from The Iliad

Homer c.900 BC

Achilles with wild fury in his heart

pulled in upon his chest his beautiful shield-

his helmet with four burnished metal ridges

nodding above it, and the golden crest

Hephaestus locked there tossing in the wind.

Conspicuous as the evening star that comes,

amid the first in heaven, at fall of night,

and stands most lovely in the west, so shone

in sunlight the fine-pointed spear

Achilles poised in his right hand, with deadly

aim at Hector, at the skin where most

it lay exposed. But nearly all was covered

by the bronze gear he took from slain Patroclus,

showing only, where his collarbones

divided neck and shoulders, the bare throat

where the destruction of a life is quickest.

Here, then, as the Trojan charged, Achilles

drove his point straight through the tender neck,

but did not cut the windpipe, leaving Hector

able to speak and to respond. He fell

aside into the dust. And Prince Achilles

now exulted:

 

                      'Hector, had you thought

that you could kill Patroclus and be safe?

Nothing to dread from me; I was not there.

All childishness. Though distant then, Patroclus,

comrade in arms was greater far than he-

and it is I who had been left behind

that day beside the deepsea ships who now

have made your knees give way. The dogs and kites

will rip your body. His will lie in honour

when the Achaeans give him funeral.'

 

Hector, barely whispering, replied:

 

'I beg you by your soul and by your parents,

do not let the dogs feed on me

in your encampment by the ships. Accept

the bronze and gold my father will provide

as gifts, my father and her ladyship

my mother. Let them have my body back,

so that our men and women may accord me

decency of fire when I am dead.'

 

Achilles the great runner scowled and said:

 

'Beg me no beggary by soul or parents,

whining dog! Would god my passion drove me

to slaughter you and eat you raw, you've caused

such agony to me! No man exists

who could defend you from the carrion pack-

not if they spread for me ten times your ransom,

twenty times, and promise more as well;

aye, not if Priam, son of Dardanus,

tells them to buy you for your weight in gold!

You'll have no bed of death, nor will you be

laid out and mourned by her who gave you birth.

Dogs and birds will have you, every scrap.'

 

Then at the point of death Lord Hector said:

 

'I see you now for what you are. No chance

to win you over. Iron in your breast

your heart is. Think a bit, though: this may be

a thing the gods in anger hold against you

on that day when Paris and Apollo

destroy you at the Gates, great as you are.'

 

Even as he spoke, the end came, and death hid him;

spirit from body fluttered to undergloom,

bewailing fate that made him leave his youth

 and manhood in the world. And as he died

Achilles spoke again. He said:

 

'Die, make an end. I shall accept my own

whenever Zeus and the other gods desire.'

 

At this he pulled his spearhead from the body,

laying it aside, and stripped

the bloodstained shield and cuirass from his shoulders.

Other Achaeans hastened round to see

Hector's fine body and his comely face,

and no one came who did not stab the body.

Glancing at one another they would say:

 

'Now Hector has turned vulnerable, softer

than when he put the torches to the ships!'

 

And he who said this would inflict a wound.

When the great master of pursuit, Achilles,

had the body stripped, he stood among them,

saying swiftly:

                        'Friends, my lords and captains

of Argives, now that the gods at last have let me

bring to earth this man who wrought

havoc among us-more than all the rest-

come, we'll offer battle around the city,

to learn the intentions of the Trojans now.

Will they give up their strongpoint at this loss?

Can they fight on, though Hector's dead?

                                                                  But wait:

why do I ponder, why take up these questions?

Down by the ships Patroclus' body lies

unwept, unburied. I shall not forget him

while I can keep my feet among the living.

If in the dead world they forget the dead,

I say there, too, I shall remember him,

my friend. Men of Achaea, lift a song!

Down to the ships we go, and take this body,

our glory. We have beaten Hector down,

to whom as to a god the Trojans prayed.'

 

Indeed, he had in mind for Hector's body

outrage and shame. Behind both feet he pierced

the tendons, heel to ankle. Rawhide cords

he drew through both and lashed them to his chariot,

letting the man's head trail. Stepping aboard,

bearing the great trophy of the arms,

he shook the reins, and whipped the team ahead

into a willing run. A dustcloud rose

above the furrowing body; the dark tresses

flowed behind, and the head so princely once

lay back in dust. Zeus gave him to his enemies

to be defiled in his own fatherland.

So his whole head was blackened. Looking down,

his mother tore her braids, threw off her veil,

and wailed, heartbroken to behold her son.

Piteously his father groaned, and round him

lamentation spread throughout the town,

most like the clamour to be heard if Ilium's

towers, top to bottom, seethed in flames.

They barely stayed the old man, mad with grief,

from passing through the gates. Then in the mire

he rolled, and begged them all, each man by name:

 

'Relent, friends. It is hard; but let me go

out of the city to the Achaean ships.

