The Iliad by Ralph E. Blakely

Author:Ralph E. Blakely
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429997287
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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Book 14

Though he was occupied with drinking, the shouting didn’t escape the notice of Nestor. He spoke to the son of Asclepius in winged words: “Tell me, noble Machaon, how these doings will turn out. The war cry is stronger from the vigorous young men near the ships. You sit there now and drink the dark red wine until fair-haired Hecamede heats up your warm bath, and then she will wash off the bloody mess. But I am going in short order to a vantage spot to have a look around.”

8

So saying, he grabbed the well-fashioned buckler of his son the noble horseman Thrasymedes that was lying in the hut. The son had his father’s shield. He selected a sturdy spear with a point of sharp bronze. He stood outside the hut and quickly surveyed the shameful struggle as the men rushed on. The haughty Trojans advanced from behind, shouting as they broke through the Acheans’ wall. It was like watching violent gusts of shrill wind on a purple, silent wave in the great open sea. It doesn’t turn one way or the other until a wind of Zeus selects a direction for it. In such a manner was the old man’s mind distracted with two possibilities. Either he could go into the throng of the Danaans, with their swift horses, or he could go to Agamemnon Atreusson, Shepherd of the Troops. And so when he decided which would be the better choice, he went to Agamemnon, while the others fought each other in the slaughter, and tireless bronze creaked around their flesh with the thrusting of both swords and sharp-pointed spears.

26

The highborn kings met Nestor. Odysseus, Diomedes Tydeusson, and Agamemnon Atreusson were coming up along the ships because they had been wounded by bronze. The ships had been drawn up onto the beach of the gray sea a considerable distance away from the fighting. Theirs were the first drawn up on the plain and then they built the wall in front of the sterns of the ships. They were unable to leave a wide space between the sterns and the wall so there was little room for retreat of the troops in the narrow strip along the beach. They had been drawn up in rows, one ship behind another on the beach, and they filled the wide mouth of the beach’s inlet enclosed within such space as lay within the heights that surrounded them.

36

The kings looked out, trying to learn about the commotion and the fighting, as they went along in a group, each with his scepter. They were grieved at heart. And old Nestor joined them. He was one who inspired awe into the breasts and hearts of the Acheans. The Lord Agamemnon spoke to him in his resonant voice: “O Nestor Neleusson, great glory of the Acheans, why have you left the fighting, which wastes men, to come here? I fear that burly Hector might bring an end of me as he said in his speech to the Trojans when they gathered by the ships earlier.

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