Ilium

27 The Plains of Ilium

The Trojans are massacring the Greeks. My students in my other life would have said that they’re “decimating” the Greeks, using that term for total destruction so loved by late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century lazy journalists and illiterate TV anchorpersons, but since “to decimate” was a precise term—the Romans killing every tenth man in a village in response to uprisings—and that would only result in 10 percent casualties, it’s fair to say that they’re doing much worse than decimating the Greeks.

The Trojans are massacring the Greeks.

After Zeus’s ultimatum to the other gods, he QT’s to Earth in his golden chariot and lands on the slopes of Mount Ida, the tallest mountain within easy god-view of Ilium, and assumes his oversized throne on the mountaintop there, gazing down and out at the high walls of the city and the hundreds of Achaean warships on the beach and at anchor offshore. The other gods are too intimidated to come down to play after Zeus’s demonstration of raw power, so the Father of the Gods holds out his golden scales and weighs the fates of death for the men below—one weight molded in the form of a Trojan horseman, the other an Argive spearman armored in bronze.

Zeus raises high the sacred scales, holding the beam mid-haft, and down goes the Achaeans’ day of doom while the fortunes of Troy go lifting skyward. Zeus smiles at this, and I’m close enough to see that the old bastard had his thumb on the scales.

The Trojans come broiling out of their city gates like hornets out of a disturbed hive. The sky is low, gray, seething with dark energy, and Zeus’s thunderbolts strike the battlefield frequently—and always among the Argives and long-haired Achaeans. Clearly seeing the signs of the displeasure of the King of the Gods, the Greeks still surge forward to fight—what else can they do?—and the plains of Ilium echo to the crash of shields pounded hide to hide, the scrape of pike, the rumble of chariots, and the screams of dying men and horses.

It goes badly for the Achaeans from the start. Lightning strikes among them, frying men like bronze-clad chickens on a rotisserie. Hector charges forward like a force of nature, and the quiet man I admired on the walls of Ilium with his wife and child is gone, replaced by a bloodied berserker cutting men down like stalks of grass and screaming to his followers for more blood, more carnage. His followers obey, the entire Trojan army and allies shouting as if from a single throat and surging forward en masse, rolling over the retreating Achaeans like a bronze-and-leather tsunami.

Paris—whom I dismissed as a fop in my description of his meeting with Hector only the day before and then proceeded to cuckold—rides near Hector and also comes on like some demon-possessed killing machine. Paris’s killing expertise is archery, and on this day his long arrows never seem to miss. Achaeans and Argives drop with Paris’s long-shaft arrows in their throats, hearts, genitals, and eyes. Every shot is a hit.

Hector slashes his way through every pocket of Greek resistance, hacking necks like daisy stems, offering no quarter and hearing no pleas for mercy in the deafness of his killing frenzy. When Achaeans manage to rally against the Trojan onslaught in a brave clump of resistance here or there, a bolt of blue energy from the roiling clouds explodes among them like a cosmic grenade and the thunder that follows mixes with the cries of dying men.

Ideomeneus and the great king Agamemnon cut and run. Then Big and Little Ajax, campaigners of a thousand battles, lose heart and flee the field. Odysseus, the “long-enduring,” can’t endure this slaughter and decides that the greater part of valor must reside in the safety of his ships back on the beach. He runs damned fast for a short-legged man. The only man who doesn’t turn and flee is old Nestor, and that’s only because Helen’s husband has put an arrow through the skull of Nestor’s lead horse, tangling the other steeds in their panic. Nestor cuts the traces clear with his sword, obviously with every intent of vacating the battlefield as fast as he can, but Hector’s chariot surges forward, the men around Nestor fall dead with Paris’s arrows protruding from their chests and necks, and the horses flee even faster than the departed Greek heroes, leaving old Nestor standing in his horseless chariot with Hector fast approaching.

