Homer Iliad Quotes

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Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Homer (The Iliad)
…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.
Homer (The Iliad)
Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
Homer (The Iliad)
Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.
Homer (The Iliad)
Even a fool learns something once it hits him.
Homer (Iliad)
Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Homer (The Iliad)
We men are wretched things.
Homer (The Iliad)
Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.
Homer (The Iliad)
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
Homer (The Iliad)
...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.
Homer (The Iliad)
No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.
Homer (The Iliad)
No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
Homer (The Iliad)
His descent was like nightfall.
Homer (The Iliad)
Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall
Homer (The Iliad)
Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!
Homer (The Iliad)
There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
Homer (The Iliad)
Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.
Homer (The Iliad)
And overpowered by memory Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself, Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.
Homer (The Iliad)
Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.
Homer (The Iliad)
The roaring seas and many a dark range of mountains lie between us.
Homer (The Iliad)
Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.
Roman Payne (Rooftop Soliloquy)
Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other's arms.
Homer (The Iliad)
Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us. Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on
Homer (The Iliad)
Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.
Homer (The Iliad)
Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you. And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am? The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life-- A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you, Death and the strong force of fate are waiting. There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon When a man will take my life in battle too-- flinging a spear perhaps Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.
Homer (The Iliad)
…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.
Homer (The Iliad)
After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose)
Nay if even in the house of Hades the dead forget their dead, yet will I even there be mindful of my dear comrade.
Homer (The Iliad)
The sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.
Homer (The Iliad)
Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?
Homer (The Iliad)
You, you insolent brazen bitch—you really dare to shake that monstrous spear in Father’s face?
Homer (The Iliad)
Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die.
Homer (Iliad)
You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!
Homer (The Iliad)
They say Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.
Roman Payne (Rooftop Soliloquy)
Antilochus! You're the most appalling driver in the world! Go to hell!
Homer (The Iliad)
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— it’s born with us the day that we are born.
Homer (The Iliad)
Even a fool may be wise after the event.
Homer (The Iliad)
What are the children of men, but as leaves that drop at the wind's breath?
Homer (The Iliad)
Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
Homer (The Iliad / The Odyssey)
The proud heart feels not terror nor turns to run and it is his own courage that kills him
Homer (The Iliad)
Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius
Homer (The Iliad)
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.
Homer (The Iliad)
...of all creatures that breathe and move on earth none is more to be pitied than a man.
Homer (The Iliad)
But listen to me first and swear an oath to use all your eloquence and strength to look after me and protect me.
Homer (The Iliad)
Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable
Homer (The Iliad)
Three thousand years have not changed the human condition in this respect; we are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, Homer will be read as its truest interpreter.
Homer (The Iliad)
I say no wealth is worth my life.
Homer (The Iliad)
Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you to the field where men win fame.
Homer (The Iliad)
Think not to match yourself against the gods, for men that walk the earth cannot hold their own with the immortals.
Homer (Iliad)
I wish that strife would vanish away from among gods and mortals, and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind, that gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man's heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey.
Homer (The Iliad)
And his good wife will tear her cheeks in grief, his sons are orphans and he, soaking the soil red with his own blood, he rots away himself—more birds than women flocking round his body!
Homer (The Iliad)
You've injured me, Farshooter, most deadly of the gods; And I'd punish you, if I had the power.
Homer (The Iliad)
Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears.
Homer (The Iliad)
A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.
Homer (The Iliad)
A last request—grant it, please. Never bury my bones apart from yours, Achilles, let them lie together . . . just as we grew up together in your house
Homer (The Iliad)
One omen is best; Defending the fatherland
Homer (The Iliad)
Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.
Homer (The Iliad)
Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.
Homer (The Iliad)
When night falls and the world lies lost in sleep, I take to my bed, my heart throbbing, about to break, anxieties swarming, piercing—I may go mad with grief.
Homer (The Odyssey)
Strife and Confusion joined the fight, along with cruel Death, who seized one wounded man while still alive and then another man without a wound, while pulling the feet of one more corpse out from the fight. The clothes Death wore around her shoulders were dyed red with human blood.
Homer (The Iliad)
The heart in his rugged chest was pounding, torn
Homer (The Iliad)
The gods are hard to handle — when they come blazing forth in their true power.
Homer (The Iliad)
But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well—for your own son’s death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels—I’ve lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men—
Homer (The Iliad)
You must endure and not be broken-hearted.
Homer (The Iliad)
All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.
Homer (The Iliad)
we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.
Homer (The Iliad)
I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches, in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came- not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults, in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs! Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding, tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions. But a man's life breath cannot come back again- no raiders in force, no trading brings it back, once it slips through a man's clenched teeth. Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies... true, but the life that's left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.
Homer (The Iliad)
The lord of distant archery, Apollo, answered: "Lord of earthquake, sound of mind you could not call me if I strove with you for the sake of mortals, poor things that they are. Ephemeral as the flamelike budding leaves, men flourish on the ripe wheat of the grainland, then in spiritless age they waste and die.
