The Iliad · wrath, sing, goddess
The news reaches Achilles: the scream, the choice of death — and on the anvil of Hephaestus a whole world of peace, hammered onto the shield he will carry to kill Hector.
Book 18 is built from three scenes of making and unmaking: a man unmade by four lines of news; a night of vows over a washed body; and a god at his anvil making a world. The unmaking first: Antilochus delivers the catastrophe in the poem's most economical sentence — "Patroclus lies dead... naked; and Hector of the flashing helmet has the armor" — and Achilles pours soot on his head and lies down in the dust "mighty in his mightiness," the epitaph-line of Cebriones (16.776) settling on a living man, while Antilochus holds his hands "for fear he would cut his throat with the iron": the Iliad's only suicide watch (notes [2], [3]). Thetis rises with all the Nereids — the catalogue of sea-names the ancients athetized and this translation keeps (note 4) — to mourn a son still alive; and in their exchange the poem reaches its hinge: "quick-fated then you shall be, child" — "Then let me die at once, since I could not defend my companion." Plato put the exchange at the center of the Apology; Socrates chose his death by quoting this one (note 8). With it comes the wrath's own retraction: "may strife perish from among gods and men, and anger — sweeter far than dripping honey, it swells like smoke in men's chests" (note 9).
The middle movement belongs to voice and light: the unarmed Achilles at the ditch, flame streaming from his head like the beacon of a besieged island city — the Achaeans' own situation made into his halo — killing twelve men with three shouts (note 11); Hera forcing the sun into Ocean to end the longest day of the poem (note 13); and, in the standing Trojan assembly, Polydamas's fourth and fatal counsel rejected — "Enyalius is impartial: he kills the would-be killer" — with the narrator's civic verdict on the applause (notes [14]-[16]).
Then the Shield (478-608), which Zenodotus athetized entire and which is the reason the book is immortal: the cosmos; the city at peace with its weddings and its trial — where the blood-price for a killed man is argued before elders, the very ποινή Achilles refused in Book 9, shown working (note 26); the city at war fighting this poem's own battle in miniature, Fate dragging the dead by the feet (note 27); the plowland turning black behind the plow "though it was made of gold" (note 28); the harvest, the vineyard with the boy singing the Linos-song, the lions on the bull, the dancing floor of Daedalus with its potter's-wheel simile and — kept in our printed text against Aristarchus's deletion — the divine singer himself, the poet inside his own artifact (note 33); and Ocean round the rim. A world of peace is forged as the equipment of revenge: the poem's whole argument, carried on one arm.
Register notes: 18.21 reuses 17.693; 18.200-201 reuse 16.42-43; Thetis's sapling-lament (56-62) recurs verbatim at 437-443, both kept identical; "quick-fated" continues 1.417; the slave-women, the fixed soliloquy frames, and the Book 1 "Most dread son of Cronos" line all recur in their registered forms.
1So they fought on, like blazing fire;
and Antilochus came to Achilles, a swift-footed messenger.
He found him in front of his ships with their upright horns,
brooding in his heart on what was already done;
5and troubled, he spoke to his own great-hearted spirit:
"Ah me — why are the long-haired Achaeans again1
being driven in rout across the plain, back on the ships?
Let the gods not now accomplish the evil griefs of my heart,
as my mother once set out for me plainly, and told me
10that the best of the Myrmidons, while I still lived,
would leave the light of the sun at Trojan hands.
Surely he is dead already — Menoetius's stout son.
Stubborn man! I ordered him: beat off the enemy fire,
then back to the ships — do not fight Hector strength to strength."
15While he was turning this over in mind and heart,
the son of illustrious Nestor came up close to him,
shedding hot tears, and spoke the grievous message:
"Ah me, son of war-minded Peleus — it is very hard news2
you must hear now: a thing that should never have happened.
20Patroclus lies dead. They are fighting over the body —
naked: for Hector of the flashing helmet has the armor."
So he spoke; and the black cloud of grief covered Achilles.
With both hands he took up the sooty dust3
and poured it down over his head, and defiled his gracious face;
25and on his nectar-fragrant tunic the black ash settled.
And he himself, in the dust, lay stretched out —
mighty in his mightiness — with his own hands he tore and fouled his hair.
And the slave-women Achilles and Patroclus had won as plunder
shrieked aloud in the grief of their hearts, and ran
30out of the doors around war-minded Achilles, and all of them
beat their breasts with their hands, and the limbs of each went slack.
And Antilochus on the other side mourned, shedding tears,
holding the hands of Achilles as his glorious heart groaned —
for he feared he might cut his own throat with the iron.
35Then he cried out, terribly; and his lady mother heard him
where she sat in the depths of the sea beside her aged father,
and wailed in answer; and the goddesses gathered around her,
all the Nereids who were in the depths of the sea.
There were Glauce and Thaleia and Cymodoce,4
40Nesaea and Speio and Thoë and ox-eyed Halië,
Cymothoë and Actaea and Limnoreia
and Melite and Iaera and Amphithoë and Agave,
Doto and Proto and Pherousa and Dynamene,
Dexamene and Amphinome and Callianeira,
45Doris and Panope and far-famed Galateia,
Nemertes and Apseudes and Callianassa;
and there were Clymene and Ianeira and Ianassa,
Maera and Oreithyia and lovely-braided Amatheia,
and the other Nereids who were in the depths of the sea.
50The silver-shining cave was filled with them; and all together
they beat their breasts, and Thetis led the lament:
"Hear me, sister Nereids, so that all of you
may know well, hearing it, what griefs are in my heart.
Ah me, unhappy! Ah me — mother of the best of men, and cursed in it!5
55For I bore a son, blameless and powerful,
first among heroes; and he shot up like a sapling.
I reared him like a young tree on the orchard's slope
and sent him out with the beaked ships to Ilion
to fight the Trojans; and I shall never receive him again,
60never coming home again to the house of Peleus.
And while he still lives, and looks on the light of the sun,
he grieves; and I can do nothing to help him, though I go to him.
But go I will, to see my dear child, and to hear
what grief has come to him as he waits out of the fighting."
65So speaking she left the cave; and they went with her,
weeping; and around them the wave of the sea
broke apart. And when they came to deep-soiled Troy
they stepped up onto the beach, one after another, where the ships
of the Myrmidons were drawn up close around swift Achilles.
70And his lady mother came and stood by him as he groaned heavily,6
and with a sharp wail she took her son's head in her arms,
and mourning him she spoke winged words:
"Child, why do you weep? What grief has come to your heart?
