Chapter summary
After leaving the city, Hector returns to the fight with Paris, and the two reach the Trojans like the wind that a god sends to sailors exhausted from rowing. Paris kills Menesius, Hector kills Eioneus, and Glaucus, leader of the Lycians, kills Iphinous. Athena, who has seen the Argives die, descends from Olympus to Ilium, and Apollo, who wants victory for the Trojans, finds her beside an oak. He asks whether she has come once more to give victory to the Danaans, without pity for the Trojans who are dying, and he proposes to halt the war today, letting it resume later until an end for Ilium is found, since that is what the immortals want. Athena agrees, for she came with the same thoughts, and asks how the fight is to be stopped; Apollo proposes to rouse Hector's strength so that he challenges one of the Danaans alone, and the Achaeans, struck with admiration, will put up a champion against him.
Helenus, son of Priam, perceives in his spirit the plan that pleases the gods, goes to Hector, and advises him: let him have Trojans and Achaeans sit down and challenge the best of the Achaeans to single combat, for it is not yet his fate to die, as he has heard from the gods. Hector, glad at the news, advances into the middle, holding his spear by its center, and has the Trojan ranks sit down; Agamemnon does the same with the Achaeans. Athena and Apollo alight, in the form of vultures, on the high oak of Zeus to watch the men. Hector says that Zeus has not kept his oaths and prepares evil for both sides, until the Achaeans take Troy or are defeated beside the ships. He offers to fight whichever champion his spirit directs, with Zeus as witness: if he is killed, the victor takes the armor but returns the body, so that the Trojans and their wives may give him fire; if Hector wins, he will carry the armor to the temple of Apollo and return the corpse, so that the Achaeans may bury him in a tomb by the Hellespont, and someday a man sailing past will say, "there lies the one whom Hector killed": thus his fame will never perish.
All fall silent, ashamed to refuse and afraid to accept. At last Menelaus rises, groaning, and rebukes the Achaeans: boastful Achaeans, no longer Achaeans! It will be a disgrace if no one faces Hector; let all of you sit there and turn to earth and water, without glory. He himself arms, for victory lies in the hands of the gods. Agamemnon takes his right hand and restrains him: Hector is better than he is, and even Achilles shuddered at the thought of facing him; let him sit down and leave it to the Achaeans to find another champion. Menelaus yields, and the attendants take the armor from his shoulders. Then Nestor rises and shames the Achaeans: what grief for the Achaean land! How the old Peleus would groan, he who used to ask each Argive about his family, if he heard them cowering before Hector: he would pray to die. He recounts how, as a young man, he killed Ereuthalion, the tallest and strongest of men, who wore the armor of Areithous and challenged everyone while no one dared; his spirit pushed him forward, though he was the youngest, and Athena gave him the glory. If only he had that strength now, Hector would soon meet his match. Nine men rise: Agamemnon, Diomedes, the two Ajaxes, Idomeneus, Meriones, Eurypylus, Thoas, and Odysseus.
Nestor orders the lots drawn: each man marks his token and throws it into Agamemnon's helmet, and the people pray that Ajax, Diomedes, or Agamemnon himself will come out. Nestor shakes the helmet, and Ajax's token leaps out, the one everyone wanted. The herald carries it around from right to left, showing it to the chiefs, and no one recognizes it until it reaches its owner, the son of Telamon, who recognizes it and rejoices. He tells the others to pray to Zeus, silently or aloud, while he dons his armor, because he does not fear: no one will defeat him by force or by skill, and he was neither born nor raised in Salamis as an ignorant man. The Achaeans pray to Zeus for victory for Ajax and, if he also loves Hector, equal strength and glory for both.
