An Iliad (16 page)

Ah, I heard those words with joy in my heart … I offered him that cup, the cup I had brought for Achilles. I offered it to him and asked him if in exchange he could take us into the Achaean camp.

“Old man, don’t test me,” he said. “I can’t accept gifts from you unbeknownst to Achilles. Anyone who steals something from that man is heading for disaster. But I’ll lead you to him without any reward. And you’ll see that with me no one will dare stop you.” Thus he spoke, and he mounted the chariot, taking the reins and spurring the horses. And when he reached the trench, and the wall, the sentinels said nothing to him. He passed through the open gates and swiftly guided us to Achilles’ tent. It was majestic, supported on posts of fir and surrounded by a great courtyard. The enormous door was of wood. The man opened it and told me to enter. “It’s as well if Achilles doesn’t see me, old man. But don’t be afraid, go and kneel before him. May you be able to move his hard heart.”

Then the old king entered. He left Idaeus to watch the

chariots. And he entered the tent of Achilles. Some men were busy around the table where they had just been eating. Achilles was sitting in a corner, alone. The old king approached him without anyone noticing. Perhaps he could have killed him. But instead he fell at his feet and embraced his knees. Achilles was startled, caught by surprise. Priam took his hands, the terrible hands that had killed so many of his sons, and brought them to his lips and kissed them. “Achilles, you see me, I am old now. Like your father, I have crossed the threshold of sorrowful old age. But he at least will be in his homeland hoping to see his son return one day from Troy. I, instead, have endured much suffering: fifty sons I had, to defend my land, and the war has taken away almost all of them. Only Hector remained, and you killed him, beside the walls of the city whose last, heroic defender he was. I have come here to bring him home, in exchange for splendid gifts. Have pity on me, Achilles, in memory of your father. If you have pity on him, have pity on me, who, unique among all fathers, was not ashamed to kiss the hand that killed my son.”

Achilles’ eyes filled with tears. With a gesture he brushed Priam away, but gently. The two men wept, in the memory of a father, a beloved friend, a son. Tears, in the tent, in silence. Then Achilles rose from his chair, took the old king by the hand, and raised him up. He looked at his white hair, his white beard, and, moved, he said, “You unhappy man, who have endured so much heartbreaking sorrow. Where did you find the courage to come to the ships of the Achaeans and kneel before the man who killed so many brave sons? You have a bold spirit, Priam. Sit here, on my chair. Together let’s forget our sorrow, which weeping is no help for. It’s man’s fate to live in sorrow—only the gods live happy. Inscrutable destiny dis-
penses good and evil. My father, Peleus, was a fortunate man, first among all men, king in his own land, husband of a woman who was a goddess, and yet fate gave him an only son, born to rule, and now that son, far from him, runs swiftly toward his destiny of death, sowing ruin among his enemies. And you, you were so happy once, king of a great land, father of many sons, lord of an immense fortune, and now you are forced every day to wake amid war and death. Be strong, old man, and do not torture yourself: weeping for your son will not bring him back to life.” And he gestured the old man to sit on his chair.

But Priam didn’t want to. He said he wanted to see the body of his son with his own eyes, that was all he wanted. He didn’t want to sit, he wanted his son.

Achilles looked at him in irritation. “Now don’t make me angry, old man. I will give you back your son, because if you arrived here alive, it means that it was a god who guided you, and I don’t want to displease the gods. But don’t make me angry, because I am also capable of disobeying the gods.”

The old king then trembled with fear, and sat as he had been ordered. Achilles went out of the tent with his men. He went to get the precious gifts that Priam had chosen for him. And he left two linen cloths and one tunic in the chariot, in which to wrap the body of Hector when it was ready to be carried home. Then he called his servants and ordered them to wash and anoint the body of the hero, and to do all this elsewhere, so that the eyes of Priam wouldn’t see and wouldn’t suffer. And when the body was ready, Achilles himself took it in his arms, lifted it up, and laid it on the funeral bed. Then he returned to the tent and sat down opposite Priam.

“Your son has been given back to you, old man, as you
wanted. At dawn you will see him, and take him away. And now I order you to eat with me.”

