Chapter summary
The two armies advance in order: the Trojans with shouts, like cranes fleeing winter, and the Achaeans in silence, breathing fury, resolved to come to one another's aid. At the front of the Trojans goes Paris, with a leopard skin, bow and sword on his shoulders, and two spears in his hand, and he challenges the best of the Achaeans to fight him. Menelaus sees him and rejoices like a lion that finds prey, because he means to punish the guilty man, and he leaps from the chariot in arms. Paris feels his heart shake and retreats into the midst of his companions, like one who sees a serpent and flees pale. Hector, seeing this, rebukes him: he would prefer that Paris had never been born, or had died unmarried, rather than see him serve as a disgrace and a laughingstock to others. The Achaeans must be laughing, since they took him for a champion because of his beauty, but he has neither strength nor courage. How did he dare sail, seek out companions, and bring back a beautiful woman from a distant land, a calamity for his father, the city, and the people, and now will not face her husband? His lyre, his hair, and the gifts of Aphrodite will be of no use when he falls in the dust, and if the Trojans were not so timid, he would already be stoned for the evils he has caused.
Paris acknowledges the justice of the rebuke, compares Hector's heart to an axe that cuts through a tree trunk, asks him not to throw the gifts of Aphrodite in his face, because the gifts of the gods cannot be chosen, and proposes what Hector wanted: that the two armies sit down and that he and Menelaus fight for Helen and all the possessions; whoever wins takes the goods and the woman, and the others swear friendship, with the Trojans staying in Troy and the Achaeans sailing back to Argos. Hector rejoices, holds his spear by the middle to restrain the Trojan line, and the Achaeans attack him with arrows and stones until Agamemnon orders them to stop. Hector sets out the proposal before both armies, which fall silent. Menelaus then speaks: the pain is greater for him, who suffered the offense; he accepts an end to the war, but wants one of the two to die, the one to whom destiny falls; he asks for two lambs, a white one for the Sun and a black one for the Earth, and a third for Zeus, and for Priam himself to come and swear, because his sons are arrogant and untrustworthy, and the minds of the young are fickle, while the old man sees both what came before and what comes after. Achaeans and Trojans rejoice, hoping for the end of the war; they dismount, disarm, and leave their weapons on the ground, one beside another, and heralds set out to fetch the lambs and Priam.
Iris, in the form of Laodice, Helen's sister-in-law, seeks out Helen, who was weaving a purple cloak on which she embroidered the battles of Trojans and Achaeans fought over her. She calls her to watch the duel, says that whoever wins will take her as his wife, and stirs in her a sweet longing for her first husband, her city, and her parents. Helen covers herself with a white veil and goes, weeping, with two maids, to the Scaean Gates, where Priam and the elders, too old for war but good speakers, see her arrive. They murmur among themselves that it is no wonder Trojans and Achaeans suffer so much for such a woman, who looks like a goddess, but that she should go back in the ships and not remain as a calamity for them and their children. Priam calls her to his side, says that she is not to blame but the gods, who launched this war against them, and asks her to name the Achaean leaders. Helen answers that she feels respect and fear for him, and that she would have preferred to die rather than follow his son, leaving her marriage bed, her kin, her daughter, and her companions. She then identifies Agamemnon, Odysseus (and Antenor recalls how he saw him when he came to Troy with Menelaus, and how he speaks when he rises), Ajax, and Idomeneus, and says she does not see her brothers Castor and Polydeuces, whom she supposes stayed away out of shame over her; the narrator adds that the earth already covered them, in Lacedaemon.
