Aias, and the spearmen were in flight. Meanwhile Achilles was standing
by the stern of his ship watching the defeat of the Greeks, but when he
saw Machaon being carried past, sorely wounded, in the chariot of
Nestor, he bade his friend Patroclus, whom he loved better than all the
rest, to go and ask how Machaon did. He was sitting drinking wine with
Nestor when Patroclus came, and Nestor told Patroclus how many of the
chiefs were wounded, and though Patroclus was in a hurry Nestor began a
very long story about his own great deeds of war, done when he was a
young man. At last he bade Patroclus tell Achilles that, if he would not
fight himself, he should at least send out his men under Patroclus, who
should wear the splendid armour of Achilles. Then the Trojans would
think that Achilles himself had returned to the battle, and they would
be afraid, for none of them dared to meet Achilles hand to hand.
So Patroclus ran off to Achilles; but, on his way, he met the wounded
Eurypylus, and he took him to his hut and cut the arrow out of his thigh
with a knife, and washed the wound with warm water, and rubbed over it a
bitter root to take the pain away. Thus he waited for some time with
Eurypylus, but the advice of Nestor was in the end to cause the death of
Patroclus. The battle now raged more fiercely, while Agamemnon and
Diomede and Ulysses could only limp about leaning on their spears; and
again Agamemnon wished to moor the ships near shore, and embark in the
night and run away. But Ulysses was very angry with him, and said: 'You
should lead some other inglorious army, not us, who will fight on till
every soul of us perish, rather than flee like cowards! Be silent, lest
the soldiers hear you speaking of flight, such words as no man should
utter. I wholly scorn your counsel, for the Greeks will lose heart if,
in the midst of battle, you bid them launch the ships.'
Agamemnon was ashamed, and, by Diomede's advice, the wounded kings went
down to the verge of the war to encourage the others, though they were
themselves unable to fight. They rallied the Greeks, and Aias led them
and struck Hector full in the breast with a great rock, so that his
friends carried him out of the battle to the river side, where they
poured water over him, but he lay fainting on the ground, the black
blood gushing up from his mouth. While Hector lay there, and all men
thought that he would die, Aias and Idomeneus were driving back the
Trojans, and it seemed that, even without Achilles and his men, the
Greeks were able to hold their own against the Trojans. But the battle
was never lost while Hector lived. People in those days believed in
'omens:' they thought that the appearance of birds on the right or left
hand meant good or bad luck. Once during the battle a Trojan showed
Hector an unlucky bird, and wanted him to retreat into the town. But
Hector said, 'One omen is the best: to fight for our own country.' While
Hector lay between death and life the Greeks were winning, for the
Trojans had no other great chief to lead them. But Hector awoke from his
faint, and leaped to his feet and ran here and there, encouraging the
men of Troy. Then the most of the Greeks fled when they saw him; but
Aias and Idomeneus, and the rest of the bravest, formed in a square
between the Trojans and the ships, and down on them came Hector and
Aeneas and Paris, throwing their spears, and slaying on every hand. The
Greeks turned and ran, and the Trojans would have stopped to strip the
armour from the slain men, but Hector cried: 'Haste to the ships and
leave the spoils of war. I will slay any man who lags behind!'
On this, all the Trojans drove their chariots down into the ditch that
guarded the ships of the Greeks, as when a great wave sweeps at sea over
the side of a vessel; and the Greeks were on the ship decks, thrusting
with very long spears, used in sea fights, and the Trojans were boarding
the ships, and striking with swords and axes. Hector had a lighted torch
and tried to set fire to the ship of Aias; but Aias kept him back with
the long spear, and slew a Trojan, whose lighted torch fell from his
hand. And Aias kept shouting: 'Come on, and drive away Hector; it is not
to a dance that he is calling his men, but to battle.'
The dead fell in heaps, and the living ran over them to mount the heaps
of slain and climb the ships. Hector rushed forward like a sea wave
against a great steep rock, but like the rock stood the Greeks; still
the Trojans charged past the beaks of the foremost ships, while Aias,
thrusting with a spear more than twenty feet long, leaped from deck to
deck like a man that drives four horses abreast, and leaps from the back
of one to the back of another. Hector seized with his hand the stern of
the ship of Protesilaus, the prince whom Paris shot when he leaped
ashore on the day when the Greeks first landed; and Hector kept calling:
'Bring fire!' and even Aias, in this strange sea fight on land, left the
decks and went below, thrusting with his spear through the portholes.
