Achilles, and after that the long Achaean tide "until they take steep Ilion through Athena's counsels" — all of it suspended from the promise to Thetis in Book 1 (note 4). From here forward the audience watches men choose what it has heard decreed. The narrator twice does the same on his own account: Zeus waits "to see with his eyes the flare of a burning ship," and Hector rages superb in his last full day of glory — "for he was to be short-lived: already Pallas Athena was speeding his death-day under the strength of Peleus' son" (610-614, which Zenodotus cut; note 30).

The fighting that fills the second half is the war at its narrowest: pikes on ship-decks, axes and swords at arm's length, Ajax striding from deck to deck with a twenty-two-cubit boarding pike like a trick-rider leaping between four horses (note 34). The paired exhortations are the book's moral architecture: Hector's "it is no dishonor to die defending your fatherland — his wife is safe, his children after him" (494-499, quoted three centuries later by Lycurgus prosecuting an Athenian deserter, note 25) against Ajax's stripped-down answer to men who have no fatherland at their backs: "our light of safety is in our hands, not in any gentleness of war" (733-741, note 36). Patroclus, mid-book, finally leaves Eurypylus's hut quoting Nestor's own hope back to himself — the fatal errand resumes (note 21). The book ends with Hector's hand on the stern-horn of the ship that carried the war's first casualty, calling for fire, and Ajax on a seven-foot plank, counting his twelve.

Register notes: 15.263-268 reuse the stalled-horse simile of 6.506-511 verbatim, as the Greek does; 15.333-336 reuse Medon's biography from 13.694-697, at his death; 15.550-551 reuse 13.175-176 (the returned-exile lines); 15.563-564 reuse 5.531-532; 15.403-404 reuse Nestor's persuasion-couplet from 11.792-793, now in Patroclus's own mouth.

1But when in their flight they had crossed the stakes and the ditch,

and many were broken under Danaan hands,

they halted and held their ground beside the chariots,

green with fear, panic-driven. And Zeus woke

5on the peaks of Ida beside Hera of the golden throne,

and started up, and stood, and saw Trojans and Achaeans —

the ones being driven, the others driving them on

from behind, the Argives, and among them lord Poseidon;

and he saw Hector lying on the plain, his companions

10sitting around him, and he laboring for breath, his wits astray,

vomiting blood — for not the feeblest of the Achaeans had hit him.¹

Seeing him, the father of men and gods felt pity,

and glaring darkly, terribly, he spoke his word to Hera:

"Past all handling, Hera — this evil craft, this trick of yours

15has stopped brilliant Hector from the fight, and routed his army.

I wonder whether you may not be the first to reap the fruit

of your grievous plot-weaving, when I flog you with lashes.

Do you not remember hanging from on high, when from your feet²

I slung two anvils, and threw about your wrists a band

20of gold, unbreakable? In the clear air and the clouds

you hung; and the gods raged up and down high Olympus

but could not come and free you: whomever I caught

I seized and hurled from the threshold, till he struck

the earth with little life in him. Even so my heart would not

25let go its relentless pain for godlike Heracles,

whom you, suborning the storm-blasts with the North Wind's help,

sent driving over the barren sea, plotting evils,

and carried away at last to well-peopled Cos.

I rescued him from there, and brought him back again

30to horse-pasturing Argos, after all his labors.

I remind you of this so you will drop your deceits — so you will see

whether the love-making helps you, and the bed

you came from among the gods and lay in, and tricked me."

So he spoke; and ox-eyed lady Hera shuddered,

35and speaking winged words she addressed him:

"Let Earth be my witness now, and wide Heaven above,³

and the down-flowing water of Styx — the greatest oath

and the most terrible for the blessed gods —

and your own sacred head, and the bed of the two of us,

40our bridal bed — a thing I would never swear by falsely:

it is not by any will of mine that Poseidon the earth-shaker

harms the Trojans and Hector and gives help to the others.

It is his own heart, I suppose, that drives and commands him:

he saw the Achaeans worn down at the ships and pitied them.

45Why — I would as soon give him my counsel

to walk the road you lead us, lord of the dark cloud."

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

and answering her he spoke winged words:

"If from now on, then, ox-eyed lady Hera,

50you would sit among the immortals thinking with my mind,

Poseidon, however much his will runs otherwise,

would soon enough bend his thought to your heart and mine.

But if you are speaking truly now, and without evasion,

go to the tribes of the gods, and call for me

55Iris to come here, and Apollo famed for the bow:

she to go to the army of bronze-shirted Achaeans⁴

and tell lord Poseidon to leave the war

and come to his own house; and Phoebus Apollo

to rouse Hector into the fighting and breathe fury into him

60again, and make him forget the pains that now

wear down his wits; and to turn the Achaeans back

again, driving strengthless panic into them,

till in their flight they fall among the many-benched ships

of Achilles, Peleus' son. And he will send out his companion

65Patroclus; and glorious Hector will kill him with the spear

before Ilion, after he has cut down many strong young men —

and among them my own son, brilliant Sarpedon.

And in anger for him brilliant Achilles will kill Hector.

From that hour on I will make the tide run back

70from the ships, steadily, without pause, until the Achaeans

take steep Ilion through the counsels of Athena.

Before that I do not cease my anger, and no other

immortal will I allow to defend the Danaans here,

not before the desire of Peleus' son is accomplished

75as I promised him at the first, and bowed my head to it,

on the day the goddess Thetis clasped my knees,

begging me to honor Achilles, sacker of cities."

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

and went from the mountains of Ida to high Olympus.

80As when the mind of a man darts, who has traveled⁵

over much country, and thinks in his quick wits

"would I were here, or there," and wishes himself many places,

so swiftly, straining, flew the lady Hera;

and she came to steep Olympus, and found the immortal gods

85assembled in the house of Zeus. And when they saw her

they all sprang up and pledged her with their cups.

The others she let be; but from fair-cheeked Themis

she took the cup, for Themis came running first to meet her,

and speaking winged words addressed her:

90"Hera, why have you come? You look like one struck senseless.

Cronos's son has frightened you badly — your own husband."

Then answered her the goddess white-armed Hera:

"Do not ask me that, goddess Themis. You yourself know

what kind of heart is his — how arrogant, how unbending.

95Lead the gods to the fair-shared feast in the house,

and you will hear with all the immortals together

what evil works Zeus is announcing. I do not think

every heart will be pleased alike, mortal or god,

however cheerfully some may be feasting still."

100So the lady Hera spoke, and took her seat;

and the gods were troubled through the house of Zeus. And she laughed

with her lips; but the forehead above her dark brows

did not warm; and she spoke among them all, vexed:⁶

"Fools — who rage against Zeus with no more sense than children!

105Do we still mean to march up close and stop him,

by word or by force? He sits apart and takes no thought,

no notice; for he says that among the immortal gods

in power and might he is beyond dispute the first.

So — swallow whatever evil he sends each one of you.

