The persuasion of a comrade has its powers.
But if down deep some prophecy makes him balk,
some doom his noble mother revealed to him from Zeus,
at least let Achilles send Patroclus into battle.
Let the whole Myrmidon army follow your command—
you might bring some light of victory to our Argives!
And let him give you his own fine armor to wear in war
so the Trojans might take you for him, Patroclus, yes,
hold off from attack, and Achaea’s fighting sons
get second wind, exhausted as they are ...
Breathing room in war is all too brief.
You’re fresh, unbroken. They’re bone-weary from battte—
you could roll those broken Trojans back to Troy,
clear of our ships and shelters!”
So old Nestor urged
and the fighting spirit leapt inside Patrocius—
he dashed back by the ships toward Achilles.
But sprinting close to King Odysseus’ fleet
where the Argives met and handed down their laws,
the grounds where they built their altars to the gods,
there he met Eurypylus, Euaemon’s gallant son,
wounded, the arrow planted deep in his thigh,
and limping out of battle ...
The sweat was streaming down his face and back
and the dark blood still flowed from his ugly wound
but the man’s will was firm, he never broke his stride.
And moved at the sight, the good soldier Patroclus
burst out in grief with a flight of winging words,
“Poor men! Lords of the Argives, O my captains!
How doomed you are, look—far from your loved ones
and native land—to glut with your shining fat
the wild dogs of battle here in Troy ...
But come, tell me, Eurypylus, royal fighter,
can the Achaeans, somehow, still hold monstrous Hector?—
or must they all die now, beaten down by his spear?”
Struggling with his wound, Eurypylus answered,
“No hope, Patroclus, Prince. No bulwark left.
They’ll all be hurled back to the black ships.
All of them, all our best in the old campaigns
are laid up in the hulls, they’re hit by arrows,
pierced by spears, brought down by Trojan hands
while the Trojans’ power keeps on rising, rising!
Save me at least. Take me back to my black ship.
Cut this shaft from my thigh. And the dark blood—
wash it out of the wound with clear warm water.
And spread the soothing, healing salves across it,
the powerful drugs they say you learned from Achilles
and Chiron the most humane of Centaurs taught your friend.
And as for our own healers, Podalirius and Machaon,
one is back in the shelters, wounded, I think—
Machaon needs a good strong healer himself,
he’s racked with pain. The other’s still afield,
standing up to the Trojans’ slashing onslaught.”
The brave son of Menoetius answered quickly,
“Impossible. Eurypylus, hero, what shall we do?
I am on my way with a message for Achilles,
our great man of war—the plan that Nestor,
Achaea’s watch and ward, urged me to report.
But I won’t neglect you, even so, with such a wound.”
And bracing the captain, arm around his waist,
he helped him toward his shelter. An aide saw them
and put some oxhides down. Patroclus stretched him out,
knelt with a knife and cut the sharp, stabbing arrow
out of Eurypylus’ thigh and washed the wound clean
of the dark running blood with clear warm water.
Pounding it in his palms, he crushed a bitter root
and covered over the gash to kill his comrade’s pain,
a cure that fought off every kind of pain ...
and the wound dried and the flowing blood stopped
BOOK TWELVE
The Trojans Storm the Rampart
And so under shelter now Menoetius’ fighting son
was healing Eurypylus’ wounds. But hordes of men fought on,
the Achaean and Trojan infantry going hand-to-hand.
The Argive trench could not hold out much longer,
nor could the rampart rearing overhead, the wide wall
they raised to defend the ships and the broad trench
they drove around it all—they never gave the gods
the splendid sacrifice the immortals craved,
that the fortress might protect the fast ships
and the bulking plunder heaped behind its shield.
Defying the deathless gods they built that wall
and so it stood there steadfast no long time.
While Hector still lived and Achilles raged on
and the warlord Priam’s citadel went unstormed,
so long the Achaeans’ rampart stood erect.
But once the best of the Trojan captains fell,
and many Achaeans died as well while some survived,
and Priam’s high walls were stormed in the tenth year
and the Argives set sail for the native land they loved—
then, at last, Poseidon and Lord Apollo launched their plan
to smash the rampart, flinging into it all the rivers’ fury.
All that flow from the crests of Ida down to breaking surf,
the Rhesus and the Heptaporus, Caresus and the Rhodius,
Grenicus and Aesepus, and the shining god Scamander
and Simois’ tides where tons of oxhide shields
and homed helmets tumbled deep in the river silt
and a race of men who seemed half god, half mortal.
The channels of all those rivers-Apollo swung them round
into one mouth and nine days hurled their flood against the wall
and Zeus came raining down, cloudburst powering cloudburst,
the faster to wash that rampart out to open sea.
The Earth-shaker himself, trident locked in his grip,
led the way, rocking loose, sweeping up in his breakers
all the bastion’s strong supports of logs and stones
the Achaeans prized in place with grueling labor ...
He made all smooth along the rip of the Hellespont
and piled the endless beaches deep in sand again
and once he had leveled the Argives’ mighty wall
he turned the rivers flowing back in their beds again
where their fresh clear tides had run since time began.
So in the years to come Poseidon and god Apollo
would set all things to rights once more.
But now
the war, the deafening crash of battle blazed
around the strong-built work, and rampart timbers
thundered under the heavy blows as Argive fighters
beaten down by the lash of Zeus were rolled back,
pinned to their beaked ships in dread of Hector,