Speak out; hide nothing. All of it has been accomplished
75by Zeus, exactly as you prayed with lifted hands:
that the sons of the Achaeans be penned against the sterns,
in desperate need of you, and suffer shameful things."
Then, groaning heavily, swift-footed Achilles answered her:
"Mother — yes: the Olympian has accomplished all of it.7
80But what pleasure is it to me, when my dear companion has perished —
Patroclus — whom I honored beyond all companions,
equal to my own head? I have lost him; and the armor
Hector has stripped from his kill — the gigantic armor, a wonder
to see, beautiful: the shining gifts the gods gave Peleus
85on the day they threw you into the bed of a mortal man.
If only you had stayed there among the immortal women of the sea,
and Peleus had brought home a mortal wife!
But now — so that for you too there might be grief past measure
for a child destroyed, whom you will never receive again,
90never coming home — since my own heart forbids me
to live on and remain among men, unless Hector
first, beaten under my spear, loses his life
and pays for making Patroclus, Menoetius's son, his spoil."
Then Thetis answered him, shedding tears:
95"Quick-fated then you shall be, child, by what you say:
for straight after Hector your own doom stands ready."
Then, deeply troubled, swift-footed Achilles answered her:
"Then let me die at once, since I was not to help8
my companion at his killing. Far from his fatherland
100he perished, and had need of me to be his warder-off of ruin.
Now — since I shall not come home to my dear fatherland,
since I proved no light of safety to Patroclus, nor to my other
companions, all the many broken by brilliant Hector,
but sit here by the ships, a useless weight on the plowland —
105I, who am such as no other of the bronze-shirted Achaeans
in war, though in assembly there are others better —
may strife perish from among gods and men,9
and anger, that drives even the prudent man to harshness:
sweeter by far than honey dripping down,
110it swells like smoke in the chests of men —
as the lord of men Agamemnon angered me now.
But we will let that be — a thing done and past, for all our grief,
beating down the heart in our chests because we must.
Now I will go, to find the killer of the dear head —
115Hector. My own death-spirit I will accept whenever
Zeus wills to accomplish it, and the other immortal gods.
For not even the might of Heracles escaped his doom —
and he was dearest of all to lord Zeus, Cronos's son —
but fate broke him, and the grinding anger of Hera.
120So I too, if a like fate is built for me,
shall lie still when I die. But now let me win great fame:
let me drive some deep-girdled woman of Troy
or Dardania to wipe with both her hands the tears
from her soft cheeks, sobbing without pause,
125and let them know how long I have been out of the war.
Do not hold me from the fighting, though you love me. You will not persuade me."
Then answered him the goddess, silver-footed Thetis:
"Yes, child — all this is true. It is no bad thing
to beat sheer destruction away from worn companions.
130But your fine armor is held among the Trojans,
the glittering bronze; and Hector of the flashing helmet
glories in it on his own shoulders. Yet I promise you
he will not glory in it long: his killing is close to him.
So do not go down into the grind of the war-god yet —
135not before your own eyes see me come back here.
At dawn I will return, with the rising of the sun,
bringing fine armor from the lord Hephaestus."
So speaking she turned away from her son,
and turning spoke to her sisters of the sea:
140"Sink now, all of you, into the broad fold of the sea,
to see the old man of the sea and our father's house,
and tell him everything. I go to high Olympus,
to Hephaestus famed for craft, to see if he is willing
to give my son famed armor, shining bright."
145So she spoke; and they sank at once beneath the wave of the sea,
and the goddess, silver-footed Thetis, went on
to Olympus, to bring famed armor to her dear son.
So her feet carried her toward Olympus. And the Achaeans,
fleeing with unearthly clamor before man-slaughtering Hector,
150came to the ships and the Hellespont;
nor could the strong-greaved Achaeans drag the corpse
of Patroclus, Achilles' aide, out of the missiles:
for the army overtook it again, and the horses,
and Hector, Priam's son, like flame in his fury.
155Three times glorious Hector seized him from behind by the feet,
straining to drag him off, calling loud on the Trojans;
and three times the two Ajaxes, clothed in rushing courage,
beat him back from the corpse. But he, steady, sure of his strength,
now charged into the crush, and now again
160stood and shouted his great shout; and he gave back not one step.
As shepherds in the field can in no way drive
a fire-colored lion from a carcass, when his hunger is huge,
so the two Ajaxes, helmed for war, could not
frighten Hector, Priam's son, away from the corpse.
165And now he would have dragged it off, and won unspeakable glory,
had not wind-footed swift Iris come running10
from Olympus with a message for Peleus' son — to arm —
in secret from Zeus and the other gods: for Hera sent her.
And standing close she spoke winged words:
170"Rise, son of Peleus — most terrifying of all men!
Defend Patroclus, for whose sake the dread struggle
stands before the ships. They are killing one another —
the one side fighting for the dead man's body,
the other, the Trojans, storming to drag him off
175to windy Ilion; and glorious Hector above all
is wild to haul him away: his heart is set on cutting
the head from the soft neck, and fixing it on the palisade.
Up — lie there no longer! Let awe come into your heart
that Patroclus should be sport for the dogs of Troy.
180Yours is the disgrace, if the corpse comes back defiled."
Then answered her swift-footed brilliant Achilles:
"Goddess Iris — which of the gods sent you to me with this message?"
Then answered him wind-footed swift Iris:
"Hera sent me, the honored wife of Zeus;
185and the high-throned son of Cronos does not know it, nor any other
of the immortals who live on snow-capped Olympus."
Answering her spoke swift-footed Achilles:
"And how am I to go into the grind? They have my armor —
those men; and my dear mother forbade me to arm
190before my own eyes see her come back here:
she promised to bring fine armor from Hephaestus.
I know no other man whose famed gear I could put on —
unless it were the shield of Ajax, Telamon's son;
and he himself, I trust, is out among the front-fighters,
195wreaking havoc with his spear for dead Patroclus."
Then answered him wind-footed swift Iris:
"We know it well — yes, they hold your famed armor.
But go to the ditch, just as you are, and show yourself to the Trojans:
in dread of you the Trojans may hold back
200from the fighting, and the warlike sons of the Achaeans catch their breath,
worn as they are; for the breathing-spaces of war are few."
