The Iliad: Book 23

All in battle-order drive them past Patroclus—
a cortege will mourn the man with teams and chariots.

So he triumphed
and again he was bent on outrage, on shaming noble Hector—
he flung him facedown in the dust beside Patroclus' bier.

They singed the bristles,
splaying the porkers out across Hephaestus' fire

As soon as the party reached the warlord's tents
they ordered the clear-voiced heralds straightaway
to set a large three-legged cauldron over the fire,
still in hopes of inducing Peleus' royal son
to wash the clotted bloodstains from his body.

It's sacrilege for a single drop to touch my head
till I place Patroclus on his pyre and heap his mound
and cut my hair for him

So now let a single urn, the gold two-handled urn
your noble mother gave you, hold our bones—together!

He set two-handled jars of honey and oil beside him,
leaned them against the bier—and then with wild zeal
slung the bodies of four massive stallions onto the pyre

Aphrodite daughter of Zeus beat off the packs,
day and night, anointing Hector's body with oil,
ambrosial oil of roses, so Achilles could not rip
the prince's skin as he dragged him back and forth.

Stepping back from the pyre he prayed to the two winds—
Zephyr and Boreas, West and North

All night long they hurled the flames—massed on the pyre,
blast on screaming blast—and all night long the swift Achilles,
lifting a two-handled cup, dipped wine from a golden bowl
and poured it down on the ground and drenched the earth,
calling out to the ghost of stricken, gaunt Patroclus.

For the third he produced a fine four-measure cauldron
never scorched by flames, its sheen as bright as new.

The cars shot on, now jouncing along the earth that rears us all

There Atrides was heading—no room for two abreast—
but Antilochus swerved to pass him, lashing his horses
off the track then swerving into him neck-and-neck

Menelaus trailed Antilochus, dauntless driver.

Achilles was just about to give the man the mare
when Antilochus, son of magnanimous old Nestor,
leapt to his feet and lodged a formal protest

Quickly, lords of the Argives, all my captains,
judge between us—impartially, no favoritism

Well you know how the whims of youth break all the rules.
Our wits quicker than wind, our judgment just as flighty.

It's only youth that got the better of your discretion,
just this once—but the next time be more careful.

He could keep his feet no longer, knees caved in on the spot—
as under the ruffling North Wind a fish goes arching up
and flops back down on a beach-break strewn with seaweed

Both champions, belted tight, stepped into the ring
and grappling each other hard with big burly arms,
locked like rafters a master builder bolts together,
slanting into a pitched roof to fight the ripping winds.

And their backbones creaked as scuffling hands tugged
for submission-holds and sweat streamed down their spines
and clusters of raw welts broke out on ribs and shoulders
slippery, red with blood, and still they grappled, harder

They toed the line—
and broke flat out from the start and Ajax shot ahead
with quick Odysseus coming right behind him, close
as the weaver's rod to a well-sashed woman's breast
when she deftly pulls it toward her, shooting the spool
across the warp

The soldier who gets in first and cuts a rival's flesh,
who pierces armor to draw blood and reach his entrails—
I'll give that man this broadsword, silver-studded,
handsome Thracian work I stripped from Asteropaeus.

The dove settled onto the mast of the dark-prowed ship,
her neck wrenched awry, her beating wings went slack
and life breath flew from her limbs that instant

And now the spear-throwers rose up to compete,
Atrides Agamemnon, lord of the far-flung kingdoms,
flanked by Idomeneus' rough-and-ready aide Meriones
but the swift runner Achilles interceded at once