Twelve men lay dead who had brought fire against the ship which Aias
guarded.
VII
THE SLAYING AND AVENGING OF PATROCLUS
At this moment, when torches were blazing round the ships, and all
seemed lost, Patroclus came out of the hut of Eurypylus, whose wound he
had been tending, and he saw that the Greeks were in great danger, and
ran weeping to Achilles. 'Why do you weep,' said Achilles, 'like a
little girl that runs by her mother's side, and plucks at her gown and
looks at her with tears in her eyes, till her mother takes her up in her
arms? Is there bad news from home that your father is dead, or mine; or
are you sorry that the Greeks are getting what they deserve for their
folly?' Then Patroclus told Achilles how Ulysses and many other princes
were wounded and could not fight, and begged to be allowed to put on
Achilles' armour and lead his men, who were all fresh and unwearied,
into the battle, for a charge of two thousand fresh warriors might turn
the fortune of the day.
Then Achilles was sorry that he had sworn not to fight himself till
Hector brought fire to his own ships. He would lend Patroclus his
armour, and his horses, and his men; but Patroclus must only drive the
Trojans from the ships, and not pursue them. At this moment Aias was
weary, so many spears smote his armour, and he could hardly hold up his
great shield, and Hector cut off his spearhead with the sword; the
bronze head fell ringing on the ground, and Aias brandished only the
pointless shaft. So he shrank back and fire blazed all over his ship;
and Achilles saw it, and smote his thigh, and bade Patroclus make haste.
Patroclus armed himself in the shining armour of Achilles, which all
Trojans feared, and leaped into the chariot where Automedon, the squire,
had harnessed Xanthus and Balius, two horses that were the children, men
said, of the West Wind, and a led horse was harnessed beside them in the
side traces. Meanwhile the two thousand men of Achilles, who were called
Myrmidons, had met in armour, five companies of four hundred apiece,
under five chiefs of noble names. Forth they came, as eager as a pack of
wolves that have eaten a great red deer and run to slake their thirst
with the dark water of a well in the hills.
So all in close array, helmet touching helmet and shield touching
shield, like a moving wall of shining bronze, the men of Achilles
charged, and Patroclus in the chariot led the way. Down they came at
full speed on the flank of the Trojans, who saw the leader, and knew the
bright armour and the horses of the terrible Achilles, and thought that
he had returned to the war. Then each Trojan looked round to see by what
way he could escape, and when men do that in battle they soon run by the
way they have chosen. Patroclus rushed to the ship of Protesilaus, and
slew the leader of the Trojans there, and drove them out, and quenched
the fire; while they of Troy drew back from the ships, and Aias and the
other unwounded Greek princes leaped among them, smiting with sword and
spear. Well did Hector know that the break in the battle had come again;
but even so he stood, and did what he might, while the Trojans were
driven back in disorder across the ditch, where the poles of many
chariots were broken and the horses fled loose across the plain.
The horses of Achilles cleared the ditch, and Patroclus drove them
between the Trojans and the wall of their own town, slaying many men,
and, chief of all, Sarpedon, king of the Lycians; and round the body of
Sarpedon the Trojans rallied under Hector, and the fight swayed this way
and that, and there was such a noise of spears and swords smiting
shields and helmets as when many woodcutters fell trees in a glen of the
hills. At last the Trojans gave way, and the Greeks stripped the armour
from the body of brave Sarpedon; but men say that Sleep and Death, like
two winged angels, bore his body away to his own country. Now Patroclus
forgot how Achilles had told him not to pursue the Trojans across the
plain, but to return when he had driven them from the ships. On he
raced, slaying as he went, even till he reached the foot of the wall of
Troy. Thrice he tried to climb it, but thrice he fell back.
Hector was in his chariot in the gateway, and he bade his squire lash
his horses into the war, and struck at no other man, great or small, but
drove straight against Patroclus, who stood and threw a heavy stone at
Hector; which missed him, but killed his charioteer. Then Patroclus
leaped on the charioteer to strip his armour, but Hector stood over the
body, grasping it by the head, while Patroclus dragged at the feet, and
spears and arrows flew in clouds around the fallen man. At last, towards
sunset, the Greeks drew him out of the war, and Patroclus thrice charged
into the thick of the Trojans. But the helmet of Achilles was loosened
in the fight, and fell from the head of Patroclus, and he was wounded
from behind, and Hector, in front, drove his spear clean through his
body. With his last breath Patroclus prophesied: 'Death stands near
thee, Hector, at the hands of noble Achilles.' But Automedon was driving
back the swift horses, carrying to Achilles the news that his dearest
friend was slain.
