Homer ILIAD : Rhapsody 22

Page 12

Thus having spoken, he drew his sharp sword, which hung below his loins, both huge and strong, and, with collected might, rushed forward, like a lofty-soaring eagle, which swoops to the plain through the gloomy clouds, about to snatch either a tender lamb, or a timid hare; thus Hector rushed forward, brandishing his sharp sword. Achilles also rushed on, and filled his soul with fierce rage. He sheltered his breast in front with his shield, beautiful, curiously wrought and nodded with his shining helmet, four-coned; but the beautiful golden tufts, which Vulcan had diffused in great abundance round the cone, were shaken. As the star Hesperus, which is placed the brightest star in heaven,[707] proceeds amongst other stars in the unseasonable time of night, so it shone from the well-sharpened spear which Achilles, designing mischief to noble Hector, brandished in his right hand, eyeing his fair person, where it would best yield. But the beautiful brazen armour, of which he had despoiled great Patroclus, having slain him, covered the rest of his body so much; yet did there appear [a part] where the collar-bones separate the neck from the shoulders, and where the destruction of life is most speedy. There noble Achilles, eager, drove into him with the spear, and the point went out quite through his tender neck. However the ash, heavy with brass, did not cut away the windpipe, so that, answering in words, he could address him. But he fell in the dust, and noble Achilles vaunted over him:

"Hector, thou didst once suppose, when spoiling Patroclus, that thou be safe, nor dreaded me, being absent. Fool! for I apart, a much braver avenger of him, was left behind at the hollow ships, I who have relaxed thy knees. The dogs, indeed, and birds shall dishonourably tear thee, but the Greeks shall perform his funeral rites."

But him crest-tossing Hector, growing languid, then addressed:

"I supplicate thee by thy soul, thy knees, thy parents, suffer not the dogs to tear me at the ships of the Greeks; but do thou indeed receive brass in abundance, and gold, which my father and venerable mother will give thee; and send my body home, that the Trojans and wives of the Trojans may make me, dead, partaker of a funeral pyre." [708]

[Footnote 707: Milton, P.L. v. 166: "Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn."]

[Footnote 708: Cf. Aen. x. 903; xii. 930, sqq.]

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