The Trojan War (15 page)

“Take the body, men! Bear it to Troy! I shall set his head on a pike on the city wall, so that Achilles may meet his friend again, face to face, if he seeks to storm the wall. As for the body, we shall throw it to the dogs!”

But before the Trojans could seize the body, Menelaus rushed up and straddled it, growling like a mastiff, fighting off everyone who approached. Other Trojans pressed forward; other Greeks pressed in to aid Menelaus. A bloody battle raged over the corpse.

What happened to the dead, in those days, was very important to the living. Bodies were not buried; they were cremated. The flames were made sacred by sacrifice to the gods, by libation, and by prayer. In the case of a great warrior, or a king, or of any person who had earned unusual respect during his lifetime, the death ceremonies would include funeral games—chariot races, wrestling, boxing, spear-throwing and archery—reflecting in play form the mourned one’s aptitudes in manly pursuits. By such ceremonies and celebrations, it was felt, the dead person could depart in all honor; this sense of honor would ease his journey to the Land of the Dead and give him status in Hades’ kingdom. If sufficiently honored at his funeral, he would be singled out from among death’s hordes by Charon, the grim boatman whose job it was to ferry them across the Styx. The honored one would not have to linger in a mob, sorrowfully, on this side of the Styx, but be ferried quickly over by the status-conscious Charon to his reward in the land of the dead.

On the other hand, if, for some reason, a corpse went unclaimed by friend or relative—or was kept by the enemy and not given a proper sendoff—then dreadful things would happen to the survivors. The dishonored dead could not cross the Styx and enter Hades’ kingdom. His spirit would cling to the site of his unregarded death. Wearing stinking rags of flesh he would appear before family and friends, usually at night, howling, weeping, begging. Or, worst of all, he would be found standing in any hidden corner, staring at you out of empty eye-sockets. If you were unfortunate enough to have dealings with a ghost, you would set out his favorite food—black beans in little pots, shallow dishes of blood—and he would be appeased for a while by such delicacies. But not for long. Soon he would reappear, howling, begging, or silently staring.

In the case of the Greeks, demoralized as they were at this point of the battle, they still fought savagely for Patroclus’ body, because they knew that Achilles would go berserk when he learned of his friend’s death. But if Achilles also learned that the body of his beloved companion had been taken by the Trojans, beheaded, and then thrown to the dogs, they knew he would be capable of doing anything—to friend as well as foe. In fact, it was probable he would visit his first vengeance upon the Greeks.

Thus, despite being outnumbered by the Trojans, they formed a hedge of spears around the body, and would not let the Trojans pass.

But Hector sent in more men, and the weight of their numbers must finally have broken the Greek resistance had it not been for Achilles’ horses, those magically bred stallions, tall as stags and fierce as Harpies. They charged toward the knot of fighting men, burst into their midst, and hurled people in all directions. Rearing on their haunches, they struck with their front hooves, kicking and biting until they had cleared the Trojans away from the corpse. This allowed Menelaus time to lift the body and put it in the chariot. Then the horses galloped back toward Achilles’ tent, bearing their dead charioteer.

Patroclus had come very close to the Trojan wall before being killed and so the fighting had been beyond Achilles’ sight, although he had been watching from the rampart trying to follow the course of battle. All he could hear was faroff shouting; all he could see was a cloud of dust.

“Under their walls,” he said softly to himself. “I told him not to advance so far. Still, perhaps it means that he has broken their lines, and put them to flight.”

Then he saw a bright speck detach itself from the dust and fly toward him. He watched until it took shape. A chariot! Coming with such speed it could be drawn only by Xanthus and Balius, his own stallions! His heart leaped with joy.

“It’s Patroclus!” he cried. “It must be he! They will obey only his hand beside mine! He’s safe! Safe! Coming to report a great victory!”

With incredible speed the West Wind stallions galloped to the rampart, rearing and neighing when they saw Achilles there. He looked at them in amazement. Great tears were welling from their golden eyes. No one had ever seen horses cry before, and it was a terrible sight. He tried not to believe what those tears meant as he stood staring at his beautiful stallions. Then they broke the long primordial silence:

“Forgive us, dear master,” said Xanthus. “We bring back to you Patroclus.”