Homer (The Iliad)
Miserable mortals who, like leaves, at one moment flame with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly perish
Homer (The Iliad)
What is proper to hear, no one, human or divine, will hear before you.
Homer (The Iliad)
We are perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our admiration of good.
Homer (The Iliad)
...The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary.
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
But when he spoke, that great voice of his poured out of his chest in words like the snowflakes of winter, and then no other mortal could in debate contend with Odysseus. Nor did we care any longer how he looked.
Homer (The Iliad)
My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I will not return alive but my name will live forever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me.
Homer (The Iliad)
It was the gray sea that bore you and the towering rocks, so sheer the heart in you is turned from us.
Homer (The Iliad)
For of all creatures that breathe and creep about on the earth, there is none so miserable as man.
Homer (The Iliad)
He had better beware our wrath, great man though he is. What is he doing in his fury but insulting senseless clay?
Homer (The Iliad)
…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. But Ruin is strong and swift—She outstrips them all by far, stealing a march, leaping over the whole wide earth to bring mankind to grief.
Homer (The Iliad)
But his sister, Artemis of the wild, the lady of wild beasts, scolded him bitterly and spoke a word of revilement: 'You run from him, striker from afar...Fool, then why do you wear that bow, which is wind and nothing.
Homer (The Iliad)
Sing, goddess, of Achilles' ruinous anger Which brought ten thousand pains to the Achaeans, And cast the souls of many stalwart heroes To Hades, and their bodies to the dogs And birds of prey.
Homer (The Iliad)
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding, tripods for the trading, and tawny headed stallions. But a mans's lifebreath cannot come back again- no raiders in force, no trading brings it back, once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Homer (The Iliad)
Hyrtacides pummeled his thighs and groaned and bit his lip and said: "O Father Zeus, you, even you, turn out to be a liar." [bk.12]
Homer (The Iliad)
Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings. A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
Richmond Lattimore
Troy has perished, the great city. Only the red flame now lives there. The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke and all is hidden. We now are gone, one here, one there. And Troy is gone forever. Farewell, dear city. Farewell, my country, where my children lived. There below, the Greek ships wait.
Homer (The Iliad)
Do thou restrain the haughty spirit in thy breast, for better far is gentle courtesy.
Homer (The First Six Books of Homer's Iliad)
يا كل شئ هنا.. وداعا.
Homer (The Iliad)
And so their spirits soared as they took positions own the passageways of battle all night long, and the watchfires blazed among them. Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glittering round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm... all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts the boundless bright air and all the stars shine clear and the shepherd's heart exults - so many fires burned between the ships and the Xanthus' whirling rapids set by the men of Troy, bright against their walls. A thousand fires were burning there on the plain and beside each fire sat fifty fighting men poised in the leaping blaze, and champing oats and glistening barley, stationed by their chariots, stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne.
Homer (The Iliad)
Hektor, argue me no agreements. I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement but forever these hold feelings of hate for each other, so there can be no love between you and me, nor shall there be oaths between us, but one or the other must fall before then to glut with his blood Ares the god who fights under the shield's guard.
Homer
Everywhere in Homer's saga of the rage of Achilles and the battles before Troy we are made conscious at one and the same time of war's ugly brutality and what Yeats called its "terrible beauty." The Iliad accepts violence as a permanent factor in human life and accepts it without sentimentality, for it is just as sentimental to pretend that war does not have its monstrous ugliness as it is to deny that it has its own strange and fatal beauty, a power, which can call out in men resources of endurance, courage and self-sacrifice that peacetime, to our sorrow and loss, can rarely command.
Bernard Knox
Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.
Mark Twain (On Masturbation)
Why, pray, must the Argives needs fight the Trojans? What made the son of Atreus gather the host and bring them? Was it not for the sake of Helen? Are the sons of Atreus the only men in the world who love their wives? Any man of common right feeling will love and cherish her who is his own, as I this woman, with my whole heart
Homer (The Iliad)
Ah my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you in the field where men win fame. But now, as it is, the fates of death await us, thousands poised to strike, and not a man alive can flee them or escape – so in we go for attack! Give our enemy glory or win it for ourselves!
Homer (The Iliad)
Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot... A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound. When I wound a man, though I but graze his skin, it is another matter, for my weapon will lay him low. His wife will tear her cheeks out for grief and his children will be fatherless: there he will rot, reddening the earth with his blood, and vultures, not women, will gather round him.
Homer (Iliad)
Căntã, zeițã, mânia ce-aprinse pe-Ahil Peleianul, Patima crudã ce-Aheilor mii de amaruri aduse; Suflete multe viteze trimise pe lumea cealaltã, Trupul fãcându-le hranã la câini și la feluri de pãsãri Și împlinitã fu voia lui Zeus, de când Agamemnon, Craiul nãscut din Atreu, și dumnezeiescul Ahile S-au dezbinat dupã cearta ce fuse-ntre dânșii iscatã.