When Odysseus sprints by, not even giving the old man a glance, Nestor cries, “Where are you going in such a hurry, son of Laertes, O cool tactician . . .” but his sarcasm is wasted. Odysseus disappears in the dust cloud of panicked retreat without slowing for his old friend.

Diomedes, always more afraid of being called a coward than he is of pain or death, drives his chariot back into the fray, obviously intent on rescuing Nestor and driving back Hector. He swoops Nestor up like a wrinkled bag of laundry and the old charioteer seizes the reins in both hands, driving Diomedes’ chariot not away from the charging Hector, but toward him. Diomedes gets close enough to cast his spear at Hector, but the heavy shaft kills Hector’s driver, Eniopeus, son of Thebaeus, and for a moment, as the driver’s corpse flies backward into the surprised foot soldiers and Hector’s horses rear out of control, everything changes.

I’ve read that there is a moment like this in many battles, where everything hangs in the balance. As Hector fights to regain control of his horses and the Trojans with him pause in confusion, the Greeks see a possible reversal of fortune and rush into the gap, loping after old Nestor and Diomedes. For an instant the Achaeans have the initiative again, shouting their defiance and hacking down the men leading the Trojan assault.

Then Zeus intervenes again. Thunder booms. Lightning splits the earth and horses disappear in a flash of light and the stink of sulfur and burning hooves. Achaean chariots near Diomedes and Nestor explode in a tumble of horseflesh and flying bodies. Bronze melts and leather shields burst into flame. It’s obvious even to the thick-skulled Diomedes that Zeus is not pleased with him this day.

Nestor tries to drag the rearing horses around but they have the metaphorical bit in their very real mouths and can’t be managed. Their chariot—all alone now since the other Achaeans have turned tail and fled—bounces toward ten thousand angry Trojans.

“Quick, Diomedes, grab the reins and help me swing these stallions around!” cries Nestor. “To fight more today is to die today!”

Diomedes grabs the reins from the old man but does not turn the chariot. “Old Soldier, if I run today, Hector will brag to his troops—‘Diomedes ran for his ships, and I drove him back!’ “

Nestor grabs Diomedes by his muscled throat. “What are you, six years old? Turn the fucking chariot, you asshole, or Hector will be wearing both our guts for garters before it’s teatime in Troy!”

Or some words to that effect. I am a hundred yards across the battlefield when this occurs, and the shotgun mike on my baton might not be working correctly. Also, since I am morphed into the shape of a Trojan foot soldier, I’m running with the rest, watching all this over my shoulder as Paris’s arrows fall around us and among us.

Diomedes wrestles with his dilemma for two or three seconds and then wrestles the horses instead, turning their heads, driving the chariot back toward the black ships and safety.

“Hah!” screams Hector over the din. He has a new driver—Archeptolemus, Iphitus’ handsome son—and is coming on again with the renewed vigor of a man truly enjoying his work. “Hah! Diomedes—made you run! You coward! You girly girl! You glittering little puppet! You quavering sparrowfart!”

Diomedes turns again in the chariot, glowering with fury and embarrassment, but Nestor has the reins now and the horses themselves have figured out which way safety lies. The chariot rolls over boulders, ruts, and fleeing Greek foot soldiers in the horses’ wild gallop toward the beach and safety, and the only way Diomedes can fight Hector now is by leaping off the chariot and fighting the thousands of Trojans on foot. He chooses not to do this.

“If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum,” Helen had said that morning.

She’d asked me then about my knowledge of the Iliad—although she thought of it as my oracle-sense of the future—and pressed me to find the fulcrum of events, the single point in the ten-year war on which everything pivoted. Fate’s hinge, as it were.

I’d hemmed and hawed that morning, distracting her and myself with a final bout of lovemaking, but I’d thought about that question in the crazy hours since.

If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.

I’d bet my tenure as a Homerian scholar that the fulcrum of this particular tragic tale was fast approaching—the embassy to Achilles.