After Ulysses was wounded, early in this great battle, he was not able
to fight for several days, and, as the story is about Ulysses, we must
tell quite shortly how Achilles returned to the war to take vengeance
for Patroclus, and how he slew Hector. When Patroclus fell, Hector
seized the armour which the Gods had given to Peleus, and Peleus to his
son Achilles, while Achilles had lent it to Patroclus that he might
terrify the Trojans. Retiring out of reach of spears, Hector took off
his own armour and put on that of Achilles, and Greeks and Trojans
fought for the dead body of Patroclus. Then Zeus, the chief of the Gods,
looked down and said that Hector should never come home out of the
battle to his wife, Andromache. But Hector returned into the fight
around the dead Patroclus, and here all the best men fought, and even
Automedon, who had been driving the chariot of Patroclus. Now when the
Trojans seemed to have the better of the fight, the Greeks sent
Antilochus, a son of old Nestor, to tell Achilles that his friend was
slain, and Antilochus ran, and Aias and his brother protected the Greeks
who were trying to carry the body of Patroclus back to the ships.
Swiftly Antilochus came running to Achilles, saying: 'Fallen is
Patroclus, and they are fighting round his naked body, for Hector has
his armour.' Then Achilles said never a word, but fell on the floor of
his hut, and threw black ashes on his yellow hair, till Antilochus
seized his hands, fearing that he would cut his own throat with his
dagger, for very sorrow. His mother, Thetis, arose from the sea to
comfort him, but he said that he desired to die if he could not slay
Hector, who had slain his friend. Then Thetis told him that he could not
fight without armour, and now he had none; but she would go to the God
of armour-making and bring from him such a shield and helmet and
breastplate as had never been seen by men.
Meanwhile the fight raged round the dead body of Patroclus, which was
defiled with blood and dust, near the ships, and was being dragged this
way and that, and torn and wounded. Achilles could not bear this sight,
yet his mother had warned him not to enter without armour the battle
where stones and arrows and spears were flying like hail; and he was so
tall and broad that he could put on the arms of no other man. So he went
down to the ditch as he was, unarmed, and as he stood high above it,
against the red sunset, fire seemed to flow from his golden hair like
the beacon blaze that soars into the dark sky when an island town is
attacked at night, and men light beacons that their neighbours may see
them and come to their help from other isles. There Achilles stood in a
splendour of fire, and he shouted aloud, as clear as a clarion rings
when men fall on to attack a besieged city wall. Thrice Achilles shouted
mightily, and thrice the horses of the Trojans shuddered for fear and
turned back from the onslaught, and thrice the men of Troy were
confounded and shaken with terror. Then the Greeks drew the body of
Patroclus out of the dust and the arrows, and laid him on a bier, and
Achilles followed, weeping, for he had sent his friend with chariot and
horses to the war; but home again he welcomed him never more. Then the
sun set and it was night.
Now one of the Trojans wished Hector to retire within the walls of Troy,
for certainly Achilles would to-morrow be foremost in the war. But
Hector said, 'Have ye not had your fill of being shut up behind walls?
Let Achilles fight; I will meet him in the open field.' The Trojans
cheered, and they camped in the plain, while in the hut of Achilles
women washed the dead body of Patroclus, and Achilles swore that he
would slay Hector.
In the dawn came Thetis, bearing to Achilles the new splendid armour
that the God had made for him. Then Achilles put on that armour, and
roused his men; but Ulysses, who knew all the rules of honour, would not
let him fight till peace had been made, with a sacrifice and other
ceremonies, between him and Agamemnon, and till Agamemnon had given him
all the presents which Achilles had before refused. Achilles did not
want them; he wanted only to fight, but Ulysses made him obey, and do
what was usual. Then the gifts were brought, and Agamemnon stood up, and
said that he was sorry for his insolence, and the men took breakfast,
but Achilles would neither eat nor drink. He mounted his chariot, but
the horse Xanthus bowed his head till his long mane touched the ground,
and, being a fairy horse, the child of the West Wind, he spoke (or so
men said), and these were his words: 'We shall bear thee swiftly and
speedily, but thou shalt be slain in fight, and thy dying day is near at
hand.' 'Well I know it,' said Achilles, 'but I will not cease from
fighting till I have given the Trojans their fill of war.'
