An Iliad (6 page)

But Hector said no. He said that he didn’t want wine, he didn’t want to lose his strength and forget about the battle. He said to her that he couldn’t offer wine to the gods, either, because his hands were stained with dust and blood. “Go to the temple of Athena,” he said to her. “Take your finest robe, the largest one you have in the palace, the one you love most, and go and lay it on the knees of Athena, the predator goddess. Ask her to have pity on the Trojan wives and their little children, and pray to her to get rid of Diomedes, the son of Tydeus, because he is a savage fighter, and is sowing fear everywhere.”

Then the mother called her handmaidens and sent them throughout the city to gather the old women of noble birth. Then she went into the scented chamber where she kept the robes embroidered by the women of Sidon, robes that godlike Paris had brought home from his journey when he returned with Helen, crossing the wide sea. And among all the robes Hecuba chose the finest and largest, embroidered all over, which shone like a star. And I want to tell you this: it was at the bottom, the one that was lying under all the others. She took it and set off with the other women to the temple of Athena.

In truth, I wasn’t there. But I know these things because they were talked about, always, among us, the servant women, and all the palace attendants.
And they told me that Hector, when he left his mother, went to look for Paris, to bring him back to the battle. He found him in his room, polishing his beautiful armor, the shield, the breastplate, the curved bow. Helen, too, was in the room. She sat among her women. They were all working with marvelous skill. Hector entered—still
with the spear in his hand, the bronze tip gleaming—and as soon as he saw Paris he cried out, “You shameless man, what are you doing here, giving in to bitterness while men are fighting beneath the high walls of Troy? It’s you who are the cause of this war. Come on, come and fight, or you’ll soon see your city in flames.”

Paris … “You are not wrong, Hector, to reproach me,” he said. “But try to understand. I am here not to nurse resentment against the Trojans but to feel my sorrow. Helen, too, is telling me gently that I must return to the battle, and perhaps it’s the best thing I can do. Wait for me, for the time it takes to put on my armor, or go on ahead and I will join you.”

Hector didn’t even answer. In the silence all the women heard the sweet voice of Helen. “Hector,” she said, “how I wish that on the day my mother brought me into the world a stormy wind had carried me far away, to some mountain peak or into the waves of the sea, before all this happened, or that fate had, at least, kept for me a man who was able to feel shame and the scorn of others. But Paris doesn’t have a strong nature, and never will. Come here, Hector, and sit beside me. Your heart is oppressed by troubles and it’s my fault, the fault of me and Paris and our folly. Rest beside me. You know, sorrow is our fate: but for that reason our lives will be sung forever, by all the men who come after.”

Hector didn’t move. “Don’t ask me to stay, Helen,” he said. “Even if you do it for my sake, don’t ask. Let me go home, rather, because I want to see my wife and my son: my family. The Trojans fighting out there are waiting for me, but still I want to go to my wife and son, see them, because I truly don’t know if I will ever return here again, alive, before the Achaeans kill me.”

Thus he spoke, and he went away. He came to his house
but he didn’t find us. He asked the servants where we were and they told him that Andromache had gone to the walls of Ilium. She had heard that the Trojans were giving way before the power of the Achaeans and she had rushed to the walls, and the nurse with her, carrying little Astyanax in her arms. And now they were out there, rushing like madwomen toward the walls.

Hector didn’t say a word. He turned and headed swiftly toward the Scaean gates, crossing the city again. He was about to leave and return to the battle when Andromache saw him and ran to stop him, and I behind her, with the small, tender child in my arms, the beloved son of Hector, bright as a star. Hector saw us, and he stopped. And smiled.
This I saw with my own eyes. I was there.
Hector smiled. And Andromache went up to him and took his hand. She wept and said, “Unhappy Hector, your strength will be your ruin. Don’t you feel pity for your son, who is still a child, and for me, your unlucky wife? Do you want to go back there, where the Achaeans all together will attack you and kill you?” She wept. And then she said, “Hector, if I lose you, it will be better to die than to live, because there will be no comfort, for me, only sorrow. I have no father, no mother, I have no one anymore. Achilles killed my father when he destroyed Thebes with its tall gates. I had seven brothers and Achilles killed them all, on the same day, while the slow oxen and the white sheep grazed. Achilles carried off my mother, and we paid a ransom to get her back, and she returned to our house, but only to die, suddenly, of grief. Hector, you are my father, and mother, and brother, and you are my husband, and young. Have pity on me. Stay here, on the wall. Don’t fight out in the open plain. Lead the army back to the wild fig tree, which marks the only
weak point of the wall, where the bold Achaeans have already attacked three times.”