110Already now, I think, calamity is built for Ares:

his son has perished in the fighting — the dearest of men to him —

Ascalaphus, whom massive Ares calls his own."

So she spoke; and Ares struck his sturdy thighs

with his flat hands, and cried out in grief:

115"Do not blame me now, you who keep the halls of Olympus,⁷

if I go down to the ships of the Achaeans to avenge

the killing of my son — even if my fate is to be struck

by Zeus's bolt, and lie with the corpses in the blood and the dust."

So he spoke, and ordered Terror and Panic to yoke

120his horses; and he himself got into his blazing armor.

And then a greater and more grievous anger and wrath

would have been wrought by Zeus against the immortals,

had not Athena, in terror for all the gods,

sprung through the doorway, leaving the chair where she sat.

125She tore the helmet from his head, the shield from his shoulders,

and took the bronze spear out of his heavy hand

and set it up; and she lashed rushing Ares with words:

"Madman! Wits gone — you are destroyed! So you do have ears

for hearing — but your mind is perished, and your shame.

130Do you not hear what the goddess white-armed Hera says,

come straight now from Olympian Zeus?

Or do you want to fill your own cup of evils and come back

to Olympus by compulsion, grieving as you go,

and plant a great calamity for all the rest of us?

135For he will leave the high-hearted Trojans and the Achaeans

on the instant, and come to Olympus to set us tumbling,

and he will seize us each in turn, guilty or not.

So drop your anger now for your son. Better men

than he by strength of hands have been killed before this,

140or will be killed hereafter. It is a hard thing

to rescue the line and offspring of every man."

So speaking she seated rushing Ares on his chair.

And Hera called Apollo outside the house,

and Iris, who runs messages for the immortal gods,

145and speaking winged words she addressed them:

"Zeus commands you both to come to Ida with all speed;

and when you have come, and looked on the face of Zeus,

do whatever he urges and commands."

So speaking the lady Hera went back in

150and sat on her chair; and the two sprang up and flew.

They came to Ida of the many springs, mother of wild things,

and found the wide-seeing son of Cronos seated on Gargaron

peak; and a fragrant cloud was wreathed about him.

The two of them came before Zeus the cloud-gatherer

155and stood; and seeing them his heart was not angered,

because they had obeyed his dear wife's words so quickly.

To Iris first he spoke winged words:

"Up, go, swift Iris; to lord Poseidon

carry all this word, and be no false messenger.

160Command him to leave the battle and the war

and go to the tribes of the gods, or into the bright sea.

And if he will not obey my words, but makes light of them,

let him consider then in his mind and heart

whether, strong as he is, he can dare to stand my coming —

165since I say my strength is far greater than his,

and my birth is elder; yet his heart does not shrink

from calling himself my equal — whom the others dread."

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

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

170As when out of the clouds the snow flies, or the hail,

cold under the blast of the sky-born North Wind,

so swiftly, straining, flew swift Iris,

and standing close she spoke to the famed earth-shaker:

"A message for you, holder of the earth, blue-maned one:

175I have come here carrying it from aegis-bearing Zeus.

He commands you to leave the battle and the war

and go to the tribes of the gods, or into the bright sea.

And if you will not obey his words, but make light of them,

he threatens to come here himself and fight you

180strength against strength; and he warns you to keep out

from under his hands, since he says his strength is far greater

than yours, and his birth is elder; yet your heart does not shrink

from calling yourself his equal — whom the others dread."

Then, deeply angered, the famed earth-shaker answered her:

185"Shame on him! Great as he is, this is arrogance —⁸

to hold me back by force, against my will, who am his equal in honor.

Three brothers are we, whom Rhea bore to Cronos:

Zeus, and I, and Hades third, who is king of those below.

All was divided three ways; each got his share of honor:

190I drew the grey sea to live in forever

when the lots were shaken; and Hades drew the misty dark,

and Zeus drew the wide heaven, in the clear air and the clouds;

but the earth is common to all three still, and high Olympus.

So I will not walk by the mind of Zeus. Let him stay

195quiet in his third portion, strong as he is;

and let him not try to frighten me with his hands as though I were

some coward. Better he keep his blustering words

to scold the daughters and the sons he fathered himself,

who will have to listen to whatever he commands."

200Then answered him wind-footed swift Iris:

"Is this really the word, holder of the earth, blue-maned one,

that I am to carry to Zeus — this hard, unbending word?

Or will you turn a little? The hearts of the great can turn.⁹

You know how the Erinyes always side with the elder-born."

205Then Poseidon the earth-shaker answered her:

"Iris, goddess — that word of yours was rightly spoken:

it is a fine thing when a messenger knows what is fitting.

But this comes as bitter grief to my heart and spirit —

when he chooses to rail with angry words at one

210allotted an equal share, doomed to the same portion.

Still — for now I will yield, indignant though I am.

But I will tell you this, and it is a threat from my heart:¹⁰

if in spite of me, and Athena driver of the spoil,

and Hera, and Hermes, and lord Hephaestus,

215he spares steep Ilion — if he refuses

to sack it and to hand great power to the Argives —

let him know this: between us two the anger will have no healing."

So speaking the earth-shaker left the Achaean army

and went into the sea and sank; and the Achaean heroes missed him.

220Then Zeus the cloud-gatherer spoke to Apollo:

"Go now, dear Phoebus, to Hector of the bronze helmet.

For by this time the holder of the earth, the earth-shaker,

has gone into the bright sea, dodging our sheer anger —

otherwise even the others would have heard of our fight,

225the gods who are down below, gathered around Cronos.

But this is far better, for me and for himself:

that he yielded, for all his indignation, before my hands —

since not without sweat would the business have been settled.

Now: take up in your hands the tasseled aegis¹¹

230and shake it hard over the Achaean heroes, to rout them.

And for yourself, far-striker: let glorious Hector be your care.

Wake the great fury in him, until the Achaeans

come in their flight to the ships and the Hellespont.

From there I myself will devise the word and the work

235by which the Achaeans may catch their breath again from toil."

So he spoke, and Apollo did not disobey his father,

but went down from the mountains of Ida like a hawk,

the swift dove-killer, fastest of flying things.

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

240sitting up — no longer lying down: he had just gathered his spirit,

knowing the companions around him; and the gasping and the sweat

had ceased, for the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus was waking him.

And standing close, the worker-from-afar, Apollo, spoke to him:

"Hector, son of Priam — why do you sit apart from the others,

245with so little strength in you? Has some trouble found you?"

And with the little strength he had, Hector of the flashing helmet answered:¹²

"Which of the gods are you, kindest one, who ask me face to face?

Have you not heard? By the sterns of the Achaean ships,

as I killed his companions, Ajax good at the war-cry

250struck me on the chest with a stone, and stopped my rushing courage.

Indeed I thought that on this day I would look on the dead

and the house of Hades: I was breathing out my own dear life."