So all that day he chased and slew the Trojans. He drove them into the
river, and, though the river came down in a red flood, he crossed, and
slew them on the plain. The plain caught fire, the bushes and long dry
grass blazed round him, but he fought his way through the fire, and
drove the Trojans to their walls. The gates were thrown open, and the
Trojans rushed through like frightened fawns, and then they climbed to
the battlements, and looked down in safety, while the whole Greek army
advanced in line under their shields.
But Hector stood still, alone, in front of the gate, and old Priam, who
saw Achilles rushing on, shining like a star in his new armour, called
with tears to Hector, 'Come within the gate! This man has slain many of
my sons, and if he slays thee whom have I to help me in my old age?' His
mother also called to Hector, but he stood firm, waiting for Achilles.
Now the story says that he was afraid, and ran thrice in full armour
round Troy, with Achilles in pursuit. But this cannot be true, for no
mortal men could run thrice, in heavy armour, with great shields that
clanked against their ankles, round the town of Troy: moreover Hector
was the bravest of men, and all the Trojan women were looking down at
him from the walls.
We cannot believe that he ran away, and the story goes on to tell that
he asked Achilles to make an agreement with him. The conqueror in the
fight should give back the body of the fallen to be buried by his
friends, but should keep his armour. But Achilles said that he could
make no agreement with Hector, and threw his spear, which flew over
Hector's shoulder. Then Hector threw his spear, but it could not pierce
the shield which the God had made for Achilles. Hector had no other
spear, and Achilles had one, so Hector cried, 'Let me not die without
honour!' and drew his sword, and rushed at Achilles, who sprang to meet
him, but before Hector could come within a sword-stroke Achilles had
sent his spear clean through the neck of Hector. He fell in the dust and
Achilles said, 'Dogs and birds shall tear your flesh unburied.' With his
dying breath Hector prayed him to take gold from Priam, and give back
his body to be burned in Troy. But Achilles said, 'Hound! would that I
could bring myself to carve and eat thy raw flesh, but dogs shall devour
it, even if thy father offered me thy weight in gold.' With his last
words Hector prophesied and said, 'Remember me in the day when Paris
shall slay thee in the Scaean gate.' Then his brave soul went to the
land of the Dead, which the Greeks called Hades. To that land Ulysses
sailed while he was still a living man, as the story tells later.
Then Achilles did a dreadful deed; he slit the feet of dead Hector from
heel to ankle, and thrust thongs through, and bound him by the thongs to
his chariot and trailed the body in the dust. All the women of Troy who
were on the walls raised a shriek, and Hector's wife, Andromache, heard
the sound. She had been in an inner room of her house, weaving a purple
web, and embroidering flowers on it, and she was calling her bower
maidens to make ready a bath for Hector when he should come back tired
from battle. But when she heard the cry from the wall she trembled, and
the shuttle with which she was weaving fell from her hands. 'Surely I
heard the cry of my husband's mother,' she said, and she bade two of her
maidens come with her to see why the people lamented.
She ran swiftly, and reached the battlements, and thence she saw her
dear husband's body being whirled through the dust towards the ships,
behind the chariot of Achilles. Then night came over her eyes and she
fainted. But when she returned to herself she cried out that now none
would defend her little boy, and other children would push him away from
feasts, saying, 'Out with you; no father of thine is at our table,' and
his father, Hector, would lie naked at the ships, unclad, unburned,
unlamented. To be unburned and unburied was thought the greatest of
misfortunes, because the dead man unburned could not go into the House
of Hades, God of the Dead, but must always wander, alone and
comfortless, in the dark borderland between the dead and the living.
VIII
THE CRUELTY OF ACHILLES, AND THE RANSOMING OF HECTOR
When Achilles was asleep that night the ghost of Patroclus came, saying,
'Why dost thou not burn and bury me? for the other shadows of dead men
suffer me not to come near them, and lonely I wander along the dark
dwelling of Hades.' Then Achilles awoke, and he sent men to cut down
trees, and make a huge pile of fagots and logs. On this they laid
Patroclus, covered with white linen, and then they slew many cattle, and
Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan prisoners of war, meaning to
burn them with Patroclus to do him honour. This was a deed of shame, for
Achilles was mad with sorrow and anger for the death of his friend. Then
they drenched with wine the great pile of wood, which was thirty yards
long and broad, and set fire to it, and the fire blazed all through the
night and died down in the morning. They put the white bones of
Patroclus in a golden casket, and laid it in the hut of Achilles, who
said that, when he died, they must burn his body, and mix the ashes with
the ashes of his friend, and build over it a chamber of stone, and cover
the chamber with a great hill of earth, and set a pillar of stone above
it. This is one of the hills on the plain of Troy, but the pillar has
fallen from the tomb, long ago.
