Chapter summary
Nestor, who is drinking wine in the tent with the wounded Machaon, hears the clamor rising beside the ships and decides to see what is happening. He tells Machaon to keep drinking until Hecamede heats the water for the bath, takes the shield of his son Thrasymedes and his spear, and goes out. He sees the Achaeans in disorder, the proud Trojans on their heels, and the Achaean wall lying on the ground. He hesitates like a sea that darkens and does not move until the wind that Zeus sends has descended: should he go into the middle of the troops, or look for Agamemnon? He judges it more useful to go to the king.
On the way he finds Agamemnon himself with Odysseus and Diomedes, the three of them wounded, coming up from the ships leaning on their spears. The ships had been drawn up in several rows along the beach, because the bay was too narrow for all of them, so the wall had been built behind the sterns. Nestor's arrival increases the anguish of the three. Agamemnon asks why he has left the battle and confesses his fear: that Hector will carry out his threat to return to Ilion only after burning the ships and killing the Greeks. He adds that the other Achaeans seem to hold the same wrath against him that Achilles holds, and do not want to fight beside the ships. Nestor replies that the worst has already come to pass: the wall they trusted in has fallen, the fighting is at the sterns, and the confusion is so great that one cannot see where the Achaeans are fleeing. He proposes that they deliberate, but says it is not right to return to the fight, because the wounded are of no use in combat.
Agamemnon concludes that Zeus wants the Achaeans to perish far from Argos, without a name: the wall and the ditch were worth nothing, and the god who once helped them now exalts the Trojans as if they were immortals and binds the strength of the Greeks. He proposes to launch into the sea the ships nearest the water, anchor them offshore, and wait for night, so that they can drag all the rest back if the Trojans stop fighting; to flee from evil, he says, is no shame, not even at night. Odysseus glares at him sideways and rebukes him harshly: he ought to command some worthless army, and not men to whom Zeus has assigned wars from youth to old age. With the battle still undecided, dragging the ships into the sea would give the Trojans what they want and take from the Achaeans the spirit to fight. He orders him to be silent, so that no other Achaean hears such a proposal. Agamemnon yields: the rebuke has wounded his spirit; he does not intend to force anyone to launch the ships into the sea, and he will gladly accept better counsel, from the young or from the old.
Diomedes, the youngest of those present, asks to be heard without anger at his age, and grounds his speech in his lineage: he is son of Tydeus, buried in Thebes, and grandson of Oeneus, of Calydon. Tydeus, wandering by the will of Zeus and the other gods, settled in Argos, married a daughter of Adrastus, and grew rich, excellent with the spear. Having said this, he proposes to return to the fight, even though wounded, out of necessity, but to stay out of reach of the missiles, so that no one wastes away wound upon wound, and to urge on those who had withdrawn and are not fighting. All obey, and Agamemnon leads them.
Poseidon, the shaker of the earth, was not inattentive: he takes the form of an old man, grasps Agamemnon's hand, and tells him that the heart of Achilles must rejoice at the slaughter and flight of the Achaeans, for he lacks wisdom; he wishes Achilles dead, and assures the king that the gods are not wholly angry with him, for soon he will see the Trojan chiefs fleeing to the city. Then he lets out a shout as loud as that of ten thousand men and infuses strength into every Achaean.
From the height of Olympus, Hera sees Poseidon, her brother and brother-in-law, helping in the ranks, and rejoices; she sees Zeus seated on the crest of Ida and finds him hateful. She decides to deceive him: she will go to Ida, carefully adorned, to see whether he desires to lie with her, and then she will pour sleep over his eyelids. She goes to the chamber her son Hephaestus built for her, with a secret lock that no other god can open, bathes in ambrosia, anoints herself with oil, combs her braids, puts on the robe that Athena wove, fastens the belt of a hundred tassels, puts on earrings and a veil, and binds on her sandals. She calls Aphrodite aside and asks for the love and desire with which she subdues gods and men, saying that she is going to the ends of the earth to visit Oceanus and Thetis (the ancient sea goddess, not Achilles' mother), who raised them, to end the quarrel between the two, who have long avoided each other's bed. Aphrodite cannot see how to refuse one who sleeps in the arms of Zeus, and she takes from her breast the embroidered girdle, where love, desire, intimate talk, and the seduction that steals the wits even of the sensible are kept. Hera smiles and tucks it into her bosom.
Hera flies to Lemnos, finds Sleep, brother of Death, and asks him to lull the eyes of Zeus as soon as she lies down with him, promising a golden throne, the work of Hephaestus. Sleep refuses: he would put any god to sleep, even Oceanus, but he approaches Zeus only if Zeus commands it. He recalls that the last time, when Hera sent storms against Heracles, who was returning from Troy, Zeus woke furious, searched for him among the gods, and would have hurled him into the sea if Night had not sheltered him. Hera asks whether he believes Zeus will help the Trojans as he was angered over Heracles, and offers him one of the youngest Graces as his wife. Sleep accepts, names Pasithea, whom he has long desired, and demands the oath by the waters of the Styx; Hera swears, invoking the Titan gods of Tartarus. The two then set out, wrapped in mist, through Lemnos and Imbros to Ida; there Sleep climbs a very tall fir and stays hidden, disguised as a bird.
