Chapter summary
The Trojans in flight cross the stakes and the ditch and stop by the chariots, pale with fear, after many have fallen at the hands of the Danaans. On Ida, Zeus wakes beside Hera, leaps up, and sees the Trojans scattered, the Argives in pursuit, Poseidon among them, and Hector fallen on the plain, surrounded by companions, gasping and vomiting blood, struck by an Achaean who was not among the weakest. He takes pity on Hector and, with a terrible glance, accuses Hera of the trick that removed him from the battle, threatens to whip her, and reminds her of the day he hung her between the aether and the clouds, with two anvils on her feet and golden fetters on her wrists, so that the gods could not free her, a punishment that came to her for having sent storms against Heracles, whom Zeus saved and brought back to Argos. He recalls this, he says, so that she will abandon her deceits and see whether the bed and the love with which she deceived him will still serve her.
Hera shudders and swears by the Earth, the Sky, the waters of the Styx, and the marriage bed that it is not by her will that Poseidon harms the Trojans: it is the spirit of Poseidon himself that drives him, seeing the Achaeans in distress beside the ships; she will counsel him to follow wherever Zeus commands. Zeus smiles and says that if she thought as he does, Poseidon would soon change course; he sends her to Olympus to summon Iris and Apollo. Iris will tell Poseidon to leave the war; Apollo will restore strength to Hector, make him forget his pains, and turn the Achaeans in flight back to the ships of Achilles. The latter will send Patroclus, whom Hector will kill before Ilion after Patroclus has killed many, among them Sarpedon, son of Zeus; enraged, Achilles will kill Hector. After that, Zeus will carry out the pursuit of the Trojans far from the ships, without pause, until the Achaeans take Ilion, by the design of Athena. Until then, however, his wrath will not cease, nor will he allow any immortal to help the Danaans, until the desire of Achilles is fulfilled, as he promised with a nod of his head, on the day when Thetis clasped his knees.
Hera obeys and flies to Olympus. The gods rise and offer her cups; she accepts only the one from Themis, who asks whether Zeus has frightened her. Hera answers that Zeus has an arrogant and cruel temper, tells the gods to continue the banquet, and says they will hear the evils he announces. She laughs only with her lips, without relaxing her brow, and says it is foolish to be angry with Zeus: he keeps himself apart, indifferent, and calls himself the best in strength; let each one bear whatever evil he sends. She adds that an evil has already reached Ares, whose son Ascalaphus died in combat. Ares strikes his thighs and says that no one should be indignant if he goes down to the ships to avenge his son, even if his fate is to be struck down among the dead; he orders Flight and Terror to yoke the horses. Athena, fearing for the gods, leaves her throne, removes from Ares his helmet, shield, and spear, and rebukes him: has he lost his mind, did he not hear Hera? Zeus will come to punish everyone, guilty or not. Others better than Ascalaphus have died and will still die, and it is hard to protect the lineage of all men. She makes Ares sit down.
Hera calls Apollo and Iris out of the hall and sends them to Ida, where Zeus summons them. They find him at Gargarus, with a fragrant cloud around him, and Zeus is not angered to see that they obeyed his wife so quickly. He orders Iris to tell Poseidon to leave the war and go to the gods or to the sea; if he disobeys, Zeus will come to fight against him, for he is stronger and older. Poseidon is indignant: they are three brothers, sons of Cronus and Rhea, and the world was divided into three parts, the sea for him, the darkness for Hades, the sky for Zeus, with the earth and Olympus common to all; he does not live at Zeus's pleasure, and let Zeus be content with his share and frighten the sons and daughters he himself begot. Iris asks whether she should carry such a harsh message, and reminds him that the hearts of the good can be bent, and that the Erinyes accompany the elders. Poseidon accepts the justice of her words and yields, though indignant, but adds a threat: if Zeus spares Ilion against his will, and against that of Athena, Hera, Hermes, and Hephaestus, the anger between them will have no cure. He leaves the Achaeans and plunges into the sea, and the heroes feel his absence.
