The Iliad, Page 69

  the strong, whirling Xanthus sprung of immortal Zeus,

  Hermes went his way to the steep heights of Olympus

  as Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth,

  and the two men, weeping, groaning, drove the team

  toward Troy and the mules brought on the body.

  No one saw them at first, neither man nor woman,

  none before Cassandra, golden as goddess Aphrodite.

  She had climbed to Pergamus heights and from that point

  she saw her beloved father swaying tall in the chariot,

  flanked by the herald, whose cry could rouse the city.

  And Cassandra saw him too ...

  drawn by the mules and stretched out on his bier.

  She screamed and her scream rang out through all Troy:

  "Come, look down, you men of Troy, you Trojan women!

  Behold Hector now--if you ever once rejoiced

  to see him striding home, home alive from battle!

  He was the greatest joy of Troy and all our people!"

  Her cries plunged Troy into uncontrollable grief

  and not a man or woman was left inside the walls.

  They streamed out at the gates to meet Priam

  bringing in the body of the dead. Hector--

  his loving wife and noble mother were first

  to fling themselves on the wagon rolling on,

  the first to tear their hair, embrace his head

  and a wailing throng of people milled around them.

  And now, all day long till the setting sun went down

  they would have wept for Hector there before the gates

  if the old man, steering the car, had not commanded,

  "Let me through with the mules! Soon, in a moment,

  you can have your fill of tears--once I've brought him home."

  So he called and the crowds fell back on either side,

  making way for the wagon. Once they had borne him

  into the famous halls, they laid his body down

  on his large carved bed and set beside him singers

  to lead off the laments, and their voices rose in grief--

  they lifted the dirge high as the women wailed in answer.

  And white-armed Andromache led their songs of sorrow,

  cradling the head of Hector, man-killing Hector

  gently in her arms: "O my husband ...

  cut off from life so young! You leave me a widow,

  lost in the royal halls--and the boy only a baby,

  the son we bore together, you and I so doomed.

  I cannot think he will ever come to manhood.

  Long before that the city will be sacked,

  plundered top to bottom! Because you are dead,

  her great guardian, you who always defended Troy,

  who kept her loyal wives and helpless children safe,

  all who will soon be carried off in the hollow ships

  and I with them--

  And you, my child, will follow me

  to labor, somewhere, at harsh, degrading work,

  slaving under some heartless master's eye--that,

  or some Achaean marauder will seize you by the arm

  and hurl you headlong down from the ramparts--horrible death--

  enraged at you because Hector once cut down his brother,

  his father or his son, yes, hundreds of armed Achaeans

  gnawed the dust of the world, crushed by Hector's hands!

  Your father, remember, was no man of mercy ...

  not in the horror of battle, and that is why

  the whole city of Troy mourns you now, my Hector--

  you've brought your parents accursed tears and grief

  but to me most of all you've left the horror, the heartbreak!

  For you never died in bed and stretched your arms to me

  or said some last word from the heart I can remember,

  always, weeping for you through all my nights and days!"

  Her voice rang out in tears and the women wailed in answer

  and Hecuba led them now in a throbbing chant of sorrow:

  "Hector, dearest to me by far of all my sons ...

  and dear to the gods while we still shared this life--

  and they cared about you still, I see, even after death.

  Many the sons I had whom the swift runner Achilles

  caught and shipped on the barren salt sea as slaves

  to Samos, to Imbros, to Lemnos shrouded deep in mist!

  But you, once he slashed away your life with his brazen spear

  he dragged you time and again around his comrade's tomb,

  Patroclus whom you kitted--not that he brought Patroclus

  back to life by that. But I have you with me now ...

  fresh as the morning dew you lie in the royal halls

  like one whom Apollo, lord of the silver bow,

  has approached and shot to death with gentle shafts."

  Her voice rang out in tears and an endless wail rose up

  and Helen, the third in turn, led their songs of sorrow:

  "Hector! Dearest to me of all my husband's brothers--

  my husband, Paris, magnificent as a god ...

  he was the one who brought me here to Troy--

  Oh how I wish I'd died before that day!

