a guest, a friend, with the royal Polynices
raising troops that time they geared to attack
the holy walls of Thebes. They pressed us hard,
they begged us to give them battle-tested allies.
My kin were glad to oblige and grant them their requests—
till Zeus changed our minds with a flash of bad omens.
So off they went, getting some distance on their way
and reached the Asopus’ grassy banks and reedbeds.
From that point the men sent Tydeus on ahead,
bearing their message. He marched out at once
and came on crowds, menacing bands of Thebans
feasting away in the halls of mighty Eteocles.
There, 450
a total stranger, the horseman Tydeus had no fear,
alone in the midst of Theban hordes. Undaunted,
Tydeus challenged them all to tests of strength
and beat them all with ease, in each event,
Athena urged him on with so much winning force.
But the Thebans rose in anger, lashed their teams
and packed an ambush to meet him heading back—
full fifty fighters with two chiefs in the lead,
Hunter the son of Bloodlust, strong as the gods,
and Killerman’s son, the gifted cutthroat Slaughter.
But Tydeus treated them all to a shameful fate,
finished them all but let one run for home,
heeding the gods’ signs he let the hunter off.
Now there was a man, that Tydeus, that Aetolian.
But he bore a son who’s not the half of him in battle—
better only in wrangling, wars of words!”
Taunting so,
and steadfast Diomedes offered no reply ...
overawed by the king’s majestic scorn.
But Capaneus’ headstrong son lashed back in style:
“Don’t lie, Atrides! You know the truth—say it!
We claim we are far, far greater than our fathers.
We are the ones who stormed the seven gates of Thebes,
heading a weaker force and facing stronger walls
but obeying the gods’ signs and backed by Zeus.
Our fathers? Fools. Their own bravado killed them.
Don’t tell me you rank our fathers with ourselves!”
But resolute Diomedes gave him a dark glance:
“Sit down, my friend, be quiet. Listen to me.
I don’t blame Agamemnon, our commander in chief,
for goading his combat-ready Argives into battle.
The glory goes to him if the Argive fighters
lay the Trojans low and take their sacred city,
but immense grief is his if comrades die in droves.
Up now, rouse our fighting-fury!”
With that challenge
he sprang from his chariot fully armed and hit the ground.
A terrific din of bronze rang from the captain’s chest,
striding toward attack. Fear would have gripped
the staunchest man and made his knees give way.
As a heavy surf assaults some roaring coast,
piling breaker on breaker whipped by the West Wind,
and out on the open sea a crest first rears its head
then pounds down on the shore with hoarse, rumbling thunder
and in come more shouldering crests, arching up and breaking
against some rocky spit, exploding salt foam to the skies—
so wave on wave they came, Achaean battalions ceaseless,
surging on to war. Each captain ordered his men
and the ranks moved on in silence ...
You’d never think so many troops could march
holding their voices in their chests, all silence,
fearing their chiefs who called out clear commands,
and the burnished blazoned armor round their bodies flared,
the formations trampling on.
But not the Trojans, no ...
like flocks of sheep in a wealthy rancher’s steadings,
thousands crowding to have their white milk drained,
bleating nonstop when they hear their crying lambs—
so the shouts rose up from the long Trojan lines
and not one cry, no common voice to bind them
all together, their tongues mixed and clashed,
their men hailed from so many far-flung countries.
Ares drove them, fiery-eyed Athena drove the Argives,
and Terror and Rout and relentless Strife stormed too,
sister of manslaughtering Ares, Ares’ comrade-in-arms—
Strife, only a slight thing when she first rears her head
but her head soon hits the sky as she strides across the earth.
Now Strife hurled down the leveler Hate amidst both sides,
wading into the onslaught, flooding men with pain.
At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,
they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike
with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze
and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,
and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.
Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.
Wildly as two winter torrents raging down from the mountains,
swirling into a valley, hurl their great waters together,
flash floods from the wellsprings plunging down in a gorge
and miles away in the hills a shepherd hears the thunder—
so from the grinding armies broke the cries and crash of war.
Antilochus was the first to kill a Trojan captain,
tough on the front lines, Thalysias’ son Echepolus.
Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet
right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged
in the man’s forehead, smashing through his skull
and the dark came whirling down across his eyes—
he toppled down like a tower in the rough assault.
As he fell the enormous Elephenor grabbed his feet,
Chalcodon’s son, lord of the brave-hearted Abantes,
dragged him out from under the spears, rushing madly
to strip his gear but his rush was short-lived.
Just as he dragged that corpse the brave Agenor
spied his ribs, bared by his shield as he bent low—
Agenor stabbed with a bronze spear and loosed his limbs,
his life spirit left him and over his dead body now
the savage work went on, Achaeans and Trojans
mauling each other there like wolves, leaping,
hurtling into each other, man throttling man.
And Telamonian Ajax struck Anthemion’s son,
the hardy stripling Simoisius, still unwed ...
His mother had borne him along the Simois’ banks
when she trailed her parents down the slopes of Ida
to tend their flocks, and so they called him Simoisius.
But never would he repay his loving parents now
for the gift of rearing—his life cut short so soon,
brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.
At the first charge he slashed his right nipple,