Hera reaches Gargarus, and Zeus, seeing her, feels desire cloud his judgment, as on the first occasion they lay together, hidden from their parents. He asks where she is going, without chariot or horses; Hera repeats the lie (Oceanus and Thetis, the horses waiting at the foot of Ida, and that she came only to tell him so that he would not be angry with her afterward). Zeus invites her to the bed and swears that no goddess or woman has ever dominated him like this, listing those he loved, among them the wife of Ixion, Danae, the daughter of Phoenix, Semele, Alcmene, Demeter, and Leto, to say that none inflamed him as she does. Hera objects that the summit of Ida is visible, that a god could see them and tell everyone, and proposes the chamber of Hephaestus. Zeus reassures her: he will cover the two of them with a golden cloud that not even the Sun can pierce. He embraces his wife; the earth makes grass, lotus, crocus, and hyacinth spring up, and they lie down beneath the cloud, from which drops of dew fall. Zeus falls asleep, overcome by sleep and by love.
Sleep runs to the ships and tells Poseidon to help the Danaans and give them glory, even if only briefly, while Zeus sleeps; Hera has deceived him. Poseidon goes ahead and exhorts the Achaeans: will they yield the victory to Hector again, who boasts because Achilles stays by the ships, furious? Achilles will be little missed if the others help one another. He orders them to exchange arms: the best shields and helmets for the best men, and whoever has a small shield gives it to the weaker in exchange for a larger one. The wounded kings, Diomedes, Odysseus, and Agamemnon, go along the ranks overseeing the exchange. Poseidon advances with a long, terrible sword, which may not be confronted in combat; Hector gives orders to the Trojans on the other side. The sea rises to the tents, and the cry of the two armies surpasses that of the waves, that of fire in the forest, and that of the wind in the oaks.
Hector throws first at Ajax and strikes the point where the two baldrics cross, the one of the shield and the one of the sword, which protect Ajax's skin; annoyed at the wasted throw, he withdraws into the group. Telamonian Ajax picks up one of the stones that prop up the ships and strikes him in the chest, above the rim of his shield; Hector spins like a top and falls like an oak struck by the lightning of Zeus. The Achaeans run to drag him off, but the best of the Trojans, Polydamas, Aeneas, Agenor, Sarpedon, and Glaucus, surround him, and his companions carry him to the horses and to the city. At the ford of the Xanthus they pour water over him; he recovers his breath, kneels, vomits dark blood, and falls again, with night over his eyes.
With Hector out of the fight, the Achaeans advance with renewed ardor. Ajax, son of Oileus, attacks first and wounds Satnius; Polydamas kills Protoenor and boasts that his spear will serve him as a staff all the way to Hades. Telamonian Ajax, who saw Protoenor fall beside him, hurls his spear at Polydamas; he dodges, and the spear kills Archelochus, son of Antenor, whom the gods had destined for death. Ajax asks him whether this dead man does not pay for Protoenor. Acamas kills the Boeotian Promachus, who was dragging a corpse by the feet, and declares that his brother's vengeance will not go unpaid: it is good for a man to leave at home a kinsman to avenge him. Peneleos, seized with grief, kills Ilioneus, the only son of Phorbas and a favorite of Hermes, piercing his eye with his spear; he cuts off his head and holds it up like a poppy, telling the Trojans to tell his parents to mourn him, and that the wife of Promachus will not rejoice in her husband when the Achaeans sail home from Troy. Terror seizes the Trojans.
The poet invokes the Muses to say who was the first to take spoils after Poseidon turned the battle. Telamonian Ajax kills Hyrtius, leader of the Mysians; Antilochus kills Phalces and Mermerus; Meriones, Morys, and Hippotion; Teucer, Protoon and Periphetes; one of the Atreidae wounds Hyperenor in the flank, and his life flees through the wound. Yet it is Ajax, son of Oileus, who kills the most, and no man equals him in pursuing those who flee when Zeus sends them panic.
Analysis
The song sets up an inversion with few pieces. In the first two thirds the Achaeans lose because Zeus has abandoned them, as Agamemnon says (14.69-73); once Zeus falls asleep, the Trojans lose, and Hector falls to a stone. The one who turns the battle is no man: it is a woman who lies and a god who helps her. What men do is stand firm, and that is what gives Poseidon's favor something to hold on to: Odysseus and Diomedes block the flight before any divine help arrives. Sleep warns that the favor is brief (14.357), and the deadline is known to Hera, to Sleep, and to Poseidon, and to no one else.
The speeches in council show four ways of speaking to a king. Nestor points to the fact (the wall has fallen), Agamemnon proposes what the fact seems to demand, Odysseus responds to the effect on the army's spirit, and Diomedes, the youngest, asks for a hearing on the strength of his lineage and proposes a viable middle course. It is the last who prevails, and his plan keeps the wounded kings out of reach of the missiles, so that their authority survives without cost to their bodies. What the counselors achieve is to keep the army standing; what decides the battle comes from outside the council, from the gods.
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