So speaking, swift-footed Iris went her way;
and Achilles, dear to Zeus, rose up. And around
his powerful shoulders Athena threw the tasseled aegis,
205and around his head the brilliant goddess set a crown
of golden cloud, and out of it lit a flame, blazing bright.11
As when smoke rises from a city into the upper air,
far off, from an island that enemies have surrounded,
where all day long the men are put to the test of hateful war
210from their own city walls; and then, with the setting sun,
beacon-fires blaze up one after another, and the glare
shoots high for the neighboring islanders to see,
in hope that they may come with ships as warders-off of ruin:
so from the head of Achilles the light went up to the upper air.
215He went from the wall and stood at the ditch; nor did he mix
with the Achaeans, for he heeded his mother's strict command.
There he stood, and shouted; and apart, Pallas Athena
gave voice; and among the Trojans he stirred unspeakable tumult.
As piercing-clear as the voice of the trumpet, when it screams
220around a city ringed by life-breaking enemies,
so piercing-clear then was the voice of Aeacus' grandson.
And when they heard the brazen voice of Aeacus' grandson,
the heart in every man was shaken; and the fair-maned horses
wheeled the chariots backward: they smelled sorrows coming.
225And the charioteers were struck out of their wits, seeing
the unwearying fire, terrible, over the head
of great-hearted Peleus' son: grey-eyed Athena made it blaze.
Three times over the ditch brilliant Achilles gave his great shout,
and three times the Trojans and their famed allies were thrown into confusion;
230and there and then twelve of their best men perished
on their own chariots and their own spears. And the Achaeans,
glad at heart, drew Patroclus out from under the missiles
and laid him on a bier; and his dear companions stood around him
mourning; and among them followed swift-footed Achilles,
235shedding hot tears, when he saw his trusted companion
lying on the litter, torn by the sharp bronze —12
the man he had sent out with horses and chariot
into the war, and never received again at his homecoming.
And the ox-eyed lady Hera sent the unwearied Sun,13
240much against his will, into the streams of Ocean;
and the Sun set, and the brilliant Achaeans rested
from the strong struggle and the leveling war.
And the Trojans on the other side, back from the strong encounter,
loosed their swift horses from under the chariots
245and gathered in assembly before they thought of supper.
The assembly was held standing: no man dared14
sit, for trembling held them all — because Achilles
had appeared, who had long stayed out of the grievous fighting.
Among them the level-headed Polydamas began to speak,
250Panthous's son: he alone looked before and behind.
He was Hector's companion, born in the one night with him;
but one was far the better in words, the other with the spear.
With good will toward them he spoke and addressed them:
"Weigh both sides well, my friends. For my part I command us:
255go to the city now — do not wait for the brilliant dawn
on the plain beside the ships. We are far from our wall.
So long as that man raged against brilliant Agamemnon,
so long the Achaeans were easier men to fight —
I too was glad to camp beside their swift ships,
260hoping we should take the double-ended vessels.
But now I dread the swift-footed son of Peleus, terribly.
So violent is that man's heart, he will not be willing
to stay on the plain, where Trojans and Achaeans
share between them the middle ground and the fury of the war-god:
265it is for our city he will fight, and for our women.
Let us go to the town. Trust me: for so it will be.
For now, the ambrosial night has stopped the swift-footed
son of Peleus; but if he finds us here tomorrow
when he comes out armed, then a man will know him
270well enough: gladly will he reach holy Ilion,
whoever escapes; and dogs and vultures will eat many
of the Trojans. May such a tale stay far from my hearing!
But if we do as I say — though it grieves us —
tonight we keep our force in the meeting-place, and the city
275is guarded by its towers and high gates and the tall
polished doors, fitted close, bolted fast, that shut them;
and early, toward dawn, armed in our gear,
we take our stand along the towers. The worse for him then,
if he wants to come from the ships and fight us for the wall:
280back to the ships he must go, when he has worn out his strong-necked
horses with every kind of running, driving them under the town.
Inside it his heart will not let him charge;
never will he sack it: sooner the running dogs will eat him."
Glaring at him darkly, Hector of the flashing helmet answered:15
285"Polydamas, this talk of yours pleases me no longer —
you who command us to run back and be penned in the city.
Have you not all had your fill of being cooped inside those towers?
In the days before, all mortal men would tell of
Priam's city as rich in gold, rich in bronze;
290but now the fine heirlooms are gone out of our houses:
sold off, our treasures have long since passed to Phrygia
and lovely Maeonia, since great Zeus turned his wrath on us.
And now — now, when the son of crooked-counseled Cronos has granted me
to win glory at the ships, and pen the Achaeans against the sea —
295fool, do not lay such counsels open before the people!
No Trojan will obey you: I will not allow it.
Come then — as I say it, let us all obey:
Take your supper now, through the army, by companies;
remember the watch; and let every man stay wakeful.
300And any Trojan whose goods torment him beyond measure —
let him gather and give it to the people to consume in common:
better any of ours enjoy them than the Achaeans.
and early, toward dawn, armed in our gear,
we will waken sharp Ares beside the hollow ships.
305If it is true that brilliant Achilles has risen by the ships,
the worse for him, if that is what he wants. I at least
will not run from him out of the harsh-sounding war: I will stand
against him, face to face — whether he carries off the great triumph,
or I carry it. Enyalius is impartial: he kills the would-be killer."
310So Hector spoke; and the Trojans roared applause —16
the fools: for Pallas Athena had taken their wits from them.
To Hector they gave their praise, whose counsels were ruinous;
to Polydamas no man's, who had devised the good counsel.
Then they took their supper through the army. But the Achaeans
315all night long mourned Patroclus with wails and groans;
and Peleus' son led the thick lament among them,17
laying his man-slaughtering hands on his companion's chest,
groaning again and again — like a bearded lion
whose cubs a deer-hunter has snatched away
320out of the thick wood; and he comes back too late, and grieves,
and goes down glen after glen tracking the man's footprints,
hunting him out — for bitter anger takes hold of him:
so, groaning heavily, Achilles spoke among the Myrmidons:
"Shame! It was an empty word I let fall on that day
325when I reassured the hero Menoetius in his halls:
I said I would bring back his far-famed son to Opoeis
with his share of the spoils, when he had sacked Ilion.
But Zeus does not accomplish all the designs of men:
for the two of us are fated to redden the same earth
330here in Troy — since I too will not come home
to be received in his halls by the old horseman Peleus,
nor by Thetis my mother: the earth will hold me here.
But now, Patroclus, since I go under the earth after you,
I will not give you burial before I bring here
335the armor and the head of Hector, your great-hearted killer;
and before your pyre I will cut the throats of twelve
shining children of the Trojans, in my rage at your slaying.