They prepared a sort of funeral banquet, and when the meal was over we sat there, facing each other, talking, in the night. I couldn’t help admiring his beauty. He was like a god. And he listened to me, in silence, rapt by my words. Incredible as it might seem, we spent the time in admiration of each other, so that at the end, forgetting where I was, and why I was there, I asked for a bed, because it was days since, afflicted by grief, I had slept. And they prepared one for me, with rich carpets and coverings of purple, in a corner, so that none of the other Achaeans should see me. When everything was ready, Achilles came and said to me, “We’ll stop the war to give you time to honor your son, old king.” And then he took my hand and held it, and I was no longer afraid.

I woke in the middle of the night, when all around me were sleeping. I must have been mad to think of waiting there until dawn. I rose, in silence, and went to the chariots. I woke Idaeus, we hitched the horses, and, without anyone seeing us, we left. We crossed the plain in the darkness. And when golden Aurora slipped over the earth, we arrived at the walls of Troy. From the city the women saw us and began to cry that King Priam had returned, and with him his son Hector, and they streamed out of the gates, running toward us. They all wanted to touch the beautiful head of the dead man, weeping with muted laments. With difficulty the old king managed to drive the chariots inside the walls, and then to the palace. They took Hector and placed him on an inlaid bed. Around him rose the funeral lament. And the women, one by one, went up to him, and holding his head in their hands said farewell.

First was Andromache, who was his wife. “Hector, by dying young you leave me a widow in our house, with a small
child who will never grow up. This city will be destroyed, because you who protected it are dead. The wives of the princes will be dragged onto the ships, and I will be among them. One of the Achaeans will take your son and hurl him down from the high towers, giving him a horrible death, in hatred and contempt for you who killed so many sons of the Achaeans, and brothers, and friends. Your parents mourn you today, the whole city mourns you, but no one mourns you with such sorrow as your wife, who will never forget that you died far away from her.”

Then Hecuba grieved for him: the mother. “Hector, among all my sons the dearest to my heart. The gods who loved you so much in life even in death have not abandoned you. Achilles dragged you on the ground, to make his beloved friend Patroclus happy, but now I find you here and you are beautiful, and fresh, and whole. Achilles destroyed you with his spear, but I think you died a sweet death, my son.”

And finally Helen of Argos mourned him. “Hector, my friend. Twenty years have passed since Paris took me away from my homeland. And in twenty years never once did I hear from you an unkind word or an insult. And if someone spoke ill of me, here in the palace, you always defended me with sweet, gentle words. I weep for you because in you I mourn the only friend I had. You’re gone, leaving me alone to be devoured by hatred.”

So they mourned through the night, the women and men of Troy, around the body of Hector, breaker of horses. The next day, they built a pyre in his honor and let the flames flare up high in the rosy light of dawn. They stored his white bones in a golden urn, wrapped in a purple cloth. The bones repose now in the depths of the earth, where no Achaean warrior can ever disturb them.

M
any years after these events, I was at the court of the Phaeacians when a mysterious man arrived from the sea, who had been shipwrecked and had no name. He was welcomed like a king, and honored with all the rites of hospitality. During the sumptuous banquet prepared for him, I sang the adventures of heroes, because I am a bard and singing is my work. The man listened, sitting in the place of honor. He listened to me in silence, filled with emotion. And when I finished he cut a piece of meat and offered it to me, and said, “Demodocus, a Muse, a daughter of Zeus, was your master, for you sing the stories of the Achaean heroes with wonderful art. I would like to hear in your voice the story of the wooden horse, the trap that godlike Odysseus devised for the destruction of Ilium. Sing it, and I will tell everyone that a god taught you to sing.” This he asked me, the man without a name. And this is what I sang for him, and for all.

···

Already the tenth year had passed and the war was still going on between Achaeans and Trojans. The spears were tired of killing, the straps of the shields, worn out, were breaking, and the weakened bowstrings let the swift arrows fall. The horses, grown old, grazed sadly, heads lowered, eyes closed, mourning the companions with whom they had run and fought. Achilles lay under the earth beside his beloved Patroclus. Nestor wept for his son Antilochus; Telamonian Ajax wandered through Hades after killing himself; Paris, the cause of the evil, was dead, and Helen lived with her new husband, Deiphobus, son of Priam. The Trojans mourned Hector, and Sarpedon, and Rhesus. Ten years. And Troy still rose intact in the shelter of its invincible walls.