The heralds bring the lambs and the wine, and Idaeus calls Priam, who trembles and climbs into the chariot with Antenor. In the space between the armies, Agamemnon cuts hair from the lambs' heads, which the heralds distribute to the leaders, and invokes Zeus, the Sun, the rivers, the earth, and the gods below who punish perjurers. If Paris kills Menelaus, let him keep Helen and the goods, and the Achaeans sail back in their ships; if Menelaus kills Paris, let the Trojans return Helen and the goods and pay the Argives a compensation that will be remembered by men to come; and if Priam and his sons refuse to pay it, he will keep fighting until the end of the war. He slits the lambs' throats; both sides pour wine and pray that the brain of whoever breaks the oath spill on the ground like that wine, his and his children's, and that his wife be taken by other men. Zeus does not grant the prayer. Priam says he cannot bear to see his son fight Menelaus, that only Zeus and the gods know which of the two is destined for death, and returns to Troy with the lambs. Hector and Odysseus measure out the ground and shake lots in a helmet to see who will throw first, while the two armies pray to Zeus that the one who caused the war go down to Hades and that the others swear friendship; Paris's lot leaps out.
Paris arms himself with the breastplate of his brother Lycaon, and Menelaus arms himself the same way. The two advance, and astonishment seizes those who see them. Paris throws first, and the point bends on Menelaus's shield. Menelaus prays to Zeus: grant that he may punish Alexander, who did him the first wrong, so that men to come will fear to wrong a host who offers them friendship. His spear pierces the shield and the breastplate and tears the tunic, but Paris leans aside and escapes death. Menelaus strikes the crest of the helmet with his sword, which shatters into pieces and slips from his hand; he cries out to Zeus that no god is more ruinous, for he hoped to take revenge and now the sword is broken and the spear was thrown in vain. He then grabs Paris by the helmet and drags him toward the Achaeans, while the strap chokes him under the chin; he would have won immense glory if Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, had not seen and broken the strap, made of oxhide, so that the helmet came away empty in his hand. Menelaus hurls it to his companions and charges again with the spear, but Aphrodite easily snatches Paris away, wraps him in mist, and sets him down in his perfumed bedchamber.
Aphrodite then goes to summon Helen, who was in the tower among the Trojan women, in the form of an old woman who had carded wool for her in Sparta and whom she was fond of. She tells Helen that Paris awaits her in the bedchamber, handsome and well dressed, like a man coming from the dance and not from the fight. Helen recognizes the goddess by her neck, her breast, and her eyes, and rebukes her: she wants to lead her further, to another man, now that Menelaus has won; let the goddess go and sit beside Paris and stay with him until she makes her his wife or his slave; Helen will not go and prepare his bed, because the Trojan women will reproach her, and she already has too many sorrows. Aphrodite grows angry and threatens to hate her as much as she now loves her and to cast the hatred of Trojans and Danaans upon her; Helen is afraid and follows her in silence, unseen by the Trojan women. In the palace, Aphrodite sets a chair before Paris. Helen sits down without looking at him and reproaches him: he came back from the war, and would that he had died at the hands of the strong man who was her husband; he used to boast that he surpassed Menelaus, let him challenge him again, but she immediately tells him not to, lest he be killed by him. Paris answers, asking her not to wound him with insults: Menelaus won this time with Athena's help, next time it will be him, for there are gods on their side too; he proposes they lie down, for desire has never enveloped him like this, not even when he carried her off. They go to the bed. Menelaus, meanwhile, moves through the ranks like a wild beast searching for Paris, and no Trojan or ally shows him where Paris is, for all hate him like black death. Agamemnon then declares that the victory is Menelaus's and demands Helen, the goods, and the compensation; the Achaeans approve.
Analysis
The duel is the work of the men themselves: Hector rebukes, Paris proposes, Menelaus demands the oaths, and Priam is brought in to seal them. What undoes it is a goddess's intervention when the outcome was almost decided, and the book ends with a victory declared (the text says she "appears," 3.457) over a living opponent lying beside Helen. The poem shows the human attempt to end the war by agreement and leaves it without effect, without saying it was impossible, and records that Zeus did not fulfill the prayer of both sides against whoever breaks the pact (3.302).
Helen is the center of the book, and each character names her in a different way: for Iris, she is the prize of the victor; for the elders, a beauty to be returned; for Priam, innocent; for Agamemnon, someone to be handed over along with the goods and the fine; for Paris, desire; for herself, at times a woman who ought to have died (3.173), at times someone who refuses the goddess's order and then obeys it (3.410-420). The text does not choose among these descriptions and lets them coexist.
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