Zeus sends Apollo after Hector: Poseidon has withdrawn to avoid Zeus's anger, which was better for both of them, because the confrontation would not have ended without sweat. Apollo must take the tasseled aegis and shake it against the Achaeans, look after Hector, and rouse in him great strength until the fleeing Achaeans reach the ships and the Hellespont; after that, Zeus himself will plan how the Achaeans may draw breath again. Apollo descends like a falcon and finds Hector already seated, coming to himself, recognizing his companions, without sweat or gasping, because Zeus has roused him. He asks why Hector is away from the others, and Hector, without strength, asks who the god is and tells him that Ajax struck him in the chest with a stone and that he thought he would go to Hades that day. Apollo encourages him: Zeus sends him as a protector, Phoebus of the golden sword, who has always guarded him and the city; let Hector send his horsemen to the ships, and Apollo will go before them, clearing the way and turning the Achaean heroes. Full of new strength, Hector runs like a horse that breaks its tether and gallops to the river.
The Danaans, who were coming in mass, beating the Trojans, lose heart when they see Hector, like hunters and dogs before the lion that appears when they chase a deer. The Aetolian Thoas, good with the spear and in assembly, says it is a prodigy that Hector has risen after escaping the death everyone expected at Ajax's hands; some god saved him, and he does not advance without Zeus. He proposes that the crowd retreat to the ships and that the best men stay to hold him back. They obey: around Ajax, Idomeneus, Teucer, Meriones, and Meges the line forms, and the crowd returns to the ships. The Trojans advance, Hector in front and Apollo ahead of him, with a cloud on his shoulders and the terrible aegis that Hephaestus gave to Zeus. As Apollo holds it still, the spears fly from both sides and many fall; when he shakes it before the Danaans and gives a great shout, they forget their strength and flee like cattle and sheep attacked at night by two beasts. Scattered deaths follow: Hector kills Stichius and Arcesilaus; Aeneas, Medon and Iasus; Polydamas, Mecisteus; Polites, Equios; Agenor, Clonius; Paris kills Deiochus, striking him from behind. While the Trojans strip the dead, the Achaeans flee across the ditch and the stakes and crowd together behind the wall.
Hector orders the Trojans to leave the spoils and run to the ships: whoever is found far from them will be killed, without the right to a funeral pyre among his kin, and dogs will eat him before the city. Apollo, going ahead, breaks down the edges of the ditch with his feet, makes a broad bridge, and then tears down the wall of the Achaeans as a child destroys the sandcastle it has just built on the beach. The Achaeans halt beside the ships and raise their hands to the gods; Nestor asks Zeus to remember the offerings of those who prayed to return home and to free them from the cruel day. Zeus thunders, hearing the old man's prayer, but the Trojans, when they hear the thunder, attack with greater force, like a wave that passes over the rim of a ship; they fight from atop their chariots with spears, while the Achaeans defend themselves from atop the ships with long naval poles tipped with bronze.
Patroclus, who was keeping Eurypylus company with conversation and treating his wound with remedies, sees the Trojans scaling the wall and hears the cry of the Danaans in flight; he groans, strikes his thighs, and tells Eurypylus that he cannot stay: he will go to Achilles's tent to try to persuade him to fight, and perhaps, with the help of a god, move his spirit, for a friend's exhortation is a good thing. He leaves. The Achaeans resist the attack, and no one breaks the line. Hector confronts Ajax around one ship, neither able to drive the other away nor set the vessel on fire; Ajax kills with his spear Caletor, son of Clytius, who was carrying fire, and Hector, seeing his cousin fallen, shouts to the Trojans to save the body and throws at Ajax; he misses and strikes Lycophron, Ajax's servant, who had lived with him since killing a man in Cythera. Ajax calls his brother Teucer, who comes with the bow and kills Clitus, charioteer of Polydamas; Clitus's driver hands the horses to Astynous and returns to the front. Teucer aims at Hector, but Zeus, who guards Hector, breaks the string of the bow; Teucer sees in this a hostile divinity, and Ajax tells him to drop the bow and take up spear and shield.
