1. Homer’s Iliad: The Poetics of Death

2. ‘Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,
Would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
So neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost
Nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory.
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us
In their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them,
Let us go and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.’

3. kleos: fame; literally: “that which is heard;”
sought by warriors and bestowed by poetry;
kleos aphthiton: unwithering fame;

4. Now they came beside the shelters and ships of the Myrmidons
And they found Achilles delighting his heart in a lyre …
Singing of men’s fame

5. Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous; that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done

6. Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage,
Black and murderous; that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades’ dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done

7. Then the lame god turned serving boy, siphoning nectar
From the mixing bowl and pouring the sweet liquor
For all the gods, who couldn’t stop laughing
At the sight of Hephaestus hustling through the halls

8. Longinus, On the Sublime, 9.7
Homer seems to me, in recording the wounds of the gods, their conflicts, deeds of vengeance, tears, and bindings, all sorts of mixed passions, to have as much as possible made the men of the Iliad gods, and the gods men.
Longinus, On the Sublime, 9.7

10. All this time Achilles, the son of Peleus in the line of Zeus,
Nursed his anger, the great runner idle by his fleet’s fast hulls.
He was not to be seen in council, that arena for glory,
Nor in combat. He sat tight in camp consumed with grief,
His great heart yearning for the battle cry and war

13. He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles.
In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it
Over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance,
And the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic.
And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay
At length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it

16. But heaven-descended Achilles left his spear there on the bank
Leaning against the tamarisks, and leapt in like some immortal,
With only his sword, but his heart was bent upon evil actions,
And he struck in a circle around him. The shameful sound of their groaning
Rose as they were struck with the sword, and the water was reddened
With blood.

17. As before a huge-gaping dolphin the other fish
Escaping cram the corners of a deepwater harbor
In fear, for he avidly eats up any he can catch;
So the Trojans along the course of the river shrank under the bluffs. He, when his hands grew tired with killing,
Chose out and took twelve young men alive from the river
To be vengeance for the death of Patroclus …
And gave them to his companions to lead away to the hollow ships,
Then himself whirled back, still in a fury to kill men

18. His mind opened to the clear space before him,
And he was off toward the town, moving
Like a thoroughbred stretching it out
Over the plain for the final sprint home.
Achilles, lifting his knees as he lengthened his stride.

19. As when a hawk in the mountains who moves lightest of things flying
Makes his effortless swoop for a trembling dove, but she slips away
From beneath and flies and he shrill screaming close after her
Plunges for her again and again, heart furious to take her;
So Achilles went straight for him in fury, but Hector
Fled away under the Trojan wall and moved his knees rapidly (Lattimore translation)

21. ‘I beg you, Achilles, by your own soul And by your parents, do not
Allow the dogs to mutilate my body
By the Greek ships. Accept the gold and bronze
Ransom my father and mother will give you
And send my body back home to be buried
In honor by the Trojans and their wives.’
And Achilles, fixing him with a stare:
‘Don’t whine to me about my parents,
You dog! I wish my stomach would let me
Cut off your flesh in strips and eat it raw
For what you have done to me.’

23. An orphan has no friends.
He hangs his head, his cheeks are wet with tears.
He has to beg from his dead father’s friends,
Tugging on one man’s cloak, another’s tunic,
And if they pity him he gets to sip
From someone’s cup, just enough to moisten
His lips but not enough to quench his thirst.
Or a child with both parents still alive
Will push him away from a feast, taunting him,
‘Go away, your father doesn’t eat with us.’

24. ‘I have borne what no man
Who has walked this earth has yet ever borne.
I have kissed the hand of the man who killed my son.’
He spoke, and sorrow for his own father
Welled up in Achilles. He took Priam’s hand
And gently pushed the old man away.
The two of them remembered. Priam,
Huddled in grief at Achilles’ feet, cried
And moaned softly for his man-slaying Hector.
And Achilles cried for his father and
For Patroclus. The sound filled the room