Chapter summary
At dawn Zeus calls the gods to the peak of Olympus and forbids any of them to go and help Trojans or Danaans: whoever disobeys will be hurled into Tartarus, the abyss that lies beneath Hades. He wants to finish quickly the work he has in mind and proves his own strength by proposing that all the gods hang from a golden chain fixed to the sky: none could drag him down, while he, if he wished, would pull them all up, with the earth and the sea. The gods fall silent. Athena agrees to stay out of the war, but asks leave to give the Argives some useful counsel, because she pities them and does not want them all to die from Zeus's wrath. Zeus smiles, says that he did not speak with his whole mind and that he wants to be gentle with her. He then goes to Mount Ida, unyokes his horses, wraps them in mist, and sits on the peak to look at the city and the ships.
Greeks and Trojans arm and clash, and until midday the fighting stays balanced. Then Zeus lifts the golden scales and places in the pans the fates of death for each side: the Achaeans' pan sinks to the earth and the Trojans' rises to the sky. From Ida he thunders and hurls a bolt into the midst of the Greeks, who fill with dread. Agamemnon, Idomeneus and the two Ajaxes fall back. Only Nestor stays, and not by choice: Paris wounded one of his horses, which thrashes and tangles the team. While the old man cuts the traces with his sword, the chariot of Hector advances. Diomedes sees the danger and calls Odysseus, who does not listen and runs for the ships. Diomedes, alone, takes Nestor up into his own chariot, pulled by the horses he took from Aeneas, and throws his spear at Hector: he misses, but kills the charioteer, Eniopeus. Hector, grieving but not stopping, leaves the body and gets another charioteer, Archeptolemus. The Trojans would have been trapped in Ilium like lambs if Zeus had not hurled a thunderbolt in front of Diomedes' horses.
Frightened, Nestor orders Diomedes to fall back: today Zeus gives the glory to Hector, tomorrow perhaps to them, and no man holds back the mind of Zeus. Diomedes agrees, but suffers at the thought that Hector might one day boast that he made him flee; Nestor replies that neither the Trojans nor the widows of the men Diomedes killed would believe he is a coward. The two flee, and Hector pursues them with shouts and spears and taunts them: once the Danaans honored him at their feasts, now they will treat him like a woman. Diomedes hesitates three times between turning back and facing him, and three times Zeus thunders from Ida, a sign of victory for the Trojans. Hector, hearing it, tells his men that Zeus has signaled victory to him, mocks the Greek wall, whose ditch his horses will leap, and announces that he will set the ships on fire and kill the Argives choked by smoke. He also speaks to his horses: he reminds them of the care of Andromache and asks them to run and take Nestor's golden shield and Diomedes' breastplate, made by Hephaestus, because with them the Greeks would be at their ships still this very night. Hera is indignant at the boasting, shakes her throne and asks Poseidon to help the Greeks; he refuses, because he does not want to fight against Zeus.
The Trojans fill the space between the ditch and the ships, and Hector, equal to Ares, nearly sets the ships on fire. Hera then puts into Agamemnon's chest the impulse to rouse the Achaeans. The king goes to the ship of Odysseus, which stands in the middle of the camp and from which the voice carries to the tents of Ajax and of Achilles, at the ends of the line, and he rebukes them aloud: where are the boasts of Lemnos, when each one promised to face a hundred or two hundred Trojans, and now none of them is worth a Hector? He prays to Zeus: he has never passed an altar of the god without burning the fat of oxen, eager to destroy Troy, and he asks whether Zeus has ever blinded a king like this and taken away his glory. He asks only that they be allowed to escape. Zeus, moved by the tears, nods that the people should be saved and sends an eagle that drops a deer beside the altar. The Greeks, seeing the sign, return to the fight with new spirit. Diomedes is the first to cross the ditch and kill a Trojan; the other chiefs follow him. Teucer, sheltered under Ajax's shield, kills many with his bow, and Agamemnon urges him on, promising the prize right after his own: a tripod, a chariot with horses, or a woman. Teucer replies that he is already doing his best: he has hit eight arrows, yet he has not hit Hector. He shoots again and kills Gorgythion, son of Priam; with the next arrow, deflected by Apollo, he kills Hector's charioteer, Archeptolemus. Hector, grieving again and not stopping, passes the reins to his brother Cebriones, leaps from the chariot and strikes Teucer with a stone on the collarbone: the bowstring snaps, the hand goes numb, and Ajax covers him with his shield while two companions carry him to the ships.