  But this, now, is the twentieth year for me

  since I sailed here and forsook my own native land,

  yet never once did I hear from you a taunt, an insult.

  But if someone else in the royal halls would curse me,

  one of your brothers or sisters or brothers' wives

  trailing their long robes, even your own mother--

  not your father, always kind as my own father--

  why, you'd restrain them with words, Hector,

  you'd win them to my side ...

  you with your gentle temper, all your gentle words.

  And so in the same breath I moum for you and me,

  my doom-struck, harrowed heart! Now there is no one left

  in the wide realm of Troy, no friend to treat me kindly--

  all the countrymen cringe from me in loathing!"

  Her voice rang out in tears and vast throngs wailed

  and old King Priam rose and gave his people orders:

  "Now, you men of Troy, haul timber into the city!

  Have no fear of an Argive ambush packed with danger--

  Achilles vowed, when he sent me home from the black ships,

  not to do us harm till the twelfth dawn arrives."

  At his command they harnessed oxen and mules to wagons,

  they assembled before the city walls with all good speed

  and for nine days hauled in a boundless store of timber.

  But when the tenth Dawn brought light to the mortal world

  they carried gallant Hector forth, weeping tears,

  and they placed his corpse aloft the pyre's crest,

  flung a torch and set it all aflame.

  At last,

  when young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more,

  the people massed around illustrious Hector's pyre ...

  And once they'd gathered, crowding the meeting grounds,

  they first put out the fires with glistening wine,

  wherever the flames still burned in all their fury.

  Then they collected the white bones of Hector--

  all his brothers, his friends-in-arms, mourning,

  and warm tears came streaming down their cheeks.

  They placed the bones they found in a golden chest,

  shrouding them round and round in soft purple cloths.

  They quickly lowered the chest in a deep, hollow grave

  and over it piled a cope of huge stones closely set,

  then hastily heaped a barrow, posted lookouts all around

  for fear the Achaean combat troops would launch their attack

  before the time agreed. And once they'd he
aped the mound

  they turned back home to Troy, and gathering once again

  they shared a splendid funeral feast in Hector's honor,

  held in the house of Priam, king by will of Zeus.

  And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.

  NOTES

  THE GENEALOGY OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF TROY

  TEXTUAL VARIANTS FROM THE OXFORD CLASSICAL TEXT

  NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION

  (Here and throughout the Pronouncing Glossary that follows, line numbers refer to the translation, where the line numbers of the Greek text will be found at the top of every page.)

  1.1 Goddess: the Muse who personifies the inspiration for epic poetry.

  1.1 Peleus' son Achilles: Achilles is the son of a mortal father and a divine mother, the sea goddess Thetis. Zeus was once in love with her but was warned that she would bear a son stronger than his father. So it was decided that she should wed a mortal. (See 18.97-101, 504-7, 24.72-76, 625-27, and note 24.35-36.) She later departed from Peleus, however, and went to live with her father, the Old Man of the Sea. According to one legend, she had attempted to make Achilles immortal by dipping him, as a child, in the water of the river Styx. But the heel by which she held him remained vulnerable, and it was there that later the arrow of Paris found its mark. See notes 19.494, 24.545.

  1.45 Smintheus: ancient commentators disagreed about the meaning of this name of Apollo. Some derived it from Sminthe, a nearby town; others from the Mysian (non-Greek) word (sminthos) = mouse, and it is known that there was a festival in Rhodes called Smintheia, in honor of Apollo and Dionysus because they were thought to kill the mice that damaged the new vines.

  1.53 The arrows clanged at his back: the arrows of Apollo are a metaphor for the onset of a plague.

  1.273 This scepter: the scepter is passed by the heralds to anyone in the assembly who wishes to speak--while he holds it, he has the floor. It is a symbol of royal and divine authority, and also stands for the rule of law and due process in the community. It is not the same as Agamemnon's own royal scepter (2.118-26), which has come down to him from Zeus through several generations of Argive kings.

