flicked it over the car and off it flew for nothing—
and after him Diomedes yelled his war cry, lunging out
with his own bronze spear and Pallas rammed it home,
deep in Ares’ bowels where the belt cinched him tight.
There Diomedes aimed and stabbed, he gouged him down
his glistening flesh and wrenched the spear back out
and the brazen god of war let loose a shriek, roaring,
thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers
shriek with Ares’ fury when massive armies clash.
A shudder swept all ranks, Trojans and Argives both,
terror-struck by the shriek the god let loose,
Ares whose lust for slaughter never dies.
But now,
wild as a black cyclone twisting out of a cloudbank,
building up from the day’s heat, blasts and towers—
so brazen Ares looked to Tydeus’ son Diomedes.
Soaring up with the clouds to the broad sweeping sky
he quickly gained the gods’ stronghold, steep Olympus,
and settling down by the side of Cronus’ great son Zeus,
his spirit racked with pain, Ares displayed the blood,
the fresh immortal blood that gushed from his wound,
and burst out in a flight of self-pity: “Father Zeus,
aren’t you incensed to see such violent brutal work?
We everlasting gods . . . Ah what chilling blows
we suffer—thanks to our own conflicting wills—
whenever we show these mortal men some kindness.
And we all must battle you—
you brought that senseless daughter into the world,
that murderous curse—forever bent on crimes!
While all the rest of us, every god on Olympus
bows down to you, each of us overpowered.
But that girl—
you never block her way with a word or action, never,
you spur her on, since you, you gave her birth
from your own head, that child of devastation!
Just look at this reckless Diomedes now—
Athena spurred him on to rave against the gods.
First he lunges at Aphrodite, stabs her hand at the wrist
then charges me—even me—like something superhuman!
But I, I’m so fast on my feet I saved my life.
Else for a good long while I’d have felt the pain,
writhing among the corpses there, or soldiered on,
weak as a breathless ghost, beaten down by bronze.”
But Zeus who marshals storm clouds lowered a dark glance
and let loose at Ares: “No more, you lying, two-faced . . .
no more sidling up to me, whining here before me.
You—I hate you most of all the Olympian gods.
Always dear to your heart,
strife, yes, and battles, the bloody grind of war.
You have your mother’s uncontrollable rage—incorrigible,
that Hera—say what I will, I can hardly keep her down.
Hera’s urgings, I trust, have made you suffer this.
But I cannot bear to see you agonize so long.
You are my child. To me your mother bore you.
If you had sprung from another god, believe me,
and grown into such a blinding devastation,
long ago you’d have dropped below the Titans,
deep in the dark pit.”
So great Zeus declared
and ordered the healing god to treat the god of war.
And covering over his wound with pain-killing drugs
the Healer cured him: the god was never bom to die.
Quickly as fig-juice, pressed into bubbly, creamy milk,
curdles it firm for the man who chums it round,
so quickly he healed the violent rushing Ares.
And Hebe washed him clean, dressed him in robes
to warm his heart, and flanking the son of Cronus
down he sat, Ares exultant in the glory of it all.
And now the two returned to the halls of mighty Zeus—
Hera of Argos, Boeotian Athena, guard of armies, both
had stopped the murderous Ares’ cutting men to pieces.
BOOK SIX
Hector Returns to Troy
So the clash of Achaean and Trojan troops was on its own,
the battle in all its fury veering back and forth,
careering down the plain
as they sent their bronze lances hurtling side-to-side
between the Simois’ banks and Xanthus’ swirling rapids.
That Achaean bulwark giant Ajax came up first,
broke the Trojan line and brought his men some hope,
spearing the bravest man the Thracians fielded,
Acamas tall and staunch, Eussorus’ son.
The first to hurl, Great Ajax hit the ridge
of the helmet’s horsehair crest—the bronze point
stuck in Acamas’ forehead pounding through the skull
and the dark came swirling down to shroud his eyes.
A shattering war cry! Diomedes killed off Axylus,
Teuthras’ son who had lived in rock-built Arisbe,
a man of means and a friend to all mankind,
at his roadside house he’d warm all comers in.
But who of his guests would greet his enemy now,
meet him face-to-face and ward off grisly death?
Diomedes killed the man and his aide-in-arms at once,
Axylus and Calesius who always drove his team—
both at a stroke he drove beneath the earth.
Euryalus killed Dresus, killed Opheltius,
turned and went for Pedasus and Aesepus, twins
the nymph of the spring Abarbarea bore Bucolion ...
Bucolion, son himself to the lofty King Laomedon,
first of the line, though his mother bore the prince
in secrecy and shadow. Tending his flocks one day
Bucolion took the nymph in a strong surge of love
and beneath his force she bore him twin sons.
But now the son of Mecisteus hacked the force
from beneath them both and loosed their gleaming limbs
and tore the armor off the dead men’s shoulders.
Polypoetes braced for battle killed Astyalus—
Winging his bronze spear Odysseus slew Pidytes
bred in Percote, and Teucer did the same
for the royal Aretaon—
Ablerus went down too,
under the flashing lance of Nestor’s son Antilochus,
and Elatus under the lord of men Agamemnon’s strength—
Elatus lived by the banks of rippling Satniois,
in Pedasus perched on cliffs—
The hero Leitus
ran Phylacus down to ground at a dead run
and Eurypylus killed Melanthius outright—
But Menelaus
lord of the war cry had caught Adrestus alive.
Rearing, bolting in terror down the plain
his horses snared themselves in tamarisk branches,
splintered his curved chariot just at the pole’s tip
and breaking free they made a dash for the city walls