Zeus restores strength to the Trojans, who push the Greeks back to the ditch and the ships, and Hector pursues them like a dog after a lion, always killing the last one. Hera, moved with pity, tells Athena that they cannot watch the Danaans die because of one man. Athena agrees and complains about Zeus: he forgets that she saved his son Heracles from the labors of Eurystheus, and now he hates her and yields to Thetis, who kissed his knees, asking honor for Achilles. The two arm themselves. Zeus, from Ida, sees them and sends Iris to stop them: if they persist, he will break their horses, throw the goddesses from the chariot, and leave wounds from his lightning that will not heal for ten years, so that Athena learns what it means to fight with her father. Iris delivers the message and calls Athena an impudent bitch. Hera gives way: it is not worth fighting Zeus over mortals, and let each have the lot that falls to them. Back on Olympus, Zeus finds the two silent and questions them: had they entered the battle, they would not have returned. Athena keeps silent; Hera repeats what Athena had said, that they know his power and pity the Danaans. Zeus replies that tomorrow she will see even more destruction, and that Hector will not stop until Achilles rises beside the ships, on the day they fight around the dead Patroclus: so it is decreed, and her anger does not weigh on him.
Night falls, which the Greeks receive with relief and the Trojans with grief. Hector gathers the assembly away from the ships, in a clear stretch free of the dead, leaning on his spear of eleven cubits. He says he expected to destroy the Greeks and return to Ilium, but the night has saved them. He orders supper prepared, the horses unyoked and many fires lit, so that the Greeks will not flee by sea during the night: he wants them to carry their wounds home, and that this will discourage others from bringing war to Troy. He sends heralds to tell the young men and the old to guard the towers, and the women to keep fires burning at home, so that no ambush enters a city emptied of men. The next morning he will go to pray to Zeus and the other gods and see whether Diomedes makes him retreat or whether he kills him, and he ends by saying that he would wish to be immortal and honored like Athena and Apollo, as surely as that day brings disaster to the Argives. The Trojans applaud, bring oxen, sheep, wine and wood, and sacrifice hecatombs, but the gods refuse the offering, because they hate Ilium, Priam and his people. The Trojans spend the night in the open, confident, around a thousand fires.
Analysis
The book shows fate as something that is weighed, and the one who weighs it is Zeus. Everything that follows responds to this scene: Nestor reads the bolt and accepts it, Diomedes hesitates and the thunder decides, Hector reads the same thunder as a promise and plans the fire, Agamemnon prays and gets only a pause, Hera and Athena arm themselves and return. Each character interprets a sign, and Hector, who interprets it with the most eagerness, is also the one who most depends on Zeus: in Zeus's speech to Hera, Hector's day is already inside a plan that exceeds him.
What moves men in this book is reputation: Diomedes fears Hector's words, Hector dreams of Nestor's shield and Diomedes' breastplate, Agamemnon reminds the Greeks of the boasts of Lemnos. War remains, at once, slaughter and a contest for a name. The night that closes the book gives each side what it asked for: to the Greeks, relief; to the Trojans, fires and hope. Achilles does not appear in the book, but he is named three times: at the end of the row of ships (8.225), in Thetis's request that Athena recalls (8.372), and in Zeus's prophecy (8.474). What is decided far from him passes through him.
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