“Dead …” said Balius. “We bring him dead.”

Achilles did not weep. His face was like a rock. Very gently he lifted the battered body from the chariot and bore it into his tent, binding the latchets so that no one could enter. The stallions stood before the tent like watchdogs and let no one approach. Achilles remained alone with his grief all through the long twilight and the hours of night, and the next morning.

No one dared approach his tent and intrude upon his grief. The Greeks were afraid he might have fallen on his own sword, choosing to lie in death beside his comrade, but they did not dare approach.

“He will not kill himself,” said Ulysses. “He has work to do first; he must avenge himself upon Hector. After that, perhaps … but not yet.”

In the darkest hour of night Thetis arose from the sea and walked through the walls of Achilles’ tent. He had not wept, but mothers can hear silent grief; she had heard his even in the depths of the sea, and had come to him. All night long he crouched in her embrace, not weeping, but making low hoarse whimpering sounds. She held his head to her breast as if he were a babe again, and stroked his face, and kissed him. Even in his terrible grief he was comforted by her sea-magic touch. He spoke only at dawn, just before she left him.

“Will you do something for me, mother?”

“Anything, son.”

“Patroclus went to battle clad in my armor. The Trojans stripped him of it. It is worn by Hector now, that armor made by Hephaestus and given to my father as a wedding present. I mean to seek Hector out and combat him today, but I wish to appear in armor no less fine than that I lost, and to bear weapons no less fine than those taken from Patroclus when he fell. These can issue only from the smithy of the gods. Can you persuade Hephaestus to labor this morning and forge me new gear?”

“I have some influence over the lame god,” said Thetis. “I was the one who nurtured him, you know, after Zeus had flung him from Olympus and he had fallen into the sea with shattered legs, helpless as a tadpole. I took him to my cave, mended his wounds, and raised him as my own child, giving him pebbles and seashells to make jewelry of, so that he grew clever in that craft. He will drop what he is doing and labor this morning. Weapons and armor more beautiful than those you lost will issue from his forge. By the time you are ready to combat Hector you will find what you need here in your tent. Now farewell, dear son.”

On certain evenings the sun diving through clouds forges out the shape of armed men, taller than mountains, who burn in the western sky as if guarding the horizon. Their flaming delicate armor is what Hephaestus took as his model when he yielded to Thetis’ plea and worked the morning through casting new weapons for Achilles. Like the red-hot sun-disk itself written over with a tracery of cloud was his shield. His spear was a polished volt-bright shaft that Zeus himself might have used as a lightning bolt. For helmet crest he sheared a plume of cloud-fleece and dipped it into the colors of the sunset.

When he gave Thetis this gorgeous gear, the tall nereid scooped up the little lame god, held him in her arms as if he were a child, and kissed him on the lips.

“Thank you, dear Hephaestus,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness, for your quickness, and for your masterful craftsmanship. You are a great god now, Artificer-in-Chief for the whole flat world; your smithy is a volcano where you wreak implements for the high use of father Zeus and the Pantheon. God though you be, you shall always remain my own dear little tadpole, my sweet maimed foster-child, and from me you shall always have a mother’s tenderness although I am cast in eternal flowing nymphhood and you in eternal middle age.”

She kissed his seamed, charcoal-grimed face, set him down, and flew off with the glittering new armor made for Achilles.

E
VERY FEW YEARS THE
gods were entitled to read in the great book of the Fates wherein was written all that had been and all that was to be. We use the word “book,” but there were no books then as we know them. This tome of the Fates was a huge scroll hung from a place in the heavens beyond man’s sight and written over with starry characters. Night-blue was this scroll, made from the dark blue hide of a heavenly beast, unknown to man, hunted by the gods once every thousand years in a great chase across the inlaid floor of heaven.

Night-blue was the scroll, and those winged crones who were the Fates, those twisted sisters whom even the gods fear, would dip their claws into starlight and scrawl their irrevocable decrees upon these dark pages. Once every several years the gods were summoned to read what was written on the scroll, to consider what they had read, and then to return to Olympus to conduct the affairs of men accordingly.

