Chapter summary
At dawn Zeus sends Strife to the ships of the Achaeans with the sign of war in her hands. She stops over the ship of Odysseus, in the middle of the camp, from where her voice reaches the tents of Ajax and of Achilles at either end, and she shouts; the Achaeans come to find war sweeter than going home. Agamemnon orders the Argives to arm, and puts on an armor described in detail: the breastplate that King Cinyras gave him as a gift when he learned, in Cyprus, that the Achaeans would sail for Troy, the blue serpents on the neck, the shield with the Gorgon. Athena and Hera thunder in honor of the king. On the other side, Hector appears now at the front, now at the rear, like a star among clouds. Zeus makes drops of blood fall from the sky, because he is going to send many heads down to Hades. The gods stay at home, all blaming Zeus for wanting to give glory to the Trojans; he sits apart, exulting, and looks at the city and the ships.
Until midday, arrows fly on both sides and men fall on each. At the hour when the woodcutter takes his midday meal, the Danaans break their ranks by their own valor, and Agamemnon is the first to attack, killing Bianor and his companion. He also kills Iso and Antiphus, sons of Priam, who were in the same chariot and whom Achilles had already captured and released for ransom; Agamemnon recognizes them. Then the two sons of Antimachus, the man who, having received gold from Paris, had prevented Helen from being returned to Menelaus, fall from their chariot with the reins loose, embrace the king's knees and offer a ransom, with a list of their father's goods. Agamemnon recalls that Antimachus had proposed in the Trojan assembly to kill Menelaus, when he came as envoy; he kills one with a spear and cuts off the head of the other, and keeps killing. The Trojans flee toward the city like oxen pursued by a lion, and the king pursues them to the Scaean Gates. There Zeus descends to Ida and sends Iris to tell Hector to withdraw from the fight while Agamemnon is in the vanguard, and that only when the king is wounded and leaps into his chariot will he give him the strength to kill until sunset.
Hector obeys, climbs down from his chariot and regroups the lines. Agamemnon, again the first to attack, meets Iphidamas, a young newlywed who had come from Thrace for fame; his spear fails to pierce the belt, which the silver turns aside, and the king kills him with the sword. Coön, Iphidamas's elder brother, overcome with grief, wounds Agamemnon in the arm, from the side, without being seen. The king kills Coön, cuts off his head over his brother's body, and goes on fighting while the blood still runs warm. When the wound dries, the pains overwhelm him like those of a woman in labor, and he climbs into his chariot, orders his charioteer to take him to the ships, and shouts to the chiefs to defend them, for Zeus did not let him fight the Trojans all day.
Hector, seeing the king leave, calls the Trojans and Lycians to the attack, saying that the best of the Achaeans has gone and that Zeus has given him the glory, and he kills a series of Danaan chiefs. The flight to the ships is halted only when Odysseus calls Diomedes to stand at his side, saying that it will be a disgrace if Hector takes the ships. Diomedes agrees to resist, though he says their joy will be short, for Zeus wants to give power to the Trojans. The two kill and push the Trojans back until Hector attacks again. Diomedes strikes his helmet, and Hector, stunned, falls to his knees and escapes; Diomedes shouts that Apollo has saved him once more, and goes on killing others. While Diomedes strips a dead man, Paris, hidden behind the stele of Ilus's tomb, shoots and wounds his foot, laughing. Diomedes says that the arrow of an archer with curled hair matters to him no more than the blow of a woman or a child, pulls out the arrow, and withdraws to the ships.
Odysseus is left alone, because all the Argives flee in fear. He asks himself what to do and decides to resist. The Trojans surround him like dogs and young men surround a boar, and he wounds several of them. Socus, brother of Charops, vows to kill him or lose his own life; he pierces Odysseus's shield and breastplate and grazes his flank, but Athena does not let the spear reach his vitals. Odysseus kills Socus from behind, as he flees, and says that the birds will devour him, while if he himself dies, the Achaeans will give him burial. Wounded, he calls his companions three times. Menelaus hears him and calls Ajax, who arrives with his shield like a tower and scatters the Trojans; Menelaus takes Odysseus by the hand out of the crowd, and Ajax begins to tear through the Trojans like a river in flood.
Hector, who fights on the left flank by the Scamander, where more men fall around Nestor and Idomeneus, does not know this. Paris wounds the physician Machaon in the right shoulder, and the Achaeans fear the Trojans will capture him; Idomeneus tells Nestor to carry him to the ships, because a physician is worth many others. Hector's charioteer, Cebriones, points out Ajax to him, and Hector drives the chariot there, but avoids combat with him. Zeus puts fear into Ajax, who falls back slowly and unwillingly, fearing for the ships, like a lion driven from the fold and like a donkey that children cannot drive out of a field. Eurypylus kills Apisaon and is wounded by Paris in the thigh; he shouts that they should gather around Ajax, and Ajax returns to the group.
Achilles, standing at the stern of his ship, watches the battle and sees Nestor carrying the wounded Machaon, but does not recognize who it is. He sends Patroclus to ask Nestor who the wounded man is, and says he expects to see the Achaeans at his knees, begging. Patroclus leaves the tent, and, the narrator notes, that was the beginning of his evil. In Nestor's tent, the servant Hecamede prepares a drink of wine, cheese and barley meal; Patroclus refuses to sit down, says that Achilles is terrible and may blame those who are not at fault, and wants only the answer. Nestor lists the wounded chiefs, Diomedes, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Eurypylus, Machaon, and asks whether Achilles means to wait until the ships are burning. He recounts a war of his youth against the Epeians, in which, though small among the Pylians and without horses, he killed Mulius and took fifty chariots with Athena's help, and concludes that Achilles will enjoy his excellence alone and will weep afterward.
Nestor recalls to Patroclus what Menoetius told him when he sent him from Phthia: that Achilles is superior by lineage, but Patroclus is the elder and should advise him. He proposes that Patroclus try to dissuade him; if Achilles avoids some prophecy his mother told him on Zeus's behalf, let him at least send Patroclus at the head of the Myrmidons, in his fine armor, so that the Trojans take him for Achilles and draw back, giving the Achaeans a breather. Patroclus runs back and, by the ships of Odysseus, finds Eurypylus wounded and limping. He takes pity on him, hears that the best Achaeans are wounded and that the Trojans are gaining strength, leads him to the tent, cuts the arrow from his thigh, washes away the blood, and lays on the wound a bitter root that stops the pain.
Analysis
Zeus announces to Iris the design of the day: Hector withdraws while Agamemnon fights and advances when he is wounded, and the book carries it out to the letter. After the king, Diomedes, Odysseus and Machaon fall, and Ajax withdraws out of fear put in him by Zeus. The reason each gives for resisting or withdrawing includes the name of Zeus: Agamemnon says the god did not let him fight all day, Diomedes that he wants to give power to the Trojans, Odysseus that he has put the others to flight. The book thus shows a day in which everyone knows the will of Zeus and acts within it.
What is left at the end of the book is far from the fighting. Achilles, at the stern, wants to know who was wounded and speaks of waiting for the Achaeans to come and beg; Patroclus, whom he sent, is held back by Nestor with arguments that point toward Achilles' armor. The narrator says, already as Patroclus leaves the tent, that this is where his evil begins, and the book closes with him standing before a wounded man, out of pity. The same pity that holds him back is the trait Nestor uses to persuade him, and the book leaves both movements open: the message still to be delivered to Achilles, and the proposal of the armor already planted.
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