Until then, you shall lie just so by the beaked ships,
and around you the deep-girdled women of Troy and Dardania
340shall mourn you night and day, shedding tears —
the women we two labored to win, by strength and the long spear,
sacking the rich cities of mortal men."
So speaking, brilliant Achilles ordered his companions
to set a great tripod over the fire, so that with all speed
345they might wash the clotted blood from Patroclus.
And they set the bath-water tripod on the blazing fire
and poured the water in, and took wood and lit it beneath;
and the fire wrapped the tripod's belly, and the water warmed.
And when the water boiled in the glittering bronze,
350they washed him then, and anointed him richly with oil,
and filled his wounds with unguent nine years old;
and laying him on the bier they covered him with soft linen
from head to foot, and over that a white cloak.
Then all night long, around swift-footed Achilles,
355the Myrmidons mourned Patroclus with wails and groans.
And Zeus spoke to Hera, his sister and his wife:18
"So you have managed it after all, ox-eyed lady Hera —
you have roused swift-footed Achilles. Truly they must be
your own children, these long-haired Achaeans — born from you!"
360Then ox-eyed lady Hera answered him:
"Most dread son of Cronos, what a word you have spoken!
Even a man, I suppose, will do what he can for a man,
though he is mortal, and knows no such counsels as ours.
How then should I — who claim to be the best of goddesses,
365doubly: by birth, and because I am called your wife,
and you are king over all the immortals —
how should I not stitch evils for the Trojans in my anger?"
So the two of them spoke such things to one another.
And silver-footed Thetis came to the house of Hephaestus,19
370imperishable, starry, shining out among the immortals'
houses, built of bronze — the crook-footed god had made it himself.
She found him sweating, wheeling about his bellows,
hard at his hurry: for he was forging tripods, twenty
in all, to stand around the wall of his well-built hall,
375and under the base of each he had set golden wheels,
so that self-moved they might enter the assembly of the gods
and come home to his house again — a wonder to see.
So much was finished; but the intricate handles were not yet
fitted on: these he was preparing, and hammering their rivets.
380While he labored at this with his knowing craft,
the goddess, silver-footed Thetis, came near him;
and Charis of the shining veil saw her and came forward —20
the beautiful Charis, whom the famed crook-footed god had married —
and clung to her hand, and spoke a word, and named her:
385"Thetis of the trailing robe — why have you come to our house,
honored guest and dear? Before now you have not come often.
Come further in with me, and let me set the guest-fare before you."
So speaking, the brilliant goddess led her forward,
and seated her on a chair, silver-studded,
390beautiful, intricate, with a footstool under her feet;
and she called to Hephaestus famed for craft, and said:
"Hephaestus — come out here: Thetis has need of you."
And the famed crook-footed god answered her:
"Then a dread goddess is inside my house — one I revere:
395she saved me when the pain came over me after my great fall,
by the will of my own bitch-faced mother, who wanted
to hide me away for being lame. My heart would have suffered then,
had not Eurynome and Thetis caught me to their laps —
Eurynome, daughter of back-flowing Ocean.
400Nine years I forged intricate things beside them —
brooches, and curved spiral-bracelets, and rosette-cups, and necklaces —
there in the hollow cave; and around us the stream of Ocean
ran on forever, murmuring with foam. And no one knew —
not one of the gods, not one of mortal men:
405only Thetis knew, and Eurynome — the two who saved me.
Now she has come to our house; and so I am bound
to pay fair-braided Thetis the whole ransom of my life.
Set out the fine guest-fare before her now,
while I put away my bellows and all my tools."
410He spoke, and heaved his monstrous bulk up from the anvil-block,21
limping; and beneath him his slender legs moved quickly.
He set the bellows away from the fire, and gathered
all the tools of his labor into a silver chest;
and with a sponge he wiped his face and both his hands,
415his massive neck and his shaggy chest,
and put on a tunic, and took up a thick staff, and came out
limping; and there moved quickly, supporting their lord,
attendants made of gold, in the likeness of living girls:
in them is mind, in their breasts, and voice,
420and strength; and they know handiwork from the immortal gods.
These moved bustling at their lord's side; and he, laboring on
to where Thetis was, sat down on a shining chair,
and clung to her hand, and spoke a word, and named her:
"Thetis of the trailing robe — why have you come to our house,
425honored guest and dear? Before now you have not come often.
Say what is in your mind. My heart bids me do it,
if do it I can — if it is a thing that can be done."
Then Thetis answered him, shedding tears:22
"Hephaestus — is there any goddess, of all on Olympus,
430who has endured so many bitter griefs in her heart,
as many as the sorrows Zeus, Cronos's son, has given me beyond all?
Out of all the sisters of the sea he broke me to a man,
to Peleus, Aeacus' son; and I endured a man's bed,
much against my will. That man lies in his halls now
435worn out with wretched old age. But there is more for me:
he gave me a son to bear and to rear,
first among heroes; and he shot up like a sapling.
I reared him like a young tree on the orchard's slope
and sent him out with the beaked ships to Ilion
440to fight the Trojans; and I shall never receive him again,
never coming home again to the house of Peleus.
And while he still lives, and looks on the light of the sun,
he grieves; and I can do nothing to help him, though I go to him.
The girl the sons of the Achaeans picked out as his prize —
445her the lord Agamemnon took back out of his hands;
and grieving for her he was eating his own heart out. Then the Trojans
penned the Achaeans against the sterns, and would not let them
come out; and the elders of the Argives begged him,
naming over the many glorious gifts.
450He refused, then, to beat off the ruin himself;
but he put his own armor on Patroclus
and sent him into the war, and a great force with him.
All day they fought around the Scaean Gates,
and would have sacked the city that same day — had not Apollo
455killed the stout son of Menoetius in the front ranks,
Patroclus who had wrought so much harm, and handed the glory to Hector.
So now I come to your knees: will you give my son —
quick-fated as he is — a shield and a helmet,
and fine greaves fitted with ankle-pieces,
460and a corslet? What he had, his trusted companion lost
when the Trojans broke him; and my son lies on the ground, eating his heart out."
Then the famed crook-footed god answered her:23
"Take heart. Do not let these things trouble your mind.
Would that I could hide him away from harsh-sounding death
465as surely — when the terrible doom comes for him —
as fine armor shall be his: armor such that any man
of the many who see it hereafter will marvel."
So speaking he left her there and went to his bellows,
and turned them toward the fire and bade them work.
470And the bellows — twenty in all — blew on the crucibles,24
sending out their blast at every strength:
now to serve him pressing hard, and now the opposite,
however Hephaestus willed it and the work required.