Then lord Apollo the worker-from-afar answered him:

"Take heart: such a helper has the son of Cronos

255sent down from Ida to stand beside you and defend you —

Phoebus Apollo of the golden sword: I who before now

have guarded you, yourself and your steep citadel alike.

Up now: command your many charioteers

to drive their swift horses at the hollow ships;

260and I will go before them and smooth the whole road

for the horses, and turn the Achaean heroes back."

So speaking he breathed great fury into the shepherd of the people.

As when a stalled horse, corn-fed at the manger,¹³

breaks his tether and gallops drumming across the plain,

265used to bathing in the fair-flowing river,

glorying: he holds his head high, and the mane

streams along his shoulders; sure of his own splendor,

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

so Hector plied his feet and knees, quick and light,

270urging on his horsemen, now he had heard the god's voice.

And the others — as when dogs and countrymen

chase an antlered stag or a wild goat,

and a sheer rock-face or a shadowy wood

saves it, since it was not their portion to catch it,

275and then, drawn by their clamor, a bearded lion

shows himself in the way, and turns them all back for all their fury:

so for a while the Danaans followed close, in a mass,

stabbing with swords and double-curved spears;

but when they saw Hector ranging down the ranks of men,

280they were afraid, and every man's heart dropped to his feet.

Then Thoas spoke among them, Andraemon's son,¹⁴

far the best of the Aetolians — skilled with the javelin,

brave in the standing fight; and in assembly few Achaeans

could beat him, when the young men contended in debate.

285With good will toward them he spoke and addressed them:

"Shame! — a great marvel is this I see with my eyes:

how he has risen again, escaped the death-spirits —

Hector! The heart in each of us hoped hard enough

that he had died under the hands of Ajax, Telamon's son.

290But some one of the gods has rescued and saved him again —

Hector, who has unstrung the knees of many Danaans,

as he will now too, I think: for not without loud-thundering Zeus

does he stand there in the front rank, blazing like this.

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

295Let us order the multitude back to the ships;

and we ourselves, all who claim to be best in the army,

let us stand, and see if we can blunt him first, meeting him

with spears held high. For all his fury, I think

his heart will fear to sink into the crowd of the Danaans."

300So he spoke; and they heard him well, and obeyed.

Those around Ajax and lord Idomeneus,

and Teucer, and Meriones, and Meges the equal of Ares,

called up the best men and formed for battle,

facing Hector and the Trojans; and behind them

305the multitude went back to the ships of the Achaeans.

The Trojans struck first, massed; Hector led them

with long strides; and in front of him went Phoebus Apollo,

his shoulders wrapped in cloud, holding the rushing aegis,

terrible, shag-fringed, dazzling — which the smith

310Hephaestus gave to Zeus, to carry for the routing of men;¹⁵

holding this in his hands he led the army.

And the Argives stood to meet them, close-massed, and the war-cry

rose shrill from both sides; from the bowstrings the arrows

leapt; and many spears from daring hands

315fixed themselves in the flesh of quick young fighters,

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

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

So long as Phoebus Apollo held the aegis unmoving,

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

320but when he looked the swift-colted Danaans full in the face

and shook it, and himself gave a great shout, then the heart

in their chests he bewitched, and they forgot their rushing courage.

And as two wild beasts stampede a herd of cattle

or a great flock of sheep in the milking-dark of night,

325coming suddenly, when the herdsman is not by,

so the Achaeans panicked, strengthless: for Apollo drove

the panic into them, and handed glory to the Trojans and Hector.

Then man killed man, as the battle scattered.

Hector cut down Stichius and Arcesilaus,¹⁶

330the one a leader of the bronze-shirted Boeotians,

the other the trusted companion of great-hearted Menestheus;

and Aeneas stripped the life from Medon and Iasus.

Now the one — Medon — was a bastard son of godlike Oïleus

and brother of Ajax; but he lived in Phylace,

335far from his own fatherland, having killed a man,

a kinsman of his stepmother Eriopis, wife of Oïleus;

and Iasus was set a captain of the Athenians,

and was called the son of Sphelus, Boucolus's son.

And Polydamas killed Mecisteus, and Polites Echius,

340in the first onset, and brilliant Agenor killed Clonius;

and Paris hit Deiochus at the base of the shoulder, from behind,

as he fled through the front-fighters, and drove the bronze clean through.

While they were stripping the armor from these, the Achaeans,

tangled in the dug ditch and the stakes,

345were fleeing this way and that, and diving behind the wall by necessity.

And Hector called to the Trojans with a great shout:

"Straight for the ships — and leave the bloody spoils!¹⁷

Whomever I see hanging back, away from the ships,

I will plan his death on the spot; and no brothers of his,

350no sisters, will give his dead body its portion of fire:

the dogs will drag him before our city."

So speaking, with a full swing of the whip he drove his horses on,

calling to the Trojans down the ranks; and all of them with him,

shouting as one, steered the chariot-pulling horses

355with a prodigious roar. And in front of them Phoebus Apollo,

kicking down the banks of the deep ditch with his feet,

easily, tumbled them into the middle, and bridged a causeway

long and wide — about as wide as a spear-cast

carries, when a man is trying his strength.

360Down this they poured, rank after rank, and before them Apollo

held the aegis beyond all price; and he kicked down the wall

of the Achaeans — easily — as when a boy by the sea¹⁸

heaps sand into shapes in his childish play,

and then, still playing, scatters them again with his feet and hands:

365so you, archer Phoebus, poured into ruin the long

labor and misery of the Argives, and drove the panic through them.

So they halted and held their ground beside the ships,

calling to one another, and lifting their hands

to all the gods, each man prayed aloud;

370and Nestor above all, the Gerenian, warden of the Achaeans,

prayed, stretching his arms toward the starry heaven:

"Father Zeus — if ever anyone in wheat-rich Argos,¹⁹

burning to you the fat thighs of ox or sheep,

prayed for his homecoming, and you promised it with a nod:

375remember it, Olympian; ward off the pitiless day,

and do not let the Achaeans be broken so by the Trojans."

So he spoke in prayer; and Zeus the counselor thundered loud,

hearing the prayers of the old man, Neleus' son.

But the Trojans, when they heard the thunder of aegis-bearing Zeus,

380leapt at the Argives all the harder, and remembered their war-craft.

As a great wave of the wide-wayed sea²⁰

comes down over a ship's bulwarks, when the strength of the wind

drives it high — for that above all makes the waves grow:

so the Trojans with a great cry came down over the wall,

385and driving their horses in they fought at the sterns,

hand to hand with double-curved spears — they from their chariots,

and the Achaeans high up, from the decks of their black ships,

with the long pikes that lay aboard for sea-fighting,

jointed and socketed, their heads clothed in bronze.

390Now Patroclus, so long as the Achaeans and Trojans

fought for the wall, outside the swift ships,

sat in the hut of gracious Eurypylus

and delighted him with talk, and on his grievous wound

sprinkled the remedies against the black pains.