It was Odysseus who invented the end of that endless war. He ordered Epeus to construct a giant wooden horse. Epeus was the best when it came to making instruments or machines for war. He set to the work. He had tree trunks brought down from the mountains, the same wood with which many years before the Trojans had built the ships of Paris, the origin of the evil. Epeus used the wood to build the horse. He began with the belly, broad and hollow. Then he attached the neck, and on the purple mane he poured pure gold. In place of the eyes he put precious stones: the green emerald and the blood-colored amethyst sparkled together. To the temples he attached the ears, pricked as if to grasp in the silence the sound of the war trumpet. Then he put on the back, the sides, and finally the legs, bending them at the knees, as if they were running, a motionless but true gait. The hooves were of bronze, plated with gleaming tortoiseshell. In the side of the animal the genius of Epeus cut a small, invisible door, and attached a
ladder that when needed could let men go up and down, and then disappear inside the horse. He worked for days. But finally the marvelous horse appeared: gigantic, to the eyes of the Achaeans, and terrifying.

Then Odysseus called the princes to an assembly. And, in that deep voice that was his alone, he spoke. “Friends, you continue to have faith in your weapons, and in your courage. But meanwhile we’re growing old here, without glory, exhausting ourselves in a war without end. Believe me, only by intelligence, not by force, will we take Troy. Do you see that, the magnificent wooden horse built by Epeus? Listen to my plan: Some of us will climb inside it, fearlessly. The others, after burning the encampment, will set sail for the open sea, leaving the beach deserted, and will go and hide behind the island of Tenedos. The Trojans will have to believe that we’ve really gone. They’ll see the horse: they’ll take it for a homage to their valor, or a gift to the goddess Athena. Trust me: they will bring it into their city, and it will be their end.”

Thus he spoke. And they listened. And they had faith in him. They drew lots to see who would go inside the horse. And the lots indicated five of them: Odysseus, Menelaus, Diomedes, Anticlus, and Neoptolemus, who was the son of Achilles. They climbed inside the horse, and then they closed the little door that Epeus had cut in the wood. They crouched down in the darkness with anguish in their hearts. They were like animals who, frightened by a storm, have taken refuge in their den and now await the sun’s return, tormented by hunger and unease.

The others meanwhile waited for night, and when it was dark they destroyed their encampments and put the ships to sea. Before dawn rose they had gained the open sea and disappeared behind the island of Tenedos. On the beach, where the
immense army had lived for ten years, there remained only corpses and smoking ruins.

Amid the first shadows of breaking day, the Trojans saw, far off, the smoke of the fires. The news that the Achaeans had fled spread quickly, echoing again and again from one to another, a cry of ever-increasing hope and joy. They emerged from behind the walls, just a few at a time, and then in greater numbers, and crossed the plain to see. When Priam arrived, surrounded by the old men of Troy, what he saw was an immense empty beach, in the middle of which towered a gigantic wooden horse. They gathered around that marvel. Some, because of their hatred for the Achaeans, wanted to throw it into the sea or hack it to pieces with axes; but others, seduced by the beauty of the horse, urged that it be consecrated to the gods and brought into the city as a magnificent monument to the war that had been won. And in the end they prevailed, because men are pitiful, and it is not given to them to see the future, but only to live enveloped in the fog of the present. They drove the horse on its speeding wheels over the plain, accompanying it with singing and dancing. Loud were the cries of the men who were pulling the thick ropes, who by their great effort were dragging into their dwelling place an animal with poisonous entrails. When they arrived at the wall, they had to widen the gates to get the giant horse into the city. But this, too, they did amid dancing and singing, while they scattered a carpet of flowers where the animal would pass and sprinkled honey and perfumes everywhere.

Then Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, appeared, who had received from the gods the gift of being able to read the future and the punishment of never being believed. She appeared like a fury in the middle of that celebration, tearing her hair and her clothes and crying. “Wretched people, what is
this horse of misfortune that you are driving like madmen? You are rushing toward your darkest night. This creature is pregnant with enemy soldiers, and it will give birth to them in the night under the affectionate gaze of Athena, the destroyer of cities. And an ocean of blood will run in these streets, overwhelming us all in a great wave of death. Ah, beloved city of my ancestors, you will soon be ashes in the wind. Father, Mother, I beg you, return to yourselves and send away this horror. Destroy that horse, burn it, and then indeed we will celebrate with singing and dancing. Only then will we rejoice at freedom regained, freedom that we so love.”