And he threw unwearying bronze on the fire, and tin,
475and precious gold, and silver; and next he set
the great anvil on the anvil-block, and took up in one hand
the massive hammer, and in the other took the tongs.
And he made first of all a shield, great and heavy,
working the whole of it with cunning; and around it he threw a rim,
480bright, triple, glittering; and from it a silver strap.
Five were the layers of the shield itself; and on its face
he wrought many intricate things with his knowing craft.
On it he made the earth, and the heaven, and the sea,25
the unwearied sun and the moon at her full,
485and on it all the constellations with which heaven is crowned —
the Pleiades and the Hyades, and the strength of Orion,
and the Bear, which men also call by the name of the Wagon,
who turns in her own place, keeping watch on Orion,
and alone has no share in the baths of Ocean.
490And on it he made two cities of mortal men,26
beautiful. In the one there were weddings and feasts:
brides were being led from their chambers under blazing torches
up through the town, and loud rose the wedding-song;
and young men whirled in the dance, and among them
495flutes and lyres kept up their cry; and the women,
standing each at her door, looked on and marveled.
And the people were gathered in the meeting-place, where a quarrel
had risen: two men quarreling over the blood-price
of a man who was killed. The one claimed he had paid all,
500declaring it to the people; the other refused to take anything;
and both were eager to take an end of it before an arbiter.
And the people cheered for both, supporters of either side,
and the heralds held the crowd in check; and the elders
sat on polished stones in the sacred circle,
505the scepters of the clear-voiced heralds in their hands;
with these they rose, and gave judgment each in turn.
And in the middle lay two talents of gold,
to be given to the one who spoke the straightest judgment.
But around the other city two armies of fighting men were lying27
510blazing in their armor; and their counsel was divided —
whether to sack it outright, or to divide in two
all the wealth the lovely town held inside it.
But the besieged were not yielding: they had armed in secret for an ambush.
Their dear wives and little children stood on the wall
515and guarded it, with the men whom old age held;
and the rest went out. And Ares led them, and Pallas Athena,
both of gold, and golden the clothes they wore,
beautiful and great in their armor — like the gods they were,
conspicuous on every side; and the people under them were smaller.
520And when they came to the place that suited their ambush,
by a river, where there was a watering-place for all the herds,
there they settled themselves, wrapped in blazing bronze.
And two scouts sat apart from the army,
waiting to sight the sheep and the twist-horned cattle.
525And these came on soon, and two herdsmen followed with them,
delighting in their pipes: the trap they never guessed.
And the men in ambush saw them and ran out, and swiftly
cut off the herds of cattle and the fine flocks
of white-shining sheep, and killed the herdsmen over them.
530But the besiegers, when they heard the great noise among the cattle
from where they sat before the assembly-ground, mounted at once
behind their high-stepping horses and came on fast, and reached them.
And they formed up and fought their battle on the river-banks,
striking one another with the bronze-fitted spears.
535And Strife was joining the crowd, and Tumult, and deadly Fate,
holding one man fresh-wounded and alive, another
unwounded, another dead, dragging him by the feet through the fighting;
and the cloak on her shoulders was red with the blood of men.
They closed and fought like living mortals,
540and dragged away each other's dead.
And on it he set a fallow field, soft, rich plowland,28
wide, thrice-turned; and on it many plowmen
wheeled their teams and drove them this way and that;
and whenever they turned and came to the field's edge,
545a man would come and put in their hands a cup
of honey-sweet wine; and they would turn back down the furrows,
straining to reach the deep fallow's edge again.
And the field grew black behind them, like earth the plow has turned,
though it was made of gold: that was the very wonder of the work.
550And on it he set a king's estate, where laborers29
were reaping, with sharp sickles in their hands.
Some handfuls were falling to the ground in rows along the swath,
and others the sheaf-binders were tying with twisted straw:
three binders stood at their work, and behind them
555boys gathered the handfuls and carried them in their arms,
keeping them supplied without pause. And the king among them,
in silence, staff in hand, stood at the swath, glad at heart.
And heralds apart, beneath an oak, were laying out the feast,
dressing the great ox they had slaughtered; and the women
560sprinkled the meal with white barley in plenty, for the laborers' dinner.
And on it he set a vineyard, heavy-laden with grape-clusters,30
beautiful, golden: the grapes along it were black,
and it stood staked from end to end on silver poles.
And around it he drove a ditch of blue enamel, and about that a fence
565of tin; and one single path led in,
by which the carriers passed whenever they gathered the vintage.
And girls and young men, hearts light as children's,
carried the honey-sweet fruit in woven baskets;
and in the middle of them a boy with a clear-toned lyre
570played longingly, and sang the beautiful Linos-song
in his delicate voice; and they, stamping in time,
followed with song and cries, skipping on their feet.
And on it he made a herd of straight-horned cattle:31
the cows were wrought of gold and of tin,
575and streamed lowing from the farmyard toward their pasture
beside a murmuring river, beside the waving reeds.
And golden herdsmen walked along with the cattle,
four of them, and nine quick-footed dogs came after.
But two terrible lions, in among the leading cattle,
580had hold of a bellowing bull; and he, roaring loud,
was dragged away; and the dogs and the young men went after him.
The two lions, ripping open the great bull's hide,
were gulping the entrails and the black blood; and the herdsmen
urged their swift dogs in vain, setting them on:
585the dogs kept shying back from sinking teeth in the lions,
but stood in close and barked, and leapt away.
And on it the famed crook-footed god made a pasture32
in a beautiful glen, a great pasture of white-shining sheep,
with steadings and roofed huts and pens.
590And on it the famed crook-footed god wrought a dancing floor,33
like the one that Daedalus once fashioned
in wide Knossos for lovely-haired Ariadne.
There young men and girls whose bride-price is many oxen
were dancing, holding one another's hands at the wrist.
595The girls wore fine linen, and the young men tunics
well-woven, glistening softly with oil;
and the girls wore beautiful garlands, and the young men carried
golden daggers hanging from silver belts.
And now they would run on skillful feet,
600lightly, easily — as when a potter, seated, tries
the wheel fitted to his hands, to see if it will spin —
and now again they would run in lines toward one another.
And a great crowd stood around the lovely dance,
delighting; and among them a divine singer made music,
605playing the lyre; and two acrobats, leading the measure,
whirled through the middle of them.
And on it he set the great strength of the river Ocean,34
along the outermost rim of the strong-built shield.
