The Odyssey by Homer & Robert Fagles

Author:Homer & Robert Fagles
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Ancient & Classical, Classics, Poetry
ISBN: 9781789509427
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1996-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

So he grieved but I tried to lend him heart:

‘About noble Peleus I can tell you nothing,

576 but about your own dear son, Neoptolemus,

I can report the whole story, as you wish.

I myself, in my trim ship, I brought him

579 out of Scyros to join the Argives under arms.

580 And dug in around Troy, debating battle-tactics,

he always spoke up first, and always on the mark —

godlike Nestor and I alone excelled the boy. Yes,

583 and when our armies fought on the plain of Troy

he’d never hang back with the main force of men —

he’d always charge ahead,

giving ground to no one in his fury,

587 and scores of men he killed in bloody combat.

How could I list them all, name them all, now,

the fighting ranks he leveled, battling for the Argives?

590 But what a soldier he laid low with a bronze sword:

591 the hero Eurypylus, Telephus’ son, and round him

592 troops of his own Cetean comrades slaughtered,

lured to war by the bribe his mother took.

The only man I saw to put Eurypylus

in the shade was Memnon, son of the Morning.

Again, when our champions climbed inside the horse

that Epeus built with labor, and I held full command

to spring our packed ambush open or keep it sealed,

all our lords and captains were wiping off their tears,

600 knees shaking beneath each man —but not your son.

Never once did I see his glowing skin go pale;

he never flicked a tear from his cheeks, no,

he kept on begging me there to let him burst

from the horse, kept gripping his hilted sword,

his heavy bronze-tipped javelin, keen to loose

his fighting fury against the Trojans. Then,

once we’d sacked King Priam’s craggy city,

laden with his fair share and princely prize

he boarded his own ship, his body all unscarred.

610 Not a wound from a flying spear or a sharp sword,

cut-and-thrust close up —the common marks of war.

Random, raging Ares plays no favorites.’

So I said and

613 off he went, the ghost of the great runner, Aeacus’ grandson

614 loping with long strides across the fields of asphodel,

triumphant in all I had told him of his son,

his gallant, glorious son.

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