So far, events continue—more or less—to follow the poem, even with Aphrodite and Ares sidelined by wounds. Zeus has laid down the law and intervened on the side of the Trojans. I have no intention of QTing back to Olympos unless I have to, but I can guess that Homer’s narrative is being played out there as well—Queen Hera fretting that her Argives are getting pummeled and trying to persuade Poseidon to intervene on their behalf, but the “god who rocks the earth” being shocked by the suggestion—he has no desire to battle Zeus. Then, when the Greeks are really routed later today, Athena will strip naked, then dress in her best battle armor and glistening breastplate—well, I confess that it might be worth QTing to Olympos for that—but is stopped cold by Zeus’s messenger, Iris. Zeus’s message will be succinct—

“If you and Hera come to oppose me by clash of arms, my gray-eyed girl, I’ll maim your racers from beneath their yokes, hurl both you goddesses down from your chariot, smash your car, and rend both of you so terribly with my lightning bolts that you’ll be in the healing vats ten slow wheeling years before the green worms can stitch you together again.”

Athena will stay on Olympos. The Greeks, after a few hours of successful counterattack, will suffer heavier losses and fall back behind their own fortifications—a trench dug ten years ago shortly after landing, a thousand sharpened stakes, all the defenses recently deepened and built back up at Agamemnon’s order—but even behind their own wall, the panicked Achaeans will lose hope and vote to sail for home.

Agamemnon will try to rally them by throwing a great feast for his commanders—even as Hector and his thousands organize for the final charge that they know will end in the burning of the Achaeans’ black ships and the settling of this war for once and all—and at the Greek king’s feast, Nestor will argue that their only hope lies in Agamemnon making up with Achilles.

Agamemnon will agree to pay Achilles a king’s ransom—more than a king’s ransom—seven fire tripods, ten bars of gold, twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen stallions, seven beautiful woman, and I can’t remember what else—a partridge in a pear tree, perhaps. Most important, the bribe will include Briseus’ daughter Briseis—the slave wench who was at the center of this whole argument. To wrap this gift in a red ribbon, Agamemnon will also swear that he’s never bedded Briseis. As a final incentive, he also throws in seven citadels, Greek kingdoms—Cardamyle, Enope, Hire, Anthea, Pherae, Aepea, and Pedasus. Of course, Agamemnon doesn’t own or rule these citadels—he’s giving away his neighbors’ lands—but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.

The one thing Agamemnon will not offer Achilles is his apology. The son of Atreus is still too proud to bow. “Let him bow down to me!” he’ll shout at Nestor, Odysseus, Diomedes and the other captains in a few hours. “I am the greater king, I am the elder born, and, I claim, the greater man.”

Odysseus and the other will see a way out despite Agamemnon’s arrogance. They realize that if they bring the message of Briseis’ return and all these other marvelous gifts—and just happen to leave out the “I’m the greater man” bit—there’s a chance that Achilles might rejoin the fight. At least this embassy to Achilles offers a ray of hope.

But here the complicated part begins—here the fulcrum may yet be found.

As a scholar, I know in my soul that the embassy to Achilles is the heart and pivot of the Iliad. Achilles’ decisions upon hearing the embassy’s entreaties will determine the flow of all future events—the death of Hector, the subsequent death of Achilles, the fall of Ilium.

But here’s the tricky part. Homer chooses his language very carefully—perhaps more carefully than any other storyteller in history. He tells us that Nestor will name five men for the embassy to Achilles—Phoenix, Big Ajax, Odysseus, Odios, and Eurybates. The last two are mere heralds, decorations for the sake of protocol, and will not walk to Achilles’ tent with the real ambassadors nor take part in the discussion there.

The problem here is that Phoenix is an odd choice—he hasn’t appeared in the story before, he’s more of a Myrmidon tutor and retainer to Achilles than a commander, and it makes little sense that he would be sent to persuade his master. To top that off, when the ambassadors are walking along the ocean’s edge—“where the battle line of breakers crash and drag”—on their way to Achilles’ tent, the verb form that Homer uses is a dual form—a Greek verb set between singular and plural always relating to two people—in this case, Ajax and Odysseus. Homer uses seven other words that, in the Greek of his day—this day—relate to two men, not three.

