Troy by Stephen Fry

Author:Stephen Fry [Fry, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405944489
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

THE ARISTEIA OF ACHILLES

Never had such fighting been seen. Never such glory won. Never such crazed and bloody slaughter.

The gods knew this was a day that would live for ever. Zeus cast thunder, Athena and Ares clashed, Poseidon shook the earth with powerful tremors.

Achilles hunted Hector, calling on him to come and fight. It was Aeneas who first emerged to face him.

‘You, Aeneas! Shepherd boy,’ sneered Achilles. ‘Do you think if you kill me, Priam will leave you the throne of Troy? He’s got sons. You’re a nobody.’

Aeneas was unafraid and launched his spear. The tip pierced the bronze and tin layers of Achilles’ great shield only for it to bury itself in the soft core of solid gold. Aeneas lifted a huge boulder and Achilles rushed in, sword drawn. One of them would surely have died there and then had not Aeneas vanished in a great swirl of dust. Poseidon, favouring the Greeks as he did, had nonetheless rescued Aeneas, whose destiny he knew to be momentous.

‘So,’ cried Achilles, staring around. ‘I’m not the only one the gods love. Never mind, there are plenty of Trojans left to kill.’

And indeed there were. Whirling about, Achilles charged into the Trojan ranks and swiftly killed Iphition, Hippodamas and Demoleon, a son of Antenor.

POLYDORUS, Priam’s youngest surviving son, although forbidden to fight by his father, had been unable to resist entering the fray. When the boy suddenly found himself face to face with the greatest of all the Greeks, he turned and fled. But he was too slow. Achilles speared him in the back.

Hector heard his younger brother’s shrill screams and hurled his own spear at Achilles, but a gust of wind caused it to fall short – or was it, as Homer suggests, blown back by Athena?

Finally! Hector was in his sights. Achilles closed on him with a terrible series of screams, but once more the gods intervened and Hector disappeared in a cloud of mist. This time it was Apollo who denied Achilles his kill.

The enraged Achilles cut down more Trojans. Homer is as merciless and implacable in his descriptions as Achilles was in his killing. Dryops: speared through the neck. Demuchus: knee smashed and cut into pieces. The brothers Laogonus and Dardanus: speared and chopped. Young Tros, son of Alastor: liver split open and butchered. Mulius: a spear through one ear and out the other. Echeclus, the son of Agenor: head split open, a curtain of blood running down his face. Deucalion: speared, spitted and decapitated.

Achilles: his aristeia. A pitiless orgy of blood. An unstoppable cyclone. A raging wildfire. His blood-spattered chariot wheels rolled over the dead. The soaked earth was saturated with dark blood as he pushed the Trojans towards the River Scamander. In quick succession he killed Thersilochus, Mydon, Astypylus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius and Ophelestes, before despatching Lycaon, another of Priam’s sons, and tossing the body into the river. Scamander, his waters now choked with the corpses of men and horses, begged him to stop. Achilles only laughed and slaughtered yet more Trojans, pitching their bodies into the water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.