395But when he saw the Trojans storming over the wall,

and the Danaans' shouting and panic broke out,

he groaned aloud, and struck both his thighs

with his flat hands, and cried out in grief:

"Eurypylus — I can stay with you here no longer,²¹

400much as you need me: a great struggle has risen.

Let your aide look after you now; I myself

will hurry to Achilles, to rouse him to fight.

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

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

405And even as he spoke his feet were carrying him. Meanwhile the Achaeans

stood fast against the Trojan advance, yet could not

push them from the ships, though they were fewer;

nor could the Trojans ever break the Danaans' lines

and force their way in among the huts and the ships.

410But as a chalk-line trues a ship-timber straight²²

in the hands of a skilled carpenter, who knows

his whole craft well by the promptings of Athena,

so their battle and their war were drawn even and taut.

And others fought their fight at other ships,

415but Hector made straight for glorious Ajax.

The two of them labored over a single ship, and neither

could win: Hector could not drive Ajax off and fire the ship,

nor Ajax push Hector back — since a god had brought him.

Then shining Ajax hit Caletor, Clytius's son,²³

420with the spear in the chest as he carried fire toward the ship:

he fell with a thud, and the brand dropped from his hand.

And Hector, when he saw with his own eyes his cousin

fallen in the dust before the black ship,

called to the Trojans and Lycians with a great shout:

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

do not give back from the battle in this narrow place:

save the son of Clytius, or the Achaeans will strip

his armor, fallen where the ships stand gathered."

So speaking he cast at Ajax with his shining spear.

430Him he missed; but Lycophron, Mastor's son,

Ajax's henchman from Cythera, who lived with him —

for he had killed a man in most holy Cythera —

him he struck on the head above the ear with the sharp bronze

as he stood beside Ajax; and backward in the dust

435he dropped from the ship's stern to the ground, and his limbs were unstrung.

And Ajax shuddered, and spoke to his brother:

"Teucer, old friend — our trusted companion is killed,

Mastor's son, the man from Cythera we honored

in our halls like our own dear parents.

440Great-hearted Hector has killed him. Where now are your arrows

of quick death, and the bow that Phoebus Apollo gave you?"

So he spoke; and Teucer understood, and came running to stand

beside him, his back-bent bow in his hand

and the arrow-holding quiver; and fast he loosed his shafts at the Trojans.

445And he hit Cleitus, the shining son of Peisenor,

companion of Polydamas, Panthous's illustrious son,

with the reins in his hands, laboring with his horses;

for he held them where the most battle-lines were driven

in confusion, doing a favor to Hector and the Trojans. But swiftly

450the evil came on him that no one could hold off, wish it as they might:

for the arrow of many groans dropped into the back of his neck,

and he crashed from the chariot, and the horses shied back,

rattling the empty car. And lord Polydamas saw it

at once, and was first to come and stand at the horses' heads.

455He gave them to Astynous, Protiaon's son,

with many orders to hold them close and keep them

in his eye; and himself went back and mixed with the front-fighters.

And Teucer was drawing another arrow, for Hector

of the bronze helmet — and would have stopped the battle

460at the ships of the Achaeans, had he hit him mid-triumph

and torn out his life. But he did not slip the close mind of Zeus,

who was guarding Hector, and robbed Teucer, Telamon's son, of his triumph:²⁴

the well-twisted string on the blameless bow —

Zeus broke it as he drew; and the bronze-weighted arrow

465swerved wide and away, and the bow dropped from his hand.

And Teucer shuddered, and spoke to his brother:

"Look — how utterly some power is shearing off the plans

of our fighting! It has struck the bow from my hand

and snapped the fresh-twisted string I bound on it

470this very morning, to bear the arrows springing thick and fast."

Then great Telamonian Ajax answered him:

"Old friend — then let the bow and the showering arrows

lie, since a god has spited the Danaans and wrecked them.

Take a long spear in your hands and a shield on your shoulder

475and fight the Trojans yourself, and drive on the rest of the army.

If they take us, at least let it cost them labor —

the well-benched ships. Let us remember our war-craft."

So he spoke; and Teucer set the bow away in the huts,

and about his shoulders he slung a shield of four hides,

480and on his powerful head he set a well-made helmet,

horsehair-crested; the plume nodded terribly above it;

and he took up a stout spear, edged with sharp bronze,

and set off at a run, and quickly stood by Ajax.

And Hector, when he saw Teucer's shots crippled,

485called to the 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

here along the hollow ships: for I have seen with my own eyes

the shots of their best man crippled by Zeus.

490Easily known among men is the strength of Zeus —²⁵

both those to whom he hands the higher glory

and those he wears down and will not defend:

so now he wears down the Argives' fury, and helps us.

Fight at the ships in one mass! And whichever of you,

495hit from afar or stabbed close, meets his death and his doom —

let him die. It is no dishonor for him to die

defending his fatherland: his wife is safe after him, and his children,

his house and his portion of land unharmed, if the Achaeans

go away in their ships to their dear fatherland."

500So speaking he stirred the fury and the heart of every man.

And Ajax on the other side called to his companions:

"Shame, Argives! Now it is certain: either we perish²⁶

or we are saved, and beat the ruin back from the ships.

Do you hope, if Hector of the flashing helmet takes the ships,

505that each of you will walk home on foot to his fatherland?

Do you not hear him driving his whole army —

Hector, who is raging now to burn the ships?

It is not to a dance he is inviting them: he invites them to fight.

For us there is no plan, no better thought than this:

510to bring our hands and fury against them, body to body.

Better once for all to seize our death or our life

than be squeezed slowly dry in the dread combat,

here by the ships, uselessly, under worse men than ourselves."

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

515Then Hector cut down Schedius, Perimedes' son,

a captain of the Phocians; and Ajax cut down Laodamas,

a leader of the foot-soldiers, Antenor's shining son;

and Polydamas stripped the life from Otus of Cyllene,

companion of Phyleus' son, a captain of the great-hearted Epeians.

520Meges saw it and sprang at him; but Polydamas swerved

from under, and Meges missed him — for Apollo

would not let Panthous's son be broken among the front-fighters —

but he stabbed Croesmus full in the chest with the spear:

he fell with a thud, and Meges set to stripping the armor from his shoulders.

525But meanwhile Dolops sprang on him, a master of the spear,

Lampus's son — the strongest son that Lampus fathered,

Laomedon's own son, well skilled in rushing courage —

who stabbed the middle of Phyleus' son's shield with his spear²⁷

at close range; but the thick corslet saved him,

530the corslet he wore, close-fitted with its plates: the one Phyleus

brought home once out of Ephyra, from the river Selleïs.

A guest-friend gave it to him — Euphetes, lord of men —

to carry into war, a defense against enemy men;

and now it kept destruction from the flesh of his son.

535Then Meges stabbed with his sharp-pointed spear at the topmost

ridge of Dolops's bronze helmet, thick with horsehair,

and sheared the horsehair plume clean off; and the whole of it

fell in the dust, fresh-shining with its scarlet dye.

