Book 1, lines 1–21

Menace  – sing to us, goddess, the menacing rage of Achilles, son

of Peleus, that rained a thousand agonies

down on the Achaeans,

and sent so many noble souls

of heroes down to Hades, and delivered to

those noisy crows and dogs

the spoils of their bodies.

And thus the will of Zeus was, as usual, fulfilled.

Start your song here,

when they first stood apart in their quarreling:

the son of Atreus, lord of men, and shining Achilles.

But who of the gods got them clashing in

discordant air? It was the son of Leto
and Zeus: angered at the king, he roused
all through the army a wicked plague, and men
succumbed and keened

because the son of Atreus

dishonored Chryses the priest. With rhetoric
and an aim to free his daughter, he came
to the nimble ships of the Achaeans, possessed
of countless ransom and holding in his hands
the farthest archer Apollo’s fresh-stemmed wreaths,
upon a golden staff—

he begged all Achaeans
to listen, most of all
the sons of Atreus,
commanders of their men.

“Atreidae, and all you other iron-kneed Achaeans,

may the gods who call Olympus home allow you extirpate

Priam’s city, and then return home well—

just please release

my beloved daughter, and accept this ransom, in reverence of

the son of Zeus, the farthest archer Apollo.”

 Book 19, lines 266–308

So he spoke, and cut the throat of a big-stomached boar
with his sword without pity. And then Talthybius whirled it
centrifugally, letting rip the corpse into the great
gulf of the sea’s grey light: exclusive food for fishes.

Then Achilles stood and spoke
to the battle-loving Argives:
“Father Zeus, how huge
is the bewilderment
you can instill in men.
Never, otherwise,
would the son of Atreus
have roused so damnably
such rancor in the heart
anchored in my chest,
Nor would he have led the girl
away so worthlessly
when I said no. I suppose
Zeus must have willed it, that death
should be the state of that many
Achaeans. For now go eat
your dinner, before we range
together plains of war.”

So he spoke, and unyoked the assembly, fearsome fast
to leave. Most skittered off, each to his own ship,
but the mega-hearted Myrmidons

took charge of the gifts,

and bore them off to the ship of godlike Achilles.
They set them in the huts,

deposited the women there,

and splendid squires drove the horses into the agile herd.

But then Briseis, a woman like gold-combed Aphrodite,
when she saw Patroclus ripped open, broken
by the cutting calculated bronze,

she poured herself around him

like melting wax, calling loud and clear,
and with her hands

she clawed her chest, the soft

skin of her neck and candlelight-lovely face.
And while she wept she spoke, this woman like the goddesses:

 “Patroclus, you who showed my heart

much greater grace than any man,
lost soul that I am,
I left you living

when I went forth from these huts and now

I come to you, a prince among the people,

dead at my return. And so for me,

cacophonies

of evil at the heels of evil,
always. I saw my husband, to whom
my father and regal mother gave me,
ripped open, broken

by the cutting calculated bronze

before our poleaxed city,

and my three brothers,

all of us born

from the same mother, beloved brothers—
every single one incurred
their panting day of death. But you,
you would not let me,

when swift Achilles killed my husband

and razed our city of godlike Mynes,

you would never let me weep but said

I would be safe,

the lawful-wedded bedmate of Achilles
like a god, that he would lead
me in his ships to Phthia, and set
a marriage feast

among the Myrmidons. And so unceasingly

I mourn you dead, another death

to say oh no to. You were

honey-sweet, always.”

So she spoke, weeping,

and to hers the other women added their laments:
Patroclus the pretense
while each one tended sorrows of her own.

Meanwhile around him
Achaean elders gathered, begging him to eat,
but in his mourning
he refused them: “I’m begging you, if any one
of my dear friends
will heed me, do not tell me to sate my own dear heart
with either food or drink,
for the dreaded grief has reached me. Until the sun
sinks in the sea
I will remain and suffer, empty as I am.”

Book 24, lines 692–746

But once they reached the spot to cross the lovely-streaming river,
the swirling Xanthus, fathered by immortal Zeus,
then Hermes went his way to tall Olympus; then Dawn,
crocus-cloaked,

began to drench the earth entire;

then with lamenting, weeping stony sorrow’s tears, they drove
their horses to the citadel, and the mules pulled the corpse.

And nobody among the men or beauty-belted women
would know they neared

until Cassandra, a woman like

gold-combed Aphrodite, who rose that morning to the height
of Pergamon, discerned her father’s stature, dear
in the distant chariot, beside the city’s blaring herald;
and him,

him lying in the flatbed drawn by mules—

she saw him too. And shot the city through with agony

with her resounding clarion call:

“Come gather, Trojan men

and Trojan women, come behold

Hector, if ever you

rejoiced when he returned alive

from battle; for he was joy

incarnate in the city, joy

to all the people here.”

She spoke, and not one man or woman in the city stayed

where they were, for unchecked grief beset them all.
They crushed together, anchoring against the city gates
for the king who carried their dead one home.

. . . .

Among them, white-armed Andromache was first in the lament
As she cradled in a locked embrace the cherished head
Of man-killing Hector:

“Husband, you are gone so young

from life, leaving me a widow
in the spaces of great rooms, and the boy
only a baby,

the very boy we bore, you and I,

out of our doomed unarmored love,

and I cannot think he’ll ever be

a young man, never—

the heights of this despairing city

will turn to ash long before that.
For our champion has perished, you
who were our shield,

who guarded all these tender wives

and cooing children—these all will soon

be brought aboard the hollow ships

and I among them,

and you’ll be no exception, child

of mine; you’ll follow me to where
you’ll toil at inglorious tasks,
struggling under

an unmild master. Unless some one

of the Achaeans should rip you by the arm

and drop you from the tower, purging you

in sorrowing death,

implacable since Hector slew

perhaps his brother, or father, or his own son,
since so awfully many Achaeans
bit the broad earth

with their teeth, palmed by Hector’s hands:

your father was not mild in sorrowing war.

And thus the people weep for him

unendurably

all through the city, and you’ve besieged

your parents with the grief that will
not yield to prayer and suffering,
Hector, and for me

especially the freshest hells remain.

For as you died you did not

stretch out your hands to me

upon our bed,

nor did you speak some word like lovers speak

that I could keep, remembering for all
my nights and all my days, anytime
I shed a tear."