HOMER'S ILIAD COMPLETE

Rhapsody 21

Literally Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Theodore Alois Buckley

Homer Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Homer in Print

Page 5

Thus he spoke; but his knees and dear heart were relaxed. He let go the spear, indeed, and sat down, stretching out both hands. But Achilles, drawing his sharp sword, smote [him] at the clavicle, near the neck. The two-edged sword penetrated totally, and he, prone upon the ground, lay stretched out, but the black blood flowed out, and moistened the earth. Then Achilles, seizing him by the foot, threw him into the river, to be carried along, and, boasting, spoke winged words:

"Lie there now with the fishes,[673] which, without concern, will lap the blood of thy wound; nor shall thy mother[674] weep, placing thee upon the funeral couch, but the eddying Scamander shall bear thee into the wide bosom of the ocean. Some fish, bounding through the wave, will escape to the dark ripple,[675] in order that he may devour the white fat of Lycaon. Perish [ye Trojans], till we attain to the city of sacred Ilium, you flying, and I slaughtering in the rear: nor shall the wide-flowing, silver-eddying river, profit you, to which ye have already sacrificed many bulls, and cast solid-hoofed steeds alive into its eddies. But even thus shall ye die an evil death, until ye all atone for the death of Patroclus, and the slaughter of the Greeks, whom ye have killed at the swift ships, I being absent."

[Footnote 673: Cf. Virg. Aen. x. 555, sqq.; Longus, ii. 20: [Greek: alla boran [ymas] ichthyon theso katadysas].]

[Footnote 674: Cf. Soph. Electr. 1138, sqq. with my note.]

[Footnote 675: I.e. the surface.]

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