But Hector answered, “I know all this, woman. But the shame I would feel if I were to stay away from the battle would be too great. I was taught, growing up, always to be strong, and to fight in the front line of every battle, for the glory of my father and for my own. How could my heart now allow me to flee? I well know that the day will come when the sacred city of Troy will perish, and with it Priam and the people of Priam. And if I imagine that day it’s not the grief of the Trojans that I imagine, nor that of my father, or my mother, or my brothers, slaughtered by their enemies and lying in the dust. When I imagine that day I see you. I see an Achaean warrior who seizes you and drags you away in tears, I see you a slave, in Argos, weaving clothes for another woman and fetching water for her at the fountain, I see you weeping, and I hear the voices of those who, seeing you, say, ‘Look there, that’s the wife of Hector, the bravest of all the Trojans.’ May I die before I know you are a slave. May I be under the earth before I have to hear your cries.”

Thus spoke glorious Hector, and then he came toward me. I was holding his son in my arms, you see? And he approached and was going to take the boy. But the child hugged my breast and burst into tears. It frightened him seeing his father. The bronze armor frightened him, and the fluttering crest on the helmet scared him, and so he burst into tears. And I remember that then Hector and Andromache looked at each other and smiled. He took off the helmet and set it on the ground. Then the child let himself be held, and Hector took him in his arms and kissed him. And lifting him up high he said, “Zeus, and you other gods in heaven, let my son be like me, the bravest of
all the Trojans, and lord of Ilium. And may people seeing him return from battle say, ‘He is even braver than his father.’ May he return one day bearing the bloody spoils of his enemies, and may his mother be there, that day, to rejoice in her heart.” And as he was speaking these words he put the child in Andromache’s arms. And I remember that she smiled and wept, hugging the child to her breast. She wept and smiled, and Hector, looking at her, took pity on her and caressed her and said to her, “Don’t grieve too much in your heart. No one will kill me unless fate wills it; and if fate wills it, then remember that no man, once he is born, can escape fate. Whether he is a coward or brave. No one. Now go home and take up your work at the spindle and the loom with your women. Let the men take care of the war, all the men of Troy, and I more than any other man of Troy.”

Then he bent down and picked up his helmet from the ground, the helmet with the fluttering crest. We went home. Andromache wept as she walked, and kept turning to look back. When the women saw her coming, a great sadness arose in all of them. They burst out crying. They wept for Hector. They wept for him in his house, wept for him while he was still living, because not one felt in her heart that he would return from the battle alive.

W
e saw Hector come hurrying out of the Scaean gates.
‘
We thought he had returned to fight, but in fact what he did was strange. He strode along the front ranks of his men, with his spear lowered, ordering them to stop. So Agamemnon, too, ordered us Achaeans to lower our arms. Thus the two armies faced each other, suddenly silent, almost motionless: they were like the sea when the wind begins to blow and the surface lightly ripples. In the middle of that sea was Hector, and he spoke out.

“Hear me, Trojans, and you, Achaeans. I will tell you what is in my heart. The gods delude us with their promises, and then condemn us to suffering and sorrow, and so it will go on until Troy wins or is taken. And so I say to you: if there is an Achaean prince who has the courage to fight me, man to man, I challenge him. Today I am ready to meet my fate.”

The armies were silent. We, the Achaean princes, looked into one another’s eyes: it was clear that we were afraid to
accept the challenge, but we were ashamed to refuse it. Finally we heard the voice of Menelaus, furious.

“So, Achaeans, what are you, sissies? Can’t you imagine the disgrace if no one of us accepts the challenge? Go to your ruin, men without courage or glory. I will fight for you, and the gods will decide the victor.” And he took his armor and stepped forward. We knew that it was hopeless, that Hector was too strong for him. So we stopped him. Agamemnon, his brother, took him by the hand and spoke to him in a low voice, gently. “Menelaus, don’t continue in this madness. Don’t fight a man who is stronger than you. Even Achilles is afraid to fight Hector, and you want to do it? Stop, let us send someone else.”

Menelaus knew in his heart that Agamemnon was right. He listened and obeyed: he let his men take the armor from his shoulders. Then I looked at all the others and said, “Alas, what a sad moment this is for the Achaean people. How many tears would our fathers shed if they knew that we were all trembling before Hector. Ah, if only I were still young and strong. I would not be afraid, I swear, and Hector would have to fight me. You are afraid, I wouldn’t be.”