I'll make my plea to that demonic heart.

He may feel shame before his peers, or pity

my old age. His father, too, is old,

Peleus, who brought him up to be a scourge

to Trojans, cruel to all, but most to me,

so many of my sons in flower of youth

he cut away. And, though I grieve, I cannot

mourn them all as much as I do one,

for whom my grief will take me to the grave-

and that is Hector. Why could he not have died

where I might hold him? In our weeping, then,

his mother, now so destitute, and I

might have had surfeit and relief of tears.'

 

These were the words of Priam as he wept,

and all his people groaned. Then in her turn

Hecabe led the women in lamentation:

 

'Child, I am lost now. Can I bear my life

after the death of suffering your death?

You were my pride in all my nights and days,

pride of the city, pillar to the Trojans

and Trojan women. Everyone looked to you

as though you were a god, and rightly so.

You were their greatest glory while you lived.

Now your doom and death have come upon you.'

 

These were her mournful words. But Hector's lady

still knew nothing; no one came to tell her

of Hector's stand outside the gates. She wove

upon her loom, deep in the lofty house,

a double purple web with rose design.

Calling her maids in waiting,

she ordered a big cauldron on a tripod

set on the hearthfire, to provide a bath

for Hector when he came home from the fight.

Poor wife, how far removed from baths he was

she could not know, as at Achilles' hands

Athena brought him down.

                                           Then from the tower

she heard a wailing and a distant moan.

Her knees shook, and she let her shuttle fall,

and called out to her maids again:

                                                      'Come here.

Two must follow me, to see this action.

I heard my husband's queenly mother cry.

I feel my heart rise, throbbing in my throat.

My knees are like stone under me. Some blow

is coming home to Priam's sons and daughters.

Ah, could it never reach my ears! I die

of dread that Achilles may have cut off Hector,

blocked my bold husband from the city wall,

to drive him down the plain alone! By now

he may have ended Hector's deathly pride.

He never kept his place amid the chariots

but drove ahead. He would not be outdone

by anyone in courage.'

                                     Saying this, she ran

like a madwoman through the megaron,

her heart convulsed. Her maids kept at her side.

 

On reaching the great tower and the soldiers,

Andromache stood gazing from the wall

and saw him being dragged before the city.

Chariot horses at a brutal gallop

pulled the torn body toward the decked ships.

Blackness of night covered her eyes; she fell

backward swooning, sighing out her life,

and let her shining headdress fall, her hood

and diadem, her plaited band and veil

that Aphrodite once had given her,

on that day when, from Eetion's house,

for a thousand bridal gifts, Lord Hector led her.

Now, at her side, kinswomen of her lord

supported her among them, dazed and faint

to the point of death. But when she breathed again

and her stunned heart recovered, in a burst

of sobbing she called out among the women:

 

'Hector! Here is my desolation. Both

had this in store from birth-from yours in Troy

in Priam's palace, mine by wooded Placus

at Thebe in the home of Eetion,

my father, who took care of me in childhood,

a man cursed by fate, a fated daughter.

How I could wish I never had been born!

Now under earth's roof to the house of Death

you go your way and leave me here, bereft,

lonely, in anguish without end. The child

we wretches had is still in infancy;

you cannot be a pillar to him, Hector ,

now you are dead, nor he to you. And should

this boy escape the misery of the war ,

there will be toil and sorrow for him later,

as when strangers move his boundary stones.

The day that orphans him will leave him lonely,

downcast in everything, cheeks wet with tears,

in hunger going to his father's friends

to tug at one man's cloak, another's khiton.

Some will be kindly: one may lift a cup

to wet his lips at least, though not his throat;

but from the board some child with living parents

gives him a push, a slap, with biting words:

"Outside, you there! Your father is not with us

here at our feast!" And the boy Astyanax

will run to his forlorn mother. Once he fed

on marrow only and the fat of lamb,

high on his father's knees. And when sleep came

to end his play, he slept in a nurse's arms,

brimful of happiness, in a soft bed.

But now he'll know sad days and many of them,

missing his father. "Lord of the lower town"

the Trojans call him. They know, you alone,

Lord Hector, kept their gates and their long walls.

Beside the beaked ships now, far from your kin,

the blowflies' maggots in a swarm will eat you

naked, after the dogs have had their fill.

Ah, there are folded garments in your chambers,

delicate and fine, of women's weaving.

These, by heaven, I'll burn to the last thread

in blazing fire! They are no good to you,

they cannot cover you in death. So let them

go, let them be burnt as an offering

from Trojans and their women in your honour.'

 

Thus she mourned, and the women wailed in answer.

 

Translated from the Greek by

Robert Fitzgerald