  1.312 Centaurs: the Centaurs were a race of (literally) horse-men: half horse, half man. They were feared for their violence--all except one, Chiron, who was a healer and taught many heroes (see 4.2 51-52), including Achilles (see 11. 992-94), the arts of medicine.

  1.470-83 Your claims in father's halls: this story of the near defeat of Zeus by Hera, Poseidon and Athena (incidentally, they are the three gods most passionately hostile to Troy in the Iliad) is unique in the rich variety of myths about the Olympian gods in that Zeus is almost defeated. It seems likely that Homer invented the story himself, to provide Thetis with a claim on Zeus's gratitude.

  1.505 Ocean River: in the Homeric imagination, Ocean is a river that, rising from sources in the west, encircles the whole world. All the rivers of the world flow from it, connected often by subterranean channels. See Introduction, p. 63.

  1.534-58 The sacrifice for Apollo: what happens in the following passage is a sacrifice to the gods which is also a feast for the human worshippers (this was the way meat was eaten in the ancient world). The cattle are arranged around the altar, and the sacrificers wash their hands to establish purity for the ritual. They scatter barley on the victims, then pull back their heads and cut their throats over the altar. The animal's skin is then taken off and a portion prepared for the gods. This is a choice portion, the meat of the thighbones: it is wrapped in a double fold of fat and the outside covered with small pieces of meat from different parts of the animal. This portion is then burned over the fire--the smoke and savor go up to the gods above. Wine is poured over it, a libation. The sacrificers then begin their meal--with the entrails, which they have roasted on forks over the fire, They then carve the carcass and roast portions of meat on spits and set them out for the feast.

  1.596 Crouching down at his feet: Thetis assumes the position of the suppliant--kneeling, clasping the knees of the person supplicated, reaching up to his (or her) chin. It is a gesture that symbolizes the utter helplessness of the suppliant, his abject dependence, but at the same time applies a physical and moral constraint on the person so addressed. (See Introduction, p. 52.) The Greeks believed that Zeus was the protector and champion of suppliants.

  1.712 He seized my foot: Hephaestus, the smith-god, is lame. This may be a reflection of the fact that in a community where agriculture and war are the predominant features in the life of its men, someone with weak legs and strong arms would probably become a blacksmith. He seems to have been lame from birth: at 18.461-64 he says that his mother, Hera, threw him out of Olympus because of this defect. The fall referred to here was probably a consequence of his attempt to help Hera when Zeus had hung her up from Mount Olympus with a pair of anvils tied to her feet. See 15.23-31 and note 18.462.

  1.715 The mortals there: Homer identifies them as the Sintians. Lemnos was a center of the cult of Hephaestus; it was an island noted for its volcanic gas.

  2.86 Time-honored custom: the Greek word used here, themis, describes conduct that is usual and proper. It seems unlikely that commanders normally made a discouraging, not to say despairing, speech to their troops when preparing to take the offensive, but that is what the word suggests.

  2.121 The giant-killing Guide: in the Greek, two regular epithets of Hermes. He is called the guide or escort (the meaning of the word is disputed) because he is often sent by Zeus to act in that role, as in Book 24, when he escorts Priam to the tent of Achilles. The other epithet refers to the fact that, at the request of Zeus, he killed a monster of immense strength called Argos, who had eyes all over his body, so that he could keep some of them open when he slept. He was killed because Hera had sent him to guard Io, a woman Zeus was in love with, whom Hera had changed into a cow.

  2.130 Madness, blinding ruin: the Greek word for this is Ate. The meanings of the word range from "delusion," "infatuation," "madness," to the "ruin," "disaster," "doom" that the mood can bring about. In 19.106-57 Ate is personified: Zeus, led astray by her, threw her out of Olympus, so that now she works among men. See Introduction, pp. 50, 54.