And when he had made the shield, great and heavy,35
610he made him a corslet brighter than the blaze of fire,
and he made him a heavy helmet, fitted to his temples,
beautiful, intricate, and set upon it a crest of gold,
and he made him greaves of pliant tin.
And when the famed crook-footed god had labored out all the armor,
615he took it up and laid it before the mother of Achilles;
and she like a hawk plunged down from snow-capped Olympus,
carrying the glittering armor from Hephaestus.
1 lines 1–14 — Achilles reads the rout before the message arrives, through a prophecy remembered: "the best of the Myrmidons, while I still lived, would leave the light of the sun." His mother's oracles (cf. 17.408-411) work in him as dread; the fixed soliloquy frame ("troubled, he spoke...") carries the poem's most fearful private arithmetic. His last clause before the news is a rebuke to the dead man — "I ordered him: beat off the fire, then back" — the conditions of 16.87-96, recited by the man who set them, to no one. ↩
2 lines 15–21 — The delivery: four lines, weeping, with the fixed formula shared by Menelaus's instructions (17.685-693) — "Patroclus lies dead... naked: for Hector of the flashing helmet has the armor" (the line reused verbatim). Nothing softened, nothing arranged: the worst news in the poem is also its shortest speech. ↩
3 lines 22–35 — The unmaking: the black cloud; both hands pouring soot over the head; the "nectar-fragrant tunic" fouled with ash; and the fallen line — "in the dust he lay stretched out, mighty in his mightiness" — the epitaph of Cebriones (16.776, register kept), now describing a living man performing his own burial. The slave-women's shrieking (δμῳαί, the register's word) makes the hut a house of mourning; and Antilochus holds Achilles' hands "for fear he might cut his own throat with the iron" — Aristarchus's reading, and the Iliad's only suicide watch: the poem considers, for one line, that its hero might end it here. Then the scream that a goddess hears through the sea. ↩
4 lines 35–49 — The Nereid catalogue: thirty-three names of the sea's daughters, athetized by Zenodotus and Aristarchus and omitted in the Argolic edition — and kept here, because the list is the point: an entire society of the sea rises keening. The names are transparent sea-poetry — Glauce (Grey-green), Cymodoce and Cymothoë (Wave-gatherer, Wave-swift), Nemertes and Apseudes (Truthful and Unlying), Pherousa and Dynamene (Carrier and Capable), Galateia of the milk-white calm — Hesiod's Theogony shares many. Grief summons the whole element: when Achilles screams, the Mediterranean answers by name. ↩
5 lines 50–64 — Thetis leads the lament (ἐξῆρχε γόοιο — the ritual term for the chief mourner) for a son not yet dead, and coins for herself the poem's most desolate word: δυσαριστοτόκεια — "unhappy in the best of sons": mother of the best, and cursed by the superlative itself. The sapling lines — "he shot up like a sapling; I reared him like a young tree on the orchard's slope" — recur verbatim in her petition to Hephaestus (437-443): a mother's lament already hardened into liturgy. ↩
6 lines 65–77 — The Nereids beach at Troy; Thetis "took her son's head in her arms" — the position of the chief mourner at a corpse's head (cf. 24.724): she mourns him alive, enacting the funeral she will not attend. Her comfort is the poem's bitterest arithmetic: all this "has been accomplished by Zeus, exactly as you prayed" — the Book 1 petition returned with interest. ↩
7 lines 78–93 — Achilles' answer: the prayer granted, "but what pleasure is it to me?" Patroclus "equal to my own head" — self and friend one body — and the armor's loss traced to its origin: the gods' wedding-gift "on the day they threw you into the bed of a mortal man." The logic runs backward from grief to his own conception: better his mother had stayed in the sea, better he had never been. Then the vow that closes the argument of the whole poem's first movement: no life "unless Hector first, beaten under my spear, loses his life." ↩
8 lines 94–116 — The choice. Thetis: "Quick-fated then you shall be, child" (ὠκύμορος — her word for him since 1.417); "straight after Hector your own doom stands ready." Achilles: "Then let me die at once (αὐτίκα τεθναίην), since I was not to help my companion at his killing." Plato set this exchange at the center of the Apology (28c-d): Socrates, refusing to abandon his post for fear of death, cites Achilles despising danger "when the alternative was to live a coward who does not avenge his friends" — the pagan scripture of principled dying, quoted by philosophy at its own martyrdom. (Aeschines quoted the neighboring lines in court in 345 BC, reading the friendship as love — the ancient debate about what Patroclus was to Achilles begins in the orators.) The self-portrait that follows is pitiless: "a useless weight on the plowland" — the best of the Achaeans as unharvested ground. ↩
9 lines 107–126 — The wish against strife: "may strife perish from among gods and men, and anger, that drives even the prudent man to harshness: sweeter by far than honey dripping down, it swells like smoke in the chests of men." The wrath of the poem's first word is renounced by its owner in its most quoted self-description — anger as honey and smoke, pleasure and suffocation in one body. Then the turn: "done is done"; death accepted "whenever Zeus wills"; the Heracles precedent (even Zeus's dearest died); and the terrible new economy of fame — to make "some deep-girdled woman of Troy or Dardania wipe with both her hands the tears from her soft cheeks": his glory henceforth denominated in enemy grief. Thetis does not argue; she schedules the armor. ↩
10 lines 148–202 — Hera's covert operation: Iris sent "in secret from Zeus," finding Achilles weaponless — and Iris's answer to "how am I to go?" is the poem's discovery about presence: "go to the ditch, just as you are, and show yourself." The reuse of 16.42-43 (our English kept: "catch their breath... for the breathing-spaces of war are few") makes the point formally: what Patroclus's borrowed armor did in Book 16, Achilles' bare appearance will do now. The disguise-plot ends: the man himself is the weapon. ↩
11 lines 203–231 — The epiphany at the ditch: aegis, golden cloud, and flame from the head — and the great simile turns the Achaean camp inside out: the light is like smoke and beacon-fires "from an island that enemies have surrounded... in hope that neighbors may come with ships as warders-off of ruin." The besieged fleet's distress-signal is Achilles himself: he is the rescue the beacons pray for. The trumpet simile (a city ringed by "life-breaking" enemies) keeps the siege inverted; Athena's voice doubles his; and the toll is the poem's most economical: twelve men dead "on their own chariots and their own spears" — killed by sound. He never crosses the ditch; his mother's command holds even here. ↩
12 lines 232–239 — The body received: Achilles walking behind the bier "shedding hot tears, when he saw his trusted companion lying on the litter, torn by the sharp bronze — the man he had sent out with horses and chariot into the war, and never received again at his homecoming." The verb is Thetis's (59, 89, 440): the failed reception, parent's and friend's, is now the poem's defining gesture of loss. ↩