Homer (The Iliad of Homer, Volume 1)
As gale-winds swirl and shatter under the shrilling gusts on days when drifts of dust lie piled thick on the roads and winds whip up the dirt in a dense whirling cloud- so the battle broke, storming chaos, troops inflamed, slashing each other with bronze, carnage mounting, manslaughtering combat bristling with rangy spears, the honed lances brandished in hand and ripping flesh and the eyes dazzled now, blind with the glare of bronze, glittering helmets flashing, breastplates freshly burnished, shields fiery in sunlight, fighters plowing on in a mass. Only a veteran steeled at heart could watch that struggle and still thrill with joy and never feel the terror.
Homer (The Iliad)
And let Apollo drive Prince Hector back to battle, breathe power back in his lungs, make him forget the pain that racks his heart. Let him whip the Achaeans in headlong panic rout and roll them back once more, tumbling back on the oar-swept ships of Peleus' son Achilles. And he, will launch his comrade Patroclus into action and glorious Hector will cut him down with a spear in front of Troy, once Patroclus has slaughtered whole battalions of strong young fighting men and among them all, my shining son Sarpedon. But then - enraged for Patroclus - brilliant Achilles will bring Prince Hector down. And then, from that day on, I'll turn the tide of war: back the fighting goes, no stopping it, ever.
Homer (The Iliad)
we're looking for a planeet on the strength of a song. it's crazy I know, but its the only chance we have to do something useful." ...Evan Wilson said gravely "I think you're as crazy as Heinrich Schliemann - and you know what happened to him!" "What" ... "you don't know what happened to him?" she asked her blue eyes widening in astonishment."Ever read Homer's Iliad, Captain?" ... "I don't know what translation you read Doctor, but there was no Heinrich Schliemann in mine - or in the Odyssey." "That depends on how you look at it." smiling she settled back into her chair and went on,"Heinrich Schliemann was from Earth, pre-federation days, and he read Homer too. No, not just read him, believed him. So he set out at his own expense-mind you, I doubt he could have found anyone else to fund such a crazy endeavor - to find Troy, a city that most of the educated people of his time considered pure invention on Homer's part." "And?" "And he found it. Next time you're on earth, stop by the Troy Museum. the artifacts are magnificent, and every one of them was found on the strength of a song.
Janet Kagan (Uhura's Song (Star Trek: The Original Series #21))
so evenly was strained their war and battle, till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-taming Trojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierce blazing fire." So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears, and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spears in their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. And Hector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thick in the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two best men of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from the ground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son of crooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherd lightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and little doth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straight against the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, double gates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one bolt fastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly planted himself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, that his cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and the stone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loud around, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and that beneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with face like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about his body, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could have held him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods, and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to the Trojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedily some overleaped the wall, and some poured into the fair-wrought gateways, and the Danaans fled in fear among the hollow ships, and a ceaseless clamour arose.
Homer (The Iliad)
Friends, Grecian Heroes, Ministers of Mars! Grievous, and all unlook’d for, is the blow Which Jove hath dealt me; by his promise led I hop’d to raze the strong-built walls of Troy, And home return in safety; but it seems 130 He falsifies his word, and bids me now Return to Argos, frustrate of my hope, Dishonour’d, and with grievous loss of men. Such now appears th’ o’er-ruling sov’reign will Of Saturn’s son; who oft hath sunk the heads 135 Of many a lofty city in the dust, And yet will sink; for mighty is his hand. ’Tis shame indeed that future days should hear How such a force as ours, so great, so brave, Hath thus been baffled, fighting, as we do, 140 ’Gainst numbers far inferior to our own, And see no end of all our warlike toil. For should we choose, on terms of plighted truce, Trojans and Greeks, to number our array; Of Trojans, all that dwell within the town, 145 And we, by tens disposed, to every ten, To crown our cups, one Trojan should assign, Full many a ten no cup-bearer would find: So far the sons of Greece outnumber all That dwell within the town; but to their aid 150 Bold warriors come from all the cities round, Who greatly harass me, and render vain My hope to storm the strong-built walls of Troy. Already now nine weary years have pass’d; The timbers of our ships are all decay’d, 155 The cordage rotted; in our homes the while Our wives and helpless children sit, in vain Expecting our return; and still the work, For which we hither came, remains undone. Hear then my counsel; let us all agree 160 Home to direct our course, since here in vain We strive to take the well-built walls of Troy.” Thus as he spoke, the crowd, that had not heard The secret council, by his words was mov’d; So sway’d and heav’d the multitude, as when 165 O’er the vast billows of th’ Icarian sea Eurus and Notus from the clouds of Heav’n Pour forth their fury; or as some deep field Of wavy corn, when sweeping o’er the plain The ruffling west wind sways the
Homer (The Iliad)