Then nine of them stepped forward, first Agamemnon, and then Diomedes, the two Ajaxes, Idomeneus, Meriones, Eurypylus, Thoas, and, last, Odysseus. Now they all wanted to fight. “Fate will decide,” I said. And in Agamemnon’s helmet I had each of the nine put a tile bearing his symbol. I shook the helmet and drew one. I looked at the symbol. Then I went to Telamonian Ajax, the only one of us who had some hope against Hector, and gave it to him. He looked. He understood. And throwing it on the ground he said, “Friends, mine is the fate, mine is the fortune, and my heart laughs, because

I will crush glorious Hector. Give me my arms and pray for me.”

He dressed in dazzling bronze, and when he was ready he went toward Hector with long strides, terrifying, brandishing his spear on high, above his head, with a fierce expression on his face. Seeing him, the Trojans trembled, all of them, and I know that even Hector felt his heart race in his chest. But he could no longer flee, having thrown out the challenge, and he couldn’t withdraw.

“Hector,” Ajax shouted, “now you’ll find out what sort of heroes there are among the Achaeans, besides Achilles the destroyer. He, the lion-hearted, may be in his tent, but, as you see, we, too, are capable of fighting you.”

“Stop talking,” Hector answered, “and fight.” He raised his spear and hurled it. The bronze tip struck Ajax’s enormous shield, tore through the layer of bronze and then, one after the other, seven layers of ox hide, and in the last it stopped, in the last layer, just before it would have wounded him. Then it was Ajax’s turn. The spear tore through Hector’s shield. Hector leaned to one side, and this saved him. The bronze tip only grazed him. It tore his tunic but didn’t wound. Then both wrenched the spears from the shields and set upon one another like savage lions. Ajax was protected by his enormous shield; Hector kept striking but couldn’t touch him. When he grew tired, Ajax left the shelter of his shield and with a thrust of the spear cut his neck: we saw the black blood spurt from the wound. Another would have stopped, but not Hector: he bent down to pick up a stone from the ground, huge, jagged, black, and he hurled it at Ajax. You could hear the shield resound—the bronze echoing—but Ajax withstood the blow and in his turn picked up a rock, an even bigger one, swung it
in the air, and threw it with a terrible strength. Hector’s shield broke apart and he fell, but right away he got up again, and they grabbed their swords and went for one another, yelling …

And the sun set.

Then two heralds, one Achaean, one Trojan, came forward to separate the two, because even in battle it’s good to be obedient to the night. Ajax didn’t want to stop. “It’s Hector who must decide, he made the challenge.” And Hector decided. “Let’s interrupt the fight for today,” he said. “You are strong, Ajax, and your spear is the best among all those of the Achaeans. You will make your friends and companions happy by returning alive to your tent tonight. And the men and women of Troy will rejoice, seeing me return, alive, to Priam’s great city. And now let’s exchange precious gifts, so that all may say: They fought fiercely, but they parted in harmony and peace.” So he spoke. And he gave Ajax his silver-studded sword, with its well-made sheathe and strap. And Ajax gave him his war belt of shining purple.

That night, at the banquet where we celebrated Ajax, I let them all drink and eat, and then, when I saw that they were tired, I asked the princes to listen to me. I was the oldest, and they respected my wisdom. So I said that we should ask the Trojans for a day of truce, so that we and they could gather up our dead from the battlefield. And I said that we must take advantage of that day to build a wall around the ships, a high wall, and a broad trench, to protect ourselves from an assault by the Trojans.

“A wall? What need do we have for walls—we have shields,” said Diomedes. “I knock down walls, I don’t build them,” he said. No one liked the idea. There were even some who said, “Think how Achilles will boast when he discovers
that without him we are so afraid that we shut ourselves behind a wall.” They laughed. But the truth is that they were young, and the young have an old idea of war. Honor, beauty, heroism. Like the fight between Hector and Ajax: two princes who first try savagely to kill each other and then exchange gifts. I was too old to believe in those things still. We won that war by means of a huge wooden horse, filled with soldiers. We won by a trick, not by an open, fair, honorable fight. And this they, the young men, never liked. But I was old. Odysseus was old. We knew that the long war we were fighting was old, and that it would be won in a day by those who were able to fight it in a new way.