Where’s Phoenix during this walk from Agamemnon’s camp to Achilles’ part of the encampment? Is he somehow already in Achilles’ tent waiting for the embassy? That makes little sense.

A lot of scholars, before and during my time on earth, argued that Phoenix was a clumsy addition to the tale, a character added centuries later, which explains the dual verb form, but this theory ignores the fact that Phoenix will give the longest and most complex argument of the three ambassadors. His speech is so wonderfully digressive and complicated that it reeks of Homer.

It’s as if the blind poet himself had been confused about whether there were two or three emissaries to Achilles and what, exactly, Phoenix’s role was in the conversation that would decide all the players’ fates.

I have a few hours to think about this.

If you want to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.

But that’s hours in my future. It’s still mid-afternoon here, and the Trojans are pausing on the Ilium-side of the Achaeans’ moat while the Greeks mill around like ants behind their wall of rocks and sharpened stakes. Still morphed as a sweaty Achaean spearman, I manage to get close to Agamemnon as the king first berates his men and then pleas for Zeus’s aid in their darkest hour.

“Shame on all of you!” shouts the son of Atreus at his bedraggled army. Only a hundredth of the men can hear him, of course, ancient acoustics being what they are, but Agamemnon has a powerful voice and those in the back pass the message on to others.

“Shame! Disgrace! You dress like splendid warriors, but it’s pure sham! You vowed to burn this city and you gorged yourself on cattle—bought at my expense!—and drank to the full those brimming bowls of wine—bought and shipped here at my expense!—and now look at you! Beaten rabble! You bragged that each of you could stand up to a hundred Trojans—two hundred!—and now you’re no match for one mortal man—Hector.

“Any minute Hector will be here with his hordes, gutting our ships with blazing fire, and this vaunted army of . . . heroes . . .”—Agamemnon all but spits the word—“will be fleeing home to wife and kids . . . at my expense!”

Agamemnon gives up on the army and lifts his hands to the southern sky, toward Mount Ida, from where the storms and thunder and lightning bolts have come. “Father Zeus, how can you tear away my glory so? How have I offended thee? Not once—I swear, not a single time!—have I passed a shrine of yours, not even on our ocean voyage here, but did I stop and burn the fat and thighs of oxen to your glory. Our prayer was simple—to raze Ilium’s walls to its roots, kill its heroes, rape its women, enslave its people. Is that too much to ask?

“Father, fulfill this prayer for me: let my men escape with their lives—at least that. Don’t let Hector and these Trojans beat us like rented mules!”

I’ve heard Agamemnon give more eloquent speeches—hell, all of the speeches I’ve heard from him have been more eloquent than this, and I understand Homer’s need to rewrite all this—but at that second a miracle occurs. Or at least the Achaeans take it as a miracle.

Out of nowhere, an eagle appears, flying from the south, a huge eagle, carrying a fawn in its talons.

The mob who had been surging toward their ships and safety on the seas and who paused only briefly for Agamemnon’s speech freeze in place and point at the sight of this.

The eagle soars, circles, dips lower, and drops the still-kicking fawn a hundred feet to a sandy bump right at the base of the stone altar the Achaeans had raised to Zeus upon their landing so many years ago.

That does it. After fifteen seconds of stunned silence, a roar goes up from the men—men beaten into cowardice ten minutes earlier, but a fighting mob now, hearts and hands strengthened by this clear sign of forgiveness and approval from Zeus—and without further ado, fifty thousand Achaeans and Argives and all the rest surge back into formation behind their captains, horses are re-tethered to chariots, chariots are driven out across the earth-bridges still spanning the defensive trenches, and the battle is on again.

It becomes the hour of the archer.