While Meges held his ground and fought him, still hoping for victory,

540warlike Menelaus came to his rescue:

he took his stand aside with his spear, unseen, and hit his shoulder

from behind; and the point, raging, drove through his chest

and out, straining onward; and he crumpled down on his face.

The two of them moved in to strip the bronze armor

545from his shoulders; but Hector called on his kinsmen,

all of them; and first he rebuked Hicetaon's son,

strong Melanippus. He had herded his shambling cattle²⁸

in Percote a while, with the enemy far away;

but when the double-ended ships of the Danaans came,

550he came back to Ilion, and stood out among the Trojans,

and lived with Priam, who honored him like his own children.

Him Hector rebuked, and spoke a word, and named him:

"Is this how we slacken, Melanippus? Is your own heart

not turned at all — for your cousin killed?

555Do you not see how they swarm over Dolops's armor?

Follow me. No longer can we stand off and fight

the Argives at a distance: now we kill them, or they pull down

steep Ilion from its height and cut her citizens down."

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

560And great Telamonian Ajax roused the Argives:

"Friends — be men! Set shame in your hearts,

and feel shame before each other in the strong encounters.

Where men feel shame, more are saved than slain;²⁹

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

565So he spoke; and they themselves were furious to beat the enemy off,

and took his word to heart, and fenced the ships

in a hedge of bronze; and Zeus drove the Trojans on against them.

And Menelaus, good at the war-cry, urged Antilochus:

"Antilochus — no other Achaean is younger than you,

570none faster on his feet or braver in the fighting:

might you not spring out and hit some man of the Trojans?"

So speaking he hurried back; but he had stirred him,

and out from the front-fighters he sprang, and cast his shining spear,

glancing all round him; and the Trojans shrank away

575from the man as he threw. And his shot did not go in vain:

Hicetaon's high-hearted son, Melanippus,

coming into the battle, he hit in the chest by the nipple:

he fell with a thud, and darkness covered his eyes.

And Antilochus sprang on him as a hound springs on a fawn

580that is hit — the hunter's shot caught it leaping

out of its bed, and unstrung its limbs beneath it:

so on you, Melanippus, staunch Antilochus sprang,

to strip your armor. But he was not unseen by brilliant Hector,

who came running through the combat to face him;

585and Antilochus did not stand him, quick fighter though he was,

but fled, like a wild beast that has done some mischief —³⁰

that has killed a dog, or a herdsman with his cattle,

and runs before the crowd of men can gather:

so Nestor's son ran; and after him the Trojans and Hector

590with a prodigious roar poured their missiles of groaning;

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

And now the Trojans, like flesh-eating lions,

stormed at the ships, accomplishing the commands of Zeus,

who woke the great fury in them always, and bewitched the heart

595of the Argives, and stole their triumph, and drove the others on.

For his heart willed the glory for Hector,

Priam's son, so he might hurl on the beaked ships

the prodigious, unwearying fire, and bring to pass

the whole extraordinary prayer of Thetis. For Zeus the counselor

600waited for one thing: to see with his own eyes

the flare of a single burning ship. From that moment on

he would make the Trojans' tide run back

from the ships, and hand the glory to the Danaans.

With this in mind he woke against the hollow ships

605Hector, Priam's son — already burning hot himself.

He raged like Ares the spear-shaker, or as annihilating fire

rages in the mountains, in the thickets of a deep wood;

the foam stood at his mouth, and his two eyes

blazed under his grim brows, and around his temples the helmet

610shook terribly as Hector fought. For out of the upper air

Zeus himself was his defender — Zeus who honored

and glorified him, one man among many; for he was to be³¹

short-lived: already Pallas Athena was speeding

his death-day on, under the strength of Peleus' son.

615And he strained to break the ranks of men, probing them

wherever he saw the thickest crowd and the best armor;

but he could not break them for all his blazing:

they held, locked like a tower — like a rock-face,

sheer and huge, hard by the grey salt water,

620that abides the quick paths of the shrill winds

and the swollen waves belching against it:

so the Danaans stood the Trojans, steady, and did not run.

But he, glittering with fire on every side, leapt on the mass,

and fell on them as a wave falls on a swift ship,

625wind-fed, ravening, out of the clouds: and the whole ship

is buried in spray, and the terrible blast of the wind

roars in the sail, and the sailors tremble at heart,

terrified: for they are carried only just out from under death:

so the heart was torn in the chest of every Achaean.

630And he came on like a murderous lion on cattle³²

grazing in their thousands in the water-meadow of a great marsh,

and among them a herdsman not yet sure of his skill

to fight a beast off from the carcass of a twist-horned cow:

he keeps pace always with the first ranks or the last,

635but the lion leaps on the middle and devours a cow,

and all the rest stampede: so then the Achaeans

fled unearthly before Hector and father Zeus,

all of them — though he killed one man only: Periphetes of Mycenae,

the dear son of Copreus, who used to carry the messages

640of king Eurystheus to the might of Heracles.

Of that far worse father was born a better son

in every virtue — in speed of foot and in fighting,

and in mind among the first of the Mycenaeans;

and it was he, then, who handed Hector the higher glory.

645For turning back, he tripped against the rim of his shield —

the shield he carried himself, reaching his feet, a tower against javelins;

tangled in it he tumbled backward, and the helmet

clanged terribly about his temples as he fell.

And Hector saw it sharply, and ran to stand beside him,

650and fixed the spear in his chest, and killed him close by

his own dear companions; and they could not help him, though grieving:

they were themselves too much afraid of brilliant Hector.

Now they had come inside the ships, and around them stood

the ends of the ships drawn up in the first line; and the Trojans poured in.

655And the Argives gave back from the first line of ships

by necessity, but held their ground right there among the huts,

massed together, not scattering through the camp: shame held them,

and fear; and they called to one another without ceasing.

And Nestor above all, the Gerenian, warden of the Achaeans,

660begged each man by his parents, clasping their knees with his words:

"Friends — be men! Set in your hearts the shame³³

of what other men will say; and remember, each of you,

your children and your wives, your property and your parents —

you whose parents live, and you whose parents are dead:

665for their sake, absent though they are, I clasp your knees here:

stand strong — and do not turn yourselves to panic."

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

And from their eyes Athena thrust away the prodigious

cloud of mist; and light came hard and clear on both sides,

670toward the ships and toward the leveling war alike.

And they made out Hector, good at the war-cry, and his companions,

both those who stood behind and were not fighting

and those who fought the battle along the swift ships.

Nor did it please the heart of great-hearted Ajax any longer

675to stand where the other sons of the Achaeans stood back:

he went striding along the decks of the ships,

wielding in his hands a great jointed pike for sea-fighting,

twenty-two cubits long, socketed with rings.