Hector, seeing Teucer's bow rendered useless, shouts to his men that Zeus has broken the hero's weapon, and that Zeus's force is easy to recognize, whether he gives glory to some or denies it to others; let them fight around the ships, and whoever dies, dies, for it is no dishonor to die for the fatherland: wife, children, house, and inheritance will be safe if the Achaeans leave. Ajax, on the other side, shouts to the Achaeans to feel shame: it is time to die or be saved, for if Hector takes the ships they will not return on foot; the Trojan leader orders them to burn, not to dance. It is better to fight up close and die at once than to wear oneself out beside the ships under worse men. The deaths follow: Hector kills Schedius, Ajax kills Laodamas, Polydamas kills Otus; Dolops attacks Meges, but his breastplate saves him, and Meges tears the horsehair crest from his helmet; Menelaus, from behind, pierces the shoulder of Dolops. Hector rebukes Melanippus, who lived in Troy with Priam, for not moving against the cousin who has been stripped, and takes him along. Ajax exhorts the Achaeans to shame, and they surround the ships like a wall of bronze, while Zeus incites the Trojans. Menelaus asks Antilochus, the youngest and swiftest, to attack; Antilochus kills Melanippus, but flees when Hector appears.
The narrator says what Zeus wants: to give glory to Hector, so that he hurls tireless fire at the ships and fulfills all of Thetis's excessive prayer, for Zeus expected to see the flash of a burning ship; only then would he make the Trojans retreat and give glory to the Danaans. Hector rages like Ares or like fire in the forest, with foam at his mouth and eyes gleaming beneath his brows, because Zeus honors him, only him among so many men, though he will have a short life: Athena hastens the appointed day, under the might of the Peleid. He tries to break through the line where it is densest, but the Danaans resist like a rock against the sea; he hurls himself like a wave upon a ship and like a lion upon oxen, and he kills Periphetes of Mycenae, who stumbles over the rim of his own shield. The Achaeans fall back from the first row of ships but hold firm by the tents; Nestor urges them by their fathers, sons, and wives, absent, living or dead, and Athena dispels the mist from their eyes, so that they all see Hector and his companions.
Ajax will not accept staying where the others stay; he climbs onto the decks with a naval pole of twenty-two cubits and goes from ship to ship, like a horseman who leaps between four horses, shouting to the Danaans to defend the ships and the tents. Hector, like an eagle over birds by the riverbank, falls upon a dark-prowed ship, pushed by Zeus, who also moves the people behind him. The fight resumes at close quarters, with axes, swords, and spears. Hector seizes the stern of the ship that brought Protesilaus to Troy and did not carry him back, and orders fire brought: Zeus gave him a day worth all the others, that of taking the ships that came against the will of the gods; the elders held him back when he wanted to fight beside the ships, but if Zeus clouded his judgment at that time, now it is he himself who sends him forward. Ajax, forced back by the shots, retreats to the seven-foot bench and from there, with his long spear, strikes at those who come near with fire. He shouts to the Danaans that there is no city behind them, no wall, and that only their own hands can save them. At the end of the song, twelve Trojans lie before the ships.
Analysis
The song takes up again, after the interval of the deceit, the plan that Zeus fixed in the first song, and says it aloud. Zeus tells Hera the sequence of Patroclus, Sarpedon, Hector, and Achilles (15.64-68) and gives the measure of his commitment: he will not cease until the desire of Achilles is fulfilled (15.72-77). The narrator then fixes the point of stopping (15.596-602): Zeus wants to see a ship burn, and then to reverse the tide. The prayer of Thetis is called excessive by the poet, and its fulfillment has the exact measure of a burning ship, so that the excess of the request and the limit of the concession fit in the same passage.
The song also organizes the dispute among the gods as a succession of retreats before Zeus, which are resolved without discussing merit. Hera retreats out of memory of the punishment, Ares by Athena's intervention, Poseidon out of prudence before Iris, and each retreat comes with a threat held back for later (15.211-217). Zeus obtains obedience, not consensus, and Poseidon's speech shows that the order of Olympus is a division of honors (15.189), not a monarchy. On earth, the same currency: Hector invokes fatherland, wife, children, and house (15.494-499), and Ajax the fatherland that lies far away (15.504-505; 15.739-741), two symmetrical speeches that the poet places in the same song without choosing between them.
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