Although Diomedes leads the counterattack, followed closely by the Atrides, Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed in turn by Big Ajax and Little Ajax, and although these heroes take their toll on the Trojans in spearcasts and shortsword clashes, the fighting now is centered around the Achaean archer Teucer, bastard son of Telamon and half-brother to Big Ajax.

Teucer has always been considered a master-archer, and I’ve seen him shoot dozens of Trojans over the years, but this is his day in the limelight. He and Ajax get into a rhythm whereby Teucer crouches under the wall of his half-brother’s shield—Big Ajax uses a giant rectangular shield that military historians say wasn’t even in use during the time of the Trojan War—and when Ajax lifts the shield, Teucer fires from beneath it into the Trojan ranks some sixty yards away. On this day he can’t seem to miss his mark.

First he kills Orsilochus, putting a barbed arrow in the short man’s heart. Then he kills Ophelestes, putting a point through the captain’s right eye when the Trojan peeks above his rawhide shield. Then Daetor and Chromius fall mortally wounded from two fast, perfectly placed shots. Each time Teucer fires, the Trojans unleash their own arrows and spears in a vain attempt to kill the archer, but Big Ajax crouches over both of them and his massive shield deflects every missile.

The Trojan volleys pause, Ajax lifts his shield, and Teucer shoots Lycophontes, prince of his distant city, but just wounds the man. As Lycophontes’ captains rush to his aid, Teucer puts a second arrow into the fallen man’s liver.

Polymaeon’s son, Amopaon, falls next, Teucer’s shaft through his throat. Blood fountains five feet high and the powerful Amopaon tries to rise, but the arrow has pinned him to the ground, and he bleeds out in less than a minute, his body kicking and spasming ever more weakly. The Achaeans cheer. I know . . . knew . . . Amopaon. The Trojan used to eat in the little open restaurant where Nightenhelser and I liked to meet, and we’d spoken many a time of trivial things. He told me once that his father, Polymaeon, had known Odysseus in friendlier times, and once, when traveling to Ithaca and joining the friendly Greeks on a hunt, Polymaeon had killed a wild boar that had deeply gored Odysseus’ leg and would have killed him if Polymaeon’s spearcast had missed its mark. Amopaon told me that Odysseus bears the scar to this day.

Ajax crouches, holding his massive metal shield over him and his half-brother like a roof, and Trojan arrows rattle against it. Ajax rises, lifts the shield, and Teucer kills Melanippus—eighty yards away—with a shot that enters the man’s groin and protrudes from his anus as the Trojan falls. His comrades step away and grimace as Melanippus writhes on the ground and dies. The Achaeans cheer again.

Agamemnon swings down off his chariot and shouts encouragement at Teucer, promising the archer second choice of tripods or purebred teams of horses—if Zeus and Athena ever allow him to plunder the treasure troves of Troy, he says—and then promises Teucer a beautiful Trojan woman to bed as well, perhaps Hector’s wife, Andromache.

Teucer is angered by Agamemnon’s offer. “Son of Atreus, do you think I’ll try any harder than I already am, spurred on by your talk of plunder? I’m firing as fast and accurately as I can. Eight arrows—eight kills.”

“Shoot at Hector!” cries Agamemnon.

“I have been shooting at Hector,” screams Teucer, his face red. “All this time—Hector’s been my target. I just can’t hit the son of a bitch!”

Agamemnon falls silent.

As if responding to the challenge, Hector suddenly urges his chariot to the front of the Trojan ranks, trying to rally his men who’ve lost heart because of the archer’s slaughter.

Ajax doesn’t bother to lift his shield this time, because Teucer stands, goes to full draw, takes careful aim at Hector, and lets fly.

The shaft misses Hector’s heart by a hand’s breadth, striking Gorgythion as that son of Priam steps behind Hector’s chariot. The big man stops, looks surprised, stares down at the protruding shaft and feathers as if he is the butt of some barracks joke, but then Gorgythion’s head appears to become too heavy for his massive neck and falls limp to his shoulder as the weight of his helmet pulls it down; then Gorgythion falls dead in the blood-muddied sand.