  2.422-23 Payment in full for the groans ... I we have all borne for Helen: the line could refer to vengeance for the struggles and groans of Helen--a vision of Helen as an unwilling victim of Paris, which is not found elsewhere in the poem. The ancient critic Aristarchus understood it to mean "the struggles and groans because of Helen," and we have followed his interpretation.

  2.529 Her awesome shield of storm: this is the aegis (literally "goatskin"). It is sometimes displayed by Zeus himself, and by Apollo, as well as by Athena. Its shape is not easily determined from the text: at one point it seems to be a shield, for the figure of the Gorgon's head and other forms of terror appear on it. In any case, its effect seems to be to stiffen morale in the armies it is raised to protect and inspire terror in those who face it.

  2.748 Heracles is the greatest of the Greek heroes; he eventually, after his death, became an immortal god. He was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Alcmena (14.387-88). Zeus intended that he should "lord it over all who dwell around him," but Zeus's jealous wife, Hera, contrived to have that destiny conferred on Eurystheus, king of Argos, to whom Heracles was to be subject (19.112-57). At Eurystheus' command, Heracles performed the famous twelve labors: among them was the capture of the three-headed dog, Cerberus, the guardian of the entrance to the underworld (8.419-21). For the story of his sack of Troy, many years before the Trojan War, see 14.300-8, 5.733-38 and note ad loc. Homer refers twice to his participation in battles at Pylos (5.446-62, 11.818-19): the passage in Book 5 has him wounding Hera and Hades, a story that does not appear elsewhere and that Homer may have invented (see note 5.434-62). Homer attributes Heracles' death to "Hera's savage anger" (18.141, see note 15.32-39), but in other poets' versions of his death Hera plays no part.

  2.826 The Argives would recall Philocietes: this refers to a we
ll-known story about the final phase of the war. The Achaeans, unable to take Troy, learned of a prophecy that they would be able to do so only with the aid of Philoctetes and his bow, a famous weapon that he had inherited from Heracles. They had to send an embassy to Lemnos to persuade him to come and help them. This embassy is the subject of Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes.

  2.858 Oath-stream of the gods: the river Styx, the main river of the underworld, was the guarantor of oaths sworn by the gods. Any one of the gods, Hesiod tells us (Theogony 793-806), who pours a libation of the river's water and swears falsely is paralyzed for one year and for nine years after that is excluded from the feasts and assemblies of the gods.

  3.77-81 The lovely gifts l of golden Aphrodite: see note 24.35-36 concerning the Judgment of Paris.

  3.118 Such limited vengeance: we follow here the interpretation of algos ("hurt") and phroneo ("I intend") suggested by Kirk on 3.97-110 of the Greek (1985, pp. 276-77).

  3.174 The Scaean Gates: not only the main gates of Troy but the scene of several lethal actions, including the death of Achilles beyond the compass of the poem but foreseen by Hector at 22.424.

  3.247 Once in the past: in a last-minute attempt to avoid the war, Menelaus and Odysseus came to address the Trojan assembly, urging them to restore Helen to her husband. The Trojans refused; furthermore, as we learn later (11.161-64), one of them, Antimachus, even told the assembly that they should kill Menelaus then and there.

  3.332 You beneath the ground: presumably the Furies. See 19.305-6.

  3.386 Greaves: tin or leather armor that covered the leg below the knee, worn by fighters to protect them from arrows and salvos of rocks and also from being chafed by the lower edge of their shields. See 6.136-37.

  4.8 Boeotian Athena, guard of armies: Athena here (and at 5.1052) is given an epithet that connects her with her cult at Alalcomenae in Boeotia.

  4.24 Plotting Troy's destruction: for Hera's and Athena's hatred of Troy, see Introduction, p. 41, and note 24.35-36.

  4.117 Wolf-god: Lukegenes in Greek--its meaning is disputed. Lukos is the normal Greek word for "wolf," but some scholars would rather connect the title with the place name Lycia (Lukia in Greek).