Ajax advances like Ares, smiling with a terrible face, carrying a shield of seven oxhides and an eighth layer of bronze, which Tychius made for him, and he comes like a tower. The Achaeans rejoice, the Trojans tremble, and Hector's heart pounds in his chest, but he can no longer draw back, because he issued the challenge. Ajax tells him that he will now see that among the Danaans too there are champions after Achilles, who lies by the ships, angry at Agamemnon; there are many of them to face him. Hector answers that Ajax should not test him as if he were a weak boy or a woman: he knows the craft of war, but he does not want to strike him in secret, only in the open. He throws first; the point pierces six hides and stops at the seventh. Ajax throws next, pierces the shield and the breastplate, and tears the tunic at the flank; Hector bends aside and escapes black death. They pull out their spears and rush at each other like lions or wild boars: Hector strikes the center of Ajax's shield, but the bronze bends; Ajax charges, pierces the shield, makes Hector stagger, and grazes his neck, so that dark blood spurts. Hector falls back and picks up a black, rough stone; Ajax lifts a larger one, whirls it, and hurls it with force, breaking Hector's shield and wounding his knees; Hector falls on his back, still held by the shield, but Apollo raises him up at once. They would have fought with swords if the heralds Talthybius and Idaeus, messengers of Zeus and of men, had not placed their staffs between them. Idaeus says that night is coming, that both are beloved of Zeus, and that it is good to obey the night. Ajax answers that Hector should be the first to stop, since he was the one who issued the challenge; Ajax will obey. Hector agrees, praises his greatness, strength, and good sense, and offers gifts: he gives a sword with silver studs, with its scabbard and baldric, and Ajax gives him a purple belt. They part: the Trojans, who no longer expected it, rejoice to see him alive and lead him to the city, while the Achaeans take Ajax to Agamemnon, who sacrifices a five-year-old ox to Zeus and, after the feast, honors Ajax with the whole loin.
At the table, Nestor, whose counsel had already proved the best, proposes, because of the many Achaeans dead around the Scamander, to halt the war at dawn, gather the bodies with oxen and mules, burn them near the ships so that each man can carry the bones to his sons when he returns, raise a single tomb on the plain, and beside it build high towers with gates and a deep ditch to protect the ships and the men. The kings approve. On the citadel of Troy, by the gate of Priam, the Trojans gather in a tumultuous assembly. Antenor proposes returning Helen, the Argive woman, along with the goods, to the Atreidae, since they fought after breaking the oaths, and nothing seems better to him than that this be done. Paris, Helen's husband, answers that this does not please him, asks whether the gods have taken away his wits, and declares that he will not return the woman: all the goods he brought from Argos, every one of them, and others from his own house, he will give. Priam, who speaks afterward, orders that they dine, keep watch, and that Idaeus go to the ships at dawn to carry to the Atreidae Paris's offer and the proposal of a truce to burn the dead.
At dawn, Idaeus delivers the message to the assembled Achaeans by the stern of Agamemnon's ship. All fall silent; at last Diomedes says that no one should accept Paris's goods or Helen, for even the most foolish can see that the end of ruin already hangs over the Trojans, and the Achaeans approve with shouts. Agamemnon tells Idaeus that this is the Achaeans' answer, and that, as for the truce to burn the dead, he does not object, since there is no reason to spare the corpses; he raises the scepter to the gods and calls Zeus as witness of the oaths. The two sides gather the dead on the plain, wash off the blood, and carry them away; Priam forbids weeping, and the Trojans burn their bodies in silence, and the Achaeans do the same. Before dawn, the Achaeans raise a common tomb, a wall with high towers and firm gates, and a wide ditch with stakes.
The gods, seated beside Zeus, look at the Achaeans' work. Poseidon complains: is there any mortal who will go and tell the immortals what he thinks? The Achaeans have raised a wall before the ships and dug a ditch without offering hecatombs; the fame of that wall will reach as far as the dawn spreads, and the wall that he and Phoebus built for the hero Laomedon will be forgotten. Zeus, angered, answers that another god, a weaker one, might fear this, and that Poseidon's own fame will reach as far as the dawn spreads; when the Achaeans sail away in their ships, let him destroy the wall, throw it into the sea, and cover the beach with sand again. At sunset the work is finished; they slaughter oxen and dine. Ships come from Lemnos with wine, sent by Euneus, son of Jason and Hypsipyle, who gives the Atreidae a thousand measures. The Achaeans buy wine with bronze, iron, hides, oxen, and slaves, and feast all night, as do the Trojans and their allies. But Zeus, all night long, plots evil against them, thundering terribly, and pale terror seizes them: they pour the wine from their cups onto the ground, and no one dares to drink before offering a libation to the mighty son of Cronus. They lie down and receive the gift of sleep.
Analysis
Neither of the two pauses in this book decides the war. The duel, which Apollo and Athena set up, ends in a draw and in gifts; the truce for the dead lets the Achaeans raise the wall that Poseidon soon disputes. In both cases the poem shows men accepting limits that come to them from outside, the night in the duel, Agamemnon's scepter in the truce, without the course of the war changing in this book.
In every scene someone speaks of what others will say. Hector imagines the traveler who one day will see the tomb of the vanquished, and the challenge turns into a promise of fame; Menelaus and Nestor move the Achaeans through shame; Paris puts all his goods on the table and keeps Helen; Poseidon fears that the fame of his wall will be forgotten next to that of the Achaeans' wall. What drives men and gods in this book is the judgment of those who are yet to come.
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