And as a man well skilled in trick-riding,³⁴

680who has yoked together four horses picked from many

and comes sweeping in from the plain toward the great city

along the public road — and many marvel at him,

men and women both — while he, steady, sure, and always

leaping, changes from horse to horse as they fly along:

685so Ajax went striding deck to deck across the swift ships

with long steps, and his voice went up to the very sky

as with terrible shouts, always, he called on the Danaans

to defend the ships and the huts. Nor did Hector

stay back in the crowd of close-armored Trojans:

690but as a fiery eagle drops on a nation of winged birds

feeding by a river's edge —

geese, or cranes, or long-necked swans —

so Hector went straight at a dark-prowed ship,

charging it head-on; and from behind Zeus thrust him

695onward with his very great hand, and drove the army with him.

And again the fighting sharpened by the ships.

You would say they met each other in the war unworn

and unbroken, so furiously they fought;

and this was the thinking of the fighters: the Achaeans

700said they would not escape the evil, but must perish;

and the heart in every Trojan's chest was hoping

to fire the ships and cut down the Achaean heroes.

With these thoughts they stood against each other;

and Hector laid his hand on the stern of a seagoing ship —³⁵

705a fair ship, quick on the salt water, that had carried Protesilaus

to Troy, and never carried him home again to his fatherland.

Around that ship Achaeans and Trojans

cut each other down hand to hand; no longer at a distance

did they stand the volleys of arrows and of javelins,

710but standing close, one heart in all of them,

they fought with sharpened axes and with hatchets

and with great swords and double-curved spears;

and many fine blades, dark-bound at the hilt,

fell to the ground, some from the hands, some from the shoulders

715of the fighting men; and the black earth ran blood.

And Hector, once he had seized the stern-horn, would not let go:

gripping it in his hands, he called to the Trojans:

"Bring fire! And all together raise the war-cry!

Now Zeus has given us a day worth all the rest:

720to take the ships — the ships that came here against the gods' will

and made us so much misery — through the cowardice of the elders,

who, when I wanted to fight at the ships' sterns,

held me back myself, and kept the army in.

But if wide-seeing Zeus was damaging our wits then,

725now he himself is driving and commanding us."

So he spoke; and they leapt at the Argives all the harder,

and Ajax could hold no longer: the missiles pressed him too hard.

He gave back a little, thinking now to die,

onto the seven-foot bridge-plank, and left the deck of the balanced ship.

730There he stood watchful; and always with his spear

he beat the Trojans off the ships — whoever carried the unwearying fire —

and always with terrible shouts he called on the Danaans:

"Friends, Danaan heroes, squires of Ares —³⁶

be men, my friends; remember your rushing courage.

735Do we imagine there are allies at our backs?

Some stronger wall, to ward the ruin off our men?

There is no city near us fitted with towers

where we might make defense, and a people to turn the scale.

No: we sit in the plain of the close-armored Trojans,

740pinned against the sea, far from our fatherland.

Our light of safety is in our hands — not in any gentleness of war."

He spoke, and pressed on furious with his sharp-pointed spear.

And whoever of the Trojans came driving at the hollow ships

with blazing fire, to please Hector at his urging,

745Ajax stood waiting and stabbed him with the long spear:

twelve men he wounded close-in before the ships.

Notes

1 lines 4–11 — Zeus wakes to the whole tableau at once: the rout, Poseidon among the Argives, and Hector "laboring for breath, his wits astray, vomiting blood — for not the feeblest of the Achaeans had hit him." The litotes is the poem's dry salute to Ajax; the concussion is continuous from 14.433-439. What wakes is not just the god but the plot. ↩

2 lines 18–33 — The punishment of Hera: hung from heaven in a golden unbreakable band, "and from your feet I slung two anvils" — the gods raging up and down Olympus, unable to free her, and any who tried "I seized and hurled from the threshold, till he struck the earth with little life in him." The cosmic-discipline memory (cf. Hephaestus's version, 1.590-594) is deployed as marital threat; and the occasion was the same Heracles-storm that Sleep remembered at 14.249-261 — the poem's back-story is consistent across books, and both tellings exist to make one point: this has happened before, and she did it anyway. ↩

3 lines 36–46 — Hera's oath — the fullest in the poem: Earth, wide Heaven, the down-flowing water of Styx ("the greatest oath and the most terrible for the blessed gods"), "and your own sacred head, and the bed of the two of us, our bridal bed." And it is a lawyer's oath: every word true — Poseidon did act of his own heart (13.15-16 confirms it) — and the seduction, the girdle, and Sleep's errand to Poseidon (14.354-360) nowhere within its terms. She swears by the very bed she used. Zeus smiles (47): readers have argued ever since about how much of that smile is belief. ↩

4 lines 49–77 — The plan of the poem, spoken by its administrator: Hector to drive the Achaeans on the ships of Achilles; "and he will send out his companion Patroclus; and glorious Hector will kill him with the spear... and among them my own son, brilliant Sarpedon. And in anger for him brilliant Achilles will kill Hector" — then the reversed tide "until the Achaeans take steep Ilion through the counsels of Athena." Sixty lines of Iliad and the fall of Troy, dictated in advance and pinned to the Book 1 promise ("on the day the goddess Thetis clasped my knees"). Aristophanes and Aristarchus athetized 56-77 and Zenodotus omitted 64-77 — prophecy so total seemed to them to deflate the tale. It does the opposite: from here on, suspense is replaced by witness. Zeus names his own son among the costs with zero comment; Book 16 will price that silence. ↩

5 lines 80–83 — Hera travels at the speed of homesick thought: "as when the mind of a man darts, who has traveled over much country, and thinks in his quick wits 'would I were here, or there'" — the mind's instant travel as the fastest thing the poet knows (cf. Odyssey 7.36, ships "swift as wing or thought"). Cognition itself becomes the vehicle of a god. ↩

6 lines 101–103 — Hera's laugh: "she laughed with her lips; but the forehead above her dark brows did not warm." The poem's greatest piece of face-writing — the smile as mask worn over rage, observed with a portraitist's exactness three thousand years before the psychology had a vocabulary. ↩

7 lines 110–142 — The Ascalaphus fuse (13.518-525) detonates: Hera lights it deliberately, naming the death to wound Zeus through Ares. Ares' reply is the book's darkest heroism — "do not blame me... even if my fate is to be struck by Zeus's bolt, and lie with the corpses in the blood and the dust": the war-god volunteering for mortality's posture. Athena disarms him physically — helmet, shield, spear — and delivers the poem's mortality-policy in the flattest possible terms: "Better men than he... have been killed before this, or will be killed hereafter. It is a hard thing to rescue the line and offspring of every man." A god may not grieve past policy; men, the poem knows, do nothing else. ↩

8 lines 185–199 — Poseidon's cosmology: three brothers, three lots — "I drew the grey sea to live in forever when the lots were shaken; and Hades drew the misty dark, and Zeus drew the wide heaven... but the earth is common to all three still, and high Olympus." Sovereignty by sortition, not primogeniture — the constitutional counter-claim to Zeus's "elder-born and stronger" (165-166). The tripartite division by lot has close Near Eastern kin (the Akkadian Atrahasis opens with Anu, Enlil, and Enki dividing sky, earth, and waters); here it surfaces once, in anger, and nowhere else in Homer. "Let him stay quiet in his third portion": for one speech, the Iliad's monarchy of heaven is a contested federation. ↩