Usually the gods chose to keep man in ignorance of what was fated for him. Occasionally, though, when it amused them, or when they wished to seduce a mortal by special knowledge, or when coaxed by artful oracles, the gods would let slip some information in the form of a riddle. And it was this matter that the oracles uttered as prophecy.

These oracles tended to cluster in groups called “colleges,” each of them dedicated to a special god. Apollo’s priestesses were especially well-known. They dwelt in a huge cave dug into a mountain at a place called Delphi. It was volcano country. Through a fissure in the rock an aromatic steam arose from the very entrails of the earth. The priestesses set their stone tripods across this fissure, and squatted above it, breathing these fumes—which gave them visions. These visions, they claimed, were of the future. They also chewed laurel—which we know as bay leaf—which sharpened vision, or blurred it; whatever it is that makes a vision most real to those who have it. Their utterances were always couched in riddles, knotty ones; no one could understand what they were saying except other priestesses, who, for a fee, would interpret these riddles.

Now, prophecy about the Trojan war had made a rich tale from the very beginning. On this subject soothsayers blabbed the secrets of the gods without restraint. We have already met certain of these prophecies: The one which said the Greeks could win the war only with the help of Achilles; and the second part of it which said Achilles must die before Troy, but if he stayed at home and did not go to war he could live a long, peaceful life. We already know the choice he made, with the help of Ulysses. And Ulysses himself was the subject of a prophecy which said that if he went to Troy he could not return to Ithaca until twenty years had passed … and would return alone, beggared, unrecognized.

Now, on this day following the death of Patroclus, the gods were summoned again to the far reaches of heaven to read the great scroll. It was the first time since the war had begun that they had been so summoned, and there was much new matter to read in the flaming scrawl of the Fates. The gods returned to Olympus brimming with news, some chattering, others sunk in meditation. All were trying to think how they could best use this knowledge of the future to tease man into providing some special entertainment in the years that lay ahead.

They had three principal spokesmen to work through. Calchas and Chryseis were professional oracles. Chryseis, the Trojan, was a priest of Apollo. He was also father to Cressida. Calchas was the most influential among the Greek soothsayers. Sometimes he posed as a priest of Hera, at other times claimed the special confidence of Athena. Actually he freelanced, picking up clues from any god he could, and making pronouncements about what the Greeks should or should not do. When things were going well he was listened to with half an ear; when disaster struck his counsel was more valued. So, professionally, he was not quite averse to catastrophe.

But the one with the real heavy, fatal burning talent for the future was Cassandra. Bestowed upon her by Apollo was that most terrible of gifts—a
memory
of the future. And she kept her pronouncements rare because she knew how awful they were. However, she did not disturb the Trojan peace of mind at all. It will be remembered that Apollo punished her for refusing his amorous advances by capping his gift with a curse. His sentence was that although she would be able to prophesy with the utmost accuracy, and know that she was doing so, she would always be disbelieved by her own people.

Apollo came to her that night, sliding down one of the shafts of his sister’s moonlight. He entered her chamber where she lay asleep. But she had trained herself never to sleep more than a few minutes at a time because her dreams were so terrible. She awoke now and gazed upon him where he stood igniting the shadows, and closing her eyes again, said: “You are so unwelcome a sight you
must
be a dream. It doesn’t really matter. You have always ignored my need for privacy, and walked through the walls of sleep as though they were open doors. Speak, my lord. Why do you honor me with this visit?”

“To impart to you certain matter that I have read in the starry scroll of the Fates. There is much, much about Troy.”

Apollo spoke at length. The last thing he told her excited her unbearably. She knelt before him and clasped his knees.

“Oh, great Phoebus—please, please, in this let me be believed. If he believes me, perchance he will take the opportunity to save his life, brave though he be. Please let him believe what I tell him. If you do so then I will put aside the loathing I feel for you, I swear I will. Somehow—I don’t know how—I will school myself to respond to your love; but you must do this thing for me.”