13 lines 239–242 — Hera sends the unwearied Sun into Ocean "much against his will": the goddess closes by force the day that began at 11.1 — the longest day in poetry, eight books long — and with it expires Hector's warrant, which ran "until the sun goes down" (11.193-194). The astronomical order itself is bent to end a battle: nothing in the poem says more economically how much the gods now need Achilles on the field tomorrow. ↩
14 lines 243–284 — The standing assembly ("no man dared sit"): fear given a posture. Polydamas — introduced with his full credentials: born the same night as Hector, "one far the better in words, the other with the spear," the man who "alone looked before and behind" — gives the fourth and last of his counsels (12.61 accepted; 12.211 rejected; 13.726 accepted; now this): into the city tonight, fight from the towers at dawn. Every clause is correct, and the poem lets him paint the alternative exactly as Book 22 will stage it: the horses worn out "with every kind of running, driving them under the town... sooner the running dogs will eat him." ↩
15 lines 285–310 — Hector's answer — the register's darkly- glaring formula for the first time turned on his own counselor since 12.230. Its center is the war's balance- sheet: Priam's city, once "rich in gold, rich in bronze," stripped — "sold off, our treasures have long since passed to Phrygia and lovely Maeonia" — ten years of attrition in four lines, the clearest economics in the poem. Then the fatal logic: Zeus has granted me glory at the ships — "I will not allow" retreat; and the creed: "I will stand against him, face to face — whether he carries off the great triumph, or I. Enyalius is impartial: he kills the would-be killer" (ξυνὸς Ἐνυάλιος — war the commons, shared ground where the hunter is hunted). Magnificent, and the exact miscalculation: the last time Hector trusted a grant of Zeus, it expired at sundown (note [13]). It has. ↩
16 lines 310–314 — The narrator's civic verdict: the Trojans applaud — "the fools: for Pallas Athena had taken their wits from them. To Hector they gave their praise, whose counsels were ruinous; to Polydamas no man's, who had devised the good counsel." The poem's one explicit theory of collective political failure: the assembly's judgment itself god-damaged. Hector will remember this night with these very terms at 22.99-107 ("Polydamas will be first to heap reproach on me"); the applause the Trojans give here is the shame that keeps him outside the wall to die. ↩
17 lines 314–355 — The wake. Achilles leads the lament with "man-slaughtering hands" laid on his companion's chest — the poem's fixed epithet for Hector's hands (ἀνδροφόνος) transferred once, here, to Achilles' (ancient copies read it either way; the transfer is the point). The lion robbed of his cubs "goes down glen after glen tracking the man's footprints... for bitter anger takes hold of him": grief as pursuit — the simile knows revenge is a species of mourning. The speech makes the broken promise to Menoetius explicit (Opoeis, the share of spoils), accepts the shared grave ("the two of us are fated to redden the same earth here in Troy"), and then makes the poem's darkest vow: Hector's armor and head; "and before your pyre I will cut the throats of twelve shining children of the Trojans" — human sacrifice, promised in cold blood and later paid (21.27-32; 23.175-176). The poem neither softens nor condemns it; it sets it beside the tenderness of the washing — the boiled water, oil, nine-year unguent, soft linen, white cloak — one night containing both. ↩
18 lines 356–368 — Zeus and Hera, dry as a domestic ledger: "So you have managed it... Truly they must be your own children, these long-haired Achaeans — born from you!" Her answer scales godhead by analogy from below: even a mortal man does what he can for a friend — how should the best of goddesses "not stitch evils for the Trojans in my anger?" (κακὰ ῥάψαι — mischief as needlework: the craft-verb of the book, on the eve of its greatest crafting.) An ancient critic (Zenodorus) condemned the exchange; it is the Olympian marriage in equilibrium — the quarrel of Books 1 and 15 subsided into married irony. ↩
19 lines 369–381 — The house of Hephaestus, "imperishable, starry... he had made it himself" — and the first wonder: twenty tripods with golden wheels under their bases, "so that self-moved (αὐτόματοι) they might enter the assembly of the gods and come home to his house again." The first self-propelled machines in literature, unfinished on the workbench — their intricate handles still to be riveted — when the biggest commission of the poem walks in. The god of craft is discovered mid-project, sweating: labor is labor even on Olympus. ↩
20 lines 382–409 — Charis — "Grace of the shining veil" — is Hephaestus's wife here (in the Odyssey it is Aphrodite: the poem marries the craftsman to the quality of his own work). Her hospitality frames the god's great autobiography: thrown from heaven by "my own bitch-faced mother," who wanted the lame child hidden; caught in the laps of Thetis and Eurynome; nine years in the sea-cave forging "brooches, and curved spiral-bracelets, and rosette-cups, and necklaces" while Ocean foamed around and no one knew. (At 1.590-594 he tells of a different fall — hurled by Zeus, landing on Lemnos: two falls, unreconciled; a god may have more than one myth.) The debt is named in the language of ransom: ζῳάγρια, "the whole ransom of my life" — the shield of Achilles will be forged as the repayment of a rescue, the poem's economy of obligation reaching into heaven. ↩
21 lines 410–421 — The god at rest: the "monstrous bulk" heaving up from the anvil-block, the sponge over face and hands and "shaggy chest" — divine labor with human sweat — and then the second wonder: "attendants made of gold, in the likeness of living girls: in them is mind, in their breasts, and voice, and strength; and they know handiwork from the immortal gods." Artificial intelligence, three millennia early: the lame god has built himself helpers with minds. The poem presents them without astonishment — in this house, the made and the living have equal standing. ↩
22 lines 428–461 — Thetis's petition: her own biography first — married off "out of all the sisters of the sea... and I endured a man's bed, much against my will," Peleus now "worn out with wretched old age" (the wedding the gods attended, reduced to a widowhood-in-waiting); the sapling lines repeated verbatim from her lament (note [5]); and then the entire Iliad summarized in thirteen lines — the prize taken, the wrath, the embassy's gifts refused, the borrowed armor, Apollo's kill, Hector's glory — the poem retold inside the poem as one mother's grievance (Aristarchus athetized the summary as needless; it is the story's shape seen from the sea: this is what the epic looks like to a bereaved immortal). The request itself is a plain equipment-list: shield, helmet, greaves with ankle-pieces, corslet — for a son she names with her own epithet for him: "quick-fated." ↩
