Agamemnon leaves his brother to Machaon’s ministrations and goes off to rouse his men to combat, although the Achaeans—even without Achilles in their ranks today—seem hung over and angry and surly and in little need of a rousing to get them to fight.
Within twenty minutes of Pandarus’s ill-conceived arrow shot, the truce is over and the Greeks attack Trojan lines along a two-mile stretch of dust and blood.
It’s time for me to get out of Echepolus’ body before the poor son of a bitch catches a spear in the forehead.
I don’t remember much of my real life on Earth. I don’t remember if I was married, if I had children, where I lived—except for murky images of a book-lined study where I read my books and prepared my lectures—nor all that much about the university I taught at in Indiana, except images of stone and brick buildings on a hill with a wonderful view to the east. One of the odd things about being a scholic is that fragments of non-scholic-essential memories do return after months and years, which may be one of the reasons the gods don’t allow us to live that long. I am the oldest exception.
But I remember classes and my students’ faces, my lectures, some discussions around an oval table. I remember a fresh-faced young woman asking, “But why did the Trojan War go on so long?” I also remember being tempted to point out to her that she had been raised in an era of fast food and fast wars—McDonald’s and the Gulf War, Arby’s and the war on terrorism—but that in ancient days, the Greeks and their foes would no more think of hurrying a war than of rushing through a fine meal.
Instead of insulting my students’ attention spans, I explained to the class how these heroes had welcomed battle—how one of their words for combat was charme, which came from the same root as charo—“rejoice.” I read to them a scene in which two warriors facing one another were described as charmei gethosunoi—“rejoicing in battle.” I explained the Greek concept of aristeia—warrior-to-warrior or small-group combat in which an individual can show his valor—and how important it was to these ancients and how the larger battle would often pause so that the soldiers on each side could witness such examples of aristeia.
“So like, you mean, like,” stammered one fresh-faced female student, her brain running in place, her stammer illustrating that irritating speech and thought defect that spread like a virus among young Americans during the end of the Twentieth Century, “like the war would have, like, been over a lot sooner if they hadn’t kept, like, stopping for this ariste-whatchamacallit?”
“Precisely,” I had said with a sigh, looking at the old Hamilton clock on the wall in the hope of deliverance.
But now, after more than nine years watching aristeia in action, I can say in certainty that these one-on-one combats so beloved by both Trojans and Argives are one of the reasons for this prolonged, endless, slow-as-molasses siege. And like even the most sophisticated Middle American traveling too long in France, one of my urges now was to get back to fast food—or, in this case, fast war. A little bombing, a little airborne invasion, bim, bang, thank you ma’am, home to Penelope.
But not this day.
Echepolus is the first Trojan captain to die in the Achaean attack.
Perhaps it is because the man is still groggy and disoriented after my borrowing of his body, but as his group of Trojan fighters closes with a Greek group led by Nestor’s son Antilochus, a good friend of Achilles, poor Echepolus is slow to raise his long spear, so Antilochus thrusts first. The bronze spearpoint hits Echepolus’ horsehair helmet right at the ridge and drives down through his skull, popping one eye out and driving the man’s brains out between his teeth. Echepolus goes down, as Homer likes to say, like a toppled tower.
Now begins a dynamic I’ve seen all too often, but which never ceases to fascinate me. The Greeks and Trojans fight for reasons of honor first, it is true, but booty comes in a close second. These men are professional warriors; killing is their work and plunder is their pay. A large part of both honor and plunder is the elaborate, beautifully tooled armor—shield, breastplate, greaves, war belt—of their fallen foes. Capturing an enemy’s gear is the heroic Greek equivalent of a Sioux warrior’s counting coup on an opponent, and much more lucrative. At the very least, a captain’s protective gear is made of precious bronze, and—for the more important officers—it is often hammered out of gold and decorated with jewels.
And thus the fight begins for dead Captain Echepolus’ gear.
An Achaean commander named Elephenor rushes in, grabs Echepolus’ ankles, and begins dragging the gory corpse back through the melee of spears and swords and crashing shields. I’ve seen Elephenor around the Achaean camp over the years, watched him fight in lesser skirmishes, and I have to say that the man’s name suits him—he’s huge, with gigantic shoulders, powerful arms, heavy thighs—not the sharpest knife in Agamemnon’s drawer of fighters, but a big, strong, brave and useful brawler. Thus Elephenor, Chalcodon’s son, thirty-eight years old this past June, commander of the Abantes and Lord of Euboea, drags Echepolus’ corpse behind the screen of thrusting Achaean attackers and begins stripping the body.
Then Agenor—a Trojan fighter, son of Antenor, father of Echeclus (both of whom I’ve seen on the streets of Ilium)—slips between the battling Achaeans and catches sight of Elephenor’s exposed ribs as the big man bends low beneath the protection of his shield to finish stripping Echepolus’ corpse. Agenor leaps forward and stabs his spear into Elephenor’s side, splintering ribs and pulping the big man’s heart into a shapeless mass. Elephenor vomits blood and collapses. More Trojan fighters surge forward, beating off the Achaean attack, as Agenor rips his spear free and begins to strip Elephenor of his war belt and sheaves and chestplate. Other Trojans drag Echepolus’ near-nude body back toward Trojan lines.
The fighting begins to swirl around these fallen men. The Achaean called Ajax—Big Ajax, the so-called Telemonian Ajax from Salamis, not to be confused with Little Ajax, who commands the Locrisians—hacks his way forward, sheaths his sword, and uses his spear to cut down a very young Trojan named Simoisius, who has come forward to cover Agenor’s retreat.
Just a week earlier, in the walled safety of Ilium’s quiet parks, while morphed as the Trojan Sthenelus, I had drunk wine and swapped ribald stories with Simoisius. The sixteen-year-old boy—never wed, never even bedded by a woman—had told me about how his father, Anthemion, had named him after the Simois River, which runs right next to their modest home a mile from the walls of the city. Simoisius had not yet turned six when the black ships of the Achaeans had first appeared on the horizon and, until a few weeks ago, his father had refused to allow the sensitive boy to join the army outside Ilium’s walls. Simoisius admitted to me that he was terrified of dying—not so much of death itself, he said, but of dying before he ever touched a woman’s breast or felt what it was like to be in love.
Now Big Ajax lets out a cry and thrusts his spear forward—batting aside Simoisius’ shield and striking the boy’s chest above the right nipple, shattering his shoulder and running the bronze point through and out until it protrudes a foot beyond the boy’s mangled back. Simoisius staggers to his knees and stares in astonishment—first at Ajax and then at the spear protruding from his chest. Big Ajax sets his sandaled foot on Simoisius’ face and rips the spear free, allowing the boy’s body to fall facefirst into the blood-dampened dust. Big Ajax pounds his chestplate and roars for his men to follow him.
A Trojan named Antiphus, standing not more than twenty-five feet away, hurls his spear at Big Ajax. The spear misses its target but strikes an Achaean named Leucus in the groin even as Leucus is busy helping Odysseus haul off the corpse of another Trojan captain. The spear passes through Leucus’ groin and comes out his anus, the tip trailing curls of gray and red colon and intestine. Leucus falls on the Trojan captain’s corpse but lives another terrible moment, writhing, grasping the spear and trying to pull it from his groin but only succeeding in spilling more of his bowels into his own lap. All the time he is tugging at the spear, Leucus is also screaming and tugging at his friend Odysseus’ bloody arm.