some to gather the bodies, some the timber.
Just as the sun began to strike the plowlands,
rising out of the deep calm flow of the Ocean River
to climb the vaulting sky, the opposing armies met.
And hard as it was to recognize each man, each body,
with clear water they washed the clotted blood away
and lifted them onto wagons, weeping warm tears.
Priam forbade his people to wail aloud. In silence
they piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to sacred Troy.
And just so on the other side Achaean men-at-arms
piled the corpses on the pyre, their hearts breaking,
burned them down to ash and returned to the hollow ships.
Then with the daybreak not quite risen into dawn,
the night and day still deadlocked, round the pyre
a work brigade of picked Achaeans grouped.
They heaped a single great barrow over the corpse-fire,
one great communal grave stretched out across the plain
and fronting it threw up looming ramparts quickly,
a landward wall for ships and troops themselves,
and amidst the wall built gateways fitted strong
to open a clear path for driving chariots through.
And against the fortress, just outside the wall,
the men dug an enormous trench, broad and deep,
and drove sharp stakes to guard it.
So they labored,
the long-haired Achaeans, while the gods aloft,
seated at ease beside the lord of lightning, Zeus,
gazed down on the grand work of Argives armed in bronze.
Poseidon the god whose breakers shake the land began,
“Father Zeus, is there a man on the whole wide earth
who still informs the gods of all his plans, his schemes?
Don’t you see? Look there—the long-haired Achaeans
have flung that rampart up against their ships,
around it they have dug an enormous deep trench
and never offered the gods a hundred splendid bulls,
but its fame will spread as far as the light of dawn!
And men will forget those ramparts I and Apollo
reared for Troy in the old days—
for the hero Laomedon—we broke our backs with labor.”
But filled with anger, Zeus who marshals the thunderheads
let loose now: “Unbelievable! God of the earthquake,
you with your massive power, why are you moaning so?
Another god might fear their wall—their idle whim—
one far weaker than you in strength of hand and fury.
Your own fame goes spreading far as the light of dawn.
Come now, just wait till these long-haired Achaeans
sail back in their ships to the fatherland they love,
then batter their wall, sweep it into the salt breakers
and pile over the endless beach your drifts of sand again,
level it to your heart’s content—the Argives’ mighty wall.”
So they conferred together, building their resolve.
The sun went down. The Argives’ work was finished.
They slew oxen beside the tents and took their meal.
And the ships pulled in from Lemnos bringing wine,
a big convoy sent across by Euneus, Jason’s son
whom Hypsipyle bore the seasoned lord of armies.
An outright gift to Atrides Agamemnon and Menelaus,
Euneus gave a shipment of wine, a thousand measures full.
From the rest Achaean soldiers bought their rations,
some with bronze and some with gleaming iron,
some with hides, some with whole live cattle,
some with slaves, and they made a handsome feast.
Then all that night the long-haired Achaeans feasted
as Trojans and Trojan allies took their meal in Troy.
Yes, but all night long the Master Strategist Zeus
plotted fresh disaster for both opposing armies—
his thunder striking terror—
and blanching panic swept across the ranks.
They flung wine from their cups and wet the earth
and no fighter would dare drink until he’d poured
an offering out to the overwhelming son of Cronus.
Then down they lay at last and took the gift of sleep.
BOOK EIGHT
The Tide of Battle Turns
Now as the Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth
Zeus who loves the lightning summoned all the gods
to assembly on the topmost peak of ridged Olympus.
He harangued the immortals hanging on his words:
“Hear me, all you gods and all goddesses too,
as I proclaim what the heart inside me urges.
Let no lovely goddess—and no god either—
try to fight against my strict decree.
All submit to it now, so all the more quickly
I can bring this violent business to an end.
And any god I catch, breaking ranks with us,
eager to go and help the Trojans or Achaeans—
back he comes to Olympus, whipped by the lightning,
eternally disgraced. Or I will snatch and hurl him
down to the murk of Tartarus half the world away,
the deepest gulf that yawns beneath the ground,
there where the iron gates and brazen threshold loom,
as far below the House of Death as the sky rides over earth—
then he will know how far my power tops all other gods’
Come, try me, immortals, so all of you can learn.
Hang a great golden cable down from the heavens,
lay hold of it, all you gods, all goddesses too:
you can never drag me down from sky to earth,
not Zeus, the highest, mightiest king of kings,
not even if you worked yourselves to death.
But whenever I’d set my mind to drag you up,
in deadly earnest, I’d hoist you all with ease,
you and the earth, you and the sea, all together,
then loop that golden cable round a horn of Olympus,
bind it fast and Leave the whole world dangling in mid-air—
that is how far I tower over the gods, I tower over men.”
A stunned silence seized them all, struck dumb—
Zeus’s ringing pronouncements overwhelmed them so.
But finally clear-eyed Athena rose and spoke:
“Our Father, son of Cronus, high and mighty,
we already know your power, far too well ...
who can stand against you?
Even so, we pity these Argive spearmen
living out their grim fates, dying in blood.
Yes, we’ll keep clear of the war as you command.
We’ll simply offer the Argives tactics that may save them—
so they won’t all fall beneath your blazing wrath.”
Zeus who drives the storm clouds smiled and answered,