9 lines 200–211 — Iris earns her wage: "Is this really the word... Or will you turn a little? The hearts of the great can turn. You know how the Erinyes always side with the elder-born." The messenger exceeds her brief with a diplomat's question and a theological reminder — the Furies as enforcers of birth-order — and Poseidon's capitulation praises the craft itself: "it is a fine thing when a messenger knows what is fitting." The scene is the poem's tribute to its own couriers. ↩

10 lines 212–217 — The yielding god's condition: if Zeus spares Ilion against the will of Poseidon, Athena, Hera, Hermes, and Hephaestus, "between us two the anger will have no healing." Athetized in antiquity, but load-bearing: the fall of Troy is established as an inter-divine settlement no single god — not even Zeus — can cheaply revoke (cf. 4.30-49, where Zeus traded away his own three cities). ↩

11 lines 229–230, 308–311 — The aegis passes to Apollo: made by the smith Hephaestus for Zeus "to carry for the routing of men" — the one artifact in the poem whose function is pure panic. Apollo carries it unshaken at first (318-320: stalemate), then shakes it and shouts — and the balance-clause the poem used for whole mornings of battle ("the missiles of both sides struck home, and the people fell") snaps in a single line. ↩

12 lines 244–262 — Hector's revival: he answers the unrecognized god with the accurate history of his own concussion, believing he was bound that day for "the dead and the house of Hades"; Apollo answers with his full title — "Phoebus Apollo of the golden sword: I who before now have guarded you, yourself and your steep citadel alike" (the helmet of 11.353; the walls he built, 7.452-453; 21.446-447). The god who will one day stand off and let him die (22.213) introduces himself as his oldest bodyguard. ↩

13 lines 263–270 — The stalled-horse simile, repeated verbatim from 6.506-511 — our English kept, as the Greek is kept (ancient critics athetized the repeat here). In Book 6 it carried Paris, glittering and trivial, down from Pergamos; here it carries Hector back from the edge of death. Same gallop, same streaming mane, opposite gravities: the formula system's boldest double exposure, and the poem trusts its audience to hold both. ↩

14 lines 281–300 — Thoas of Aetolia, given a rare résumé — best with the javelin, brave standing, "and in assembly few Achaeans could beat him, when the young men contended in debate": the full heroic curriculum (deeds and words, 9.443) in a supporting player. His plan — multitude back, champions stand — is the professional's answer to a revenant: you cannot outfight a portent, but you can blunt it. ↩

15 lines 318–327 — The physics of the aegis: held still, nothing; shaken, with the god's shout laid over it, it "bewitched" (θέλγε) the heart — the enchantment-verb again (12.255, Circe's verb). Panic in Homer is not an emotion but a possession, and the stampede simile that follows (two beasts, the herdsman absent, "in the milking-dark of night") makes the Achaeans the cattle of a masterless field. ↩

16 lines 328–345 — The counter-rout's ledger, paying debts across three books: Stichius (13.691) and Arcesilaus (2.495) fall to Hector; Aeneas kills Iasus and Medon — whose biography (334-337) repeats 13.694-697 verbatim, our English kept: the homicide-exile's story told once at his post and once at his death, as the register promised. Mecisteus, who carried the wounded off the field at 8.333 and 13.422, is carried off himself; Clonius (2.495) and Deiochus complete the roll. The poem audits its minor lives with the same care as its princes. ↩

17 lines 346–352 — Hector's field-order crosses the poem's deepest line: the man who hangs back "I will plan his death on the spot; and no brothers of his, no sisters, will give his dead body its portion of fire: the dogs will drag him before our city." Denial of burial as military discipline, threatened by Hector against his own — the exact fate Achilles will attempt on Hector's corpse, and the theme of the poem's whole last movement. The words are spoken at his triumph's crest; the poem never forgets them. ↩

18 lines 355–366 — Apollo bridges the ditch with a kick and levels the wall — the wall of Books 7-12, the wall that cost the dead their monument-fires — "as when a boy by the sea heaps sand into shapes in his childish play, and then, still playing, scatters them again with his feet and hands." And the narrator turns, for once, to face the god directly: "so you, archer Phoebus, poured into ruin the long labor and misery of the Argives." The apostrophe (elsewhere reserved for Menelaus and Patroclus, figures of pathos) here carries something close to reproach: the distance between divine play and human toil has never been measured more exactly, in either direction. What Books 12-13 fought for line by line, a god undoes as recreation. ↩

19 lines 372–380 — Nestor's prayer — the old contract-form: "if ever anyone in wheat-rich Argos... prayed for his homecoming, and you promised it with a nod: remember it." Zeus thunders — hearing him, the poet says plainly. And the Trojans, hearing the same thunder, take it for their own sign and charge harder. One peal, two readings, both catastrophic in different keys: the poem's most economical lesson in omens. ↩

20 lines 381–390 — The wave-over-the-bulwarks simile lands the Trojans inside the ships' line, and the fighting goes naval: they from chariots, the Achaeans from the decks "with the long pikes that lay aboard for sea-fighting, jointed and socketed, their heads clothed in bronze" — the ναύμαχα ξυστά, boarding weapons stowed since the landing ten years ago, at last taken down. The war has come full circle to the gear of its arrival. ↩

21 lines 390–405 — The Patroclus thread, resumed from 11.848: he is still in Eurypylus's hut, "delighting him with talk" and dressing the wound — the poem's gentlest man at his gentlest — when the wall's fall ends the interlude. His exit couplet repeats Nestor's own persuasion-lines (11.792-793) in the first person, our English kept: "Who knows whether, with a god's help, I might stir his heart by my persuading?" He leaves to fetch Achilles and will return only inside the plan of Zeus (note [4]). "Even as he spoke his feet were carrying him": the poem's quietest sentence of doom. ↩

22 lines 410–414 — The carpenter's chalk-line: battle-equilibrium as a timber trued straight "in the hands of a skilled carpenter, who knows his whole craft well by the promptings of Athena." The deadlock similes have run from farmers' scales (12.433) to boundary stones (12.421) to this: war measured, again, by the honest work it interrupts. ↩

23 lines 419–441 — Caletor, Hector's cousin, falls with the fire- brand still in his hand; and Hector's answering cast kills Lycophron of Cythera — Ajax's henchman, a homicide-exile "we honored in our halls like our own dear parents." The third such exile in three books (Medon, note [16]; Patroclus himself, 23.85-88): the heroic household absorbs killers as kin, and they die defending the men who took them in. ↩