“Damn!” says Teucer and fires again. Hector is the closest of all the Trojans now, turned full-torso toward Teucer.

This arrow catches Archeptolemus, Hector’s driver, full in the chest. The horses—war-trained as they are—rear and leap ahead as Archeptolemus’ blood geysers onto their flanks, and the young man pitches backward and off and into the dust.

“Cebriones!” cries Hector, grabbing the reins and calling to his brother—another bastard son of profligate Priam—to be his driver. Cebriones leaps up onto the chariot just as Hector jumps down. Enraged, beside himself with fury and grief at the death of his faithful Archeptolemus, Hector runs into no-man’s-land—a clear target for Teucer—and grabs the largest, sharpest rock he can lift in one hand.

Hector seems to have forgotten all the finesse of warfare he’s bragged about so many times and has reverted to caveman tactics, lifting the rock and cocking his left arm far back, looking like nothing so much—I think—as Sandy Koufax preparing to unleash a pitch. I haven’t noticed until today that Hector is ambidextrous.

Teucer sees his chance, grabs another arrow from his quiver, and draws full back, aiming at Hector’s heart, sure he can get off a shot, perhaps two, before Hector throws.

He’s wrong. Hector pitches hard, fast, flat, and accurately.

The rock hits Teucer in the collarbone, just beside the throat, an instant before the archer releases the arrow. Bones crack. Tendons rip. Teucer’s hand goes limp, the bowstring snaps, and the arrow buries itself in the ground between the archer’s sandaled feet.

Hector rushes forward, scattering Achaeans like chaff, and the Trojan archers fire arrow after arrow at the fallen Teucer, but Big Ajax doesn’t abandon his brother; he covers him with his wall of a shield while other Achaeans fight off the Trojan infantry. At Ajax’s call—bellow, really—Mecisteus and Alastor rush forward and carry the moaning, semiconscious Achaean archer back across the trench-bridge to relative safety in the shadow of the hollow ships.

But Teucer’s fifteen minutes of fame are up.

Things get worse for the Greeks very fast after this. Hector sees his survival as another sign of Zeus’s love and approval and leads his men in charge after charge against the dispirited, retreating Achaeans.

Agamemnon, Menelaus, and the other lords who’d led their men into joyous combat just hours before are truly beaten now. The Achaeans are too routed at first even to man their defenses along the trench and stakes and makeshift wall, and the only thing that stops the Trojans from burning the ships right now is the setting sun and the sudden fall of darkness.

While the Achaeans mill about in confusion, some of the men already readying their ships for departure, others sitting shell-shocked and vacant-eyed, Hector does his Henry V thing, roaming tirelessly up and down the Trojan ranks, urging his men on to more carnage come the dawn, sending men back to the city to herd cattle out for slaughter and sacrifice and feasting, ordering in rations of honeyed wine, calling up the wagons of fresh-baked bread that the ravenous Trojans attack as if it were Agamemnon himself, and giving the command to set hundreds of watchfires just beyond the Achaean defenses, so the fearful Greeks will get no sleep this night. I don my Hades Helmet and walk invisible among the Trojans.

“Tomorrow,” cries Hector to his cheering men, “I’ll gut Diomedes like a flopping fish in front of his men if he doesn’t choose to flee tonight. I’ll break his spine with the tip of my spear and we’ll nail the braggart’s head above the Scaean Gates!”

The Trojans roar. The watchfires send sparks flying up toward the hard-burning stars. Invisible to gods and men, I recross the trench bridge, wind my way through the sharpened stakes, and walk again amongst the dispirited Greeks.

For me, it’s time for truth or consequences. Agamemnon’s already called the meeting of his captains and they’re arguing courses of immediate action—flee or send an embassy to Achilles?

There’s no turning back now. I morph into the form of Phoenix, Achilles’ faithful Myrmidon tutor and friend, and walk across the cooling sand to join the council.

If you’re going to change our fates, you must find the fulcrum.