23 lines 462–467 — Hephaestus's answer measures exactly what craft can and cannot do: "Would that I could hide him away from harsh-sounding death as surely... as fine armor shall be his." He can make anything except the one thing wanted. The armor is promised not as protection but as marvel — "any man of the many who see it hereafter will wonder" — art's honest offer: not to save, but to amaze. ↩
24 lines 468–482 — The forge in motion: twenty bellows blowing "at every strength... however Hephaestus willed it and the work required" — automated, responsive tools; the four metals; anvil, hammer, tongs. The shield: five layers, triple shining rim, silver strap — and the maker's formula that will govern everything on it: "he wrought many intricate things with his knowing craft" (ἰδυίῃσι πραπίδεσσιν — with knowing wits: intelligence in the hands). ↩
25 lines 483–489 — The cosmos first: earth, heaven, sea, sun, full moon, "all the constellations with which heaven is crowned" — Pleiades, Hyades, Orion's strength, and the Bear-also-called-Wagon "who turns in her own place, keeping watch on Orion, and alone has no share in the baths of Ocean": the circumpolar star that never sets, described with precise naked-eye astronomy (the same lines steer Odysseus at Od. 5.272-275). The shield begins where Genesis begins; everything human on it will happen under this permanent sky. ↩
26 lines 490–508 — The city at peace: weddings first — torchlit processions, the hymenaios, whirling dancers, "the women, standing each at her door, looked on and marveled" (the audience inside the artwork, marveling as we do). Then the trial: two men quarreling "over the blood-price of a man who was killed" — one claiming full payment made, one refusing to accept — both eager for an arbiter; the elders in the sacred circle with the heralds' scepters, judging in turn; two talents of gold for "the straightest judgment." The most-argued lines in Greek legal history (already in antiquity) — and, in this poem, the shield's quiet answer to its bearer: in the city at peace, a killing becomes a procedure; ποινή can be paid, accepted, judged. Ajax said it to Achilles' face (9.632-636): a man accepts the price even for a slain brother. Achilles carries into battle a picture of the settlement he refused — and will, in Book 24, at last enact. ↩
27 lines 509–540 — The city at war fights this poem's own war in miniature: the divided counsel of the besiegers (sack, or take half the wealth — the very offer Hector floated at 22.111-121's rehearsal); the wall held by wives, children, and old men (Troy's exact demography, 8.518-522); the ambush at the watering-place; the herdsmen killed "delighting in their pipes: the trap they never guessed" (the shield's one unbearable clause — music as the last sound of the unsuspecting); and the river-bank battle joined by Strife, Tumult, and deadly Fate dragging a dead man by the feet, "and the cloak on her shoulders was red with the blood of men. They closed and fought like living mortals" — the highest compliment art pays itself in the poem: the made men fight like real ones. What Hephaestus forges here is the Iliad. ↩
28 lines 541–550 — The plowing: thrice-turned fallow, the teams wheeling, and at every turn "a man would come and put in their hands a cup of honey-sweet wine" — labor's rhythm marked in refreshment. Then the master-stroke: "the field grew black behind them, and looked like earth that the plow has turned, though it was made of gold: that was the very wonder of the work." Gold made to look like soil — the poem names realism itself as the miracle: not the precious material but its perfect surrender to truth. ↩
29 lines 551–561 — The king's estate: reapers, binders, boys with armfuls, the slaughtered ox under the oak, women and barley — and at the center, the poem's image of right lordship: "the king among them, in silence, staff in hand, stood at the swath, glad at heart." A king whose joy is watching his people's work — the anti-Agamemnon: no prize taken, nothing seized; the staff (σκῆπτρον, the quarrel's own prop in Book 1) held in stillness over harvest instead of strife. (Some ancient copies added a line naming the grain "Eleusinian Demeter's" — the apparatus records the pious insertion.) ↩
30 lines 562–573 — The vineyard: gold vines, black grapes, silver poles, enamel ditch, tin fence, "and one single path led in" — the picture composed like the object it is. At its heart the poem's most haunting music: the boy with the clear lyre singing "the beautiful Linos-song in his delicate voice" while the pickers stamp and skip in time. The Linos-song was the ancient harvest-lament — grief for the dying year sung inside abundance (Herodotus 2.79 found its double in Egypt) — so even the shield's happiest panel keeps one thread of mourning, in a boy's voice, at the vintage. ↩
31 lines 574–587 — The cattle and the lions: the herd streaming out "beside a murmuring river, beside the waving reeds" — and then the shield's only irruption of the wild: two lions on the bellowing bull, "gulping the entrails and the black blood," the dogs barking close and shying back. The countryside's one violence is the oldest kind — predation, not war: on the shield as in the poem's similes, the lion is what battle keeps trying to look like. ↩
32 lines 588–590 — The sheep pasture: glen, steadings, huts, pens — three lines with no event at all: the shield's one panel of pure peace, and the shortest. ↩
33 lines 591–607 — The dancing floor "like the one that Daedalus once fashioned in wide Knossos for lovely-haired Ariadne" — Homer's only Daedalus, invoked as the craftsman's own benchmark: Hephaestus outdoing the human master. Young men and much-wooed girls ("whose bride-price is many oxen"), hand on wrist; linen and oiled tunics; garlands, gold daggers on silver belts; and the wheeling runs compared to a potter testing his wheel — a craft simile inside the craftwork, the second artisan invoked within the artifact. Then the line with the great textual history: "among them a divine singer made music, playing the lyre." Aristarchus deleted the singer (Athenaeus 180-181 preserves the surgery), claiming the verse was imported from Odyssey 4.17-18 — but our printed text keeps him, and rightly: the shield's final human figure is the poet, singing inside the world he is part of, while two acrobats lead the measure. The Iliad's maker signs the work — inside it. ↩
34 lines 607–608 — Ocean at the rim: the river that circles the world circles the shield — the cosmos of line 483 closed by its own boundary; the object is finished as the world is, edged with water. On this disk Achilles will carry the entire ordered world — seasons, courts, weddings, harvests, the dance — into a battle where he intends to die. ↩
35 lines 610–618 — The rest, in one breath each: corslet "brighter than the blaze of fire," helmet with golden crest, greaves of pliant tin; and the delivery — Thetis "like a hawk plunged down from snow-capped Olympus, carrying the glittering armor." The book that began with a scream ends with a stoop of wings: the mother diving seaward-fast out of heaven, bringing her quick-fated son the most beautiful object in literature, so that he can go and be killed in it gloriously. Book 19 opens with the armor laid down clashing before him. ↩