24 lines 458–478 — Teucer's bowstring, "fresh-twisted... bound on this very morning," snaps in the draw — Zeus, guarding Hector, disarms the one man whose shot could end the day. Teucer reads it exactly ("some power is shearing off the plans of our fighting"); Ajax's answer is the poem's practical theology: "let the bow and the showering arrows lie, since a god has spited the Danaans... Take a long spear." No lament, no inquiry: identify the interference, change weapons, keep fighting. Between them the brothers state the whole range of sane response to an intervening god. ↩

25 lines 486–499 — Hector's great exhortation. First the sign read right for once ("I have seen with my own eyes the shots of their best man crippled by Zeus — easily known among men is the strength of Zeus"); then the lines Lycurgus read out to an Athenian jury in 330 BC (Against Leocrates 103), prosecuting a man who fled the city after Chaeronea: "whichever of you... meets his death and his doom — let him die. It is no dishonor for him to die defending his fatherland: his wife is safe after him, and his children, his house and his portion of land unharmed." The patriot-death ethic of 12.243 completed with its economic clause — what the dying man's death purchases, itemized. That the poem gives this creed to Hector, whose wife will not be safe, whose child will not live, whose city burns in every listener's knowledge, is the deepest irony the Iliad ever builds into a speech; and it was still doing civic work in a law-court three centuries later. ↩

26 lines 502–514 — Ajax's counter-speech strips the same choice of all its consolations: "either we perish or we are saved"; the savage joke ("It is not to a dance he is inviting them"); and the preference — "Better once for all to seize our death or our life than be squeezed slowly dry... under worse men than ourselves." Where Hector offers death a meaning, Ajax offers only the arithmetic of now or slowly: the defender's creed, with no city behind it (completed at 733-742, note [36]). ↩

27 lines 525–539 — Dolops, son of Lampus — grandson of Laomedon: even the Trojan royal cousins now feed the ships' battle. His death turns on heirloom armor: the corslet Phyleus brought out of Ephyra, guest-gift of Euphetes, "and now it kept destruction from the flesh of his son" — a cuirass with a passport, protecting the second generation (cf. the boar's- tusk helmet, 10.261-271). The plume Meges shears falls "fresh- shining with its scarlet dye" — the ornament dies first; then Menelaus, "unseen," finishes the man from behind. ↩

28 lines 547–559 — Melanippus of Percote: the cattle-herding cousin who came back when the ships came — lines 550-551 repeat the Imbrius formula (13.175-176) verbatim, our English kept: the poem has a fixed biography for Troy's returned provincials, honored "like his own children" by Priam and spent like coin by Hector, whose rebuke ends on the naked alternative: "now we kill them, or they pull down steep Ilion from its height and cut her citizens down." ↩

29 lines 561–565 — Ajax's shame-couplet repeats 5.531-532 (our English kept): "Where men feel shame, more are saved than slain; where they run, no fame rises, and no strength." Once Agamemnon's marshaling wisdom, now the last doctrine of a shrinking perimeter — αἰδώς as the army's remaining wall. ↩

30 lines 579–591 — Antilochus springs like a hound on a shot fawn, then flees Hector "like a wild beast that has done some mischief — that has killed a dog, or a herdsman with his cattle, and runs before the crowd of men can gather." The guilty-animal simile is unique — predation with a conscience attached — and it fits the poem's tenderest young fighter: Antilochus kills, knows the price of the field instantly, and is standing again the moment he reaches his friends. ↩

31 lines 592–615 — The narrator's double disclosure. Zeus drives everything toward one image: "to see with his own eyes the flare of a single burning ship" — Thetis's "extraordinary prayer" made a visual trigger; from that flare the tide reverses. Then over Hector — foam at his mouth, eyes blazing under grim brows — the lines Zenodotus cut and Aristarchus athetized: Zeus honored him "for he was to be short-lived: already Pallas Athena was speeding his death-day on, under the strength of Peleus' son." Glory as hospice-gift: every act of Hector's greatest hour is performed inside a sentence that has already ended him. The ancients found the disclosure intolerable; it is the poem's whole method — nothing is suspenseful, everything is witnessed. ↩

32 lines 630–652 — The lion takes one cow from the middle of thousands: Periphetes of Mycenae — son of Copreus ("Dung-man"), Eurystheus's herald to Heracles, "of that far worse father was born a better son in every virtue." The Heracles-cycle surfaces as family shame redeemed one generation on — and then the poem's most pitilessly ordinary death: he trips backward over his own shield-rim, "the shield he carried himself, reaching his feet, a tower against javelins," and Hector spears him where he lies tangled in his own protection. The best equipment in the panic is the thing that kills him; his friends watch, too afraid to help. ↩

33 lines 653–667 — The last line before the huts. Nestor "begged each man by his parents, clasping their knees with his words" — supplication conducted by proxy, at range: "remember, each of you, your children and your wives, your property and your parents — you whose parents live, and you whose parents are dead: for their sake, absent though they are, I clasp your knees here." The absent invoked as the army's true country (Ajax will say the country itself is absent, note [36]); and Athena lifts the mist so that they can at least see the enemy that is upon them — the poem's recurring mercy of light (17.646-647). ↩

34 lines 674–688 — Ajax's pike-walk: deck to deck with the twenty- two-cubit boarding pike, "as a man well skilled in trick- riding... yoked together four horses... steady, sure, and always leaping, changes from horse to horse as they fly along." The one extended image of equestrian spectacle in the poem — public road, admiring crowd, the city ahead — laid over a man hopping burning-threatened hulls with a siege-pole: peacetime's showman as war's last acrobat. ↩

35 lines 704–726 — Hector's hand closes on the stern of the ship "that had carried Protesilaus to Troy, and never carried him home again": the war's first casualty (2.698-702) supplying the altar for its crisis — the fleet's mortality concentrated in one hull. Hector's speech from the stern-horn rewrites his own history — the elders' "cowardice" held him back (it was Polydamas's prudence, and his own obedience) — and then produces the poem's most convenient theology: "if wide-seeing Zeus was damaging our wits then, now he himself is driving and commanding us." Both clauses are true; neither means what he thinks. The day Zeus gave him is real, and expires at sundown (11.192-194); "bring fire!" is the exact fulfillment, and the exact limit, of his warrant. ↩

36 lines 727–746 — The last stand, measured in carpentry: Ajax gives back from the deck to "the seven-foot bridge-plank" — θρῆνυς ἑπταπόδης, the cross-bench of a beached hull as the war's entire remaining ground. His speech is the reply to Hector's fatherland-creed (note [25]) from men who have none in reach: "Do we imagine there are allies at our backs? Some stronger wall?... There is no city near us fitted with towers ... We sit in the plain of the close-armored Trojans, pinned against the sea, far from our fatherland. Our light of safety is in our hands — not in any gentleness of war." τὼ ἐν χερσὶ φόως: salvation as a thing held, like a spear. Then the book's last sentence does the accounting its hero would approve: "twelve men he wounded close-in before the ships." No simile, no god, no glory-word — a count. The fire is one torch away, and Book 16 opens with Patroclus weeping in front of Achilles. ↩