Then, as the custom was, Achilles held games--chariot races, foot races,
boxing, wrestling, and archery--in honour of Patroclus. Ulysses won the
prize for the foot race, and for the wrestling, so now his wound must
have been healed.
But Achilles still kept trailing Hector's dead body each day round the
hill that had been raised for the tomb of Patroclus, till the Gods in
heaven were angry, and bade Thetis tell her son that he must give back
the dead body to Priam, and take ransom for it, and they sent a
messenger to Priam to bid him redeem the body of his son. It was
terrible for Priam to have to go and humble himself before Achilles,
whose hands had been red with the blood of his sons, but he did not
disobey the Gods. He opened his chests, and took out twenty-four
beautiful embroidered changes of raiment; and he weighed out ten heavy
bars, or talents, of gold, and chose a beautiful golden cup, and he
called nine of his sons, Paris, and Helenus, and Deiphobus, and the
rest, saying, 'Go, ye bad sons, my shame; would that Hector lived and
all of you were dead!' for sorrow made him angry; 'go, and get ready for
me a wain, and lay on it these treasures.' So they harnessed mules to
the wain, and placed in it the treasures, and, after praying, Priam
drove through the night to the hut of Achilles. In he went, when no man
looked for him, and kneeled to Achilles, and kissed his terrible
death-dealing hands. 'Have pity on me, and fear the Gods, and give me
back my dead son,' he said, 'and remember thine own father. Have pity on
me, who have endured to do what no man born has ever done before, to
kiss the hands that slew my sons.'
Then Achilles remembered his own father, far away, who now was old and
weak: and he wept, and Priam wept with him, and then Achilles raised
Priam from his knees and spoke kindly to him, admiring how beautiful he
still was in his old age, and Priam himself wondered at the beauty of
Achilles. And Achilles thought how Priam had long been rich and happy,
like his own father, Peleus, and now old age and weakness and sorrow
were laid upon both of them, for Achilles knew that his own day of death
was at hand, even at the doors. So Achilles bade the women make ready
the body of Hector for burial, and they clothed him in a white mantle
that Priam had brought, and laid him in the wain; and supper was made
ready, and Priam and Achilles ate and drank together, and the women
spread a bed for Priam, who would not stay long, but stole away back to
Troy while Achilles was asleep.
All the women came out to meet him, and to lament for Hector. They
carried the body into the house of Andromache and laid it on a bed, and
the women gathered around, and each in turn sang her song over the great
dead warrior. His mother bewailed him, and his wife, and Helen of the
fair hands, clad in dark mourning raiment, lifted up her white arms, and
said: 'Hector, of all my brethren in Troy thou wert the dearest, since
Paris brought me hither. Would that ere that day I had died! For this is
now the twentieth year since I came, and in all these twenty years never
heard I a word from thee that was bitter and unkind; others might
upbraid me, thy sisters or thy mother, for thy father was good to me as
if he had been my own; but then thou wouldst restrain them that spoke
evil by the courtesy of thy heart and thy gentle words. Ah! woe for
thee, and woe for me, whom all men shudder at, for there is now none in
wide Troyland to be my friend like thee, my brother and my friend!'
So Helen lamented, but now was done all that men might do; a great pile
of wood was raised, and Hector was burned, and his ashes were placed in
a golden urn, in a dark chamber of stone, within a hollow hill.
IX
HOW ULYSSES STOLE THE LUCK OF TROY
After Hector was buried, the siege went on slowly, as it had done during
the first nine years of the war. The Greeks did not know at that time
how to besiege a city, as we saw, by way of digging trenches and
building towers, and battering the walls with machines that threw heavy
stones. The Trojans had lost courage, and dared not go into the open
plain, and they were waiting for the coming up of new armies of
allies--the Amazons, who were girl warriors from far away, and an
Eastern people called the Khita, whose king was Memnon, the son of the
Bright Dawn.